Only with the heart can we communicate

Born to a French father and South Korean mother, raised between Paris and Seoul, Élisa Shua Dusapin explores in her novels the mixture of cultures, the theme of identity, the difficulty of communicating, even between family members when one belongs to cultures different. In her most recent work translated in Italy, “Le marbles del Pachinko” (Ibis Edizioni - Finis Terrae, 2021, pp. 144), 29-year-old Claire, who grew up in France, is spending the summer with her grandparents in Tokyo. The two elders run a Pachinko parlor, a game of chance halfway between slot machines and pinball machines, since they fled their native Korea decades earlier. Claire hopes to bring them back to their hometown that the two have never seen again after their escape. While the days of the holidays pass and the time passes between boredom and French lessons to little Mieko, the young woman struggles to enter into a relationship with her grandparents ... in fact she can't even remember their language anymore. How will he find the right harmony to convince them to embark on a journey that they have never wanted to do alone?

In this book, too, Dusapin excels at describing the ambiguity of family relationships, the subtle misunderstandings that go hand in hand with deep attachment. And the theme of the difficulty of communicating between people who, although belonging to the same family, are part of different cultures emerges.

But how is it possible to find true communication when one belongs to distant worlds? We ask Élisa Shua Dusapin directly.

“This is precisely the question behind the novel and it does not find definitive answers. It seems to me that my characters can really communicate only when they manage to meet on an emotional level, when sharing a life experience makes the other person resonate with something intimate, which allows them to better understand the other person. beyond cultural differences and language skills. When people have intellectual and rational conversations, they end up running into the barriers due to these differences, and their stories and their wounds prevent them from opening up to others ”.

Does having family roots as branched as happened to her, who is of a French father and South Korean mother, mean being able to draw on more resources or carry the weight of multiple overlapping cultures?

“For a long time, I regarded my origins as a handicap; cultural differences were a problem in the family and I grew up in a small Swiss village where we were the only foreigners. I suffered from racism in school to the point of having to change schools. But growing up, I realized how lucky I am to come from different cultures. This allows me to broaden my point of view, my understanding of others and the world, to some extent. I started writing when I was seventeen and writing was a way to explore these issues. I found you some oxygen ”.

How important is the language, to be able to express oneself in the same language when you want to build a relationship even between people of different cultures?

“It seems to me that my characters show that sharing a language does not necessarily lead to better communication, neither if you belong to the same family or the same culture, nor if you are complete strangers. In fact, every word is invested with a story - personal, family, cultural - which is different from one person to another, and the ability to understand each other depends, in my opinion, more on openness, empathy, emotional intelligence, from knowledge acquired through experience rather than theory. The problem stems from the fact that, in general, we believe that everything depends on the mastery of the language.

What value does it have for you to return to your places of origin and what are your places of origin?

“I have traveled extensively between Asia, Europe and the United States, where my family lives, since I was thirteen. It was almost a physical need, I wanted to try to find myself somewhere. Today I no longer feel this need because it seems to me that writing has become my intimate territory, the one in which I recognize myself, regardless of a geographical place, a culture ".