Excavating and Deconstructing: An Interview with Shah Tazrian Ashrafi

The short story “Camp” by Shah Tazrian Ashrafi, appears in volume 74.1-2, our 75th anniversary issue, and explores the dystopian world of a mother who has lost her daughter in an accident. “Camp” is a place where parents who have lost their children can go and find a child to replace the one who has died. The story explores many facets of grief, and we talked to Shah about where the idea for the story came from, the power of a good dystopia, and his literary mentors.

Q: Is there something that you want to be the main takeaway after reading “Camp”?

Shah: Yes. For some people, moving on is an illusion. When it shatters, the clamor can be too great to bear.

Q: If any, is there a story or life experience that inspired you to write “Camp”?

Shah: I remember being awestruck as I read Diane Cook’s story called “Moving On.” Ever since I read that, I’ve always wanted to emulate something similar but within the context of a mother-child relationship. When I wrote “Camp,” I was grieving the unexpected death of a best friend, so I was also very much interested in the ways people deal with grief and the idea of moving forward with life. My own grief certainly fueled a lot of the writing in that story (especially the parts concerning the daughter who dies). As I wrote the mother’s character and the ways which she dealt with grief, I was constantly excavating and deconstructing my experiences of dealing with grief.

Q: What drew you to use the second person “you” perspective?

Shah: Sometime before thinking of that story, I read This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga. I thought there was something visceral about the second person technique. It creates a powerful immediacy and intimacy between the reader and the text. With “Camp” I wanted the reader to feel the mother’s grief and desperation as their own.

Q: With the little girl Zara, there is a strong sense of her being an “iPad kid.” What negative effects do you think that being the “iPad kid” will have as kids grow older, especially in the writing and creativity world?

Shah: That’s something I worry about quite deeply. In the age of ChatGPT and other abominations toward creativity, where is the new generation headed? I don’t think people can learn empathy and patience (both are intertwined) if their cognitive capacity for both is consistently eroded and limited by fast, dopamine-inducing technology. When I was writing Zara’s character, though, I didn’t have this somber consideration in mind. With her want of an iPad, I just wanted to reflect something I saw all around me.

Q: Is the dystopian genre your favorite to write in?

Shah: It is. And I say this not because of the shock value of the genre, but because I am someone who grew up reading George Saunders and watching Black Mirror. I think this genre does an excellent job of caricaturing the real world and therefore in providing valuable insights about the human condition. For example, George Saunders’s “Sea Oak” is a masterclass in portraying the paradox of significance and insignificance in an “ordinary” human being (often molded by larger macroeconomic and sociopolitical structures). Not exactly dystopian, but I’m also heavily inspired by Pemi Aguda’s stories! And more on the dystopian side, Diane Cook and Samanta Schweblin remain my constant inspirations.

Q: Did you learn anything about yourself in the process of writing this story?

Shah: This was actually one of the first stories that told me yes, I must keep writing such stories and avoid the path of realistic stories. I don’t say this in a condescending way. Personally, I enjoy absurdist stories quite a lot, and I would like to get better at writing them.

I also learned that translating grief on the page, especially when you’re culling it from your own life, can be quite an emotionally intense process; you have to relive the moments you forgoed.

Perhaps I learned the most by revising this story. I learned the absolute necessity of economy in language, although I hate using that word for literature as someone who loves Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. But I suppose every story is unique. Some stories want economy. Some want full-blown, screaming-at-the-top-of-the-lungs chaotic maximalism. As I currently work on my novel, I’m trying to achieve the latter, but I’m prioritizing what the story wants instead of what I want.