5 Questions with Ariel Chu
Today, we published the final installment of Ariel Chu’s short story, “Fulfillment Center.” Emily Lowe spoke with Ariel about labor, longform fiction, and writing place.
The Rejoinder: Eastwood feels like its own character in the story, especially in the way you characterize it over time. How do you approach place in your writing, and what inspires the places you construct?
Ariel Chu: Eastwood is largely based on the place where I was raised: a farming community-turned-suburb in Southern California. I grew up watching farmland get cleared for development, seeing model homes spring up along newly-paved streets, and smelling manure from nearby dairies after heavy rainfall. Our city's "development" largely meant welcoming the construction of chain stores and warehouses. My friends and I would idle near skate parks, walk aimlessly around Target, or sneak into the local Edwards Cinema, all of which we had to beg our parents to drive us to.
I've always been interested in what local culture means in a place so intentionally constructed. What does it mean to have your interiority shaped by glaring markers of capitalism? How do pockets of strangeness and intimacy emerge in a place where history has been paved over? In general, I'm always interested in the dissonance—and intimacy!—between someone's psychic experience and the spaces they might occupy. In "Fulfillment Center," I hoped to capture both the familiarity and alienation of a place like Eastwood, and how Amber can't see herself leaving despite her vague loneliness.
Despite the blandness of my hometown, I had the unique experience of growing up alongside it, watching each incoming class of elementary, middle, and high school students inaugurate local traditions. Because everything was so new, every piece of gossip seemed larger-than-life, folkloric. I love exploring how community ties are formed amidst (and in spite of) alienating geography. Even now, my friends and I haunt the same parking lots and fast food joints when we're back in town, keeping a tiny culture of our own alive.
TR: This story spans a large expanse of time. We learn about the previous four years of Amber's father's illness and end four years after Amber's first promotion. Yet, we spend most of our time with Amber during that season of time where she works the night shifts. Can you speak to your use of pacing in this story?
AC: While writing this story, I was interested in how seemingly small, nondescript moments end up being the cornerstones of a person's experience. My experience of suburbia wasn't necessarily defined by "big" changes: a family member's cancer diagnosis, a life-changing promotion, the splintering of a friend group. When I think back to my own Eastwood, I remember long stretches of monotonous days, the subtle change in temperature between seasons. I think that this slow quality of time was key to how I understood this story.
I also wanted the pacing to reflect Amber's philosophy towards her life. Amber is a narrator who feels like she has no choice but to keep moving forward in service of her family. She's not particularly driven towards any lofty goals or life changes: she simply does what the status quo, and those in her immediate circle, seem to demand of her. When she stumbles across her new job, confronts her father's worsening condition, or gets offered a pay raise, her response is simply to accept everything without much outward fanfare (though she might be conflicted internally). I wonder if I modeled Amber's sensibilities off my immigrant parents' attitude towards crises. In order to survive, they had to put one foot in front of the other, pushing past their own feelings to make ends meet.
However, I do think the night shifts give Amber rare time to explore her interiority, especially when she meets a contrarian in Charlie. Charlie's pushback gives Amber time to reflect on her views about work, assert some of her values, and reassess her biases. Even though Charlie and Amber's friendship doesn't last, I'd like to think that their brief intersection sticks with her as a reminder of how else her life could've gone. In general, I love stories where characters are changed by relationships that don't linger, and I wanted the liminal nature of the night shifts—and Charlie's friendship—to serve that purpose.
TR: I loved how "Fulfillment Center" addressed labor and considered how people tie labor to purpose. What about this intersectionality most interests you?
AC: I'm intrigued by how familial expectations of labor get replicated in the workplace, and vice versa. Amber understands herself to be the "good one" in both her family and at Amazon, a label that ultimately helps her uphold a dysfunctional status quo. Both her traumatized family and unethical employer are dependent on her labor to function, while she's dependent on their approval for a sense of self. While it might be easy to chalk these dynamics up to simple codependency, things become trickier when survival is at stake. Characters like Charlie and Bea challenge Amber to put herself first, but it's easy for Amber to retort that she needs a job to support her family, that she needs to care for her dying father. As someone who grew up witnessing these kinds of negotiations, it's hard for me to say whether she's in the wrong. Are there any purely "right" choices under late-stage capitalism, anyway?
TR: I have been a long-time fan of your work and first encountered your flash fiction. "Fulfilment Center," as a longer story, allows for new complexities unrestricted by word count. How do you approach a flash story differently than a longer story? What joys and challenges do you feel are unique to the longer form?
AC: Thank you for your kind words! I love flash for its vivid details, its ability to capture strong emotions succinctly. Often, I'll get an idea for a flash piece when an image captures my imagination: a bluebottle jellyfish on a dark shore, a burial shroud veined in mushrooms. I love pairing strange visuals with unexpected emotions and ideas—dissonance is exciting to me, and it often provides enough inspiration for a thousand-word piece.
I have to admit that for a long time, I shied away from writing longer stories. My comfort zone is definitely in writing emotionally-charged, high-concept pieces. In a longer story, there are necessarily stretches of downtime—moments where exposition, backstory, and character interactions have to carry the weight of a story. These moments are often intimidating to me, since they can often feel rote or slow. I often have to remind myself that readers aren't always looking for the immediate gratification of a surprising image or twist. Personally, I love it when novelists take the time to linger on place, description, and relational ties: that kind of breathing room gives so much life to a story!
TR: What's exciting to you in fiction right now, either in your writing or what you are reading?
AC: This is a general answer, but I've always loved multimodal fiction that interacts with other mediums: visual art, video games, or even live-action roleplaying. Some of my close friends write storygames, which allow folks to gather in person and build collaborative narratives over one or more sessions. I've also met some of my other dear friends through online forum-based roleplaying, fanfiction, and Internet relics like Homestuck (eep).
Tying all this back to "Fulfillment Center," I'd say that collaborative, Internet-based storytelling was the only way I could find literary community when I was younger. I didn't have models for a writerly life where I grew up, so I turned to what other young creators were doing online. It's been interesting to pivot from these early roots to an aspiring career in literary fiction, which seems to be much slower compared to what's happening in digital spaces. I still remain in awe of what writers are publishing outside of a traditional, print-based literary model. There's so much room for innovation, iteration, and collaboration online, and I'm always curious to see how creators are making use of these opportunities!