As a child, I loved Elizabeth Enright’s books. But I loved just about everything I read – Heidi, Black Beauty, The Jungle Books, Little Women (and the rest in the series), Little House on the Prairie (and the rest of that series too). One summer, I tried to read as many books as possible in the Bookmobile, which came to my neighborhood.
As a teenager, I loved The Grapes of Wrath, The Stranger, and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? I guess I was in a rather grim frame of mind back then.
Would you say your childhood and teenage reading has had a distinct influence on how you write fiction now, and why?
Ummm…Maybe. A lot of my stories have people who suffer a lot and have to endure terrible things.
What did you do before you became a published novelist, and how did you come to write your first novel and get it published?
I’ve had a lot of good and bad jobs. My worst was being a receptionist in a windowless room; my best was working for a costume designer, making headdresses for a Las Vegas review. For thirteen years, I was the West Coast correspondent for Publishers Weekly, the bible of publishing here in the U.S. I also collaborated on three books with my mother, Carolyn See, and a friend, John Espey, under the pseudonym of Monica Highland.
My first book, On Gold Mountain, was actually non-fiction, and it was about my family. Although I shared an agent with my Monica Highland cohorts, I felt it was important to have my own agent for my own work. Sandy Dijkstra worked hard with me on my book proposal. She always said to me—and now I tell other writers—that the outline is a sales tool first and foremost. She wanted certain things in the outline that I didn’t care for and there were some things that I really loved that she asked me to take out. She said I could put them back in when I wrote the book (which I did), but that she needed something that would sell the book. On Gold Mountain ended up going to auction. It was beyond exciting.
When it was time to sell Flower Net, my first novel, my agent put together a very daring plan. She put the book, foreign rights, and film rights up for auction all at the same time. In two days, she’d sold the book to 17 countries and to Paramount. The film was never made, but it sure was a wild forty-eight hours.
How would you describe your style of fiction or your approach to writing fiction during your first few novels?
My first three novels—Flower Net, The Interior, and Dragon Bones—were mysteries. A mystery has a certain form, which takes time and patience to learn and perfect. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan was my next novel. It was a huge break-out book for me and an international bestseller. People have often asked me how I came to write something so completely different than my previous books. But what’s different? There’s a huge emphasis on family and emotions in Snow Flower, as there were in On Gold Mountain. And while Snow Flower is classified as literary fiction, I always thought of it as a mystery. The entire first chapter has a classic mystery set up, and I had to lay in clues throughout the novel before the “secret” was revealed at the end.
How would you describe your style of fiction or your approach to writing fiction now?
After The Interior and before Dragon Bones, I did two things that really changed my approach to writing. First, I curated an exhibition at the Autry Museum on the history of the Chinese in America based on On Gold Mountain. Second, I wrote the libretto for an opera based on On Gold Mountain. An exhibition tells a story in a purely visual way. An opera tells a story through pure emotion. I took both of those ideas and incorporated them into my writing of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, and I’ve been doing it ever since.
Was your first published novel standalone or part of a series, and what advantages or disadvantages did this present for you?
I’ve now written two series. There are many things I would have done differently—first with Flower Net and then much later with Shanghai Girls—if I’d known I was going to write a series. With a standalone, you’re totally free to write what you want. With a series, you have a complicated past that may encompass one two or more previous books. As the writer, you need to be on top of everything. If a character says he likes the color blue in the first book, then he’d better like the color blue in all subsequent books or readers will get really mad. This may seem like a minor or trivial thing, but it’s very hard to keep track of all those small details, let alone the major ones.
When I wrote Shanghai Girls, I didn’t know I would write Dreams of Joy, the sequel. If I’d known, I would have set up Joy as more of an artist. I went back through Shanghai Girls and found a line about Joy doing calligraphy and that she was praised by her neighbors for having calligraphy that was “uncorrupted” in style. This little line was enough of a seed for me to build on. So I guess what I’m saying is that you have to be careful what you put into the first book but also careful what you leave out.
Did you find writing your second novel easier or more challenging than writing your first novel and why?
The Interior was my second novel. I loved writing that book. I really felt that I improved as a writer. However, that novel was barely reviewed and almost no one read it. It’s been re-released now that I’m “an internationally bestselling author,” and it’s selling better now than when it first came out. Still, I feel special affection for that book. It’s kind of the runt of the litter, if you know what I mean.
Who is another novelist whose fiction writing you admire and why?
My mother is the writer Carolyn See. There is no question that she has been the biggest inspiration in my life as a woman and as a writer. Our styles of writing are very different. She writes exclusively about Southern California; I write about China. She writes in a very colloquial style; I’m a bit more stylized as I try to capture the essence of Chinese in English. Although we’re different in many ways, we both share a love of character and deep-heart emotions.
