Susan Choi: “As a well-behaved child, I wished I could be a bad one”

The author of Flashlight on her Booker-shortlisted novel’s protagonist representing her own childhood fantasies of who she wanted to be

How did the idea of the story of Flashlight germinate?

Author Susan Choi (Courtesy susanchoi.com)

This story comes from a couple of different points of origin. Many different preoccupations of mine came together, and that was a process that took quite a long time. I wasn’t thinking of writing a book so much as I had a number of different interests that, at some point, coalesced and became an idea.

The first is really a childhood trip to Japan in the late 1970s with my parents, which made a great impact on me personally because it was such a culturally different experience for me. But none of the events of this book, of course, took place on that trip. That trip was, in the larger scheme of things, unremarkable. My father was a visiting professor, we went home again, and there was no big event. But the landscape and those memories stayed with me. I always wished I could return to that childhood landscape for some reason. As a fiction writer, I’m often looking for a pretext to use some aspect of personal experiences and transform them in some ways.

Many years later, two decades later really, I read in The New York Times about the case of Megumi Yokota, a Japanese schoolgirl who disappeared from her hometown less than a year before the visit my parents and I had made to Japan. The coincidence struck me — she was a schoolgirl, I was a schoolgirl. This catastrophe had befallen another family so close in time to when my family had been in Japan, and it just stuck with me.

Even more years later, I began reading about the Zainichi community in Japan, which is a community of ethnic Koreans who, for various reasons, were living in Japan at the end of World War II. When Japan’s empire ended, they lost their legal status.

I was interested in all these things. It takes me a long time for different interests to swim together and suggest a storyline, but eventually they did. I started writing about these characters from different angles, and by late 2020, I had carved out enough material to stand alone as a story published in The New Yorker. Even then, I already wanted to write more. I couldn’t yet figure out how the book would work, but I knew these characters came from a larger story.

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How did you come up with the title Flashlight? Is it used as a metaphor?

It’s funny, because as a writer I don’t usually notice larger symbolic or metaphorical effects that arise from details. The word flashlight first appeared very literally — it’s the flashlight in the doctor’s office that the girl, Louisa, decides to play with. The flashlight originally had no larger meaning. I just thought that since she and her father were walking at dusk, they would have had a flashlight. Even within the logic of the story, I thought there would be a reason that this flashlight in the present connects to a past, recent traumatic event that has befallen her. But I wasn’t thinking any broader than that.

When it came time to title the story, I’m very bad at titles. I usually overthink them and come up with poor results. I admire titles that are simple, and for a short story there’s less pressure to have something grand. So I thought, I’ll just call it Flashlight. It’s about a flashlight. I was pleased with that kind of prosaic, ordinary label.

In the end, the title felt capacious enough to serve for the novel as well, even though I had originally thought of it as something quite mundane.

Did you also consider other options for the title besides Flashlight?

No, there were no other options at all. I submitted the book with the title Flashlight. By that time, I felt the flashlight was an important symbol and had a certain elegance. I was concerned the publishers might not like it, that they might say, “We need a title that tells the reader more about the book before they pick it up.” I worried they’d find it too enigmatic. But thankfully, they accepted it right away and never even brought up the title.

Did you visit Japan for the research of the novel? Because there are profound details about Japanese culture and ways of life in the novel.

The short answer is no. I was worried that visiting Japan in the present day — around 2020 or 2021, when I was writing — would erase the dreamy, imagistic vision of Japan I still retained from childhood. The Japan I saw in the late 1970s is gone. I’m sure there are traces, but it’s a very different country now. So, I avoided taking a research trip because I didn’t want to dispel that dreamlike quality.

Once I had completed a draft and was almost done, I had an unrelated opportunity to visit Japan.I was reluctant to revisit any of the landscapes I remembered, but once I was there, it seemed foolish not to. I went back to the town where I had lived as a child, the school I attended, and the apartment building I lived in. I had used all of those places as models for Louisa’s experience in Japan, even though her story is completely different.

