Category Archives: …Author Interview/Profile
Beneath the Lion’s Gaze by Maaza Mengiste + Author Interview
Maaza Mengiste‘s voice, delivered by telephone many thousands of miles away, sounds impossibly young and happy. She’s easy to talk to, easy to laugh with. She’s in Rome for another few months, enjoying the spring sun, sipping another cup of tea in a nearby café, and watching the many American tourists wandering by.
Her idyllic life for the moment seems at odds with her own early past — filled with uncertainty, inexplicable violence, and constant fear. Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Maaza was just 3 years old when the 1974 Ethiopian revolution broke out, ousting a 3,000-year-old monarchy and replacing it with the brutal Derg regime that destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives before its collapse in 1991. Maaza was too young to understand what was happening, but perceptive enough to retain shattering images of that horrific time that have stayed with her through the years. Decades later, Maaza pieced together those memories to write her award-winning, critically acclaimed debut novel, Beneath the Lion’s Gaze, published in early 2010.
At the core of Maaza’s searing work are one family’s hellish experiences during the 1974 revolution. The family’s patriarch — the good doctor Hailu — is a prominent, proud man highly trained to alleviate pain, cure illness, and save the dying. And yet he can do nothing for his beloved wife who lies in a hospital bed, shriveled, exhausted, and ready to pass on. Hailu’s elder son Yonas gravely tries to hold his family together, but is himself helpless when his young daughter becomes seriously ill and his wife Sara is crushed by the fear of potential loss.
Unlike the controlled, watchful Yonas, Hailu’s younger son Dawit is still idealistic, still fueled by a rash temper that once put a fellow student in the hospital when Dawit, too young to understand rape, witnessed that student committing a vicious crime against a family servant. Dawit is devoted to his dying mother, emotionally dependent on his sister-in-law Sara, and in love with a headstrong young woman. He looks on in anguish and disgust as the new regime claims his childhood best friend, who uses complicity as a way to escape his deprived past spent in a mud shack adjacent to the luxury of Hailu’s two-story home.
The revolution shatters the family’s lives: Hailu’s humanity, Yonas’ responsibility, Dawit’s ideals will all be tested. As if working pieces of an intricate puzzle, Maaza presents an epic historical moment too few of us know of, laying the most atrocious acts next to radiantly tender moments and juxtaposing utter cowardice with utmost bravery. The result proves unforgettable.
Based on the strength of that single novel, Maaza was chosen by the 10×10 team to write the Ethiopian chapter of the 10×10 documentary film. Her enthusiasm about the project is palpable, and she admits she is most excited about connecting to the Ethiopian girls. Almost shyly, she reveals her own experiences when, at age 7, she left the comfort of her family to escape the growing danger of remaining in Ethiopia and traveled alone to the United States as a tiny refugee. For over a decade, she grew up in a group home run by a Christian couple in a small town in Colorado: “No one has ever heard of it; it’s on the border with Kansas,” she says. She remained there, living with a revolving group of other refugees, until she graduated high school and left for college.
Maaza softly admits to her isolated youth as “difficult, and I wouldn’t want to wish it on anyone.” She adds, “maybe that’s why I feel so connected to the plight of children.” [... click here for more: author interview appears on pages 5-11]
Author interview: 10×10: Educate Girls, Change the World Book Club Kit, April 2011, pages 5-11
Readers: Adult
Published: 2010 Continue reading
The World We Found by Thrity Umrigar + Author Interview
Here’s a moment of literary serendipity: on the morning my Bookslut interview with Luis Alberto Urrea went up, I happened to be finishing the galley of Thrity Umrigar‘s latest novel, The World We Found. Amazingly, here’s what appears in the penultimate paragraph on the very last page: “Thanks to Luis Alberto Urrea, whose definition of ‘the trembling ones,’ inspires my work.” What are the chances?
When I contacted Umrigar to set up our interview for this piece, she mentioned that she had just started Urrea’s Into the Beautiful North: “Howz that 4 coincidence?” she immediately replied. After a little nagging, she explained her “trembling” reference: “I heard Luis tell a story about his dad working as a janitor in a nearby bowling alley. And Luis was there with his friend but he didn’t acknowledge his dad. The friend didn’t know their relation and made fun of the ‘janitor’ and the father just stood there, mute, trembling with embarrassment. And Luis said something like, ‘here’s to the trembling ones.’ And I thought to myself that that was the best damn description of who I write for and why I write, that I’d ever heard. He’s so friggin’ brilliant, isn’t he?”
