Dark Soil: Fictions and Mythographies

by Angie Sijun Lou (Editor), Karen Tei Yamashita (Contributor)

Eight authors’ works of personal nonfiction join with ten new stories by Karen Tei Yamashita to illuminate the hidden histories of places large and small.

Faced with a scant historical record, Karen Tei Yamashita turns to fiction to animate the secrets of Santa Cruz, the city she’s called home for nearly three decades. Her characters come alive through her signature witty humor and surreal premises, transcending the past and urging themselves into the present to illuminate a hidden geography of this California coastal city unseen in textbooks.

Alongside these stories, eight nonfiction writers chart their own counternarratives of place through the greater United States. Diverging and converging in their scale and scope, from an unnamed lot on the bank of the Ohio River to the territory of Guam, their essays use language as an instrument of excavation, uncovering layers of hurt and desire concealed in the land.

Genres: Short Stories

304 pages, Paperback

Published May 7, 2024

Reviews

[AbbyJo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a good read, though I would recommend that you take your time if you want to enjoy it fully. This book is an anthology, so there is no single author, instead it’s a collection edited by Lou and Yamashita, with ten original pieces done by Yamashita herself. Each author has a very particular style of writing and it requires a reader to think deeper to understand the meaning. Yamashita adds her own flare to the pieces, and her writing could be considered strong in the genre argument of fact vs fiction that exists in the world of nonfiction. I found that interesting, that she terms the stories in this book as mythographies because they are based off of true events but sprinkled with bits of fiction. If you like genre-crossing, you will enjoy this book.
The book begins with ten original stories by Yamashita. As with her other pieces, she does well in drawing upon historical events connecting them to the present. My favorite piece of hers was "Indian Summer". I found the switching between first person and second person well done. Often, we read history in textbooks but never stop to consider the humanity behind the events. I believe that we forget that history was lived by real people. For me, Yamashita made these events come to life through her vivid storytelling, and her rich dialogue. "The Brother's Parking Lot", one of her original pieces, is a great example of this. It's a reminder that those who are easily forgotten had a voice, a purpose, and importance. It is a niche book, but worth the read.

[Kumar Jensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is deep beauty in this book and the entire experiment that it required to be completed. The idea of a mythography, let alone mythographies, is one that I’ll continue to hold in my own writing experiences. Even though not all of the forms appealed to me I greatly appreciate the experimentation put into these pieces and think it’s important for boundaries to be pushed. Mostly sitting in appreciation that I was able to take my time with Dark Soil.

[Jacqueline Nyathi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dark Soil reminds me of, and can be argued to be a form of counter-mapping—traditionally used to mean the ways indigenous and marginalised communities make maps that counter those made by colonisers or hegemonic powers. This wonderful collection starts in Santa Cruz, California, in the US, but enlarges to encompass histories and possibilities elsewhere (the Philippines, and Guam). Some of the writing is fiction, but there’s also poetry and experimental work—an “ekphrastic approach to geography,” as Angie Sijun Lou says in the editorial introduction. All of the pieces are hauntological.

The ten excellent stories in the first section, *Santa Cruz Nori*, are by Karen Tei Yamashita, and are focussed on the “speculative histories” of Santa Cruz: a haunted spot on a map; a time-travelling boy who gets lost in the grim past; a memorably haunted ticket machine at the entrance to a parking lot (my favourite story) telling the story of an enslaved man and his family;, another grim story after/riffing off *Strange Fruit*; one on technological development or how terrible chemicals have been used for good (or not, is what you have to decide); Filipino boys who migrate for work and get caught up in racist violence; and the lives and afterlives of Chinatown. The forms of most of these stories are stories in themselves.

In the second section, there are varied pieces by Brandon Shimoda, Craig Santos Perez, Sesshu Foster, Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint, Angie Sijun Lou, Saretta Morgan, Ronaldo V. Wilson, and Juliana Sajr: the history of the Chinese Exclusion Act; a play; ties to home (buried navels, so familiar to me!); a survey of the work and tragic death of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (*Dictee*); life on the edge of poverty; the striking ways that borders are a tool for conservation and violence against immigrants; and, finally, a poem about a polluted river.

All of these stories are tied to place, and how place both shapes our narratives and is shaped by us. But these are suppressed or marginalised histories finding their way to the surface, voices that are ignored rather than unheard. The inventive forms allowed me to enjoy words, story and underlying meanings, even as I sometimes reached for Google to learn more about these histories. A deeply affective work.

Thanks to Coffee House Press and to Edelweiss for DRC access.