As most of my craft discussions, this interview with Ai Jiang will explore the text, author and character motivations, and assumes you’ve read the source work to follow along.
If you haven’t read her Bram Stoker award-winning novella Linghun, STOP. Buy the book, available where all good books are sold (https://www.amazon.com/Linghun-Ai-Jiang/dp/195859802X), your local indie shops preferred (!), or get it from your local library. Read it before continuing, you can finish it in a day (a few hours really), though be aware it will leave a lasting impression.
Done reading Linghun? Great! Read on. I hope even those who have read other interviews about this novella will find this interview offers something new to readers and fans of her work.
A heartfelt thank you to Ai Jiang for devoting time in her busy schedule to take a deep dive with me into what Linghun has to say about how people deal with grief differently and often how that grief defines the rest of our lives, stilting us even as we live.
Spoilers ahead!
Yelena Crane: In the afterward you go into a little detail about how your mom took the grief of losing her brother, and what a defining moment that was for you. How did your understanding or non-understanding of grief change through the writing of Linghun and its reception?
Ai Jiang: At the time my uncle passed, I don’t think my understanding of grief and the pain that came with it is anywhere close to how I understand it now. But compared to the past, my idea of death, of dying, of what it means to be alive has drastically changed as well both during and after writing Linghun. I feel like as with aging, with growing up, my concept of time, its value has greatly altered—in that I have come to accept death as a part of life, that lost time cannot be reclaimed, and that focusing on the things often out of our control like the death and the actions of others will only whittle down what little remains of our own lives. And perhaps to some this may seem like an almost selfish way of thinking, an uncaring way, but I feel like with how fragile and short human lives are, every grain of sand that falls from our hourglasses is precious, and what we choose to do with it will often define the rest of our lives. How will you choose to use your time? Grieving the past or spending in homes to shape a better future for both you and others? But in the end, it is difficult, because back then, I had lost an uncle but my mother had lost a brother—someone she grew up with, spent a large amount of her life next to, someone that is nestled in more of her memories than he was in my own, and memory can be such a double-edged sword when it comes to grief in the way it might bring us joy, in the way that it might remind us of persistent pain.
Yelena Crane: Why did you choose to explore the impact of grief largely through the experiences of children neglected by their grief-stricken parents?
Ai Jiang: I don’t believe in the idea of only writing “what we know”—advice that is often given to writers. However, I do believe in informing the stories we write with what we know, for I think personal experiences infused with fictious narratives make stories feel authentic and the emotions more raw rather than constructed. And for me, at least at the time of writing, my experiences with grief had, for the most part, been when I was a child. And though my experiences were not exactly like that of Wenqi, nor Liam, I felt I was most equipped the explore the themes and ideas through their perspective.
Yelena Crane: Given how much Wenqi’s parents give up in order try to reunite with their dead son, why does Tianqi appear to his sister first?
Ai Jiang: I have always believed that there is something that bonds siblings together closer than their parents, no matter the arguments and differences, though of course, this is not always true. Growing up, my sister and I had never been close, yet she had always wanted to be closer to me. And because of language barriers, my sister and I more often spoke to one another in English than to our parents in Mandarin. One thing I thought about when writing Tianqi and his appearance is how the people who desire most for the dead to return may not be the same people the dead desire most to reunite with.
Yelena Crane: Names play an important role in this story. Tianqi means weather. Linghun means soul. Some meanings of names are told in the story itself and others not. What made you decide which meanings to reveal and which to leave undisclosed? Why these names? I imagine some were conscious decisions but perhaps not all. How much thought process went into these choices? Any other big names I missed?
Ai Jiang: When it comes to names, for the most part they arrive with the narrative—sometimes before their significance is established. Tianqi and Mrs. names were very intentionally chosen from the onset, along with Linghun and Shan. I decided to reveal only the meanings that made sense given the plot progressions and also those that might hold significance to the characters themselves—ones they would personally know the meaning behind. As for Liam’s name, part of why his was chosen was because it sounded similar to “leave him”. Because the significance behind Wenqi’s name is not something she personally knows but remains with her parents, unspoken, given their tense relationship, I decided not to disclose it in the story—similar with Bawkinu, as this would not be information that any of the POV characters have.
Yelena Crane: The confrontation scene where the mother asks “why” and Wenqi doesn’t bite her tongue, says because she’s alive after she’s forced by her mother to call for Tianqi is incredibly powerful and raw. In a different kind of story this would be a pinnacle moment of change for the mother but not here. What would it have taken to get through the mother? What made her a lost cause in this regard?