I, too, eventually recognized this story because I realized I was actually there: I moderated a panel almost a year ago at the 2011 AWP Conference, where I introduced Urrea and recognized Umrigar in the audience. Umrigar would, of course, become the best part of the post-presentation discussion that followed. She is, in live time, fiery, inquisitive, challenging … though occasionally she’ll give your brain a rest with her own brand of goofy fun.
On the page, Umrigar is equally fiery and challenging, although she is capable of wielding powerful control even while revealing the most wrenching moments in her resonating novels: dissolution of decades-long relationships in her debut Bombay Time (2001), utter betrayal in The Space Between Us (2006), the death of a beloved spouse and sudden uprooting in If Today Be Sweet (2007), and the unthinkable loss of a child in The Weight of Heaven (2009).
Readers of The World We Found are surely in for some “trembling” of their own. What might initially read like chick lit – four college friends are brought back together after almost 30 years of drifting apart to fulfill the dying wish of one of their own – evolves into an explosive, revelatory examination of class, gender, family … and the very extremes of religion.
Not yet 50, Armaiti is dying of a virulent brain tumor, and having seen her own mother suffer a horrible death, she decides she will hold on as long as she can to her quality of life and not be controlled by debilitating medical interventions. More than anything, Armaiti wants to reunite with the vibrant soulmates of her youth, her three closest friends who remained in Bombay. As university students together back in the 1970s, the fearless four were idealistic, devoted, ready to fight any and all injustice. Decades later, Laleh is a privileged wife and mother, Kavita is an accomplished in-demand international architect, and Nishta has all but disappeared. With the help of Laleh’s Mr. Fix-It-husband and in spite of the obstacles of Nishta’s fundamentalist spouse, Armaiti must get her final wish.
You’ve got some explosive content in this, your latest. No spoilers here, but that final scene in the airport is a shocker. Are you ready for the reactions you’re definitely going to get?
I’m not sure what you mean. Why is the scene a shocker? I mean, I understand that it’s meant to be a surprising twist – that was my intention – but I’m not trying to offend or insult any group. My main contention is that when individuals have power over others, more likely than not they will use, and abuse, that power. What reactions, and from whom, do you think I’ll get?
That was actually one of the details about this book that I admired most, that none of the characters were ever simply “good” or “bad,” and that even the “good” guys were not above falling prey to abusing their power. But back to that final scene, I don’t at all think you were intending to offend or insult any group! I’m convinced, though, that you’ll have readers who will have strong reactions to Adish’s inflammatory one-word solution to the situation at hand. Adish has been a calming, reassuring presence throughout most of the book, so it’s a shocker when he reacts as he does at the airport. Post-9/11, don’t you feel people have become hyperaware, even hypersensitive to certain trigger words and situations?
That’s great; I want them to have a strong reaction to his “one-word solution,” as you so delicately put it. My hope is that they will ask themselves what they would’ve done in this situation and whether the ends can ever justify the means.
Let’s back up a little: So when did you begin writing World? How did the story come to you?
The bare outlines of the story took shape after a chance meeting in India with a college friend I hadn’t seen in over 25 years. We were catching up on our lives and she mentioned that she had moved away from the activism of her college days after the Hindu-Muslim riots that tore apart Bombay in 1992-’93. It marked the end of her innocence, in a way. And although I was living in the U.S. by then, I remembered how the riots had affected me at a very deep level. It was almost as if the secular, easy-going, tolerant city we had grown up in, didn’t exist any more. So I could relate to her feelings, even though I disagreed with her conclusions. And then I asked myself questions about lost idealism and whether something of value still lingered from that era. And slowly, the book took shape. [... click here for more]
Author interview: Feature: “An Interview with Thrity Umrigar,” Bookslut.com, January 2012
Readers: Adult
Published: 2012 Continue reading
Author Interview: Ha Jin
Ha Jin has lived through difficult, defining events: the Cultural Revolution in his native China, military service that began when he was a young teenager, immigration and subsequent separation from home and family. On the page, he has vividly reproduced the repression of the Cultural Revolution, the brutality of the Korean War, and most recently the horror of the Nanjing massacre. His literary reputation is built on tight, exacting prose that captures the minutiae of daily lives often trapped in challenging – if not downright tortuous – circumstances.
So I admit to being quite surprised – most pleasantly so – to finally encounter Jin the writer in real time, when he answers his phone. He doesn’t seem to mind at all that I’ve kept him waiting (shameless, I know!). He takes a quick moment to close the window of his office at Boston University, where he was once an MFA student and has been teaching literature and creative writing for almost a decade. His voice is welcoming and animated (and instantly forgiving). He laughs easily and often sounds like he’s smiling. While his speech belies his Chinese mother tongue, his answers reflect the same spare precision that defines his writing.
