INTERVIEW: Rita Chang-Eppig by Giovanna Lomanto
Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea
Rita Chang-Eppig
Bloomsbury
Interview by
Giovanna Lomanto
It’s Monday morning, and everything is closed. Rita Chang-Eppig is standing in front of the shuttered windows of a coffee shop we had predetermined for our meeting—and I am full of apologies for picking a spot that was not actually open. Rita is kind. She graciously lets me walk her to another spot down the block that is taking customers, and we sit on the benches outside as the barista unlocks the chains that hook all the outdoor tables together. She’s wearing a “New York” cap, and I quickly ask her about our shared alma mater. We discuss different MFA advisors we had, order our beverages (she gets a hot chocolate), and joke about lactose intolerance. The entire time, I’m thinking about Rita’s credentials—she’s been published in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The Rumpus, and The Best American Short Stories 2021 among others—and how she’s standing before me in a rust orange hoodie, her hands curled around the foaming, espresso-free latte art. Her novel, Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea, has made countless lists for most anticipated debuts this year—and it was definitely on mine, too.
Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea is a novel about historical pirate queen Shek Yeung, who reigned over fleets all across the South China Sea through strategic partnerships—marriages included. The novel reads like an epic tale with a unique interiority, and I sit before the author, curious to pick through the corners of her writerly mind.
Giovanna Lomanto: I really loved how the main character Shek Yeung has a high level of pragmatism, but is simultaneously not immune to emotion in this really powerful and strong way, that I think shows a lot about like, femininity, and ways that we can interact with it. Shek Yeung both defies femininity, but finds her femininity through that defiance. What do you think, in terms of the idea of a powerful woman and a strong woman, is rooted in our ideas of masculinity, and how do you see that happening?
Rita Chang-Eppig: Yeah, I mean, I this is something that I've talked with other women writers before and I think there is very much an idea in our culture, that in order for a woman character to be a strong female character, there has to be a certain amount of physical aggression, physical pain. I was thinking, you know, if you're thinking about shows, there were a bunch of shows in like the early 2000s that were full of these tropes, right, these heroines, are “kick ass.” When you're writing about a woman pirate, it's very, it's this very complicated thing, because on one hand, she is going to be doing this thing, because she's robbing people, she's a pirate. But at the same time, I definitely didn't want her to be interpreted as a kind of #girlboss character. I would say that a lot of her strengths are about sort of, like emotional resilience and emotional, which is not to say that she doesn't have many problems and unresolved emotional issues, but that it's her way of saying, just like, “Okay, I'm gonna keep going. I'm experiencing these really horrible things of life. I'm going to find a way to keep going.” I mean, I don't know if this is speaks to your original question. But I do think that if I was trying to strike a balance between like, yes, she fights, but also like, the book isn't scene after scene of her, you know, like, action sequences. I would like to think that it's also a lot more about the ways in which she you know, the ways in which she shows emotional strength and the ways in which she finds emotional strength in many women friends.
GL: I feel like a lot of times the, the moments that I find to be the most poignant are when she kind of surrenders to greater powers. She often calls upon the spirits asking for guidance or going to the fortune teller, and I feel like a lot of her strength is being able to admit when she needs help, And then to also be able to be so smart—to identify exactly what kind of help she needs—is admirable. Additionally, I'm sure it was a very conscious decision to bring some a religious aspect to the text, and I wonder how much of that was in relation to archival work? How much of that was fitting the time period to the moment and the character in this time?
RC-E: So they're actually historical records that the deity most worshipped by pirates during that period of time was Ma Zou. And this makes perfect sense when you really think about it, because if you spend all your time at sea, what do you pray to? You don’t pray to a mountain god that's like, somewhere inland—you're like, please, like, please don't have a storm that's gonna kill me. I knew that, in order for me to accurately represent the inner experiences of a sick young crew, I knew that Ma Zou worship had to go into itself. But in the early stages, it wasn't entirely clear to me how it was going to appear. And, you know, this is where having a good agent and a good editor is helpful, because had included these tiny snippets of the myth in the book. It'd be here and there. And my, my agent was like, what if you actually just make these a more formal, almost like a form of the novel? And I thought, “Oh, actually, that's really a good idea.” And then the more I kind of went down that path, the more I realized that there would be ways to draw parallels between the secular and Ma Zou. And I thought: “Okay, well, this could be an interesting opportunity to explore the ways in which Shek Yeung sees herself through something.” What are myths? They explain things for us that are unexplainable. From the earliest days, it's like, “Oh, why is there thunder? Oh, it's because of the thunder god.” Myths teach us what to do with our lives, they act as guides for the universe. And they also, in general, they help us make sense of a world that may not actually have any sense. But human beings, we need to feel like there's some kind of order, there's some kind of organization. And so I was like, “Okay, well, let's use the myths as a way to explore how Shek Yeung thinks about the world.” How does she use these myths to justify her own misdeeds? You know, how does she use these myths to give her life a sense of continuity and purpose, or meaning, or concern?
