By Kaitlin Milliken
When researching for her memoir, Grace Talusan found pictures of herself as a 1-year-old, mimicking the acts of reading and writing. In 2019, Grace shared her stories with the world in her memoir, The Body Papers.
The book gathers Grace’s essays, touching on deeply personal topics. Her writing explores her cultural identity, experiences as an undocumented immigrant, genetic disease, and her time as Fulbright Scholar in the Philippines. In this episode, Grace shares how writing the book has shaped her life.
You can get a copy of The Body Papers at your local bookstore, or you can listen to the audio book. Listen to the full conversation with Grace below, or subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Play, Stitcher, and Spotify.
Transcript
Kaitlin Milliken: Hello, and welcome to the BOSFilipinos podcast. I'm your host, Kaitlin Milliken, And this show is obviously made by BOSFilipinos.
This show is all about telling Filipino and Fim-Am stories in the Greater Boston community. Today’s episode will focus on how the Fil-Am experience has been reflected in literature.
To do that, I sat down with Grace Talusan. Born in the Philippines and raised largely in Massachusetts, Grace is a powerful author, writer, and academic. She is currently the Fannie Hurst Writer in residence at Brandeis University. She has also taught writing courses at Tufts University in Sommerville.
Grace published her first book — titled the Body Paper — in 2019. Her memoir is the winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing and was a New York Times Editor’s choice. Throughout the memoir, Grace tells her story non-linearly with legal documents, letters, and photos printed alongside her anecdotes. The different chapters cover a wide range of topics. That includes her time as an undocumented child. Her experience as both a Filipina living in the largely-white north east and as an American returning to her home country in adulthood. And family relationships, both healthy and otherwise.
Her descriptions of places in her memoir, from Boston to Bonifacio Global City in Manila, are written with such careful observation and care. Her words are filled with power. I met with Grace at Tufts in November of 2019 to talk about her experience writing The Body Papers. We also discussed the role writing has played in her life.
Before we get started, it’s worth noting: Grace’s memoir is incredibly complex. As much as her story is about joy, celebration, and self-discovery, there are many anecdotes that deal with tough topics. That includes abuse — both sexual and physical — generational trauma, living with mental illness, and genetic disease. Grace and I talked about her experience as a sexual abuse survivor around the 20 minute mark, just in case you want to skip that part of the discussion.
If you’re not able to read The Body Papers due to past experiences, you should still check out Grace’s writing. You can find a selection from her book titled “Crossing the Street in Manila” in Tuft’s Magazine, and “The Thing is, I’m Undocumented” a journalistic piece that ran in Boston Magazine.
Now on with the interview.
So tell us a little bit about the book that you released in April of 2019, for folks who may not know The Body Papers or be aware of the book.
Grace Talusan: The book is a memoir, and it's a bunch of stories and essays about my life. It's nonfiction, so all of it is true. And it's interspersed with documents, and photographs from my life. And they cover a lot of different topics and themes, from my experiences with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer, to my experiences as an aunt, as a formerly undocumented immigrant. And as someone who's had childhood trauma, and so it's about a lot of things. And in some ways, it's about the things that we don't talk about. You know, some of the people closest to me were kind of surprised when they read my book, because I hadn't talked with them about the things that I was thinking and feeling and going through. But that's because I could only write them like that's why they exist in the book. It's not really the stuff of conversation. Maybe it should be. At least it wasn't for me.
Kaitlin Milliken: So it's a book that has a lot of opening up being vulnerable. What really inspired you to start the writing process?
Grace Talusan: I've always loved to write. When I was looking at the hundreds of slides that my father took of my childhood, in order to research this book, I came across like two slides, one of me reading, probably at age like one-and-a-half, or pretending to read. And one of me writing, also at like one and a half. So before I could even really read and write, I wanted to do those things. So I think I've always wanted to write, and I've always been a huge reader. And in terms of this book, I didn't know I was writing it. I just was like, writing things that I felt an urge to write. And those pieces started to gather and accrete, and then eventually, I had like enough of these things, to put together a book.
Kaitlin Milliken: So you mentioned that you grew up and are really connected to the Boston area. But you were initially born in the Philippines. Can you talk about your relationship to culture and that move and how you feel as being not only a person who is Filipino, but also someone who's a Bostonian?
