Today, EA: Creatively Creative has the privilege of speaking with a woman who is having a decorated career. She has wrote multiple books that has made the New York Times bestseller list, among being an honoree in the Chinese American community. I would like to introduce author, Lisa See.
EA: When was the beginning of your journey as an author?
LS: I knew three things about myself when I was growing up. I never wanted to get married, I didn’t want to have children, and I always wanted to live out of a suitcase. I took two years off from college to travel in Europe. The whole time I was wondering how I was going to make my life work the way I envisioned it and how I would be able to support myself. One morning, when I was living in Greece, I woke up and it was like a cartoon light bulb had gone off in my head. I thought, 'Oh, I could be a writer!' But clearly I didn’t know myself very well, because I also got married and had children. I still spend an awful lot of time living out of a suitcase though!
EA: Who are the biggest influences on your life and career?
LS: I adored my paternal grandmother. She probably was the greatest influence on my life. She loved to travel. She wasn’t very conventional. (She married a Chinese man when it was still against the law.) My mom, Carolyn See, who was a writer, was also a huge influence on my life as a woman and a writer. I can honestly say I wouldn’t be the writer I am if not for her. Bob Dylan has also been an influence, not that I know him or anything. (Hey, Bob, if you’re reading this, give me a call!) Lastly, I’d have to say Wallace Stegner. I used a line from Angle of Repose as the epigraph for On Gold Mountain: “Fooling around in the papers my grandparents, especially my grandmother, left behind, I get glimpses of lives close to mine, related to mine in ways I recognize but don’t comprehend. I’d like to live in their clothes a while.” I didn’t realize when I used those lines that the sentiment would continue to influence me and my writing to this day.
EA: What's the concept of The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane?
LS: The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane has three main elements: the mother/daughter relationship, the history of tea, and the Akha ethnic minority of China. For the mother/daughter story, I wanted to write about a woman who gives up her baby for adoption in China, the woman in California who adopts her, and the girl herself. Tea --specifically Pu-er -- provides the historical backdrop. Tea is the second most popular drink in the world after water. The people in China that I wrote about are Akha. They have truly unique customs that I wanted to hare with readers.
EA: What is your approach to engage readers?
LS: The two most important things, it seems to me, are relationships and emotions. Each of these relationships—friends for life, sister-wives, and actual sisters—is very different. At the same time, they are uniquely female. A woman will tell her best friend things she won’t tell her mother, husband, or children. That particular intimacy is wonderful and a true blessing, but it can also leave you open to betrayal and hurt. Women being married to the same man—whether in China or with Mormans or with whatever group anywhere in the world—is also unique and rife with jealousy and rivalries, but this relationship can also be the basis for great friendship and comfort.
As for sisters, well, the sibling relationship is typically the longest we’ll have in our lifetimes. Our parents will die before we do, our children will outlive us, and often women outlive their husbands, right? A sister can be your closest friend, someone who is almost a stranger, or even an enemy. What’s the difference between sisters and women who say they are “closer than sisters”? A sister is for life. I write about these relationships because I’m a woman, because I want to connect to women, and because women’s stories still need to be told.
EA: Would you say that writing a novel is easy?
LS: God no! It's very hard work, both physically and emotionally.
EA: Describe the feeling of being a New York Times best-selling author.
LS: This isn't something I ever imagined happening to me. When it did, I cried. It's strange when something you think is impossible -- that you aren't even working toward or have as a goal -- happens. All the books since Snow Flower and the Secret Fan have become NY Times bestsellers, which I find very humbling. But maybe even more miraculous was when On Gold Mountain went onto the New York Times bestseller list after 17 years! How crazy is that?
EA: You were honored as National Woman of the Year by the Organization of Chinese-American Women in 2001; you received the Chinese-American Museum's History Makers Award in 2003, among other accolades. What do these accomplishments mean to you?
LS: I'm so glad you asked this, because my answer will help put my previous answer into perspective. The awards I've received from the Chinese American mean so much more to me than a bestseller list. They mean that my work is accurate and that I'm portraying Chinese and Chinese Americans in a truthful way. I would say that the greatest honors of my career were to be a judge in the Miss Chinatown Pageant and later to be the Grand Marshal of the Los Angeles Chinatown New Year's Parade. These things probably wouldn't mean anything to another writer, but I remembered when my uncle was a judge for the pageant and later a grand marshal. The entire family was proud of him. When I got to do these things, my family was proud of me too.
EA: What advice would you give to aspiring authors?
LS: Write 1,000 words a day, five days a week, before you do anything else. At the end of a week, you’ll have twenty pages—a chapter. If you do it first thing in the morning, then you won’t get distracted by all the things that tempt you not to write.
So much of writing happens, I think, in the editing process. I tell aspiring writers that they should listen to criticism—whether it’s from a teacher or an editor—and then look at it three ways. About a third of all editing suggestions are right, a third are absolutely wrong, and a third are things you have to look at, consider, and play around with.
EA: Finally, tell the readers why The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane is a must read.
Do you think it's right for an author to tell someone why her book is a must-read? I think it's better if someone else does that. What if instead I tell you about the initial inspiration for the novel?
I’d been thinking about writing about China’s One Child policy and transnational adoption for something like twenty years, but I hadn’t been able to figure out my way into the story. I was going to the movies with my husband and I saw up ahead of us an older white couple walking with their adopted, teenage, Chinese daughter between them. Her hair was up in a ponytail, and, as it swung back and forth, I had a vision of her as being like a fox spirit. In Chinese tradition, fox spirits can be naughty and mischievous. They’re always doing things like sneaking into a scholar’s study late at night, where he’s preparing for the Imperial Exams, and then having sex with him. See what I mean about naughty and mischievous? But in a fox spirit’s best moments, she has the ability to bring great love and help create families.
So, when I saw that fox tail swinging back and forth, I thought, 'yes, this girl is like a fox spirit in the sense that through her presence she’d brought great love and helped create a family.' That was the moment when I knew what my next novel would be. It turned out, though, that the Akha ethnic minority doesn’t have fox spirits in their culture. That was a big disappointment! Everywhere I went, I kept asking Akha people if they had some type of spirit that had a long tail, but no. In the end, I could only carry the inspiration of that fox spirit in my heart.
Epilogue
To answer Lisa's question, of course, I think it's right. While I agree that it's better if someone else speaks highly of one's work, there's nothing wrong with confidently speaking of something that you gave your all to. So, the answer is yes. Very interesting and practical advice. I think writing first thing in the morning is a good strategy to prevent you from the distractions throughout the day that may cause you to procrastinate.
I thank Lisa for taking us on a journey on who inspires her and what motivates her to become the author that she is today, to her humbling acception of the awards and honors bestowed upon her over the years.
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