Q: When did you know you were going to be a writer? Was it something you had always set your heart on?

I can’t remember a time when literature wasn’t my primary passion. When I was three, I was so shy that my teachers told my mother that they feared I had a mental handicap. My mother marched home and recorded me reading aloud my favorite book at the time: Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat. My teachers became newly attentive, and I gained the conviction that books could transform a life.

A few years later, I wrote my first short story, about a mouse who has no friends because no one can hear her when she tries to talk—until she gets on a rollercoaster, starts screaming, and finds her voice. Writing, to me, is still wrapped up in that: the struggle, the terror, the thrill, and the power of making yourself heard.

Q: What inspired you to write A Thread of Sky?

Ten years ago, I toured China with my mother, my sisters, my aunt, and my grandmother. As with most family vacations, there were moments of wonder and reconnection, along with plenty of conflict and frustration -- but there was also the central tension of seeing our ancestral home from the confines of a guided package tour.   

Afterward, I couldn't stop thinking about the dramatic possibilities of that journey: the conflicts and secrets among six strong-willed women, the family history that had led from China to America and back, the complicated notion of returning to one's roots. I started scribbling some notes and the characters began taking on lives of their own, completely apart from their real-life counterparts, and soon I was writing a novel. At the time, I didn't realize, of course, that while that tour with my own family had taken two weeks, this novel would become a six-year odyssey.

Q: How did your personal experiences in China influence your book?

As an American-born Chinese, I'd moved to Beijing for a year of post-graduate study with some notion of reclaiming my heritage -- only to realize, of course, that none of it comes so easily. I was working through a lot of questions about home and identity when, at the end of the year, I joined my family for that tour of China.

A few years later, I had started writing my novel, and I knew that in order to write from the points of view of the older generations, particularly the grandmother, I needed a much deeper understanding of the country. So I went back on a Fulbright Grant, intending to stay for another year. I immersed myself in researching contemporary Chinese history and soaking up modern life in Shanghai, while making periodic trips to the cities on my characters' itinerary.

This time, I viewed the sights through their eyes, carrying their histories and personalities everywhere I went. But even my daily life became my daily inspiration, whether I was riding the bus, ordering breakfast, hanging my laundry out on bamboo poles, or going to a gallery opening. At one point, a casual conversation about the strikingly forceful personalities of many Chinese women led me to research the Chinese feminist movement, which eventually became a major storyline. My novel continually evolved during my time in China -- which, in the end, stretched to nearly four years.

Q: There is a growing appetite for writing on China. Is there anything that you think fiction about China offers readers that non-fiction or academic writing does not?

I’ve relied on plenty of wonderful nonfiction and academic writing to deepen my own understanding of China, but fiction definitely has its place. China often tempts Westerners to make sweeping, oversimplified statements — for instance, Chinese culture is repressive, or materialistic, or all about saving face. Sometimes this happens precisely because China is a place of such vastness and complexity that it’s easier to make such statements than to convey true understanding; sometimes it’s plain ignorance. Either way, when you combine this impulse with the fact that nonfiction and academic writing are often aimed at arriving at a definitive answer, at some inarguable conclusion, there’s considerable potential for misunderstanding.

Fiction, by contrast, is aimed at exploration, not explanation. It’s the province of nuance and contradiction. A good novel gives a sense of expansion, of a broadening and deepening view, but it also acknowledges that some things remain beyond our grasp. In this way, fiction can sometimes offer readers a truer perspective of China than other forms of writing.

That, at least, is my hope.

Q: One theme of the book is what it means to be Chinese American -- how nobody in America or China is satisfied by the answer to the question "Where are you from?" Did you get any closer to understanding why that question is so hard for everybody during the course of writing the novel?

During the writing of the novel, I did some extensive research into Chinese American history because it was the focus of one of my characters, Kay. For me, it crystallized the ways in which Asian Americans are often still treated as essentially foreign and the patterns of bias that have repeated themselves over two centuries. This surprises many people who don’t experience it, who think of Asians as “honorary whites,” which in itself is a demeaning category.