Grace Talusan: Boston is a has the...you have the potential that have a very particular cultural identity in lots of ways actually. It could be through sports, like there are people who are like, really into Boston sports. My family, I have family members who are like that. Even though they've moved away, their identity is around being a Patriots fan, or a Sox fan. That's not it for me. But I still do feel really tied to this place. I've been here since I was two except for some times off and on. And I really like that I can feel tied to a place.
It's not like it's the friendliest place in the world. It's not, you know, particularly like people have complained about Boston is really like racist. Yeah, like most things that all might be true. And I have experienced some of them. And yet, because this is the place that I came to after being in the Philippines, I do feel like it's home. And that's really important to me to have a place that I feel like is home. Because one of my first experiences of life is having my home taken away, or like leaving my home, of the Philippines and not having the choice at all. Like I had this whole life going on. We left when I was two, we lived in a family compound. I had a nanny that was with me, 24-seven. Not all the time, of course, she had days off, but like, I have this unknown person who was like my caregiver all the time. I had family around all the time. And we left it, and we came here to Boston. And you know, that's like a really jarring experience.
I thought I wanted to be Irish for a long time. Like, it's kind of a bit like celebrating St. Patrick's Day would be big here when I was growing up. People would wear their green. My classmates who were of Irish heritage, like really got into it. And I wanted to be Irish, like I would wear green. And I would wear stickers that say, “Kiss me, I'm Irish,” because I very much wanted a cultural identity to belong to. And it took me a while to warm up to the Philippines as being that identity, having a Filipino cultural identity or whatever that means.
It's something that is dynamic and that I'm still figuring out after like, a lifetime. The book is framed by a six month trip that I took to the Philippines. I lived in the Philippines for several months on a Fulbright Fellowship. And that experience taught me so much and including like, I am an American. I don't know a thing about the Philippines. I'm Filipino, but I'm not also. I don't have the language skills. I don’t have like the sense of my body, the sense of humor, the kind of ways of relating that I saw people relate to that I think is so beautiful. It's kind of intimacy among strangers that I saw this way of thinking of each other as brother and sister. At least that's what I interpreted. There was this kind of warmth that I saw all the time.
That's not me. I didn't grow up that way, but I admire it.
Kaitlin Milliken: The differences you notice, things you related to, things that seemed distant. Can you talk a little bit more about what you learned and experienced while you were there?
Grace Talusan: You know, family's really important to me here, I see that. And there's ways that like, some people might think my boundaries or our boundaries with family, are unhealthy or something, but I don't think so. I mean, there's a closeness that I think is comforting and that I don't think it's unhealthy. And then I went to the Philippines and I'm like, “Yeah, I get it even more.” They are enduring, an hour and a half, three hour daily commutes in traffic in really crowded, hot conditions crammed onto jeepneys or on buses standing. They're enduring a lot, and it's for their family. Or they have to go abroad or they are what's called temporal migrants where they work the night shift in call centers to serve us in the West. Meanwhile, their family is living in the daytime, and they're working at night, right? So they're these temporal migrants. And like they will do all of that for the love of their family. And that really came through to me this kind of, you know, and I don't just mean blood family, but whoever they decide is their family. I saw that and that was just really really inspiring and beautiful.
This kind of devotion to each other was incredible because I was like a whiny, spoiled American. Like there's traffic it's too hot. The air conditioner’s not working. I was totally like a lightweight, and people were enduring so much with a much better sense of humor and attitude than I was.
Kaitlin Milliken: So you mentioned the book is framed through your journey there. Another important theme is bodies. It's called The Body Papers. Can you talk a little bit about the title and what role the body plays in your memoir?
Grace Talusan: It is a book about what it means to have papers attached to your body, that decide what your life is going to be, and where you can exist. I'm thinking particularly about immigration documents, and how those kinds of papers really impact someone's life experience. And we know now that like, horrible experiences that people are enduring on the southern border, because of lack of papers or not the right papers or something. And just like someone is more human, or treated more or less human, because of that documentation, and how I just find that unconscionable. And so that's so that's some of what I write about is my experiences.
My experiences were really not that bad. I didn't suffer that much as an undocumented immigrant in the ways that I see people are suffering today. But I had a little bit of insight into it by having the same experience of not having proper documentation.
