“I tried to present a realistic portrait of an everyday woman in China. There’s a sadness in her situation, but also moments of connection and joy. For me, it sums up what China is about—it’s not an easy place to live, but it has a certain energy and rhythm unlike anywhere else.”
Read the interview →Conversations about my fiction, books and influences, and the cross-cultural experience that shapes my writing. Currently featuring interviews conducted in support of China Girl and Other Stories.
“My first direct contact with fiction probably came with the children’s book Goodnight Moon — my brain registered the unreality of the narrative, as we move from day to night in just a few pages, but I was inspired by its creativity, as time collapsed. I wanted to be on the other end of that exchange, constructing something that would give a reader a similar sense of ‘wow.’”
Read the interview →I join Janeane Bernstein’s podcast to talk about China Girl and my cultural/familial connections with China.
Read the essay →I chat about China Girl, culture clash and the future of China.
"I read a lot of writers who approach identity from the outside — scholars and critics who are very smart about culture. But the fiction that moves me is the fiction that approaches it from the inside, from the level of the individual nervous system. That's what I was going for."
Read the interview →