Editor’s Note: 9 Questions with Jessica Kim (Editor-in-Chief)
What’s your current obsession?
Pride Month. Just everything celebratory about it. Happy Pride everyone! I can’t believe June is ending soon, but I hope ISSUE 09’s colorful magic will stay forever.
And also these interview-style Editor’s Notes, which saw their first appearance in ISSUE 08. I can’t wait to continue doing these but imagine answering 50 questions when we get to ISSUE 50.
Can you explain reality?
This summer feels like a fever-dream-turned daydream slowly degrading into a nightmare. The day before Father’s Day, I treated my parents to brunch at a cute neighborhood cafe. A week ago, I ate gelato for lunch after doing a blood test five times. The scars are still on my arms. This week, I’ve been falling asleep after the sun has risen. Three days ago, America disappointed everyone…again. Reality is feeling a bunch of different emotions (joy, grief, anger, frustration, apprehension, jealousy) and then being drained of it to a point where you feel robotic. Reality is claiming your body and then watching it turn metallic and mechanical. Reality is a sunny blue and a murky gray. Reality is a dichotomy and maybe that’s why we always think in antonyms and divergence.
Do you people-watch? If so, where do you like to do this most?
I people-watch through stories and poems. I watch Lihua and Ai Li Feng’s narrator at an old dining car restaurant in “Mother Tongue.” I watch bodies remember family, childhood, love, desire, and girlhood in Laetitia Kwok’s “The Rivers of Us.” I watch in horror as the bodies in Cassandra Whitaker’s “American Bodies’ become powerless to the violent face of the nation. Right now, I’m watching Emilio Alarcon experience his past, present, and future while eating pancakes in Ainhoa Palacios’s “Emilio Alarcon Loved Pancakes.” The best place to people-watch is definitely The Lumiere Review.
What travel experiences are at the top of your bucket list?
Lumiere’s contributors have already gotten me to create my bucket list. Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong’s “Second Date” makes me want to find something to love at the temples in Ancient Greece. I want to visit a moonlit garden with lush greenery and a majestic fountain, which Ọbáfẹ́mi Thanni has constructed in “The miracle of a hurt undone.” On some trips, I want to inhabit a house full of lineages and histories—pink-carpeted sunrooms, untouched balconies, a deserted dining room table, and secret backyard storage sheds—as Mandy Shunnarah details in “Summoning Circle.” The world in every piece is one worth visiting.
Do you think you could live in a plastic bubble at the bottom of the sea for one year?
Definitely not. I would die from all the pressure and I’m not too fond of deep-sea creatures. I’m a scaredy-cat when it comes to the sea (even despite the ISSUE 09 cover and our summertime ocean graphics).
Speaking of cats, what would be the best and worst parts of being a cat?
The best part is having soft but pointy ears, big marble eyes, and looking cute all the time. People will love me for small acts like slurping a bowl of milk or pawing a flower. The worst part of being a cat is being misunderstood. Just because they can fall off 32-story buildings without major injuries doesn’t mean they have nine lives. I would hate to be mythologized for relying on my other lives instead of appreciating morality. I would also hate to live nine lives in the same body.
Do you want to be mythologized?
To some extent, I think we’re all desperate to be remembered. Being preserved as a heroic or innovative figure in mythology would be the highest honor. But at the end of the day, I don’t want to be mythologized. Myths have a certain facade to them; the characters feel two-dimensional and the ubiquitous nature of mythology makes them feel predictable but artificial. I think I want to be remembered, not as any one hero or villain, but as a shapeshifting, unpredictable, revolutionary, but at the same time ordinary, person.
Is what you’re doing now what you always wanted to do growing up?
Actually, no. Growing up, I wanted to be a paleontologist, then marine biologist, then geologist. In retrospect, I chose all these scientists just because they sounded cool. Then I realized that I was good at science but not too interested in it. I also discovered poetry and the publishing industry; while they have their glories and pitfalls, I was mesmerized by the thought of being a hostess and architect in the writing community. I am beyond grateful to everyone who accepts my invitation to submit to The Lumiere Review, I’m thrilled to give 28 contributors lovely homes in ISSUE 09, and I also find joy in designing websites and social media graphics. Lumiere is my soulmate, and the greater beauty is that my younger self didn’t know anything about literary magazines. What I’m doing now transcends what I wanted to do growing up.
Are you more into looks or brains?
Brains all the way. The heart-fluttering, frenzied, tingling sensation feels more elevated when it’s not about people’s looks but their incredible minds. Hot and cute people are respectable, but not as much as people whom I can have long and intellectual conversations with. Please show the world your incredible brains!
With that, fill your brains with Lumiere’s ninth issue! Shoutout to contributor Nine Reed-Mera for being spot-on with timing when submitting to us. Shoutout to all our contributors, submitters, readers, and staff editors. Last but not least, shoutout to our judges Elaine Hsieh Chou and Luther Hughes for judging our contest and selecting the first 20 pieces that appear in this issue.