Q&A with Shaun Tan

  

 

 

Shaun Tan is the author and illustrator of the new picture book Hometown. His other books include The Arrival. He lives in Melbourne, Australia. 

 

Q: What inspired you to create Hometown?

 

A: A lot of different, seemingly unrelated things – always the best recipe for a story.

 

Firstly, some idle doodles in my sketchbook, lots of weird creatures, things I’ve been drawing since childhood. Might they all live in the same world, be part of the same family?

 

Secondly, I was travelling with my family some years ago and saw a weird Icelandic children’s TV show dubbed in Spanish on a hotel room TV, as you do.

 

It looked very strange by the standards of any language (it’s children’s TV!) but reminded me of lots of shows I’d seen as a kid in the ‘70s and ‘80s involving humans and puppets casually living together as if this was normal, like Sesame Street and H.R. Pufnstuff.

 

I wondered what it would be like to actually grow up with puppets for family, without another human in sight: at what point would a young person question their reality.

 

A third component involved some articles I read about missionaries cutting down Haida totem poles in the Pacific Northwest a long time ago, and also the constructions of Catholic churches using the stones of demolished Aztec temples.

 

I’ve always been interested in the way that different ideas of belonging and human identity compete with each other (notable in our present, very polarised age, but I would say this has been the case in every age).

 

There were, of course, many other ideas that inspired this book, including a lot of childhood memories to do with fishing along the West Australian coast, but those were the three main “triggers” for the Hometown story: creature doodles, a foreign kids’ TV show, and colonial history.

 

Q: How do you see this new book relating to your book The Arrival, which was first published 20 years ago?

 

A: That’s an interesting question, I only really noticed similarities close to the completion of Hometown. A lot of things are also different.

 

The Arrival is about a man forced to leave home for an unfamiliar country, and we as readers go on that journey with him, encountering all these strange, difficult and surprising things. He is a displaced person trying to find a home.

 

Hometown is about a girl very much at home already, very happy, experiencing no crisis. But one day she realises that she may have another home, elsewhere, and may need to return to it. 

 

The main difference between the two books is that the strangeness of her world – not dissimilar to the strangeness of the world in The Arrival – is not strange at all, at least for her. We readers are surprised by things that to her are very unsurprising, and the “weirdo” visitor who arrives one day is actually more representative of our own culture.

 

The two books work nicely as an inverted pair. Similar themes from very different points of view, both circling this question, “what is a home?” Both also touch on social issues that pervade our current climate if you dig a bit deeper: the complications of migration, and easy dogmatic thinking versus difficult imagination.

 

Q: The Kirkus Review of the book called it a “spectacularly surreal coming-of-age story about choice, family, and the gravitational pull of belonging.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: Well, better than anything I could come up with! It’s interesting to call it a “coming-of-age story”; I realise that’s probably true. There is a scene at the end where the girl is making a large image of herself, and I think that’s a nice metaphor (now that I think about it) for selfhood.

 

She spends a lot of the story asking other people for their opinion of her true identity, and by the end she realises, hey, I’m the only legitimate creator of that definition. I can make my own choices, beyond those already presented to me.

 

I suppose that is what we mean by “coming of age.” It doesn’t mean you have to forsake those other ideas or opinions, it’s not exactly rebellion or rejection (which by itself can be narrow). It’s some way of bringing other people’s ideas into the orbit of your own governing centre, a certain self-confidence and accountability. Making a fine effort to understand others, and then choosing your own path.

 

Q: Did you work on the text and the illustrations simultaneously, or did you focus on one before turning to the other?

 

A: Very much simultaneously, by which I mean something like a ping-pong game. A sketch suggests a caption, that caption suggests a different drawing, with a different interpretation and so on. It’s very trial-and-error, trying out lots of different ideas and seeing which ones work the best.

 

My guiding principle is generally this: what feels both strange and familiar at the same time? That balance approaches a sort of truth or reality. That is, the real world is always this hard-to-define mix of strangeness and familiarity.

 

We know very much about it, through experience and education, but every piece of that knowledge is surrounded by deep mystery… nobody really knows why anything exists, for instance, especially those who insist that they do! We still must navigate this mysterious reality, find meaning, live ethical lives, try to figure it out.

 

I think art and literature are very useful contributors to that private and public conversation, as much as science, religion, and philosophy. That’s a very long-winded way of saying, yes, I work on words and pictures at the same time!

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Getting this book out in the world ☺ But aside from that, my main duties remain being a house-husband and parent to school-age children, a dog and a parrot, fixing things around the house.

 

In terms of creative work, I recently helped develop a TV adaptation of Tales from Outer Suburbia, which was beautifully animated by teams in Melbourne and Perth, as well as being a US co-production – and remains accessible in the US via BYU (check it out).

 

It’s possible that a follow-on production may gain traction; it’s an interesting universe to revisit, a magic-realist suburbia with a distinctively Australian vibe.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I’m tempted to insert a political opinion but I’m sure you can use a break from all that! I think it’s enough to say we are all living in very strange times where the fabric of reality seems vulnerable to coming undone.

 

Sometimes I wonder at the significance of making strange, amusing stories set in other worlds when this planet seems to be skirting several human-made, entirely preventable black holes, but I think all artists are responding to contemporary anxieties in some form when they make work. Any creative thinking is beneficial, any attempt to imagine other ways of being.

 

For me, it’s about looking for deeper anchors to human nature, beyond the ebb and flow of daily news, and asking these questions primarily of myself.

 

Why do I believe what I believe, and what would it take to change my mind? Can sincere feelings be wrong? Can good ideas be dangerous? How can we really see another person’s point of view when it is different to our own?

 

These are all basic questions that young people especially have always struggled with, but they are also fun questions to ask. Books are a very entertaining way of addressing them and inviting a larger discussion. I like to think that they make a difference, particularly for young minds that still open to multiple perspectives.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Shaun Tan.