But I don’t think this question of “Where are you from?” is difficult for every Chinese American. In the novel, only Kay has been preoccupied with it, as a Chinese American activist and as a student of Chinese in Beijing. It’s only when her mother conceives of this tour of their ancestral home that the question is brought to the surface for all six women.

Q: Do you ever worry about pigeonholing? For example, do you feel as a Chinese American writer that the expectation will be that you'll always write about characters grappling with their cultural identity?

Well, I’m Chinese American, and I’m a writer, so there’s nothing wrong with the label, per se. Sometimes it can be productive, in bringing more attention to underrepresented stories, and sometimes it serves to further ghettoize. I guess I’d argue that any Chinese American story should also be seen as American—and universal. I can only write what moves me, and I think Asian Americans will always be my subject, but I don’t think our stories must be defined by the struggle with cultural identity any more than any American story must be so defined.

Q: You earned your MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. What was that like, and what did you gain from the program?

I would never call the Workshop a nurturing environment, but I’m deeply grateful for having undergone the experience. The people who surrounded me there are the smartest bunch that ever surrounded me, and the closest friends I made there will be my ideal readers for life. And though I’ve heard the program described as a competitive place in terms of publication and book deals and whatnot, I actually think there was a purity there that I haven’t found elsewhere—a love of literature for its own sake, a belief in writing as a calling, even the conviction that every single word must count.

Q: Tell us about your experiences teaching in New York City public schools.

Right now I work with high school students in midtown and on the Lower East Side. I've also taught GED students from all over the city and middle school students in Harlem and Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Public education has always been my passion, along with writing. I can't help wondering why more of us writers -- along with journalists, musicians, dancers, artists --don't seem to connect the problems in our schools with the problem we're always lamenting: the shrinking audience for our art. When we continue to fail so many of our students, where can we expect the next generation of audiences to come from?

Q: How does your teaching affect your writing?

I find teaching nourishes me as a person and as a writer. I rely on my students to challenge my thinking, and very often, I'm inspired by their toughness and their wisdom. I find schools, and adolescent groups in particular, to be such fascinating microcosms of society. Writing requires a lot of isolation and contemplation, and teaching gets me away from my computer and out of my head; it keeps me from slipping into solipsism. You have to write what moves you, but you also have to write stories that matter.

Q: You're at work on your second novel. Can you tell us anything about it? Do you feel more confident this time, or is it like starting over from square one?

I can say, somewhat vaguely, that my second novel feels like quite a departure from the first. It’s more plot-driven, it’s not China-related, and it’s not focused on issues of cultural identity. But my main characters are Chinese American, and to the degree that certain issues are intrinsic to the community, I think they will always figure in the stories I'm driven to tell.

In some ways, I feel more confident in that when I have those days of looking at the work and feeling like it’s total crap, I also know that that’s all part of the process. I think one of the best things about writing is that it forces you to resist complacency. That also means that it never gets easy.

For more of Deanna on the writing of A Thread of Sky:

1. ‣listen to the New York Times Book Review podcast interview.
   

2. ‣watch a video interview on the Fulbright YouTube channel.
   

3. ‣listen to an interview on KBOO/APA Compass Radio.
   

4. ‣read an author q&a in The Oregonian.
   

5. ‣listen to an interview on wbai 99.5 fm’s Asia Pacific Forum.
   

Q&As are also up at the following sites:

1. ‣Fiction Writers Review
   

2. ‣Hyphen magazine
   

3. ‣China Beat
   

4. ‣Book Addict’s Guide to Good Books
   

5. ‣Danwei
   

6. ‣The Apopcalypse... Culture on the Verge
   

7. ‣Earthgoat
   

8. ‣Adoption. Et cetera.
   

click here to send Deanna your own questions!