Pick a series of novels you have written. How would you describe what makes that a cohesive series with strong appeal for readers? If you have not written a series of novels, how would you describe what makes one of your favourite series by another novelist a cohesive series with strong appeal for readers?
If I may, I’d like to group all of my more recent books, which are not necessarily a series in the sense of having continuing characters but are what I would consider parts of a larger body of work that I’m writing that concerns women’s relationships. I’m going to assume you said yes!
What makes Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Peony in Love, Shanghai Girls, Dreams of Joy, and China Dolls (which I’m working on now) cohesive are the strong women who must endure many travails, hardships, tragedies, betrayals, and secrets. I’m interested in essential relationships: mothers and daughters, sisters, husbands and wives, grandparents and their roles in our lives. I’ve also been exploring the nature of love—gratitude love, respectful love, romantic love, deep-heart love. These are the things that I think appeal to readers, but I could be wrong. You should ask readers to get the real answer!
How would you summarise one of your novels in one paragraph?
Shanghai Girls: In 1937, Shanghai is the Paris of Asia, full of great wealth and glamour, home to millionaires and beggars, gangsters and gamblers, patriots and revolutionaries, artists and warlords. Twenty-one-year-old Pearl Chin and her younger sister May are having the time of their lives, thanks to the financial security and material comforts provided by their father’s prosperous rickshaw business. Though both wave off authority and traditions, they couldn’t be more different. Pearl is a Dragon sign, strong and stubborn, while May is a true Sheep, adorable and placid. Both are beautiful, modern, and living the carefree life ... until the day their father tells them that he has gambled away their wealth, and that in order to repay his debts he must sell the girls as wives to suitors who have traveled from Los Angeles to find Chinese brides. As Japanese bombs fall on their beloved city, Pearl and May set out on the journey of a lifetime, one that takes them through the villages of south China, in and out of the clutch of brutal soldiers, and across the Pacific to the foreign shores of America. In Los Angeles, they begin a fresh chapter, trying to find love with their stranger husbands, brushing against the seduction of Hollywood, and striving to embrace American life, even as they fight against discrimination, brave Communist witch hunts, and find themselves hemmed in by Chinatown’s old ways and rules. At its heart, Shanghai Girls is a story of sisters: Pearl and May are inseparable best friends, who share hopes, dreams, and a deep connection. But like sisters everywhere, they also harbor petty jealousies and rivalries. They love each other but they also know exactly where to drive the knife to hurt the other sister the most.
How would you describe the appeal of this novel to readers?
Now this is a funny question to me. If writers knew what appealed to readers, wouldn’t we write those stories all the time and wouldn’t we all find ourselves on bestseller lists? What appeals to readers is something that we, as writers, don’t know until a book comes out and readers respond. What readers responded to the most in this book was the relationship between the two sisters. Sisters will tell each other things they won’t tell their husbands, boyfriends, mothers, or children. It’s a particular kind of intimacy, and wherever and whenever there’s intimacy, you leave yourself open to hurt and betrayal. Beyond the relationship, I think readers really responded to the history that they simply didn’t know that truly shocked them.
How would you summarise a chapter from this novel in one paragraph?
In the very first chapter, Pearl and May are so carefree. They are beautiful girls—models for artists in Shanghai. They are the new Chinese woman—educated, their feet aren’t bound, and they expect to marry for love not go into arranged marriages. They are truly living the glamorous life. Pearl and May’s father comes across as seemingly strict but he is hopelessly weak in the opening scene. Their bound-footed mother appears very weak, old-fashioned, and subservient in this first chapter. Readers also meet Z.G., the artist that Pearl loves. By the end of the chapter, the father announces that he’s arranged marriages for his two daughters to pay his debts. Their carefree lives are changed forever.
How would you describe the contribution this chapter makes to the novel?
It turned out that this chapter not only was the touchstone that Pearl returns to again and again in Shanghai Girls, but there are several things that happen in this chapter that only find fruition and resolution in the last pages of Dreams of Joy. I’m not going to list everything here, because I’d be giving away a lot of the surprises in both books. But let’s just say that although Pearl and May often think back on that single night as the last moment of their beautiful girls’ lives, things were not what they seemed.
Just one added thought, because again I don’t want to give away too much about the plots of either Shanghai Girls or Dreams of Joy. In a first chapter you not only want to hook the reader, but it’s also the place to set up all of your themes. In Shanghai Girls, the themes in the opening chapter had to do with sisters, the strength of mother love, the importance of family, what is home, and how we identify ourselves. That’s a lot to hint at, but those things carried all the way through Shanghai Girls to the last page of Dreams of Joy.
Author website: www.lisasee.com
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