Linda Rui Feng explores music, history and immigration in novel Swimming Back to Trout River
Vicky Qiao | | Posted: October 1, 2021 7:21 PM | Last Updated: October 1, 2021
Swimming Back to Trout River is on the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist
How many times in life can we start over without losing ourselves?
Linda Rui Feng explores this question in her debut novel, Swimming Back to Trout River, through the intertwined lives of her characters during and after the tumultuous years of the Cultural Revolution. They journey from China to America, while grappling with deferred music ambitions, painful family secrets and unfulfilled promises.
Swimming Back to Trout River is on the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist. The shortlist will be announced on Oct. 5, 2021.
Feng is a writer, scholar and a professor of Chinese cultural history at the University of Toronto. She spoke to CBC Books about how she wrote Swimming Back to Trout River.
The complexity of the Cultural Revolution
"I was always on the lookout for hearing about people's understanding and making sense of the Cultural Revolution. All of it are things that happened before my time. The complexity and the nuance of it always escapes easy summary or encapsulation or analysis. Part of me feels like it can only be understood from a micro-historical level, on the order of individuals.
I was always on the lookout for hearing about people's understanding and making sense of the Cultural Revolution. - Linda Rui Feng
"When people in my extended family or people connected to me talk about their stories, I've always been keen to pick up on the tidbits. I've been slowly accumulating these kinds of stories in my life."
A child's refusal to immigrate
"What's great about writing the novel is that you think about all these subjunctive moods. I was interested in thinking about a child's perspective and how a child could turn the story of immigration on its head.
"I started with this idea of a child who refuses to emigrate and what repercussions does that have when a child says, 'I'm at home right here and I have everything I need here.' How does that impact the narrative of going elsewhere? I like the idea that this could play out in a larger set of events with adults in the family, and then bring it back to events that happened before the child was born.
"Those are the threads that came together when I was starting. Then, as I was writing, I was going into rabbit holes with music, with history, with immigration, with different parts of historical moments in America and in China."
Obsession with music
"As a writer, you're always envious of other professions. I'm fascinated with other arts. I've been fascinated with music.
"I'm not a musician. I have very limited, very superficial involvement with music but I've always been interested in how it works. What does it feel like to live in the world of music? What does it mean to live intimately with an instrument?
Is life experience necessary for you to understand music in a certain way? Can you master an instrument but not understand it? - Linda Rui Feng
"I think about how to convey the feeling of experiencing music. Then that sort of extends into how you convey the experience of music to someone who wants to play an instrument, or someone who just wants to be a very informed listener, or someone who wants to learn more about themselves.
"Is life experience necessary for you to understand music in a certain way? Can you master an instrument but not understand it? The answer is yes on both cases, but the 'how' is also what's fascinating.
I think through the memory of music, through the mastery or the non-mastery of music, it's something that can echo that dynamic and mystery. - Linda Rui Feng
"The primary relationship in this book is between Dawn and Momo coming into the world of music, but also being estranged and coming back together. To me, the idea of growing apart and then coming back together is a dynamic in life that's mysterious and wonderful and beyond our own control. It takes years and maybe decades to unfold. So I think through the memory of music, through the mastery or the non-mastery of music, it's something that can echo that dynamic and mystery."
How much is too much?
"Something that I've struggled with is, 'How much is too much? When is it too much information and too much detail?' There's no right answer to this and I think my answer will probably change as I work on other things. But I tried to trust my own enthusiasm. I tried to trust that the reader will be enthusiastic about things that I'm enthusiastic about.
I tried to trust my own enthusiasm. I tried to trust that the reader will be enthusiastic about things that I'm enthusiastic about. - Linda Rui Feng
"I read interviews with musicians. I read different accounts of the 1960s in China. On one hand, I want the story to be about particular characters and their story is what drives the novel. On the other hand, sometimes I couldn't resist just writing about a certain earthquake in 1976. Because those moments are also so rich with possibilities.
"I constantly go back and forth about letting the characters drive what's necessary. But then sometimes I wanted to show the reader a glimpse of the scale and the amount of detail, the richness that could be there."
Feng's comments have been edited for length and clarity.