Ai Jiang: Outside of fiction, perhaps there would have been something that could’ve gotten through the mother—realization, rekindled love for her daughter, guilt. However, with Linghun, I wanted to emphasize the way that grief might steal, continue to steal, and render a suffering individual to the point of no return and what that would look like—to have another character so desperately trying to drag a loved one away from grief and have such efforts remain futile time and time again. Not everyone heals, and not everyone decides to.
Yelena Crane: In this novella you utilized interesting methods of POV. What made you explore the POVs of Wenqi, Liam, and Mrs, and why did you specifically use 1st person for Wenqi, 2nd for Mrs, and 3rd for Liam? In reading Mrs, I could interpret that the 2nd person was used to emphasize how dissociated she was from herself. Her husband would have referred to her as “you” and so she takes on that identity the way she takes on the identity of Mrs throughout the novella. Why do you think it was important for readers to meet her as Mrs first and then give her her own name in death when Wenqi gets her will? Why was her house named Linghun and what name would Wenqi’s parents house have had?
Ai Jiang: I used first person for Wenqi because I wanted to give a very intimate and personal exploration of familial relationships and tensions. For Liam, I wanted to emphasize the way that he has dissociated from himself and those around him given the time he has been stuck in HOME, and I also found third person an effect way to offer more information about HOME as a whole.
As for Mrs, I wanted to emphasize the detriments of holding onto the past, onto the dead, and onto perhaps the wrong thing and attempting to reclaim something that she thought she wanted, needed, but not truly realizing until death that what she thought she desired was false. And sometimes, it is only in death when we see the truth, when we begin to count our regrets, but by then, it is too late, and yet, sometimes it is in these moments we might attempt to grasp at thin straws. For Mrs, leaving behind her name is her last efforts to mend a regret.
On houses and names, given Mrs.’s husband named her Linghun, I thought it would be fitting that her home be named the same to draw a parallel in the way that she has been trapped in this house by her husband. For Wenqi’s parents’ house, I suspect they would have named it Tianqi. In the end, a house is not a home—at least to me, it is the people who make it as such.
Yelena Crane: I felt there was the story on the page and a lot also left unsaid, for the reader to infer or read between the lines, such as the connection between Mrs and Wenqi as well as the relationship that develops between Wenqi and Liam. Why did Mrs feel such a strong connection to Wenqi besides the superficial similarities she sees between them? Why do you think Liam (Mrs’ husband) never came to her and why did she wait? Is it meant to say something about us if we let our identity be taken?
Ai Jiang: What I intended was Mrs. feeling a strong connection to Wenqi, though unconsciously, is that Wenqi is someone who is sure of who she is, of what she wants and does not want, and holds onto her values tightly—someone who Mrs. once was; someone who Mrs. once again desires to be but cannot; and she is someone Mrs. hopes does not end up the same as her, even though in the end Wenqi does become exactly the same. Sometimes grief is inescapable. As for Mrs. husband, to him, Mrs. was but a fleeting interest, an exotic intrigue, nothing less, nothing more. But for Mrs., Liam had become someone she had no choice but to depend on because of her lacking status in the foreign country, her fear of unfamiliar external society, her financial reliance and the knowledge that her parents also needed Liam’s wealth. She waited because that was the only thing she had come to know, a routine she became used to, something she could no longer break away from—waiting for Liam to come home from work, to leave again, to come home once more. Except this time, he didn’t. Sometimes it takes us a week, a month, a year, to break a habit, bad or good—sometimes we never do; sometimes, we choose not to.
Yelena Crane: The scene at the auction reminded me of another similar famous and violent event in “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. What inspired your version of events? Why did Liam think Wenqi would have any agency to determine if her family stays or leaves after seeing such violence?
Ai Jiang: What’s funny is that I hadn’t read “The Lottery” before writing Linghun, and it was only after the novella’s release did readers hop in my inbox to ask if I’d read it and to urge me to if I hadn’t. I suppose what I had in mind when writing the scene was the Hunger Games—of the senseless violence people might fall victim to when offered something they would throw away their lives for. For Katniss, she was willing to offer her life to save her sister’s. For the residents of HOME, the lingerers, they are willing to offer their living breaths in exchange for the dead. As for Liam’s thoughts, it was a desperate hope that since Wenqi and her family are new to HOME, they might still have some sense remaining compared to those long camped on lawns to recognize the detriments and consequences of grief, that she may in turn wrestle her parents into watching an auction to convince them to leave.
Yelena Crane: By the novella’s end I was most surprised by MC’s decision to return to HOME and stay there for Liam. Do you think he would have wanted that? Will he come? How long do you think Wenqi stays?