If literary awards are a measure of prowess, then Jin has most certainly mastered his adopted English language. As a writer of poems, short stories, and fiction, even an opera libretto, he’s been showered with major prizes: the 1996 PEN/Hemingway for his first story collection, Ocean of Words; the 1997 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction for his second collection, Under the Red Flag; the 1999 National Book Award and the 2000 PEN/Faulkner for Waiting; and the PEN/Faulkner again in 2005 for War Trash, which was also a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize.
Jin’s pivotal decision to write only in English grew out of his reaction to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre which he watched from afar as a foreign graduate student at Brandeis University. He abandoned not only his native language – at least in his writing – but his plans to return to China after finishing his graduate studies. His resolution had near-instant, fortuitous results: his first piece of writing in English, a poem written for a graduate seminar, was published by The Paris Review.
Choosing English as his literary language set Jin on a deliberate journey away from China, and yet Jin remained attached to the China of his memories by recreating his birth country in his earlier titles, including his first three short story collections, Ocean of Words (1996), Under the Red Flag (1997), and The Bridegroom (2000), and his three first novels, In the Pond (1998), Waiting (2000), and The Crazed (2002). With War Trash (2004), Jin took a step away from China into Korea, with a brief prologue set in Atlanta [Jin taught for many years at Emory University in Atlanta before his move to Boston University in 2002].
His penultimate novel, A Free Life (2007), was Jin’s first book to be set in his adopted land, and marks a clear delineation in his career. His opening dedication, “To Lisha and Wen, who lived this book,” suggests similarities to Jin’s own immigration story. His latest collection, A Good Fall (2009), continues his American observances.
Now with his newest, Nanjing Requiem, Jin returns to a China before his birth. In an introductory letter, Jin announced his intent to reclaim American missionary Minnie Vautrin’s heroism during the 1937 Nanjing massacre: “She suffered and ruined herself helping others, but she became a legend. At least her story has moved me to write a novel about her. If I succeed, my book might put her soul at peace.”
While many were fleeing Nanjing as it came under Japanese attack, Vautrin opened Jinling Women’s College to 10,000 mostly women and children and repeatedly risked her life to save refugees from the atrocities the Japanese military inflicted on Chinese civilians during the Sino-Japanese War. As if to distance himself from the unspeakable terror of the historic tragedy, Jin filters Vautrin’s experiences through the perspective of her fictional Chinese assistant, who records both Vautrin’s courage and her agonizing demise over the victims she couldn’t save.
I felt that Nanjing Requiem had a different style from your previous titles… There’s a jarring bluntness that doesn’t appear in your other works. Was this intentional?
I think this kind of story requires a different kind of narrative. I didn’t exactly design it this way, but this is a story that couldn’t be entertaining or lighthearted. Yes, I was aware of the different style, but it happened automatically.
How did you keep nightmares at bay while you were writing Nanjing? Did you have a detox plan at the end of a writing day?
Not really. Because I spent so much time writing, it was hard to keep any distance. I tried to get distant from the book after I finished writing. But while I was immersed in it, I had no way to get out. It was actually a very depressing project.
And why Nanjing? How did you pick that subject?
It was a very important historic moment. And one of my granduncles was killed by Japanese soldiers, not in Nanjing, but in Shandong. It’s hard to tell a story like that – artistically it’s very hard, very challenging. That was probably the main reason.
So this means you must enjoy challenges?
In a way, yes. The challenge here became an obsession. I gave up writing the book twice, but couldn’t help returning to it. Each time, I was just feeling so bad, I couldn’t do anything more. Then after a few weeks, I had to go back again; I felt like I wasted so much time. [... click here for more]
Author interview: Feature: “An Interview with Ha Jin,” Bookslut.com, October 2011
Readers: Adult Continue reading
Toxicology by Jessica Hagedorn + Author Interview
Eight years have passed (far too quickly) since I last saw the inimitable Jessica Hagedorn. Her 2003 novel, Dream Jungle, was about to come out and we were in desperate search of boba tea in New York’s East Village. Faced with a closed tea salon (one of her favorites), Hagedorn met my disappointment with a comforting hug and we settled instead on a nearby Japanese restaurant. Noshing with a legend, I can’t remember a thing I ate … it was all about the stellar company, after all.
Born and raised in the Philippines, arriving in the United States in her early teens, Hagedorn entered the literary world fully formed: her now-classic coming-of-age debut novel, Dogeaters, garnered a highly coveted National Book Award nomination in 1990. In the two decades since, Hagedorn has been recognized as both a leader and a mentor at the forefront of Asian Pacific America with her compilation of Asian Pacific American writings, Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction and Charlie Chan Is Dead 2: At Home in the World: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction, both of which she edited, in addition to her various other novels, poetry, films, plays, multimedia performance pieces, and a musical.