I was shocked by the similarities and differences. My memories of Japan were soft, grey, cloudy, hazy — everything blurred around the edges. But when I went back, it was the middle of July: blazing hot, blindingly bright, sharp-edged. The buildings, school, and shopping street were all the same yet totally different. I was so relieved I hadn’t visited earlier, because it would have completely disrupted the mood I wanted in the book.

Was that completely different from your imagination?

Yes. I realised much of my childhood image wasn’t from memory at all, but from old photographs — cheap Kodak prints that have degraded over the years, giving them that dark, grainy, sepia tone. Those memories definitely coloured the atmosphere of the novel.

The novel refers to the historical conflicts between two countries Japan and Korea. Is there a reason you wanted to bring these conflicts to the fore in the novel?

Yes. First of all, because of the father’s character. I decided to make him one of the Zainichi, and it was important for readers to understand his family’s situation — why they were where they were, and why they might choose to relocate to North Korea, believing it could offer them a better life.

I was fascinated, and horrified, by the historical episode when Japan-residing Koreans were encouraged — even pressured — by the Japanese government to “return” to North Korea between the late 1950s and 1960s. It was a shameful policy, and evidence soon emerged that life in North Korea was not what they’d been promised.

I initially hoped not to overload the book with history, but my editor, a wonderful reader, kept urging me to add more context. So, the material about the father’s background grew substantially.

How complicated was it to explore the child Louisa’s psyche in the novel?

I found it very easy to imagine my way into this child. And it’s not because she resembles me. But I think there is a way in which she is maybe like a bit of a wish fulfilment for me. We all have been children. And I’ve also been a parent of children of this age. My children now are 21 and 18 years old. So, they’re entering adulthood. And so, I think the experience of being a child still feels very familiar or present to me. And one of the things that I really enjoyed about Louisa is I think she behaves in ways that I wish I had behaved. But I was a very well-behaved child. And I think, I mean, I’m not sure if this is universal. But as a well-behaved child, I think I did sort of wish often that I could be a bad child, throw a tantrum, be disagreeable, not speak when spoken to, not cooperate with adults. You know, I was always very obedient and very afraid of doing anything wrong in school. So, I think that I wasn’t Louisa, but I was really rooting for her. And it didn’t feel difficult to imagine a child who, because her life has been turned upside down, just isn’t really complying anymore.

How much of Lousia is you?

I think only in the sense that she’s almost like an inverse or like the kids these days talk about the multiverse, or I think in older generations, the path not taken, like in Robert Frost’s poem. I think Louisa does represent a little bit of a path not taken for me. I can imagine being a very wayward child, but I wasn’t. My own mother read the book and she was surprised by Louisa. She said, well, you weren’t obnoxious like that.

So, I think that Louisa maybe represents my childhood fantasy of the kind of child that I wished I could be at times.

The relationship between Lousia and her mother Anne is strained. Is this because of the long succession of disappointments in both their lives?

It’s interesting question for me as a lot of the writing of relationships between characters is very instinctive. I don’t premeditate how they feel about each other. I’m more think about what events are taking place. And then I write trying to sort of intuit how they would react.

I was very interested, when I was writing this fictional family, in all of the secrets that they keep from each other. Anne has had this child by a previous liaison who she has not raised. While her husband Serk has a secretive background in his home country, which he doesn’t really think of as his native country, that he doesn’t want to share. So, these are two very secretive adults, and they’re keeping secrets from each other. I think that that kind of atmosphere makes children very surly. When we see Louisa and Anne after Serk leaves their lives — it makes sense to me that they would not get along. Something horrible has happened to them. They don’t know how to talk about it. And this just makes matters worse between them.

Which character in the novel do you find the closest to your heart?

Well, that’s such a nice question. It’s very difficult, I think, to say. I like that you didn’t say the word favourite, although the way you phrased the question is a similar idea. But to be honest, I have a very tender feeling for the character of Tobias. Writers talk about this phenomenon of being surprised by the characters — but I really kept being surprised by Tobias. It’s really true that I did not know what role he would play, and his role kept getting bigger and bigger.