Ai Jiang: For me personally, I would think, unless the dead are spiteful and selfish, that they would want their loved ones to move on, to be happy, to live their life while breath still remain in their lungs. For Liam, unlike Mrs.’s Liam, he would not return–not because he does not care for Wenqi but because he does, because he knows that if he returns, she would never leave, but also because it has always been his dream to leave, and in death he was finally able to do so. As for Wenqi, the aim of Linghun is to emphasize the vicious cycle that is grief, and so—
Yelena Crane: Not a question but I really loved this line: “In HOME, Liam was a dream. Here, he’s a flawed but beautiful reality.” It made me wonder, what is it like for the ghosts in HOME? Are they also victims of capitalism and commercialization/commodification of something that should be left to rest in peace or is there different of opinion where some want to be grieved in a type of life after death?
Ai Jiang: I’m currently working on a project that explores this further, so I won’t go into the details and would love to ask everyone reading this to be on alert for future updates!
Yelena Crane: In the novella, you give great insight into the grander world in HOME and the outside world, How difficult it is to escape once you’re there. The sunk cost fallacy of so many lingerers. If you could explore another character, who would they be? What are their lives like?
Alternatively, if we could see more of the characters we do have, like Mrs, what more would we learn about them?
Ai Jiang: Oh, it would definitely be Mrs., and this relates to the answer for my previous question. There are so many things I want to continue to explore in Linghun but didn’t have the further meditative thoughts and ideas for. More to come on ghosts, death and life, reincarnation, identity…
Yelena Crane: As a writer myself, I find as I grow in my craft, I return to my older stories even long after they’re published. Do you think there is anything you would change about Linghun were you to write it today?
Ai Jiang: I am a firm believer of having no regrets. Linghun is as it should be, and I refuse to revisit it to consider any changes I would make. Instead, I look forward to the new works that draw on the sentiments of the old or explore further the themes I have touched upon in the past. Linghun is no longer a story for the writer I am now, and like ghosts, like grief, I will leave it in the past as something to be remembered but not held onto.
Yelena Crane: Besides the execution, there are so many clever ideas in this story, for example in calling this place where people are suspended in time for their dead loved ones HOME. How did you come up with that? Did HOME come first or the acronym it stands for (Homecoming of Missing Entities)?
Ai Jiang: HOME came first, and I must say, I had to do a bit of shoehorning for the acronym and why it ended up sounding so absurd, but luckily (or I suppose hopefully), it added to the absurd nature that HOME, the auction, exists in the first place. But the idea of HOME came from me contemplating on the idea of home and what it really means, if it is a person or a place, and at least for me, and I think for many, home is a person. And for all those moving into HOME, that is exactly what they seek, a person who they have lost, a person who was their home.
Yelena Crane: What new and exciting projects are you working on now that you’d like to share?
Ai Jiang: Outside of the project further exploring the concept of death and grief through the perspective of the ghosts themselves, I have a couple of things in the works that range from meditative body horror to science fiction to science fantasy to epic fantasy. We’re set to go on submission soon with a dark fantasy that also explores death and grief, so I’m very excited about that!
Yelena Crane What’s your favorite short story that you’ve written?
Ai Jiang: “Give Me English” will forever be my favourite story because of the way the idea came to me like a fever dream, the way I had written it in one sitting, and the rush of emotions that cycled through me during the process of writing the story is something I don’t think I’ll ever forget.
To my readers: Did this interview make you reconsider some of what you thought about Linghun or recontextualize some of the characters’ struggles? Let me know in the comments!
More about Ai Jiang:
Ai Jiang is a Chinese-Canadian writer, Ignyte, Bram Stoker, and Nebula Award winner, and Hugo, Astounding, Locus, Aurora, and BFSA Award finalist from Changle, Fujian currently residing in Toronto, Ontario. Her work can be found in F&SF, The Dark, The Masters Review, among others. She is the recipient of Odyssey Workshop’s 2022 Fresh Voices Scholarship and the author of Linghun and I AM AI. The first book of her novella duology, A Palace Near the Wind, is forthcoming 2025 with Titan Books. Find her on X (@AiJiang_), Instagram (@ai.jian.g), and online (http://aijiang.ca).
Subscribe to her blog here: https://chaios.ck.page/profile
And if you’ve not read “Give me English” it is available for free as a reprint here: https://shortwavepublishing.com/magazine/give-me-english-a-short-story-by-ai-jiang/ originally published in F&SF. It’s my favorite of hers too! (Maybe I should do another interview on it? 😉 )
