Q&A: Leslie Hsu Oh

An Interview with the author of "On the line"

by Danielle Dyal

It would be easier to list the things Leslie Hsu Oh does not do than the things she does.

She doesn’t watch the world go by as a bystander without taking an active part in it. She doesn’t take nature’s beauty for granted, and instead documents and pays homage to it with her writing and photography. She doesn’t treat the Alps as a landscape with the purpose only to grace her computer monitor, and instead glacier hikes them when she isn’t teaching her four children to rock climb, snow board, ride snowmachines, and hike before the age most kids start kindergarten. Her dreams are not just dreams but future endeavors that Leslie does not hesitate to make happen. Last year, her family took a trip to Iceland to see three national parks outside the US, and this year her goal – that will no doubt reach fruition, unlike the intangible and persistently unfulfilled goals that most people make in their lifetimes – is to begin showing her children the seven wonders of the world.

Leslie doesn’t hoard her and her family’s outdoor adventures to herself either but shares them in her writing and photography that has been featured in or is forthcoming in Alpinist, Alaska Magazine, Backpacker Magazine, Conde Nast Traveler, First Alaskans Magazine, Fourth Genre, MIC, Outside Magazine, Parenting Magazine, Real Simple, Smithsonian Magazine, Sierra Magazine, Travel + Leisure, Washington Post and more. She is also the Outdoor Editorof Panorama Journal of Intelligent Travel. 

Leslie’s writing and photography is centered on her interactions with the outdoors through extreme sports and expeditions to the extraordinary corners of the world most of us will only see through the photographs taken by and stories told by others – others like Leslie, whose passion for nature is rooted in her childhood. She was raised by an outdoor photographer herself, adopted by the Navajo Táchii’nii (Red Running into Water Clan) and the Tlingit Yéil Naa (Raven Moeity), K’ineix Kwáan (Copper River Clan) from the Tsisk’w Hit (Owl House). Her life has been spent in intimate connection with her surroundings, fostered by a give and take exchange with nature. While she takes in her surroundings, she gives back tributes that include “On the Line,” her short story that is published in Grace in Darkness.

“On the Line” takes place on the shoreline of the Russian River in Alaska, where Leslie herself has combat fished beside black bears like those that appear in her story. This story is a work of fiction, however, featuring not Leslie, but Sean, a father-to-be who readers find on a late June night combat fishing and thinking, among other things, about how “his wife and he would make terrible salmon.” While fish dodge his line, Sean doesn’t quite manage to likewise dodge thoughts of his Chinese relatives’ admonishments against his and his wife’s unconventional and capricious outdoor lifestyle, or memories of his older sister’s disapproving and berating email – the last instance of communication between the siblings. But the tensions from the periphery of Sean’s chosen lifestyle as a mountaineer guide have turned inward, as Sean has found himself now in discord with his wife, with whom he had, until recently, seen eye-to-eye with in terms of how they lived their lives with a deep-set relationship with nature above all else.  

In my following interview with Leslie, we discuss her own thoughts and decisions in regard to writing “On the Line.”

With your background so centered on traveling, backcountry expeditions, and adventures in the outdoors, do you find that you begin writing fiction more often with an idea of place in mind even before you have envisioned your characters or their conflicts?
 
I begin all my stories, whether nonfiction or fiction, with an idea of place. Something speaks to me about the landscape, whether it’s an incident that occurred such as two bears causing a hook to lodge itself in someone’s ear or a feeling. 
 
My Elders often lament that what’s missing today is an intuitive understanding of our relationship to all of creation. In Navajo, we call it K’é yił yał tx’I’, which means “it’s saying something with a kinship feeling.” Nick Carltikoff, Sr. explains in Dena’ina Ełnena: A Celebration, “Everything on earth has a spirit. They call it ‘K’etniyi,’ means ‘it’s saying something’ that’s how we believed long ago. We believed that everything had a spirit and should be treated with respect. From a rock, water, mountains, animals everything. This is what’s missing today.” That is what drives my narrative.

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Grace in Darknessis a collection of stories from women writers that strives to spotlight women’s voices. Of course, this collection does not necessitate that there be only women narrators in the stories within it. On that note, what made you want to tell this story from Sean - the husband’s - point of view, rather than that of the wife?
 