Were there some fraught moments when you found it difficult to move on with the story?

Absolutely. I mean, there weren’t just some moments. I think that the whole book was actually kind of stuck in this very fraught moment very early on, because I had become very attached to this sensational idea — you’ve read the book, so I can speak openly of the whole plot — I had become very attached to this very sensational idea that the father is abducted. And I was equally attached to this and felt like it was completely too much for a book, like no reader would believe it, I wouldn’t be able to bring it off. It would just seem sensationalistic, like it would not seem authentic.

So even at the very outset, I was really in a crisis of thinking that my idea for the book was not going to work.

The story Flashlight published in The New Yorker is a direct outgrowth of my inability to write about the events that befall the family in Japan.

Which books or authors you often return to?

There are so many. I’m trying to read as widely as I can. I often won’t let myself return to the books because there’s so much that I still have to read that I have not read. And so, I’m less tolerant of returning to favourite authors. But there are books that I return to nevertheless, for whatever reason. I return to The Great Gatsby, which is a book that I find so annoying. I like almost nothing about the characters, the story, the setting — but I love the sentences. The sentences are so beautiful and surprising. And just the way Fitzgerald uses words — there’s so much pleasure in it. And the same with Nabokov. I often find Nabokov so annoying — just so irritating. But his use of language almost makes me feel elated sometimes, to see what he will do with a sentence and how brilliantly he manages to use the English language — not even his first language — to express an image or an idea. And so, those are the writers, writers like that, that I will often return to. George Eliot is another writer. Middlemarch is a book that I will often return to just because, unlike with Fitzgerald and with Nabokov, I love the project, if that makes sense, of that book. I love what she’s decided to do and the way in which she does it. Virginia Woolf is another writer that I return to again and again, even though I get very irritated with her as well. But her use of language, again, has been an inspiration to me in my whole writing life since I was a student.

You also teach Creative Writing at Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars; what is your advice for budding writers?

I mean, my biggest pieces of advice — the two that I think are worth more than any specific piece of advice — are: read a lot and widely. Read widely and read a lot.

I’m constantly surprised by how little some students read. Often, I have writing students who do not read very much. You actually just can’t be a writer if you’re not going to make reading as big a part of the job as writing. You have to read a ton. You’ll never learn more from any other activity than from reading the work of other people.

And then: write as regularly as possible, without preoccupation with the product. Don’t be constantly thinking, “Oh, I must write a story, I must write a novel.” Just write. Just put words together. Make it into a practice, not a production of an object. Because nothing will improve your writing more than just writing more. But it’s very hard to do.

Are you working on some new project now?

I am struggling myself to do the writing more and write frequently. Promoting this book and teaching have been very exhausting of my time. But I’ve been, for years and years, trying to write about my father’s family. I’ve written about my father in disguise so many times that it almost seems like I should really write a book about him. I’ve been really interested in this story of my father’s family for most of my life. I cannot figure out how to write well about it. I’m still trying. But I’ve been trying for the past two books. I’ve been trying to write this book, and instead I’ve written these other books. So, I don’t know if this will be the next book or if I’ll ever make a book about it.

How do you feel about your book being shortlisted for Booker Prize 2025?

It’s very nerve-wracking, and I’m really looking forward to it being all over, because it’s quite nerve-wracking. There is an extraordinary list of books, and there’s really no book on that list that wouldn’t deserve to win. I feel sorry for the judges. it’s so incredible to be on the list. And that’s what I like about the Booker Prize — you’ll be on the shortlist forever. I’ll always get to say, “shortlisted,” and that’s really made a huge difference to me in my career. I’m thrilled. Well, you know, what can I say? I’ve already won. But the next stage is the most nerve-wracking. I hope it just goes quickly.

Mohd. Farhan teaches English at Jamia Millia Islamia, a Central University in New Delhi.