Episode #309: Self-Exposure and Writing the Story You Have to Write
Featuring Javier Zamora and Susan Kiyo Ito
Hello story-seekers, truth-finders, memoir-writers, and story-lovers!
In this second week of Write-minded’s August mashups, we bring back the heartfelt interviews with Javier Zamora and Susan Kiyo Ito, both of whom spoke so honestly and supportively about writing and sharing stories they’ve carried with them their entire lives. Javier’s harrowing journey from El Salvador to the US border when he was just nine years old, traveling as an unaccompanied minor is the subject of his memoir, Solito, and Susan’s I Would Meet You Anywhere centers her adoption story, touching upon themes of longing, abandonment, identity, and more. Both authors grapple with exposure in these soul-searching stories of identity and survival.
. . . If I step back from publishing this book, I would not be able to forgive myself for that. I just felt like ‘My god, it’s been thirty years and I’ve put it off so many times. I’ve stepped away so many times. I’ve been afraid to do this so many times, and I’m here and I’m at the brink of it happening and for me to go to my press and say “Actually never mind” or “Can you hold off five or ten years”,’ I just felt like I couldn’t do that—you know, for myself as a writer, and for myself as a person who wanted to be able to tell my story, but had held myself back so many times. So I just jumped. I leapt.
—Susan Kiyo Ito
Partial transcript from the show
Brooke: We hope your August is going well and that you’re staying cool and finding write-minded things to do. I’m Brooke Warner, and Grant Faulkner and I are back for week two of our summer mashups where we feature some of our favorite interviews from the past year. Grant, the reason we chose Javier Zamora and Susan Ito was because these were interviews that really resonated with listeners. Javier is the author of Solito and Susan of I Would Meet You Anywhere, and both books confront this question of exposure, and both authors spoke to that exposure head on in ways that I found helpful and liberating and just generally validating about the fact that memoir writing is hard because of exposure. Which is something I’m personally grappling with in a very present and public way, Grant, since I shared on my Substack in July that I’m still working on my memoir, but I realize that I’m going to have to wait to publish it, just until my son is a bit older.
Grant: Yes, I saw that, Brooke, and I thought your post was clearly very comforting to others because I saw you had a lot of comments where people were struggling with similar feelings about how memoir impacts other people. Now that I’m writing my own memoir, I understand that concern more than ever. There are layers of concern with putting a story into the world, and I’ve never really had to think about the impact of what I publish in this way. I know, Brooke, that you wrote you’d wait till James finishes high school to publish, and that’s five years. You told me you were inspired by Susan’s interview because she’s been working on her memoir for upwards of two decades, and maybe five years doesn’t sound that long when you take the long view like that.
Brooke: Yes, exactly. I think when we’re writing we’re looking for other people to validate our experiences, and maybe that’s what my post did for others, and it’s what Susan did for me. I think the story I’m writing is important, but there’s a real-world family dynamic in the mix with a child who’s still growing up and still figuring things out. And even if he didn’t read it, now or ever, I just decided I want to wait. I don’t know how I would have felt if my mom published a memoir while I was in high school, but it’s a selfish time for kids, and a lot is going on already. And the truth is, Grant, maybe I need those five years to write the book I want to write. Once I settled into the idea of it I actually felt like I could breathe a bit.
Grant: I’m glad to hear that, Brooke. I’ve actually found that writing, and the obstacles of writing, whether they’re delays like this or rejection, sometimes are serendipitous and end up being good for the book. And, just for levity’s sake, I signed my kids up for my Substack newsletter when I started it, and I don’t think they’ve read a single issue. I also don’t think they’ve read any of my books. I’ve heard this from other writer friends. So I guess I’m free to write what I want. I do have to get their permission to post photos of them on social media, though.
Brooke: And if you’re looking for two good reads this summer, Solito and I Would Meet You Anywhere are both such beautiful books. Per usual, I listened to both of them on audio. Javier does his own recording, Susan does not. Both stories are fascinating, in Javier’s case more harrowing. I loved both of these books, and found both of these authors to be generous and helpful in their articulation of all that’s involved in writing a book that circles trauma, that contends with fear of exposure. Much to glean from these two memoirists—and if you missed the original full episodes, go back and listen. Without further ado, here’s Javier and Susan.
Part of retelling this story to myself was remembering those very real instances of perhaps the most human things, which are: telling jokes, having fart wars, eating and enjoying the best fried fish of your life. Because you have to and you must do and have those scenes and those experiences so your body won’t just stop and give in to the very real harshness of the world around you.
—Javier Zamora
ABOUT JAVIER ZAMORA & SUSAN KIYO ITO
Javier Zamora migrated to the US as an unaccompanied minor when he was nine years old. His first poetry collection, Unaccompanied, explores some of these themes. His New York Timesbestselling memoir, Solito, retells his nine-week odyssey across Guatemala, Mexico, and eventually through the Sonoran Desert. Zamora was a 2018-2019 Radcliffe Fellow and holds fellowships from CantoMundo, Colgate University, MacDowell, Macondo, the National Endowment for the Arts, and others. Susan Kiyo Ito is the author of the memoir, I Would Meet You Anywhere, and a finalist for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award. She co-edited the literary anthology A Ghost At Heart’s Edge. Her work has appeared in The Writer, Hyphen, Literary Mama, Catapult, and elsewhere. Her theatrical adaption of Untold, stories of reproductive stigma, was produced at Brava Theater. She teaches at the Mills College campus of Northeastern University.