The other kinds of ways that the body is in the book is that I got paperwork that gives me test results that told me that I had a really high susceptibility of breast and ovarian cancer. And so I had to make a choice like, “What am I going to do. I have this for knowledge. Am I going to wait for cancer to develop?” That seems like a really bad idea. Some people think it was a good idea, because they're like, “Well, why would you cut and remove healthy organs?” But the counter to that is, “Well, then why would forego this genetic fore knowledge? That something is about to happen and not prevent that from happening.”
I really, I mean, I thought a lot about it. Talked to a lot of people, studied a lot of like, studies and scientific outcomes, and talked to doctors and all kinds of things. And I just kept coming back to the same — the only answer at this point, and I didn't like the answer, but I also was not about to go get cancer like, and wait for cancer. I have known people who died of cancer, like they sure they treated it, which was quite horrible. You know, the chemo and the radiation are really difficult. And then you might still get cancer like it could come back. It wasn't easy, but eventually I felt really lucky that I had this knowledge and that I could prevent it like my sister, my other relatives and cousins they did not, and they live with various levels of fear about cancer, including one cousin —who she has metastasis to the brain and from her breast cancer, and she's just been living with it for years. And I just think, “Oh my gosh, it's like this tipping point. Like, will you have to keep taking the medication and hoping that it's going to work? But what happens when the day it doesn't? And so I needed to do something.” And that's what I did is I traded up or traded away my healthy organs for not getting cancer.
Kaitlin Milliken: Having the mastectomy is definitely an exercise in like autonomy and being able to make your choices, which is great.
Grace Talusan: Yeah. You know, my nieces are getting older. And you know, I think about them. But I do think the word autonomy is the right one, it's like they have to make the choice. We’ll be there for them and support them. If they find out that they also carry this genetic mutation, but it is up to them in their life, and they have to make their own choices.
Kaitlin Milliken: You mentioned immigration, which I know is something that's on the forefront of everyone's mind all the time in this day and age that we're living in America. Did you decide to share those experiences because of the political climate when you were writing the book? Or was that something that you had decided to include much earlier, when you first began the writing process?
Grace Talusan: I very much only wrote about it because of the political climate. I was always told to never talk about it. And in some ways, I could just pass and move on, right? Like, I had my US citizenship. I have my blue passport. I don't actually have to deal with it at all. But I started to meet people, including students who were undocumented. And I thought I realized like, “No, I'm safe, and they're not. I need to do something.” If my story can do anything to help understanding around this issue, I need to do it because I'm safe. And so I was reporting for Boston Magazine on a high school senior. And that's when I started to write about it. And I just saw her and her bravery and about telling her story and also how stuck she was. She had some really low moments.
And that's when I thought, like, “I can't keep my story actually, is important in this situation, because I was also at one time, a high school student who was undocumented.” And that's when I started to tell that story. And then I interviewed my parents. And then later on, I even did a FOIA request, and I got 100 pages back of documents from the government. And, you know, that became important because children were being separated from their parents at the southern border. And I was so upset by that. And then I was looking at the paperwork that I got back from Immigration and Naturalization Services, and they said all over it, “She is a nine-year-old child.” They wrote it in big writing all over my documentation, as if to remind the arresting officers and the other immigration officers like, have compassion here. Like she is a nine-year-old child. And so I really appreciated that, that they had that kind of discretion. And they listened to the story of my family, and that we were a mixed status family. We had it. My parents owned a home. My father had a business in which he employed people. We had US citizens, children, in our family, and they didn't disrupt our family. They let us stay together until all the documentation was cleared up. And I really did appreciate that.
Kaitlin Milliken: So you mentioned you interviewed your parents, you did a FOIA request. That's a lot of researching. And I know most books take research, but it's not always about you as an author. So how did it feel to really research yourself and take that time to be very introspective about your life?
Grace Talusan: Well, I have, because I've done some reporting, as a freelancer, I wanted to use those same skills in writing this memoir. It actually didn't feel right for me to just base it all on memory. I think it's possible, that it's fine. Like it's a memoir, it's based on your memory. But in terms of the story I wanted to tell, I felt more ethically comfortable if I at least tried to verify the things that I was writing about. And I discovered that I was actually wrong. Like the story I've been told is that I came to this country when I was three-years-old in the winter. And that's not true. My paperwork showed that I came here at age two in July. And so like my parents had just kind of forgotten. I don't think they meant to it's just that that's my memory started in my memory corroborated their memory because I remember being really cold. I remember sitting on Santa's lap. It was like snowing in Chicago, like I remember all these things. But that's when my memory begins. That's not where my story in the US actually begins.
