The Storyteller’s Story

Genaro Ky Ly Smith is an award-winning author of three books: The Land Baron’s Sun, The Land South of the Clouds and The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born. He is also a beloved instructor of composition and creative writing at Louisiana Tech University and is currently shortlisted for a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship.

Article by April Clark Honaker | Photographer by Kelly Moore Clark

BORN IN VIETNAM IN 1968, Genaro Ky Ly Smith’s earliest memory was of lying beneath a hospital bed in Pleiku, wrapped in his dad’s arms, as the Viet Cong’s bombs rained down around them. His dad Genera whistled songs in his ear to sooth and distract him the best he could. Although Genaro was just a toddler at the time, the memory remains vivid.

Genaro is the first born son of an African American G.I. and the daughter of a wealthy South Vietnamese Army Major, who was also a land baron. Originally from New Orleans, Genaro’s father spent four years as a cook in the United States Air Force. During the war, he also served as Genaro’s mother Ngoc’s English tutor. Their whirlwind relationship was strained by her family’s objection, but they eloped nevertheless after only 12 weeks of knowing each other.

When his time in the Air Force ended, Genera and his family remained in Vietnam for another two years. During that time, he worked as a civilian developing photos and later at a telephone company. Then in 1972, they decided to move back to the United States. After a brief two months in Genera’s hometown of New Orleans, they landed in a community in Los Angeles comprised of American husbands and Asian wives. According to Genaro, there were families formed during the Vietnam War, the Korean War and even World War II living there.

Genaro spent his early childhood in this neighborhood. Then, when he was 8, they moved to an area he called The Valley. Around that time, Genaro began to realize he was destined to be a writer. Watching Star Wars in 1977 inside Mann’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, Genaro knew he wanted to tell stories. He just didn’t know what kind. Watching Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and their entourage save the galaxy and rescue Princess Leia, Genaro was moved by the movie’s epic nature, the conflict between good and evil, and the internal conflicts of the heroes.

As a child, Genaro was also a serious reader, but it was not by choice. “I was forced to read Mark Twain and H.G. Wells when I was 8,” he said. Reading was one of Genera’s daily requirements for his son. “I didn’t enjoy it then,” Genaro said, “but I had to read 50 pages a day and give a summary, and if I got it wrong, I couldn’t go outside and play.” Genaro said his dad wanted to raise a kid who was as smart as possible, and he wanted to instill the importance of education and continual learning. Genaro didn’t realize how formative the experience was until he got to college. At that point, he actually thanked his dad for making him read and write so much.

In addition to summarizing every 50 pages of the books he read, Genaro willingly summarized movies on his own. He liked to watch Abbott and Costello films and other black and white films, and then he would wait a day and write a summary based on what he could remember. The summaries included paragraphs, dialogue, physical descriptions and scenery. They were good practice in terms of learning what professional storytellers did, but Genaro didn’t start writing his own stories until he was about 10.

In school, the students were asked to write stories about each of the major holidays, and Genaro’s stories were always 4 to 5 pages longer than the other kids’ stories. His teacher Mrs. Standard noticed that he liked writing. “She encouraged me to continue,” Genaro said. “One advice she gave me was to always listen.” It was good advice, but Genaro has learned that listening doesn’t always mean using your ears. “It’s not so much listening audibly but listening to the words on the page,” he said. It’s about noticing what the characters say (or don’t say) and noticing the details that define a writer’s style.

When Genaro graduated high school, he went on to major in English at California State University, Northridge. He said, “When I told my dad I was an English major, he said, ‘What are you gonna do with that?’” Despite making his son read and summarize 50 pages a day, Genera had hoped his son would major in finance or something related to business. “He didn’t understand that his constant criticisms shaped my path in life,” Genaro said. “He didn’t want me to be a writer, and that drove me to want to be a writer. I wanted to prove him wrong.”

Genaro was determined to be a writer and studied English blindly, not knowing what his primary occupation would be when he was finished or how he would support himself. “I didn’t know I was gonna be a teacher,” he said. “I was scared of that idea—of giving misinformation, of not having an impact.”

Thanks to his perseverance, Genaro is now an award-winning author of three books: The Land Baron’s Sun, The Land South of the Clouds and The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born. He is also a beloved instructor of composition and creative writing at Louisiana Tech University and is currently shortlisted for a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship. To reach this level of success, he said one of the most important steps was finding the right mentor. After earning a Bachelor of Arts with an emphasis in creative writing from California State, Genaro applied to the Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana. He applied there specifically to work with Pulitzer-Prize winning author Robert Olen Butler, and he was accepted.

