Grace Talusan’s Book of Healing and Empowerment
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Grace Talusan (Photo by Alonso Nichols)
The moments she refers to delve into cultural displacement, cancer, and the harrowing wounds of sexual abuse. Through it all, one saving grace shines as a beacon of courage: familial love. For her eloquence and candor, Talusan was awarded the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, and the memoir has been cited as a New York Times Editor's Choice selection.
The positive reception to The Body Papers has been occurring on a personal level, as well. Whether at a public appearance or via email, readers have extended their gratitude to Talusan for narrating a traumatic history with neither shame nor apology, underscoring the universality of her memoir: "Of course, they have their own version about what they experienced. But I think that seeing my version of things and my story about what happened to me, they feel some kind of opening that's being made perhaps for them to tell their story or maybe they feel seen in some way."
The Body Papers
That Talusan's paternal grandfather perpetrated her years of sexual abuse was all the more reason she needed to be heard. Through disclosure, this was a family poison that would fester no more; thus, absolving her of unjustifiable guilt. And although Talusan feared that revelation would result in an irreparable rupture in family ties, it had the opposite effect. Paternal cousins have granted support not only by attending her public readings, but also by prompting others to pick up her book either at stores or at libraries. Since many of her cousins are also artists, they understand the apprehension and reluctance she had wrestled with while drafting her memoir. Now that she has withstood all doubt, they prod her onward to reach her fullest potential as a writer, which is boundless.
"It's such a gift to get that encouragement," says Talusan. Yet even if publication had eluded her, she would have penned her story simply because she loves to write. She attributes writers of color such as Maxine Hong Kingston, Carlos Bulosan, and Toni Morrison as influential in fanning her passion for literature. Their cohesion of race and family drama resonates with her: "That was very, very important for me to find women writers and writers of color and seek them out and read their books because they showed me what was possible."
One major factor that has buoyed Talusan's ardor through the years, and that continues to do so, is her ability to view writing mainly as a catharsis. She makes no distinction between a daily journal and a more ambitious piece. Both are methods of solidifying a relationship with her thoughts and emotions. "My primary motivation to write is for myself first," she says. Only after establishing a personal tie to a story does she consider an audience to whom she could mold her work. She is of the conviction that the reward of publishing is a byproduct of writing with truth and integrity, for solely through her heart and soul can her words touch readers. Nevertheless, to maintain this frame of mind is not easy: "There are many times when I felt despair or I felt like no one is gonna ever listen to my voice or connect to my writing. That is very difficult to feel and to work with. I have to remember why I'm in it [the literary vocation], why I do it."
Grace Talusan reading at Brandeis University (Photo by Alonso Nichols)
Fortunately, as assurance of her storytelling talent, Talusan had the backing of professors and classmates while an undergraduate at Tufts University, where she had been earning a degree in medicine and is currently an English teacher. This led to an acceptance into the writing program at the University of California, Irvine and a Fulbright Fellowship. Each avenue to honing her craft has provided a community of support. One recent network of artists and advocates she discovered was the Filipino American International Book Festival held in the Bay Area in October 2019: "The people I met at the book fair, all those people are invested in our stories. To be at that book fair and see all the booksellers, librarians, buyers, and writers, it was stunning and so incredible."
Grace Talusan stands as evidence that the power is within us to transform setbacks once debilitating into fodder to nurture the best of ourselves. For her, a tremendous chunk of the greatness she has to offer is encapsulated in her writing. Her dream is that The Body Papers, along with other books she has yet to author, be taught in schools for generations to come as a lightning rod of inspiration: "In terms of me as a person and a writer and a teacher, I want to encourage other people [to write], especially voices we hadn't heard from yet in all kinds of ways -- maybe it's because of economic and social class, maybe because it's ethnicity, racial identity, sexual orientation identity… all of those things. We need more of our stories and our voices. And I want to be the kind of person that encourages and supports our community to make more stories and also publish and share them."
Rafaelito V. Sy is the author of Potato Queen, a novel about the relationship between Caucasians and Asians in the San Francisco gay community of the 1990s. Please visit his blog of short stories and inspirational essays on film: www.rafsy.com.
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