So I was glad that I got this outside documentation, because it taught me things about memory and storytelling and like, “Why was that story so important to me about being three? And it's snowing, when actually it wasn’t. It was the summer.” And I was like, “What does all that mean?” But I also think facts are incredibly important. If you have the opportunity to verify and have like other kinds of documentation, why not? Like, why wouldn't you do that? Unless you're trying to do some other kind of project about memory, that's fine, but it just seems like there's great information there to use, including photographs. Like there's so much information in photographs.
If you're writing a memoir, I would recommend you utilize all of it, including maps, like go on Google Maps and like, take a walk inside like a former neighborhood or something like that. It's all like really great material.
Kaitlin Milliken: I know something else that you discuss in your book is that you are a sexual abuse survivor. Can you share a little bit about the process of writing that portion of your story?
Grace Talusan: Because I was looking through all my archives and papers that my father had saved, like he saved my school papers. One of the things I came across was that I actually wrote and turned in an essay about it in high school, like, just two years after I told my parents. I had written about what had happened to me. It's pretty similar to what I have in the book, because it was… What happened to me was pretty repetitive. And so there wasn't...it wasn't going to be like so different from what I wrote about. So I've been writing about it for a long time, but not publishing about it.
So in graduate school, I wrote a pretty close novel that was really close to my experience autobiographically. And I wrote that I didn't publish that material, but I have been interested in the material in a long time. It's not like I want to write about it. I'd have to work up to write about it, because it's not something I want to do. But it has felt important to do it. And so when I wrote the version for this memoir, I showed my writing group, and some people in the group said, like, “Well, what happened? Because like, you never actually write about what happened directly.” And then I realized, like, “Okay, I guess I have to do that.” And so I did.
So I thought very, a lot and deeply and closely about like, what am I going to say about my experience, and why would I say it, and what will I leave out and why would I leave that out? And so ultimately, I thought that he would do more damage if I didn't...if I was not transparent and just matter of factly said, like, “This is what happened.” Because I just didn't... I wanted to be transparent and say like, this is what happened, and it was very repetitive. And so that is the thing that happened very repetitively for seven years. And so, it taught me a lot because like, I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to think about it. But it forced me to, and it forced me to contend with the kind of damage that I mean. I wish I just want to pretend it didn't happen. But when I wrote about it, I'm like, “Oh my gosh, okay, almost every night for seven years, for basically my entire childhood. Like, oh my gosh, how did I even deal? How did I get through the day?” I mean, all those things.
I was able to see it as an adult and have much more compassion for myself. Kind of give myself a break. Like, that's kind of why I struggle with some of the things I struggle with to this day. You know, it's a pretty big trauma. And I've done a lot of work to deal with it. But, um, you know, at one of my, my first readings in Seattle, someone in the audience to ask me if I was healed yet, from what happened. And I was, you know, I mean...I took the person seriously, but I was also kind of angry about the question. And I was just like, “No. Healed. I mean, what does that even mean?”
Am I going to be healed from it in my life? I hope so. I think I just learned to grow around it and like, move, create a life around it, but heal to me means it like connotates something like that or know something different like almost like it never happened or something. But I mean, my symptoms are very... I don't suffer the extent of the symptoms I did when I was, you know, 10 years ago or 20 years ago. I don't suffer those symptoms, but there are reverberations still in my life for sure. But writing about it was a another kind of way to process and another way to approach some kind of — not healing — but like a way to deal with it.
Like if part of the issue around it was keeping it secret, the fact that I did the exact opposite of that, and put my story in a book that exists all over the world and including sitting in libraries, and in bookshelves, and in Amazon warehouses and whatever, like, that means something that's meaningful to me that I didn't just keep it and like die with this story, but I put it out in the world and that's meaningful to me.
Kaitlin Milliken: Coming through the end of that writing process, do you feel like your relationship or understanding of yourself has shifted at all? Has it changed your relationship with yourself?
Grace Talusan: I think writing both writing and reading are really profound activities that have the potential to change you. Yes. And in my particular case, yes. As soon as I got the book deal, something in me changed. And then the process of working with my editor and publisher to develop the book, revise it, go through all the steps of copy editing, and making it into what I think is a beautiful object. That changed me. And then even recording my audio book changed me. Like the person who recorded the book with me, he was my engineer, you know. He sat with me for a week for hours every day. He was so kind and so gentle. And it was my first time recording an audio book. And like that was a really wonderful healing experience to like, tell my story to this audio engineer.
