True to life Winnipeg author’s new essay collection draws from ‘unconventional’ existence By: Ben Sigurdson Posted: 6:05 PM CDT Thursday, Sep. 19, 2024 Last Modified: 9:16 AM CDT Friday, Sep. 20, 2024 Updates

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In 1982, Jenny Heijun Wills was given up for adoption as an infant by her Korean parents and raised by a family in Ontario. The emotional experience of reuniting with her Korean family years later served as the basis of her debut 2019 memoir, Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related.

In her new collection of essays, Everything and Nothing at All, the Winnipeg author and University of Winnipeg professor expands on aspects of her experience as a transracial and transnational adoptee as well as exploring notions of family, race, beauty, kinship, reading and more.

She launches the book at 7 p.m. on Saturday at McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location, at an event hosted by U of W colleague Lindsay Wong as part of this year’s Thin Air writers festival.

While Everything and Nothing isn’t a sequel to Older Sister, it provides follow-up context to her first book — she’s no longer in contact with her Korean mother, for example — and expands on themes in Wills’s life she wanted to dig into further.

“It’s a sibling text, a companion text. It’s kind of like a partner in crime,” she explains.

Leading up to the book’s publication in August, Wills struggled with nerves about its reception.

“I suspect I’m not the only writer who has a lot of anxiety between making the last little adjustments and when (a book) comes out. There’s this anxiety that no one’s going to like it — and for someone like me, it translates to, ‘No one’s going to like me.’ I don’t know, maybe it’s an attachment issue for me,” she says.

When Older Sister was released, that anxiety would be immediately quelled — Wills was named to the short list of the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust award for non-fiction the same day the book was published, and went on to win the prize.

And with her latest, she needn’t have worried; on Sept. 18, Everything and Nothing again saw Wills land on the short list for the $75,000 prize. (The winner will be announced Nov. 19.)

Stylistically, Wills takes a more lyrical and poetic approach in Older Sister than she does in Everything and Nothing.

“Lyrical writing, creative writing certainly feels more comfortable for me, and I think that’s why I sprinted away from academic writing — as soon as that little window was cracked open, I flew through it,” she says.

“The memoir was very emotionally driven, very esthetically driven, and with (the new book) I wanted to do something that was a little bit more or differently cerebral and to provide the context from which that first book arose.”

With a critically-acclaimed debut under her belt, Wills felt more comfortable flexing her academic muscles a bit while threading the emotional impact of her own experiences through each of the essays.

“I think the moment is different, and people are really interested in these brilliant writers, Christina Sharpe, Roxane Gay, Dionne Brand. The door has been opened, and there’s a lot of interest for these kinds of combination texts,” she says.

Wills has long been a voracious reader, and reading has been key in shaping who she is (and isn’t), and in trying to find context and insight into her own experiences.

Her essay Not (Just) as a Pleasure lays out just how important books have been in Wills’ journey through her adoptee experience.

“Before this book came out I thought no one would be interested in this almost obsessive relationship that I have with texts, and yet that seems to be the one that has piqued the most curiosity,” she says, laughing.

“It’s interesting to find out what people attach to and what lands with them — it’s never what I think it will be.”

As was the case in Older Sister, Wills is careful to balance the sharing of her own perspectives and experiences with avoiding excess detail about those around her, including her adopted and Korean families as well as her own family.

“I think the moment is different, and people are really interested in these brilliant writers, Christina Sharpe, Roxane Gay, Dionne Brand. The door has been opened, and there’s a lot of interest for these kinds of combination texts.”–Author Jenny Heijun Wills

At the core of Everything and Nothing at All , says Wills, is an exploration of what she knows and has come to know about herself and the world, and the ways in which knowledge shifts and changes in tandem with her life.

“When I was going through my reunion, when I was doing my studies, when I was a literary critic, one gets the impression that ‘There’s an answer to this,’ and I need to find the answer, and if I say it in the proper way, if I perform in the correct way, then I’ll pass my exams, I’ll get a job, all of these wonderful things will fall into place,” she says. “But I did all of those things. I did the reunion, I studied for the exams, but I was still left with questions.”

Wills has lived in Winnipeg since 2011 and has come to embrace the city and the ways it has shaped her writing, particularly in her new book.

“I feel so anchored and honoured to be considered a Winnipeg writer, a Manitoba writer. Sometimes people say, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if you lived in Toronto or Vancouver? Think of the opportunities.’ But I can’t imagine being anywhere else other than Winnipeg,” she says.

“This is a city that that feels comfortable for me — it invites the things I’m thinking about, it inspires me to think about things in ways I haven’t before. Even though I don’t talk about it specifically, the fingerprints of Winnipeg are all over (this book).”

And while Wills hopes to publish fiction at some point — she has had one short story published, has others completed and is working on a novel — her life continues to provide an abundance of material to explore in non-fiction.

“I wish my real life would stop being so dramatic and providing me with so much fodder for non-fiction, because it’s like a siren song — it just pulls me back,” she says, laughing.

“When you have a unique or unconventional set of experiences, non-fiction starts to feel like home base.”

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@bensigurdson