Eight years after Dream Jungle—in which Hagedorn intertwines the alleged discovery of an ancient “lost tribe” in the remote hills of the Philippines with the problematic filming of Apocalypse Now – Hagedorn’s much-awaited new novel, Toxicology, hit shelves earlier this year in April. Populated with her usual cast of unpredictable characters, Toxicology opens with the spectacular death of a beloved young actor. Separately joining the multiplying crowd of shocked mourners outside the actor’s apartment are Mimi Smith – a filmmaker with a minor cult slasher hit who is suffering through a rough patch both creatively and personally – and her estranged, 14-year-old daughter Violet. Across the East River, Mimi’s older brother Melo is trying to stay sober, and is convinced that their cousin Agnes has met a sinister end at the hands of her wealthy New Jersey employers. Down the hall from Mimi, her neighbor Eleanor Delacroix – once a famous writer, now an eccentric octogenarian addicted to cocaine and alcohol – has effectively shut herself in while mourning the death of her long-time lover and partner, the renowned artist Yvonne Wilder. Brought together by loneliness—not to mention the flowing booze and drugs – Mimi and Eleanor’s disparate lives dovetail one into the other, as both find a strange comfort in their acerbic exchanges and desperate binges.
Always fascinated by Hagedorn’s writing, I recently caught up with her by phone (“some things never change,” she assures me about her phone number). We laughed, sighed, cackled, debated, and generally plotted to take over the universe … [... click here for more]
Author Interview: “Jessica Hagedorn,” Our Own Voice Literary eZine: Filipinos in the Diaspora, September 2011
Readers: Adult
Published: 2011 Continue reading
Author Interview: Jessica Hagedorn
When I first met the inimitable Jessica Hagedorn eight years ago – her 2003 novel Dream Jungle, in which Hagedorn intertwines the alleged discovery of an ancient “lost tribe” in the remote hills of the Philippines with the problematic filming of Apocalypse Now, was just about to come out – we bonded over fiery bums. I confessed to her how my mother always told me that my backend was on fire because I did too many things at the same time, her warning that I would burn out and die young. Hagedorn – who remains eternal – admitted that she, too, thought she might die young, “but it’s all turned out fine,” she assured me, “I had nurturing people who took care of me along the way.” She also wisely cautioned, “…that urge – to have your bum on fire – it never ends. That fire never goes out.”
Hagedorn’s personal flame has certainly kept her creatively fueled, involved in countless projects in various media. She entered the literary world fully formed: her now-classic coming-of-age debut novel, Dogeaters, garnered a highly coveted National Book Award nomination in 1990. In the two decades since, Hagedorn has been recognized as both a leader and a mentor at the forefront of Asian Pacific America (she was born and raised in the Philippines and arrived in the United States in her early teens) with her compilation of Asian Pacific American writings, Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction and Charlie Chan Is Dead 2: At Home in the World: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction, both of which she edited, in addition to her various other novels, poetry, films, plays, multimedia performance pieces, and a musical.
Eight years after Dream Jungle, Hagedorn’s much-awaited new novel, Toxicology, hit shelves earlier this year in April. Populated with her usual cast of unpredictable characters, Toxicology opens with the spectacular death of a beloved young actor. Separately joining the multiplying crowd of shocked mourners outside the actor’s apartment are Mimi Smith, a filmmaker with a minor cult slasher hit who is suffering through a rough patch both creatively and personally, and her estranged 14-year-old daughter Violet. Across the East River, Mimi’s older brother Melo is trying to stay sober, and is convinced that their cousin Agnes has met a sinister end at the hands of her wealthy New Jersey employers. Down the hall from Mimi, her neighbor Eleanor Delacroix, once a famous writer, now an eccentric octogenarian addicted to cocaine and alcohol, has effectively shut herself in while mourning the death of her long-time lover and partner, the renowned artist Yvonne Wilder. Brought together by loneliness – not to mention the flowing booze and drugs – Mimi and Eleanor’s disparate lives dovetail one into the other, as both find a strange comfort in their acerbic exchanges and desperate binges.
Always fascinated by Hagedorn’s writing, I recently caught up with her by phone (“some things never change,” she assures me about her phone number). We laughed, sighed, cackled, debated, and generally plotted to take over the universe…
Of course, I have so much to ask you, but we’ll start with Toxicology. We always have to start with a book! In the last couple of your major works, a factual death sparked your fiction: the passing of Manuel Elizalde Jr. for Dream Jungle, then Andrew Cunanan’s multiple murders and suicide for your musical Most Wanted. Toxicology also opens with death, the possible suicide or accidental overdose of a bad-boy Hollywood star. Dare I say, Heath Ledger came immediately to mind. Any chance that this “you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up” event ignited what became Toxicology?
