build your house around my body violet kupersmith

SHAPIRO: You know, you're sitting in suburban Philadelphia, and I'm in Washington, D.C. KUPERSMITH: And so that's why it was causing problems. And so it was upset at the offerings of chicken that was - that were being left for it. And the ghost, it turned out, was, like, a vegetarian. But in real life, it was much less intense. KUPERSMITH: (Laughter) This was - that - I did draw on this experience, by the writing of that chapter. SHAPIRO: And there is also an exorcism scene. SHAPIRO: Which is where part of this book takes place. And I witnessed an exorcism in the Central Highlands. Everyone just had their own ghost stories, and they were kind of blase about it. Well, when I was living in Vietnam, ghosts were just a kind of everyday thing. If it isn't staying dead, then there's probably a reason, and all you have to do is give the ghost the thing that it is seeking - revenge, redemption, a resolution - which sounds like such a pragmatic approach to something so, (laughter) like, spooky and, you know, impossible to fully understand. SHAPIRO: There's a piece that you wrote for the Huffington Post way back in 2014 called 'The (ph) Beginner's Guide to Vietnamese Ghosts.' And you began it by writing, Vietnamese ghosts aren't that scary as long as you know what it is that they want.

And as a figure who has this agency that was denied to them in life. But with the novel, I was more attracted to the ghost as a way of getting revenge.

Because I thought, oh, it's such a perfect figure, the ghost who's sort of trapped between worlds and doesn't really belong anywhere. KUPERSMITH: Well, when I wrote 'The Frangipani Hotel,' the short story collection, I was very interested in the metaphor of the ghost as sort of a stand-in for the immigrant. As a writer, what appeals to you about the supernatural? And before this, you wrote a collection of short stories that was also populated by ghosts, as this book is. Winnie's part was originally supposed to be much smaller, but she kept growing, I think, to anchor the story as the story itself kept getting more and more complex. VIOLET KUPERSMITH: I really didn't intend to have a character so close to me play the biggest role in the book. They're both Vietnamese American women of mixed racial background who moved to Vietnam in their early 20s. Winnie has a lot in common with the author, Violet Kupersmith. The story begins with the disappearance of a young woman named Winnie, and then it works its way backwards through time.

The exorcism doesn't have crucifixes or holy water. It has some set pieces familiar from Hollywood horror movies and Brothers Grimm fairy tales, like an exorcism and a haunted forest, but because this book is set in Vietnam, the forest is an overgrown rubber tree plantation. 'Build Your House Around My Body' is a ghost story, a sprawling novel that spans generations.

Build your house around my body violet kupersmith