“Driftwood Fire, Chile,” a creative writing collection: guest post by Taeko Kushiro

Driftwood Fire, Chile (2012) is a collection of creative memoir, essays, short stories, and poems by Taeko Kushiro. She is a member of Santiago Writers, a writing group established by two Canadians living there, Ellen Hawkins and Susan Siddeley. Their third group anthology, Perspectives (2011), has just won the National Association of Writers’ Groups’ (NAWG) Denise Robertson Group Anthology Award for 2012.

It was a joy for me to get to know Taeko and her fellow writers during my workshops for Los Parronales Writers’ Retreats in 2010. Congratulations on the NAWG award, Santiago Writers.

Here, Taeko shares thoughts on her writing journey.

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I am a piece of driftwood washed ashore in Chile.

One month short of my fortieth birthday, an erratic tide of life brought me to this “God’s jewellery box” filled with natural beauty. I was expecting to enjoy a few years’ stay in another exotic culture with my husband and three children. Though we are Japanese, we had already lived happily at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, beside the Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore, and amidst the chaotic traffic of Bangkok, Thailand.

Seventeen years later, I am still in Chile, now counting down for my husband’s retirement from the United Nations. This thin strip of land, exactly opposite mine on the globe, challenged me to drive on the right for the first time — in every aspect of life — only to skid into a jungle of language where English no longer served as a pair of magic wings, into a forest of humanity where sagging leaves drifted on my confusion and struggle for self-rediscovery. I, who had dreamed of flying lightly over the world like a sparrow, found myself a snail looking up at the sky, wondering how others could soar so high. Until I met Santiago Writers, passionate weavers of words.

I would have been lost without the company of these dynamic women. They encouraged me to gaze at shimmers of moonlight on the night sea, to burn myself up and give my best — sparks, flames, smoke, and, hopefully, some warmth. Short stories spun from word prompts, creative memoir garnished with wishes, poems like sighs, fragments of thoughts and feelings. Together, they may sound like the songs of a demented queltehue bird, but a drop of truth within each has helped me to make peace with life.

Many years ago in a musty used-book store in Japan, I purchased a piece by the calligrapher Drunken Dragon, which said, Anger means ignorance; Sorrow means discipline; Laughter means spiritual awakening. Perhaps I needed to thrash through my undergrowth to reach the light. If you hear ripples of laughter in this book, it is thanks to those earnest writers who joyfully danced around my tiny fire and coaxed me to leave some of its glow in print.

I grew up with my grandfather, who had spent twenty-five years in the United States before the Second World War. Listening to the Far East Network for the Marine Corps at the US Air Base in my hometown, I fell in love with the deep, mellow vowels and consonants of English, then studied English Literature at universities in Hiroshima and Kyoto.

In Chile seven years ago, a chance meeting with the leader of Santiago Writers (members from Canada, the United States, England, Argentina, British Guyana, South Africa, and Japan) enabled me to breathe again in my first-love language and stay alive in Chile. Writing meant sharing a part of me with my dear friends in the group, the only place I could feel I belonged.

I kept writing and bringing pieces based on our weekly prompt word so that my tiny fire might not die out. At first these took the form of stories because I was not ready to expose myself. Yet, writing meant a journey inward, and inevitably I started writing creative memoir (which covered four generations), essays, and poems that shared what is within me more directly. For a non-native speaker, the feedback from our weekly meetings, including the red pen over clunky expressions, was priceless. My writing was also deepened and sharpened by various facilitators of Los Parronales Writers’ Retreats, hosted by member Susan Siddeley every January. Many pieces in Driftwood Fire, Chile were born during these fabulous workshops, including Allyson’s on memoir writing.

Publishing was indeed stepping out of my comfort zone. Yet, my Japanese perspectives on life in Chile, international nomadic family, parenthood, womanhood, aging, culture, and life itself must have felt unique to the other members, and they persuaded me that each piece of mine held something meaningful enough to share with others. I also hoped that, in this way, I’d be able to leave something important within me to my children and relatives — what I could never have said to them in person.

Driftwood Fire, Chile is my farewell gift to my dear friends as I now return to my homeland after spending thirty years abroad. Writing was sometimes painful, but it helped clarify who I am and what I can do on earth. Thanks to the love from my fellow writers, I have even learned how to wrap sorrow with humour. All the two hundred copies I had for sale in Chile sold out in ten days because more than several who bought a copy came back for more to pass as gifts. I feel blessed that they found some grits of universal truth in my writing.

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TAEKO KUSHIRO is Japanese but has spent the last thirty years in Tanzania, Singapore, Thailand, and Chile. She holds degrees in English Literature — a BA from Hiroshima University and an MA from Kyoto University. A member of Santiago Writers since 2004, she has contributed short stories and poems to its two anthologies: In Transit (2007) and Perspectives (2011). Driftwood Fire, Chile is the culmination of her writing time in Chile, published as she packs up to return to her homeland.

The front cover photo of Driftwood Fire, Chile, is one Taeko took from the headland in Los Molles, a small village her group visited on a writing retreat. The back cover photo — her profile photo here — shows the early morning view in El Noviciado, Santiago, where Los Parronales Writers’ Retreats have taken place.

Note from Allyson:

Taeko is the sixth participant in my Chile workshops — at Los Parronales Writers’ Retreats and, later, in the city of Santiago — to have published a book. Other authors (alphabetically) are Ellen Hawkins (Djinxed), Marleen Rechsteiner (Leven Zonder Agenda [Life Without Agenda]), Mary Judith Ress (Blood Flowers), Victoria Schele (Iron Horses: The Forging of Old and New Paths), and Susan Siddeley (Home First: A Memoir in Voices).