I so remember that day [Ledger's death] happened, how fascinating it was that such a wide range of people were affected by his passing. For a lot of us, he wasn’t just another movie or pop star who died too young. Something about Heath Ledger and his vulnerability and great talent moved people. That day, I heard from writer friends who only watch artsy fartsy movies, from my kids and my colleagues at work, a really wide range of people, and the solemn mood was the same for all. The country was already in a deep funk over dirty politics, dirty wars, the recession, and all that, and this sudden, intimate, human tragedy seemed to bring folks together. It was also a very New York City event. And yes, Ledger’s unfortunate death jumpstarted the opening chapter to Toxicology. [... click here for more]
Author interview: Feature: “An Interview with Jessica Hagedorn,” Bookslut.com, September 2011
Readers: Adult Continue reading
Author/Artist Interview: CYJO + “KYOPO”
CYJO + “KYOPO” = MARVEL
Come one, come all! Get ready for the upcoming Asian Pacific American invasion at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. “Portraiture Now: Asian American Portraits of Encounter” opens this Thursday, August 12 and runs through October 14, 2012.
Presented in conjunction with the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program, “Portraiture Now: Asian American Portraits of Encounter” is the Smithsonian’s first major showcase of contemporary Asian American portraiture.
This brand new exhibit features the work of seven diverse artists with roots in the Americas and Asia, often with peripatetic tendencies: third-generation Japanese American Roger Shimomura; Japanese Mexican hapa Shizu Saldamando; Japanese-born, U.S.-domiciled Satomi Shirai; Korean-native, U.S.-trained Hye Yeon Nam; Chinese-born, U.S./China commuting Zhang Chun Hong; Vietnamese American immigrant Tam Tran; and Korean American, currently China-domiciled CYJO.
Of the lucky seven, I caught up with CYJO in transit from there (Beijing) to here (DC) to talk about the impending opening. FINALLY, it’s really happening!
CYJO and I first crossed paths years ago at the Smithsonian APA Program office when then-director Dr. Franklin Odo called me in to meet one of my own. “She’s Korean. She’s from DC. And she’s really talented,” he insisted. When I raised my eyebrows warily, he promised that CYJO had one of the most intriguing projects he had ever seen. This time, he really knew what he was talking about!
Kyopo, the Korean word, refers to people of Korean descent who do not live in Korea – some seven million dispersed throughout the world, 2.3 million who live in the U.S.
“KYOPO,” the exhibit, is a marvel. The collection in comprised of 240 wildly individual portraits, yet each presented against a common background – a stark white wall with a pale wood floor beneath. CYJO’s message is clear: while the subjects share the same Korean ethnicity, each individual clearly represents, champions, shouts out a unique, intimate experience.
“Portraiture Now” showcases a selection of 60 individual portraits from “KYOPO” chosen from the full roster of 240, plus one collective portrait of all the “KYOPO” participants together. Once you’ve been amazed (and you will be, guaranteed!) by the quarter-sampling, you can access the entire collection in a gorgeous, breathtaking coffee table book published this month by Umbrage Editions. The book offers the added bonus of interviews with almost all the subjects, with an introduction by Julian Stallabrass and foreword by Marie Myung-Ok Lee.
In all its stunning beauty, KYOPO on the page is definitely a photographic treasure to have and to hold …
So first things first … HOW did “KYOPO” start?
The idea surfaced from a curiosity and a need: a curiosity to understand how those who shared the same ancestral culture contextualized themselves in their societies; and a need since I didn’t see many photography books that focused on Korean culture and contemporary issues. [...click here for more]
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2011 Continue reading
Author Interview: Tahmima Anam
In spite of the fierce, wrenching content of her books, Tahmima Anam in real life is a gentle, warm, incredibly youthful presence. We met in livetime a few years ago in Washington, DC, as her debut novel, A Golden Age, was winning major international awards, including the 2008 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book. Recognizing the literary stardom to come, Anam was the earliest invitee to the Smithsonian Institution’s 2008 South Asian Literary and Theater Arts Festival [SALTAF], an annual public program of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program (my then-day job that came with serendipitous literary perks for sure). By the time Anam landed in DC from London almost 11 months after that initial invite, she had earned some well-deserved, hefty accolades.
