Author Spotlight: Ash Huang – Nightmare Magazine

Firstly, thank you for sending “Safe Face” to us here at Nightmare! What was the initial seed of this story for you?

Last fall at Hedgebrook’s speculative convening, Tara Campbell ran a horror-themed generative exercise. We took colloquial sayings about the body and wrote around them, like C Pam Zhang’s very excellent micro, Braindrain.

I was attracted to this idea of “saving face.” I immediately knew it might work, because I had that out-of-body-multiple-moments-all-at-once experience that sometimes comes before certain stories: the image of a literal peeled floppy face hidden in shadow, perceived safety, a metal safe with all its clicking dials, and the unease of talking to a person who has no face and acts like it’s totally normal.

The title came smoothly from there, since saving face is so much about safety. For me, some pieces seem to resist titling, even after I’ve finished. This one came with the title in tow.

In my reading, I noticed a theme of generational trauma, the weight of cultural expectation on the daughter to follow suit, and the fracture and potential healing at the end. This for me was intertwined with a reading about capitalism, giving your individuality away to get ahead at all costs, the repeated focus on velvet, Gucci, gold coins. Were these themes you had in mind while writing?

There’s this thread in Chinese and Chinese American culture, a very specific obsession with gold, jewelry, and luxury brands. When I was younger and more naive, it seemed almost humorous, a simplistic materialism. Gold has always been associated with emperors and power in Chinese culture.

Over time, I understood some of the more complicated aspects to this fixation. Like many other diasporas at war, fleeing aunties and grandmothers would wear gold bangles and shave off pieces as currency to cross treacherous seas, or to buy food. Having enough gold meant your persecuted family got to shore—not that you looked important to others whilst sunning yourself in Beverly Hills. Even today, investors in China are buying up gold because the world economy seems particularly insecure.

Inherent in saving face, there’s a backdrop of protectionism. A fear of losing your community, in losing everything. There’s pressure to be fastidious and appear too powerful to mess with. Many families, mine included, have a history of keeping their heads on a swivel to survive war. After a few generations of this, daily life might be safer, but everything can still look like a threat. Even, say, the potential someone might find your kid’s outfit a bit raggedy.

An American daughter might be removed from that history and have the enormous privilege of some psychological safety, a generational forgetting. A parent born abroad may not. The irony emerges when a parent holds onto protectionism and status too tightly. They are presently in a safer place. What kept them safe in the past is no longer the most helpful way to live. They still might lose everything, just not in the way they prepared for.

The imagery in “Safe Face” is striking, the concept of a woman locking her face away in a velvet box in particular. Did you draw inspiration from anywhere when you wrote with this imagery in mind?

Being unknowable and unfamiliar, being foreign, is a skin many diaspora women cannot shed. People have different ways of dealing with this, some more maladaptive than others. One method I’ve often seen in Chinese America particularly, is this bitter pride in outfoxing a label or system—especially when it stands in the way of your family’s prosperity. Think my face is weird and foreign? I’ll show you a weird foreign face. I’ll do it so well that it will haunt you until the end of your days.

Still, this is done in the name of self-protection. It’s not that the face is disposable, or merely an obstacle. Otherwise, it would be in a landfill somewhere. It’s still precious, but intimacy and expression is an affectation this character can’t bear to show.

What did your writing and editing process look like for this piece?

I rely a lot on my instinct when I sit down to the page. I generally write a short story only when I understand its potential shape, and I feel an undeniable compulsion to write it. Every story is a little different, but most of them tend to fall into one of two dramatically different timescales:

There are a few stories in the back of my head that have been simmering away for years because I’m waiting for that last piece of urgency to snap into place. While sometimes writing the beginning reveals that moment of alchemy in a piece, if it doesn’t appear, I never try to force it. Those stories take years to write, and I’m working on a handful of those really slowly.

The other type of story flies into my life and demands to exist. It’s the culmination of threads in my life tying themselves into order. The right speculative container or question comes along, and it pours itself right in. Two words, saving face, unlocked a full family history, a cultural history, the right imagery, and the hope I have for a restorative future that doesn’t deny past pain.

Is there anything else about “Safe Face” you want to let us know?

It isn’t easy to let go of generational patterns. I think there’s a version of this story where something more spectacularly terrible happens at the end due to the mother’s choices, or the daughter has to repeat the pattern of aggression by dismantling the mother’s power by force. There’s a cold comfort in holding onto anger and pain, and an absolute justness in it. Being right and repair are unfortunately so often at odds, and some people just can’t cross that bridge in their lifetime.

What do we have to look forward to coming from you in the future?

I’m still riding the communal high of having a story in Lee Mandelo’s anthology, Amplitudes: Stories of Queer and Trans Futurity. The stories range from heartfelt to devastating to whimsical, and I’m grateful to be in such talented company. I have several novels cooking presently, including a sixteen century-long magical epic examining Chinese American foreigner status, a book centered around similar matrilineal themes as this story (disguised as a story about a secret society of shapeshifting spies), and a speculative alternate Silicon Valley book. A few other exciting things are pending, but still under wraps. My very occasional newsletter is at buttondown.com/ashsmash if anyone wants to keep in touch.