THE FILIPINO SHELFIE: LARA STAPLETON

 THE FILIPINO SHELFIE: LARA STAPLETON

What are your reading habits and/or tendencies (e.g. favorite type of reads)?

I am always reading a few things at once. Usually, something extra challenging that I read slowly—that I just do 50 pages a week when I’m teaching, more in the summer. Also, I’m always reading some literary fiction I enjoy, just 100 pages a week when teaching, much on the train here in NYC. Thirdly, I read non-fiction before I sleep. Fiction is too emotionally intense. Often this is historical linguistics, a hobby of mine, but other kinds of non-fiction too. Alternated with these three are sometimes my Spanish reading, poetry and prose, I’m a decent Spanish reader, can read Garcia-Marquez’ easier novels, but not his tough ones. I also read a bit of English-language poetry too. 

 

What are you currently reading?

I am reading Ottessa Moshfegh’s Eileen. She is such a bold and unique writer. Her McGlue feels like a perfect book to me. I am reading Medhi Hasan’s How to Win Every Argument. I’m very excited he’s starting his own news channel after a firing by MSNBC. He is known for his integrity, and will use words like “racist” and “fascist.” He’s a journalist’s journalist. And I’m reading 1001 Nights. I am fascinated by it, deeply influenced, and now I’m using a frame narrative, stories within stories. I was enthralled with the 50-page intro of this translation by Yasmin Seale. In Aleppo, as the narratives further formed after birth in India and Iran, they had storytelling cafes, and people would have to come back to hear the ends of tales. Now I have a fantasy about owning such a place. Master storytellers take the stage every night and you must come back next week to hear the end and another beginning; then after, there’s a jazz jam. Now, I just have to get rich 

 

If you’re a published book author, choose a book(s) and think about how you hope readers would read it?

My Ruin of Everything (Paloma Press, 2021): I hope people will finish the book with theories. How do they think about the name “Tommy” repeating? What does the book say about love? I hope they enjoy my language and are made sad and happy. I hope they reflect and think something interesting has been done with prose and structure. I hope they are moved. 

 

Please share some favorite books.

Gina Apostol La Tercera

Karla Suarez Havana Year Zero

Ottessa Moshfegh McGlue

Camara Laye Radiance of the King

Gabriel Garcia Marquez Chronicle of a Death Foretold

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

 

Ask yourself a reading-related question you concoct, and answer it.

What is the relationship of your identity and your work?

Our identities profoundly influence everything, of course. My being mixed race has presented a challenge that is both difficult and interesting to me. I have a lot of anxiety about whom I should write. The answer came to me after reading the frame narrative of 1001 Nights, by telling stories-within-stories, I feel more comfortable weaving in and out of subjective identities, subjectively shared by narrators. My current novel uses those stories-within-stories like Russian nesting dolls. I’m very excited about now taking a resolutely global perspective, in a way I may have been too afraid to without that structure. 

 

*****

Lara Stapleton was born and raised in East Lansing, Michigan. Her maternal family is from the Philippines. New York City is her homeland. She is the author of the short story collection The Lowest Blue Flame Before Nothing (Aunt Lute), an Independent Booksellers' Selection, and a Pen Open Book Committee Selection, and The Ruin of Everything, published by Paloma Press in 2021. She edited The Thirdest World (Factory School) and co-edited Juncture (Soft Skull). Her work has appeared in dozens of periodicals, including The LA Review of Books, Poets and Writers, The Brooklyn Rail, Ms., Glimmer Train, and The Indiana Review. She was the recipient of a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation Grant for writers and a two-time winner of the University of Michigan's Hopwood Award for fiction. She was also the winner of the Columbia Journal fiction prize. A graduate of NYU's creative writing program, her greatest pride is for her students at Borough of Manhattan Community College of the City University of New York.