“When I write, I want to enjoy it, and I want to be there. I want my readers to come with me and be in the story.” — Taen Bounthapanya
Taen Bounthapanya is a student in CSUSM’s LTWR MA program, a former undergraduate student at CSUSM, and a student at Palomar. She enjoys reading and listening to stories. Bounthapanya hopes to share her own stories with others because storytelling is a means of connection.
She found her way to the graduate program because of the support from her undergraduate LTWR professors, glad to be exposed to the array of stories and perspectives the program offered her.
“The faculty there were always open to listen,” she says, “[they] just made me feel like I belonged.”
Bounthapanya is among like-minded, experimental thinkers at CSUSM, but this doesn’t mean her work is ordinary. Her poetry is vivid and dynamic, her digital literature, pointedly raw. All are stand-out works in both the CSUSM 318 Journal and Palomar College Bravura Literary Journal.
WHY DOES SHE WRITE?
Bounthapanya has cherished storytelling since her childhood. English wasn’t the primary language spoken in her family and the stories she grew up with were all spoken word.
“I would…hear stories from my grandma, you know, from my parents…not just stories like folktales and folklore but stories about their life…So it’s just almost like [I was] listening to them.”
When it comes to the oral tradition, everyone tends to get lost in the music of the story.
“You get to really experience it. And especially for me, it’s the sound of the words, the sound of the person telling it, and you can hear their emotions. And it’s just something fun. You think of it as a fun thing, not as a labor, right?”
At that point, just listening to her talk, I couldn’t help but to think about just how many stories Bounthapanya has in her mind. Of course, I had to ask for just one and so, per my request, she recalls a folktale her grandma always told her, her all-time favorite about olives, a little doe, and an owl.
“An owl falsely [declares] that there are olive trees in the forest,” Bounthapanya smiles, “And then the little deer–that’s his favorite fruit–so he goes searching for it. But on the way searching for it, he caused all this chaos in the forest. And in the end, they come back [asking], ‘who’s the cause of this?’ And then it was the owl. But then the owl just like, can’t really explain himself. Because he just keeps saying the same thing. And then everyone gets mad at him. So, it starts out very innocently. And then ends up in all this chaos. And all these animals. [It’s] about…the personification of animals [because] these animals can talk to humans and talk to each other…It’s just a fun story. I think most folklore has a moral tale or something. But I think this one, I enjoy it more for just the chaos. And then the character.”
This is the condensed version, varying depending on who tells it and what region of Laos it comes from. It’s a silly story perfect for kids, but Bounthapanya says that does not diminish its power.
“It’s not just a story,” she says, it meant connecting with her grandma “and connecting with the language.”
Then, we talked about Asian-American identity and the inevitable alienation Asian-Americans feel from their heritage, diving into how language, literature, and stories can be so powerful in reconnection. Bounthapanya also emphasized how the oral tradition was foundational to her love of storytelling, no matter what the form.
Despite this love, Bounthapanya didn’t see writing as an option for many years of her life, especially as a woman and first-generation immigrant from an impoverished background.
“Because English is not my primary language,” she explains, “I didn’t think I was good enough. I [thought], what kind of work could I do with stories?”
She tried what her parents suggested, to get married, be a lawyer or engineer, but she didn’t find fulfillment in it. Eventually, she couldn’t help but return to stories, and to CSUSM for the graduate program. She didn’t want to ignore what she loved.
WHAT MOTIVATES HER?
“Honestly, I think most of my writing is for class,” Bounthapanya smiles.
Creative writing classes jumpstarts her creativity because of the structure, deadlines, and dedicated support from her peers and professors. Classes forced her to block off time, therefore legitimizing herself as a writer to herself and others.
“You block it off, and then those around you who need to have [your] time and energy understand that, hey, this is my writing time,” says Bounthapanya.
She also says both the limits and the endless possibilities of writing push her to create.
“What I feel, what I imagined in my head can be communicated to my readers using just these words,” she says. “I think for anyone who wants to work with words, it’s just so many possibilities. And then you just have to think about how you want to…play with it. I think like some writers, they already…know what they want to work with. Or if they want to challenge themselves. Like, okay, I’m just going to stick with this form and see what I can do.”