It was, I don't know, there's just all these experiences that I've been able to have from the act of publishing that I would not have had if I had just stayed despairing and depressed, and not just like thought the things I was thinking before I got the book deal, which is like, “Nobody cares about my story. No one wants to publish it. And you're like, I'm just a loser.” You know, those things aren't true. I don't think those are true if people haven't published a book and have wanted to, but that's how I was feeling. I was feeling pretty bad about myself. But you know, as bad as I ever feel, there's always a part of me that wants to fight. So even though I was feeling bad about my writing and thought, like, “I'll never publish a book,” I still did enter the contest, there was still a part of me that wanted to keep going and fighting. And I entered the contest, like, I never thought I would win. And yet I did.
And so those are, those are things that changed me. And then like reading the book, like I know I wrote the book. So obviously, I've read it. By the time we were done with the very extensive revision process, I almost didn't even know what I had anymore, because I was looking very closely at like sentences as at the space between words at commas at this section, that section. It's like I couldn't see the whole thing. And so I got it back. And I got the hardcover in Seattle, that was the first time I saw it. And then at some point, I read the book and I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is a book about my father. What have I done?” Because I did not expect that it was a book about my father. I thought it was about me. And yet it was so much about how I understand myself, and which is understanding myself through my father.
Kaitlin Milliken: That was really great. I definitely understand the process of like, when you look at something for so long, that it just starts to become its own very small fixation, instead of looking something up as a whole picture.
Grace Talusan: Yes, yeah. And by the time this comes out, probably my paperback will have come out or be about to come out. And what I'm in the process of doing now is trying to look at the book holistically, and take out some errors or repetitions or things like that. And so now that the book is a thing, I can go back and like go back in and try to make some corrections and change some things, some tiny, tiny things that I saw as errors now that I can see the whole book.
Kaitlin Milliken: So this is my final question. What do you hope readers will take away after they complete your book?
Grace Talusan: That's a really great question. And it is a privilege to even think about that question. So I wonder if there is a story that you don't tell, even to yourself. And if so, why is that? Like, what is that part of yourself that you don't even want to touch? And what would it mean to attempt it? And I don't mean like, you should do this. You should do this in a safe way. Like, if the best, safest way to do this is with a trusted therapist, like definitely do it that way. But I just wonder, you know, why do we want to hide things from our own self?
And then if you go beyond that, and think like, what are the things that we need to share with each other? And we need to tell each other. Part of the reason I was driven to publish this book is because I thought about the next generation like my students, my nieces and nephews, my nibbling, like, I want them to have the truth. I want them to be equipped with the full truth of things, even though it's painful sometimes when it's appropriate for them to know the truth. It's better that they know what then they not. Like, in a way people lied to me and told me, you know, and I wanted to believe a story about my grandfather, and it actually wasn't true. And it kind of ruined or like, in lots of ways, ruined parts of my life. And like, almost destroyed it because I didn't have the truth. And so I think the truth is really important.
And at the very beginning, we need to start with ourselves. And then we have to start to think about like, what would it mean to tell the truth in this relationship or that relationship? And I think it's worth it to try and to see how your life might change for better or probably will change for the better. And like that secret that you've been holding on to, maybe you shouldn't hold on to it.
Kaitlin Milliken: Definitely. That's very powerful. Thank you. Thank you so much Grace again for taking the time out.
Grace Talusan: Oh, this has been such an honor. Thank you for interviewing me and this opportunity to talk.
Kaitlin Milliken: This has been the BOSFilipinos Podcast. I’m your host, Kaitlin Milliken. Music for this episode was made by Matt Garamella.
Special thanks to Grace Talusan for sharing her story. If you haven’t already, read The Body Papers and experience her writing first hand.
Before you go, Friday June 12 is Filipino Independence Day. Even if gatherings are still restricted, we hope that you can share Filipino culture and heritage with the people you care about. You can also keep up with opportunities to celebrate, and other stories from Boston’s Fil-Am community at bosFilipinos.com.
If you haven't already, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Spotify, and Google Play. You can also follow us on Instagram @bosfilipinos to stay connected. Thanks for listening and see you soon.