Genaro sought Butler as a mentor partly because of Butler’s experience as a G.I. in Vietnam. “He was a white man who understood my Vietnamese history better than I did,” Genaro said, “and I was hoping it would rub off and it did.” When he started his master’s, Genaro’s parents had not been open with him about his family history or life in Vietnam, so he looked to Butler to help him understand that part of himself. “When I read his stories,” Genaro said, “I felt like I was in Vietnam. He could place me there better than I could myself at the time.” Eventually Genaro’s mother started to open up more about their life and family history in Vietnam, but it wasn’t until Genaro was 30 years old.

Fortunately, the master’s program at McNeese allowed Genaro to pursue his history and his education in writing simultaneously. In fact, he said his education in writing really started at McNeese. Very little of what he learned in the program at California State made a lasting impression. He said they endorsed a kind of “bandage process” in which they pointed out the weak parts of a piece with the idea that fixing those weak parts could create something good.

According to Genaro, Butler’s advice was completely different: “If something’s bad, throw it all away.” Following that advice was hard, but Genaro did it, which is why he believes he’s the only one from his class of ten who is still writing. Now that Genaro has several publications under his belt, he can approach writing a little differently, but he believes Butler’s advice is still right for beginning writers who are serious about becoming great writers. He cited as proof two more of Butler’s former students: Adam Johnson, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Orphan Master’s Son, and Neil Connelly, author of multiple novels including The Miracle Stealer and Into the Hurricane. Although it’s hard to throw out complete drafts because something isn’t working, Genaro said, “If something’s important enough, it will come back.”

In terms of genre, Genaro likes to read and write literary fiction. “It stems from my love of Mark Twain and southern writers like Faulkner and O’Connor,” he said. “It’s the idea of bringing a region to life, whether in America or Vietnam.” Lately, Genaro has been interested more in suspense, drama and murder mysteries. In fact, he’s writing about a small-town murder of a 5-year-old boy committed by two 10-year-old boys who get away with it. The title of the work is The Boys in the Woods, and he said, “It’s dark but lulling.” It’s a story that lures readers in and inches them toward the thing they’ll find tragic and gruesome.

In this work and some of his others, Genaro has been inspired at least partly by a desire to hold on to people who are gone. “I think it’s the idea of not wanting to let certain people go, and those that are gone we want to resurrect their stories,” he said. “So many people die without finding resolution or redemption for what troubled them in their lives.” In the process of reviving people in his stories, Genaro creates a place for that resolution and redemption to happen.

In the same way, Genaro’s work allows him to work out problems in his own life. For example, he’s critical of himself as a father and husband and said, “I place that on my characters to try to find a way to resolve that.” In writing his poetry collection Portraits of Our Father Drinking, which is awaiting publication, he draws not only from the destructive wake alcoholism has left in the lives of friends and family but also from personal experience. He’s not afraid to allow his characters to take on parts of himself that he feels he needs to work on. “Because I’m laid back and inactive, most of the characters are that way. They’re often observers,” he said. “I’d like to be braver in life, and that’s the flaw of some of the characters.”

Sometimes it can be hard to write about personal struggles, especially when the goal is publication, but Genaro believes the end result is worth it. “You have to recognize that there are so many others who have the same problem,” he said, “and hopefully it will shape me to be a better person, and maybe it will help them identify some issues they have. Maybe they can resolve those issues.” In writing about his problems, Genaro is doing something about them and said the process is therapeutic. In overcoming the fear of embarrassment to share his work, his hope is that those with similar problems may find his stories therapeutic as well.

Unfortunately, thinking about how readers will react can be paralyzing for some writers, but Genaro rarely thinks about the reader until the work is finished. This approach helps him write more freely. “I’m more immersed in the characters and the story,” he said. Only when a draft is complete does he begin to consider how readers will react. “Then I place myself in the reader’s place when I read it aloud,” he said. “If it’s a sad story, the readers have to cry, or if there are moments where it’s funny, the reader has to laugh.” It’s important to him that his work inspires an emotional reaction. When people tell him they felt like they were there, whether in Vietnam or someplace else, he knows the work has been successful. When they tell him something he wrote reminded them of a specific memory or of stories they heard from their family, it’s rewarding.

Because Genaro has three voices—African American, Vietnamese and Amerasian—he can use any one of them at any time, depending on the needs of a story. He believes this aspect of his work sets him apart from other writers. “It’s the whole identity thing,” he said, “trying to find one’s place in society. Because of my racial makeup, it was hard to know where I fit in.” Through his work, Genaro continues to dig deeper into his personal history, the history of his two countries and the history of his two races. He aims to leave a legacy for his daughters and to keep his mother’s country and family alive through literature.

In the future, Genaro hopes to win a Pulitzer Prize and see his work added to the American Literature canon. He wants to be recognized as a great American writer, but at the same time, he said, “The awards don’t mean anything. It’s about recreating and resurrecting my family’s history. It’s about keeping them alive on the page.” In writing their stories, he’s learned a valuable lesson now embedded in his words: “Out of hardships like war, something beautiful can emerge, and we can appreciate certain aspects of life even more.”