Noticeable Themes In My Scribbles

When you write long enough, you begin to notice themes or patterns surfacing in your writing. My scribbles over the years have taken the Hmong and the Mormon cultures as their subject, respectively, and with that, I can't help but be aware that there are certain things that I obsess about.

Hmong

An ethnic group from Southeast Asia, the Hmong emigrated to America, as well as to other countries, after Laos fell to the communists in 1975. Between 1953 and 1975, thousands of Hmong helped the United States fight a secret war in Laos against the North Vietnamese Army and the Pathet Lao.

I learned the Hmong culture and language by working with them for two years in the Sacramento area as an LDS missionary ("the Mormons"). Since that time, I have kept up on the language and culture. My Hmong fiction has tended to explore aspects of the culture that I find worthy of change (e.g., women's rights, youth gangs, commercialization of New Year's, Christians v. Animists, etc.), as well as to emphasize the cultural loss and connectivity the Hmong have experienced as they have become assimilated into their host Western society, despite their best efforts not to be.

Some may think that as a "white skin" I should not point out flaws in the Hmong culture. I would answer that until the Hmong have a literary voice of their own that produces serious fiction about their experience, it may be a benefit to have someone who understands both cultures serve as a bridge between them. (Some of the Hmong youth and young adults have made and are making artistic efforts to present their own story, like in the literary magazine, Paj Ntaub Voice. I applaud that and hope that it continues.)

I have drafts of several Hmong-themed stories, but most are not quite ready. In the past, there haven't been many outlets to publish fiction about the Hmong, but with the coming of the e-publication age, this has changed. Look for my story "Cocked" as an e-publication soon.

Mormon

The other domain of my fictional creations has been that of Mormon culture. While at BYU, I studied creative writing under Douglas H. Thayer and, if I learned anything from him, he taught me that serious Mormon fiction is possible, and that writing about Mormon culture and Mormonism doesn't have to perpetuate the Pollyanna worldview of much of mainstream Mormon fiction (i.e., Deseret Books). In Doug's words, serious Mormon fiction is "Fiction that explores contemporary Mormon life as it is lived, not as we pretend that it is or should be."

In my efforts to write serious Mormon fiction, I find myself looking to Dostoevsky for inspiration. I have always liked the way his characters struggle with faith and doubt. In The Brothers Karamazov, he has the faithful Alyosha and the doubting Ivan dramatize that veritable Yin-and-Yang connection between the two extremes. This struggle and the relationship between the two is definitely a theme in my fiction, for better or worse. (Faith and doubt grapple, tumbling through darkness.) My novel-in-progress, No Sacred Grove, explores this dialectic. If your faith survives a "long night of darkness," it's the stronger for it. Sometimes faith wins out, sometimes doubt, but the wrestling is a process.

I hope to take up other subjects for my fiction in the future, but we'll see. These are the worlds I know best so far.

Photo by Julie Jordan Scott

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