Just One Thing with K-Ming Chang

“A photo of a family meal eaten before I was born”

K-Ming Chang’s debut novel Bestiary comes out later this year! We were thrilled to publish her flash “Gloria” in our June issue. Here she shares just one thing about the piece:

“This story began as a longer piece that was structured as a diary entry: Gloria was the entry under ‘G.’ I wrote entries about each of the girls that the narrator has hurt in her life, but as soon as I reached G, I realized that this was where the story accumulated its meaning. I quickly abandoned the rest of the alphabet. One of my main inspirations for this story began with thinking about English names that have over time become popular in East Asian and especially Chinese immigrant communities: names like Gloria, Sylvia, Esther, Vivan, Grace, Wendy, Cindy, Diana - names that are typically associated with an older generation of white women but that have been reappropriated and redefined. Hearing these names brings me home and fills me with a sense of familiarity and community. Each of the entries became a kind of word association with names, and I was compelled by the gravity of the name Gloria, the grandness of it and the expectations it carries. In contrast, the narrator remains nameless, defined by the girls she loves and hurts, unknown to herself, locating her only identity in otherness.”