Tahmima Anam’s impressive debut, A Golden Age, is the first of a trilogy set in Bangladesh, before, during, and after the War of Independence that ended in 1971 with the birth of Bangladesh as a new nation separate from Pakistan. Anam’s first protagonist is Rehana Haque, who while still mourning the sudden loss of her too-young husband, loses custody of her young son and daughter to a scheming brother-in-law. Separated for a year with her children faraway in Lahore while she remains in Dhaka, Rehana – in spite of what seems to be the impossible trap of young widowhood without a clear means of support – manages to reunite with her children out of sheer will, determined she will never lose them again. In 1971 when the people of Bangladesh declare independence from Pakistan, Rehana is no longer certain how she can protect her children during a horrific time marked by betrayal and terror. But neither will she remain a silent bystander while civil war threatens to destroy her family, friends, and adopted country.
From Rehana, Anam shifts her focus to the Haque children in The Good Muslim, the second book of her Bengal Trilogy which debuts this month. For the first time since the war, Rehana, her son Sohail, and daughter Maya are under the same roof … and yet their physical reunion is overshadowed by emotional disconnection. Sohail’s wife has just passed away when Maya returns home, leaving behind shocking violence in the small village where she was a doctor for several years. She is tired and spent, having witnessed the too-often subjugation of women just for being women. She can’t comprehend Sohail’s new religious fervor since his return from the war, his reinvention as a revered Muslim leader, nor his unbending rules and expectations in the name of a god that Maya can’t accept as absolute. Sohail’s devotion to his faith leaves him blind to his utterly neglected son – a frail young boy, unwashed, clothed in tatters, thieving, lying, and yet the only request he voices regularly is to be able to go to school. Bypassing her brother’s objections, Maya tries to at least provide her nephew with a basic literacy, but her attempts at enlightenment have tragic consequences.
Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1975, currently domiciled in London, Anam’s writerly strength is driven by a sharply observant imagination that allows her to recreate a time before she was born, before she had access to her memory. Surely her international upbringing in Paris, New York City, and Bangkok – thanks to her father’s peripatetic UN career – instilled in her a broad understanding of humanity in diverse situations. Her privileged education – undergrad at Mount Holyoke, PhD in social anthropology at Harvard (yes, that’s Dr. Anam!) – made sure that xenophobia was never even a glimmering possibility in her questioning mind.
Catching up this time via phone lines strung under the Pond from DC to London, Anam was as soft-spoken as ever. That she spoke about war, corruption, imprisonment, and even rape, rarely changed her firm but even tone. She was also sure to balance the tragedy with joyful moments of family, love, and even someday-children. As expected, her ability to explicate and engage made an hour-plus pass all too quickly …
This year, Bangladesh is celebrating its 40th birthday. You were born four years later, and have now lived through much of your country’s tumultuous history, the vast changes, improvements, and challenges. What are some of your immediate thoughts about your birth country during this celebratory time?
I feel it’s a mixed bag. The good news is the incredible progress that has been made in major areas: we’ve been a functioning democracy for the last 20 years after a tumultuous period of martial law and army rule. The world of micro-credit founded by Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank has changed so many people’s lives, especially among the very poor. The fact that 95% of the borrowers are women means many improvements for women especially. Through microcredit and state investment in girls’ education, women are becoming economically powerful. They’re sending their daughters to school, they’re managing their homes, and taking jobs. Bangladesh has a strong feminist movement; women are advocating for legal changes to the constitution for more equitable rights.
In addition to the progress, I’m aware of a lot of problems, especially the threat of climate change. In spite of being a democracy, our government has a top-down political power structure. The people suffer because of corruption.
We need more democracy, less corruption. [... click here for more]
Author interview: Feature: “An Interview with Tahmima Anam,” Bookslut.com, August 2011
Readers: Adult Continue reading
Author Interview: Jenny Han
In case you were unsure, that’s Jenny Han as in “Han Solo,” not Han as in “hand.” Befitting of the bestselling young adult author that she is, she can recite all the dialogue from the cult film Clueless, and she gladly admits her adoration for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She can eat sour gummy cherries nonstop, and likes her chocolate cake cold. If you’re nice, she might just make you the perfect brownie. She wouldn’t mind being Oprah’s best friend, although she’d also be great as Santa’s helper. She might have liked to have had Atticus Finch for a father, although she’s pretty content with the parents she got, not to mention the little sister: “My sister was born two days after Christmas, and I always say she was the best Christmas gift my parents ever gave me. I love her more than chocolate cake, gummies, anything!”
Then there’s Han’s very special talent for nicknaming people and stuffed animals. That skill has definitely served her well while writing her novels, beginning with her first, Shug, which debuted in 2006 for middle-grade readers. Han perfectly captures the changing, questioning voice of 12-year-old Annemarie Wilcox, better known as Shug, with her complex mother, her distant father, her difficult older sister – and, most importantly, her new feelings for her whole-life best friend.
