MENTOR COMMENTARY

Mentorship recipient:
​ Dis-locations
Recipient reflection:
​Carol Pang

ON "DIS-LOCATIONS" BY CAROL PANG

by Matt Weinkam

Carol Pang’s “Dis-locations” opens with the smell of fried fish that is about to be stolen. It’s the first flavorful bite in an essay that uses food to connect feelings of personal and cultural in-betweenness, a metaphor for desire and loss that lingers throughout the narrative.
 
But the essay didn’t always begin that way.
 
When first I came across “Dis-locations” in our submissions queue it started with a reflection on language. Even though that initial draft was only 1,000 words long, I could sense the honest, searching voice of a special essay. I fell in love with Popo; I had my heart broken by him. I enjoyed how the fragmented structure embodied the themes of the essay, like varied ingredients that when combined add up to something more.
 
What a gift for me as an editor, then, to get to work with such a talented chef perfecting this recipe. As part of the editorial mentorship, Carol and I talked about all the usual craft elements—structure, pacing, detail, characterization. We brainstormed ways to build sharper scenes, debated section openings and semicolons, and tried to decide where to draw the line between too much telling and not enough.
 
But we also faced the bigger challenges that come with communicating across cultures: How to revise work without submitting the dominant culture’s ideas of what constitutes “good writing.” Viet Thanh Nguyen wrote in the New York Times that “literature and power cannot be separated,” and while this often leads to forms of craft colonialism and artistic oppression, Carol showed that in her own hands the power of literature can be an opportunity.
 
Each time I marked up a draft with questions or suggestions, Carol came back with a surprising new scene or sensory detail that deepened the themes in ways I never expected. She was always able to see two steps beyond my comment to something even greater. Throughout the process I was impressed by her fearlessness, particularly when taking on emotional moments like the pivotal breakup scene. Revision is never easy and seemingly never-ending, but when the last draft came back with a new opening that connected love and culture and home and heartache through the vivid taste of home cooked fish, I knew Carol had taken a very good essay and made it great.
 
Editing “Dis-locations” was a rewarding experience every step of the way. I’m happy to see the final draft out in the world, and I can’t wait to see what Carol Pang cooks up next.

Matt Weinkam

Matt Weinkam is a writer, editor, and college instructor with published work in Denver Quarterly, Sonora Review, New South, Quarter After Eight, Split Lip, DIAGRAM, and Electric Literature. He is founding editor of Threadcount Magazine and a former Managing Editor of Passages North literary journal. He holds an MA in creative writing from Miami University, an MFA in fiction from Northern Michigan University, and he has taught creative writing as far away as Sun Yat-sen University in Zhuhai, China. Originally from Cincinnati, Matt moved to Cleveland the same month LeBron broke the curse.