Darcy Tamayose uses magic realism to explore the immigrant experience

Darcy Tamayose is a writer, graphic designer and PhD student from southern Alberta. Based in Lethbridge, her work includes the novel Odori, which received the Canada-Japan Literary Award, and the YA book Katie Be Quiet.

Her latest is Ezra's Ghosts,a collection of four short stories set in a quiet prairie town called Ezra, a fictionalizedversion of Lethbridge. Grounded in elements of magic realism, Japanese folklore and academic writing, the book is linked by place and themes of grief, language and culture.

Each story features a different character dealing with fantastical circumstances: The Thesis is about a PhDstudent who left a pregnant partner behind to workin China during the COVID-19 pandemic;Ghostfly looks at anIndigenous character who is trapped in town following her death, forced to watch her family and killer continue on without her; in The Ryukyuan, the oldest man in town suddenly sprouts wings one day; andReduxexploresa future world of AI, academia and bioterrorism.

Ezra's Ghosts is a finalist for the 2022 Atwood Gibson Writers'Trust Fiction Prize.The $60,000 award recognizes the best in Canadian fiction. The winner will be announced on Nov. 2, 2022.

Tamayose spoke with CBC Books about writing Ezra's Ghosts.

A creative escape

"I wrote this book because I need that kind of creative process in my life. I'm also a graphic designer. I need to be engaged or at least in touch with the creative process.

"The town in the book is basically my own backyard. Ezra is essentially an echo of my experience with the city of Lethbridge and southern Alberta and the surrounding community. It's an imagined place that I escape to.In the last decade of working on Ezra's Ghosts, I've written in order to return to that world of Ezra, and to shape the storyline and develop characters within that place and space.

I wrote this book because I need that kind of creative process in my life.

"But I also wrote the book in order to escape from project deadlines and coursework. Creative writing just released my academic tension. It turns out that one practice or project can serve as fuel or even resurrect another. I've been engaged in postsecondary studies as a student for over a decade. I know that has affected the way I write.

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An unconventional collection

"There's an element of magic realism, or urban fantastical, in each of the four stories. But I would define it as more of a genre variable collection.

"With The Thesis, for example, it is written in real-time to look at how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted a student who travelled to China to do research during the beginnings of the pandemic. There's a very quiet and enveloping ghostly aspect about that story. I tried to make it as diaphanous as possible. Partially because there's a ghost in the story, and partially because the two stories that follow are pretty dense intheir makeup.

There's an element of magic realism, or urban fantastical, in each of the four stories.

"It's a collection of four stories. I wanted to explore and experiment with storytelling pace, density and the nonlinear flow. With multiple pieces, multiple moving parts and being immersed in a liberal education system, I had a lot of things to draw upon.

"There's a lot of themes that's probably why I like the short story format."

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Writing for others

"Accessibility is always in the back of my mind when I write. My parents are second-generation Canadians. I want to make sure that they know the kind of stories that are being told.

The strongest way in is through compassion.

"A lot of times when I discuss things that are happening at the university or with my essays with my parents. A lot of times I'm cognizant of being from immigrants. That's why I lean toward a multimodal methodology, which means when I do my dissertation or any of my papers in academia, they have a component of graphic normalization. I think that is the universal form of communication.

"The strongest way in is through compassion. The strongest way in is through being able to understand different journeys. They're all human journeys."

Darcy Tamayose's comments have been edited for length and clarity.