In early drafts, I tried the wife’s point of view, but it was the husband’s voice that wanted to be heard. Among my Asian American family and friends, the men are usually the silent macho types. My girlfriends and I waste a lot of time guessing how our husbands or boyfriends feel about something because their actions don’t necessarily reflect their thoughts. Many times, the men in our lives do something they don’t want to do in order to please us, and we don’t discover the truth until it’s too late. Fiction offers me a chance to give these silent men a voice. I imagine what they might be thinking and try to emphasize. 
 
Since I rarely write from the point of view of a man, this at first felt very uncomfortable while at the same time familiar. I had to show drafts of this to male readers in order to get the voice right. However, when it came to decisions about his actions, Sean’s character reflected my own identity as an American Born Chinese. What Chinese traditions do I keep or reject, and at what cost? Through Sean’s character, I could explore this question with an additional twist of upending stereotypical gender roles. Here’s a man instead of a woman that wants to settle down, grow up, have kids. Ray Bradbury’s advice, which I often share with my students, is to “find a character like yourself, who will want something or not want something, with all his heart. Give him running orders. Shoot him off. Then follow as fast as you can go. The character in his great love, or hate, will rush you through to the end of the story.”
 
So often, we see narratives with wives wanting children and husbands being reluctant to the disruption children might have in their lives and to their goals. This story is an alternative to that notion, yet we see that the wife does acquiesce to Sean's desire for a family. Did you intend for the wife's acquiescence to be read as submission, compromise, sacrifice, or something else? In other words, how did you balance the wife's individual and differing desires with her concession to Sean's ultimatum of Me or mountains?
 
Something I don’t get to do in nonfiction, but I love experimenting with in fiction, is exploring various outcomes of a major life decision. I wrote what happened when the wife chose mountains vs the husband, and in the end, I continued with the choice that felt more genuine or led to conflict and tension. 
 
Her decision is much more complicated than just an act of submission, compromise, or sacrifice. When she chose mountains, she satisfied her own desires and independence, but at what cost? Regret, heartbreak, disappointing everyone you love? Summiting a mountain without anyone significant in your life to share this milestone with? The far more interesting story to me is a character choosing the option that they feel is the “right” one, the one that saves face or feels easier, but isn’t necessarily what they truly desire. This means the character learns the hard truth that in life we never get what we really want, so the question is – Do you accept, or resist, or something in-between?
 
What led you to leave the wife in this story unnamed? What does her referral solely as “the wife” signify for you?
 
The wife did have a name in earlier drafts, but in revision, it fell away. Not having a name creates a narrative distance which works in this case because we only see her through Sean’s eyes.  
 
The title “On the Line” has many meanings in this story. The sustainment of Sean and his wife’s health and finances is on the line, pointed out by Sean’s sister in her last email. Sean's reputation in the eyes of his Chinese relatives is on the line with his and his wife's break in the traditional lifestyle. And, of course, Sean’s marriage is on the line, both in flashbacks and the current moment. Also, quite literally, Sean is on the line at one point, caught by the boy’s hook. What is the greatest significance of this title to you?
 
This title came early on and alludes to all the things that you mention but also an underlying theme in my work: given how short life is, how are you going to live it? 
 
This question manifests in the decisions my characters make (even my own person in nonfiction), the risks they take. I tend to take more risks than others probably because I lost both my mother and brother to the same disease before my twenty-first birthday. In Fireweed: A Memoir, I show how I teach my kids that if you follow all the rules, do everything you can to be happy or protect who you love, things can still go wrong. I teach them what to do when that happens, how to live in the present and lead a balanced life and enjoy it even though you must embrace a constant battle, a thawing and freezing and being comfortable with standing ground on a frozen river where water still runs beneath the surface.

Leslie’s main current project is a personal memoir; regarding her motivation to write it, she says, “At twenty, I had white water rafted, spelunked, hiked, and ridden on horseback through nearly all the national parks in the United States when both my mother and eighteen-year-old brother die from the same disease. Turning to the natural world and the indigenous people most intimate to these places for answers, I learn how to make sense of this messy world when you lose everything that made sense. Fireweed: A Memoiris a story about finding a home to anchor yourself and your descendants to even if it doesn’t belong to you.” 

You can find more on Leslie’s memoir, her past publications, her photography, her travel expeditions, and the other multifaceted aspects of Leslie’s professional life on her website http://www.lesliehsuoh.com and on Twitter @lesliehsuoh