What do you love most about your memoir?
I love the idea that it might prompt other people to think deeply about their own reading habits, and perhaps go back to some of the books that shaped them. Maybe it’s the teacher in me, but if any readers of Bibliophobia go back and reread at least one of the books that’s changed the way they think or feel, I’ll be happy.
What kind of reader do you think will most appreciate or enjoy your book?
I hope that it will reach anyone who has ever regarded how they read with some curiosity and suspicion—that is to say, anyone who ever wonders why they are driven to read and/or write, and questions what might drive us to look for comfort or sometimes discomfort outside our own lives. Not everyone will have read all the books I’ve written about here, but I think anyone who’s been truly changed by a book will have their own version of this experience.
At what point did you know this story was a book?
I wrote three sections of what would become Bibliophobia in a mad rush, two of which remain in the book, and just didn’t feel like I could stop. It had been a long time since I’d been able to write anything, then all of a sudden it was like a dam had burst. It felt almost compulsive at first, and when I tried to go back and work on the soon-to-be-abandoned academic book I was writing, the flow of writing just dried up again. It was clear then that this was the only book I could write in that moment, even if there were other things I was supposed to be doing, and it was futile to try and do anything else.
What was the hardest memory to get on the page?
To write the chapter on Ruth Ozeki, “A Tale for the Non-Being,” I really had to go back to the moment of my mental health crisis and relive it. This involved tracing every step of a very significant long walk that literally put me back in a place I’d been trying to avoid thinking about for a while. I knew when I set out to do it that it would be painful, but it really brought back specific memories I didn’t know I had. I think it was more necessary than I realized it would be for my own healing process, and I wouldn’t have done it if the book hadn’t made me.
Was there anything that surprised you as you wrote?
I hadn’t realized how much I rely on humor as a way of getting through hard things; I always thought I made jokes to make it easier on others, but they are really to make sense of things to myself. Writing and revising this book really made me see how much I have made light of some aspects of my past that I actually needed to confront head-on. That being said, sometimes life is ridiculous, even or especially at its most extreme moments, and some degree of levity is the only thing that can carry you on, whether the reader or the writer.
How do you feel now that you’ve put this story to the page?
Writing this book—the story of my reading life to this point, which is to say, my whole life—has made me feel able to think about writing other things in the future. I feel more at liberty to experiment in different genres and subjects, almost as though I needed to do this in order to grant myself permission to write about topics beyond books themselves. I think I still had a lot of academic hang-ups when I started Bibliophobia about what one was “allowed” to write, which had to do with expertise and earning your way into a topic or form. I don’t think these anxieties are totally resolved—maybe they will never be—but I feel more able to let myself entertain ideas I didn’t think I was ready to tackle before, like fiction.
How have you changed since you started writing it?
Since finishing the book, I’ve been really amazed by how much it’s helped me gain perspective on my own life—which seems so obvious writing a memoir, but I really didn’t go into this project expecting it to be a memoir, or feeling like clarity was possible at all. It’s been really useful and revelatory to talk to both friends and strangers who have read it, and who have their own answers to questions I’ve been wrestling with alone for so long. Elements that felt so close and so raw in the moment of writing now feel farther away, as if writing were a way to look at myself from the outside, not coldly, but hopefully more clearly.
It’s been really useful and revelatory to talk to both friends and strangers who have read it, and who have their own answers to questions I’ve been wrestling with alone for so long.
What is the most interesting thing you had to research in order to write this book?
For sure it was the history of Anne of Green Gables in Japan, which was a cultural phenomenon I simply never thought to ask about before. I am obsessed with Canadian World, the now-defunct Anne theme park in Hokkaido, and I desperately want to visit it (it’s become a municipal park). I was also really moved by the research I did into the life of Anne’s creator, Lucy Maud Montgomery, which is both incredibly tragic and inspiring. I sought comfort in her books for so many years, never wondering what her life was really like, and even the smallest glimpse into it really shook up my understanding of her work in both the Anne books and the Emily of New Moon trilogy.
Can you describe your book as an item on a menu?
I think Bibliophobia is actually like an after-dinner drink: something to help you digest everything you’ve read before. Ideally, you’d sit and linger with it, as you think about what came before it. And there are more cigarettes in it than I’d realized, so like a good Scotch, it’s very smoky.
Photo of Sarah Chihaya by Beowulf Sheehan.