And I think these days, like if you are a young professional living in the U.S. or many parts of Western Europe, etc. It's considered gauche to say that you believe in like a higher power. People think of it as a backward belief. But I think that the fact of the matter is, we don't like that there are lots of things in the world that we don't have control over. Three years ago, all of a sudden this pandemic happened. And I guess we all just have to learn to live with these new realities. So especially back then, when science and technology and all of those things were far less than they are now, it would be hard for me to imagine that there wouldn't be this attitude of “Well, I did my best. And we're gonna have to just leave the rest of them to the gods and the universe because there’s nothing more to do.”
GL: And I also wonder— there is a lot of cruelty that happens in piracy. For instance, the flower boats, the rapings, the executions. Were you conscious about how much you wanted to show? I know that you probably were, but I was also wondering, what were your thoughts on how much you want to expose of these characters’ dark sides?
RC-E: Yeah, that that was a really fine line that I was trying to walk. I don't believe in retraumatizing people unnecessarily. In my previous life, I worked as a psychologist. And so I try to be mindful of the fact that I'm a survivor of sexual assault myself. It’s not that people can't talk about sexual assault to me. It's more than that. I don't like it when, whether it's film TV or literature, when they depict sexual assault in a way that feels like sensationalization. My goal was to not unnecessarily retraumatize people. That said, I think that I personally feel a little bit uncomfortable with depictions of pirates that just kind of show them as romantic heroes or heroines who just wanted a life on the sea. That’s a form of erasure. The pirates did bad things. And to pretend like they were these just romantic heroes, you know, like, wandering around adventuring—it’s a form of erasure to the traumas that were experienced by the victims of these pirates. And so I didn't want to write a novel in which Shek Yeung came out as this morally pure heroine. I wanted to make it very clear that in order for her to seize power and to maintain the power that she had, she went to some very, very problematic places.
GL: And on the other hand, the way that female friendship works this novel with Wo Yuet and Yan Yan really brings out this like multi-dimensional tenderness that is really present. And you realize, there's so many relationships that are validated in the novel. There', family, there's romance, there's friendship, there's sibling shifts, and all of that gets muddled because you're in the same space. And it's also really interesting because there's also this like element of polyamory within the book, and it makes me really think about how right now, a lot of people are stressing this question of: what are we? And it seems like, for the characters in this novel, that doesn't matter. To them, it’s simply: we're close. That's what we are
RC-E: I think that when you spend all day, every day together on a tiny shipyou’re saving each other’s lives all the time and you’re also driving each other crazy. So a lot of relationships develop as a result of the proximity. And I think that this whole, “let’s define what we are” thing—I don’t have proof of this, but I think it’s a pretty new phenomenon. I think these are characters who, through life circumstances, have developed whatever kinds of relationships that developed.
GL: Speaking of what’s documented—when you were engaging in archival work, what hidden gems did you find? What’s your process for archival work?
RC-E: My secret gem is dissertations. Dissertations are these book-length manuscripts that you write that are only ever read by five people. You spend years and years of your life writing this thing, and nobody reads it besides the five people who are on your committee. All dissertations are held in this archive, and if you have a university library—you can find a dissertation on every single subject. You can think about midwifery in Southern China, and you can find it! You can be the sixth person ever to read these people’s dissertations. I was also able to travel back to East Asia and live there for a year, and the libraries have these massive archives on ship building, too.
GL: New you have this amazing book that has made so many lists for most anticipated debuts, and—well—people are reading you, too, now! Congrats again on the beautiful novel.