Three years later came the first of the Belly Trilogy, so named for about-to-turn-sweet-16 Isabel whose real life revolves around the summers at the beach, where two best friend mothers and their two children each spend idyllic months together. In 2009’s The Summer I Turned Pretty, Belly arrives transformed, and Jeremiah and Conrad, two brothers she’s known her entire life, finally take notice. While Shug was fluffy fun, Summer was a sighing, dreamy pleasure. It’s one of those books that we mothers passed around to each other, any guilt over depriving our children relieved by our own nostalgic enjoyment of reliving that impossibly carefree feeling of abandoned youth.
Then came It’s Not Summer without You, in 2010, when the death of Jeremiah and Conrad’s mother turns the summer family upside down, and the grieving survivors must work their way back together again. This month, the third installment, We’ll Always Have Summer, finally arrives.
In between the Belly books, Han released another standalone title for MG readers, her first with a specifically ethnic protagonist. Like Han, the eponymous Clara Lee in Clara Lee and the Apple Pie Dream, published earlier this year, is Korean American, “which means I was born in America but my blood is Korean,” as Clara Lee explains. Like Han, Clara Lee is also spunky, imaginative, and just naughty enough to be lots of fun. And like Han, Clara Lee also has quite the memorable little sister: “Emmeline [the younger Lee] is based on [my sister]. In fact, I gave the illustrator Julia Kuo pictures of us from when we were little!”
So, being of Asian background, did you grow up with a “Tiger Mother”? A “Panda Father”?
Ha! To a degree, yes. My mom forced both my little sister and me to take piano lessons, we did math flashcards at night, we went to Korean school every Saturday morning. But both of my parents have always been incredibly supportive of my writing and of creativity in general. My sister loved to swim, I loved to read – whatever we had a passion for, my parents supported. Besides, it became evident pretty quickly that I was never going to be a piano whiz or a mathlete. One other tigerish thing though – we weren’t allowed to go on sleepovers! That was the thing I longed for most of all – sleepovers. [... click here for more]
Author interview: Feature: “An Interview with Jenny Han,” Bookslut.com, May 2011
Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult Continue reading
First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers by Loung Ung + Author Interview
For someone who has experienced hell, Loung Ung is a bright, welcoming voice filled with inviting laughter.
She’s warm: “I just had dinner with my writing group last night. They’re my PenGals. I just love them! I don’t know what I would do without them.”
She’s practical: “I hate to drive! I have a 1997 beat-up old Toyota so if I get another ding on it, I don’t have to worry!”
She’s mischievous: “Yeah, just about when everyone is pulling out their boots and scarves, I like to share pictures of me on the beach with my friends at home who are freezing.”
She’s curious: “I tried to Google you, but I couldn’t figure out which Terry Hong you are!”
She’s goofy: “When I don’t feel like cooking, and my husband doesn’t feel like cooking, I just tell him, ‘Hey, I moved to Ohio for love! Make me something warm and good! Pour me a glass of wine and I’ll sit at the counter and entertain you while you cook for me!’”
Yes, she loves to eat, and she’s not even picky: “I can eat anything, and sleep anywhere!” she declares. “I grew up eating out of the garbage cans, so nothing ever upsets my stomach!”
And there she offers a glimpse of her past. Above all else, Loung Ung is a survivor – a survivor who has managed to keep her humanity (and humor) intact in spite of enduring unspeakable atrocity. After living the first five years of her life as a privileged, pampered second-to-last daughter – one of seven children – in a large Cambodian-Chinese family in Phnom Penh, she spent the next five years trapped in tortuous horror, trying to outrun destruction, war, starvation, and death. During her most formative years, she experienced both the unconditional devotion and courage of her family, and witnessed the most atrocious evil acts of inhumanity.
The United States’ evacuation of Vietnam in April 1975 affected not only Vietnam, but neighboring Cambodia and Laos, where the so-called Vietnam War spread. With the U.S. troops out of the way, the Communist Khmer Rouge stormed into Cambodia’s capital (and largest city) Phnom Penh and dispersed its inhabitants; those who survived were sent to forced labor camps where many would die of starvation, disease, torture, and execution. Over the next four years, Pol Pot and his regime claimed 1.7 million lives – a quarter of Cambodia’s then-population.
Half of Loung’s immediate family somehow survived. Those horrific years – from ages 5 to 9 – eventually became Loung’s debut memoir, First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers, originally published in 2000, which quickly became a national bestseller. Five years later, she followed that success with the critically acclaimed Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind.