Since most of her writing is prompted by structure, she approaches new writing projects as an exercise, a word that I particularly loved. As a fellow creative writer, I tend to overcomplicate my ideas, but when I allow myself to experiment, that’s when I really get creative. There’s real value when you’re less worried about it being ‘good,’ more concerned about what story you want to tell.
Speaking of tastes, Bounthapanya loves to read. She cites Min Jin Lee as highly influential, a Korean American author and journalist famous for her critically acclaimed book, Pachinko. Bounthapanya connected with Pachinko’s themes about discrimination and stereotypes between Asian ethnicities. Lee’s writing style especially called out to Bounthapanya, along with her focus on women’s roles in an Asian family and society, across the Asian diaspora, a focus she continues to find herself being pulled to as well.
WRITING and TECHNOLOGY
In both Virtual Reality, a 2008 poem for the Palomar College Bravura Literary Journal, and Bounthapanya’s 2024 cento for CSUSM’s 318 journal, the ideas of technology encroaching on humanity have permeated her work.
“I think I’ve always been conscious of technology in our life and how it can either help us or not,” says Bounthapanya. She emphasizes the idea of writing and storytelling as a distinctly human act and to preserve that humanity, writers need to be critical of technology while also being willing to learn with it.
She demonstrates this willingness with her exploration into a literary genre called “digital literature,” intended to be experienced on a digital device. Her piece, Left Behind, is about the effects of the Vietnam War in Laos, using real footage from Laos as the war was happening and an original poem by Bounthapanya.
The work features a wedding ceremony, testimonials, music, but Bounthapanya says, “I was just focusing on one experience. Like in the poem, it’s just one experience of the mother and daughter.”
When she was creating it, she continuously thought about how civilians are most affected when it comes to military violence and how real human stories continue to get lost in the broad strokes of war.
“But maybe we just stop and listen to these people who are sometimes left behind,” she says, “put some humanity in the decisions that we make.”
In complete transparency, the main reason I wanted to interview Bounthapanya was because of Left Behind. When I first saw it, I couldn’t finish it. I had to come back and watch the full video a day later because it hit something terribly raw in me and I knew I needed to hear more.
After I spill my feelings about Left Behind, she tells me about how Left Behind also drew from her own family history.
“To hear your experience [watching it] it’s making me emotional because I sent it to some of my friends and family and they couldn’t finish the video because it was just too much,” she frowns, “It just recalled too much and I don’t want to make you sad but at the same time, like you said, sometimes like it’s just like just one story right? Like this mother and daughter. It’s just one story but it can hit many people.”
I couldn’t help but agree; stories and literature shouldn’t always be happy and feel good; their purpose is to truthfully communicate our experiences. I’m thankful that I got to hear her stories because now I want to seek out more, and isn’t that the whole point of storytelling? To be honest and relentlessly curious.
“If the piece can [make you feel that], then it’s done something,” she concludes.
NEVER DESTROYED and ‘FOR NOW’
“The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway is a story Bounthapanya can’t seem to forget. To those unfamiliar, it’s about a man who’s given up, but a young boy who always comes to help him convinces him to go out and get that one big last catch.
She describes her takeaway, “A man can be defeated but not destroyed…whenever there’s challenges in my life or whenever there are setbacks. I just see it as a temporary defeat [because] I have to keep moving on and not be destroyed.”
“There is no permanent thing,” Bounthapanya says.
In every writing project, she eventually comes to a point where she says to herself, this is it–for now. She knows she can always come back to the story and make changes because the way she feels about any work will naturally evolve, but eventually, she needs to “be happy with what [she] has at that time. Let it go.”
If she worried about perfection, it would hinder her creativity and the process of getting her stories out into the world. Thankfully, she’s let go of some stories for now, a great lesson for creative perfectionists (such as myself!)
Now, Bounthapanya has shifted her focus to her graduate program thesis: moving a text from Laotian to English. Her work centers around the different shapes language takes in storytelling and the relationship between language and culture.
I can only hope to read this project as well someday, we all have something to learn from each other’s stories.
(This article is the first in an ongoing series about student writers at CSUSM, created to center their unique artistry as storytellers. Any form of storytelling is key to community and the Chronicle’s Writer of the Month will open student’s stories to all CSUSM students and staff, not just those studying literature and writing.)