SOURCE: "Head Water: An Interview with Gerald Vizenor," in Chicago Review, Vol. 39, Nos. 3-4, 1993, pp. 50-4.

In the following interview, Vizenor discusses the impact of his experiences in Asia on his writing.

As Gerald Vizenor explains in the following interview, the act of going away has allowed him to return home richer as an individual and as a writer. Asia has been especially important in this regard: it was in Japan just after the Korean War that Vizenor experienced his first major literary discovery—haiku. Then, over twenty years later, after having published numerous books of poetry (including several books of haiku) and journalism, a year teaching in Tianjin, China resulted in Vizenor's second novel, Griever: An American Monkey King in China.

We talked with Gerald Vizenor in his office at UC-Berkeley in early January 1992, just a few months after the publication of The Heirs of Columbus, a...