With the same courageous energy that allowed her to survive when so many did not, Loung has spent most of her adulthood enabling, championing, saving other people’s lives. As an international activist, Loung was the perfect choice to inaugurate the 10×10 team of exceptional writers. [... click here for more: author interview appears on pages 8-14]
Author interview: 10×10: Educate Girls, Change the World Book Club Kit, March 2011, pages 8-14
Readers: Adult
Published: 2000 Continue reading
Author Interview: Xinran
People, even complete strangers, feel compelled to tell Xinran their personal stories, from the simple happiness of sweet everyday lives to the most horrific memories of shocking abuse. Something in her soothing voice, the wordless encouragement to keep talking, exudes a sense of undeniable comfort of being heard, of being truly understood. Her very essence gently says, “Tell me more; I am here to listen.”
Xinran has built a remarkable career by listening carefully, and always with the greatest empathy. She had an audience of faithful millions as a journalist in her native China when she hosted a nightly radio called Words on the Night Breeze. The show debuted in 1989 on Radio Nanjing and ran for seven years. As the first show in China to give voice to the personal issues of women, Xinran received hundreds of calls and letters every day; women from all walks of life poured out their stories of incest, rape, kidnapping, brutality, suffering, torture, and neglect. Xinran often wept.
Eight years later, in 1997, she moved from China to London, and took those stories with her. She felt she had been entrusted with these women’s lives, so much so that she risked her own when she was mugged on her way home from her London University teaching job. She struggled desperately with her attacker, refusing to give up her bag, which contained her only copy of a manuscript that would become her debut title, The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices. She refused to let these women sink into obscurity without a fight to the death.
When I first interviewed Xinran almost a decade ago, she was on her U.S. tour for Women. By the time she hit American shores in 2002, Women was already a major international bestseller, published in 50 countries and 27 languages. As with just about everyone lucky enough to meet her, I felt an instant connection, buoyed by the serendipity of a shared geographical proximity. At the time, Xinran lived around the corner, literally a stone’s throw, from what had been my last London address years earlier; she could see the same familiar stretch of the Thames, she walked the same streets, took the same underpass to the High Street, she ate and drank in the same neighborhood restaurants. So warm and intimate was our first conversation that I felt we were practically related by the time we finished our long conversation.
How blessed I’ve been to share small portions of Xinran’s life since. In between a staggering world travel schedule of countless talks, presentations, projects, and conferences, Xinran has graciously allowed me more interviews; together, we’ve grabbed hurried cups of hotel caffeine and enjoyed a few lingering meals (ever nurturing, Xinran picks out the best tasty morsels to place on her companion’s plate!), and of course, I’ve never missed any of her books.
Over the last nine years, strangers, colleagues, and friends alike have continued to entrust some of their most heartfelt experiences into her literary care. With her signature honesty and deep respect – not to mention her warm patience – Xinran has ushered those stories into bestselling, illuminating titles. She followed Women with Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet about a young Chinese doctor’s three-decade search for her missing husband, published Stateside in 2005.
In 2006, Xinran’s regular cultural column for The Guardian, one London’s leading newspapers, was compiled and published as What the Chinese Don’t Eat. Her first (and thus far only) fiction title, Miss Chopsticks, about three village girls trying to navigate their labyrinthine new lives in the big city, hit British and European shelves in 2008. Back on both sides of the Pond in 2009, China Witness: Voices from a Silent Generation was an ambitious, rich tome filled with unforgettable stories from the survivors of China’s tumultuous past century. “This book is a testament to the dignity of modern Chinese lives,” Xinran’s introduction begins.
Each of Xinran’s titles have been tenacious extensions of her life’s work: to acknowledge and preserve the disappearing stories of ordinary, everyday people who have managed to survive extraordinary experiences. What was missing was Xinran’s own … until now… and still just a glimpse, but what a heartbreaking, compelling, unforgettable moment of her life she shares in her latest title, Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love, finally available in the U.S. this month.
Her single children’s book published in 2007, Motherbridge of Love, hinted at what was coming. That poem of love was originally submitted anonymously by an adoptive mother to Xinran’s charity, Mothers’ Bridge of Love, a London-based group Xinran founded in 2004 that reaches out to adopted Chinese children around the world. The book celebrates the adopted child who is deeply rooted in love, who bridges two mothers, two cultures, two lives.
The wondrous Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother is by far her most personal. That I read Message in full on Mother’s Day last year was truly a gift. Contained in these 200+ pages are heartbreaking stories of Chinese mothers longing for the daughters they lost, either forced by cultural expectations to ‘do’ away with newborns, or to give up for another mother to nurture, hold, and love. Regardless of that loss, the ultimate message is clear: a mother/child bond remains forever unbreakable. [ ... click here for more]
Author interview: Feature: “An Interview with Xinran,” Bookslut.com, February 2011
Readers: Adult Continue reading
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