Interview
with Ed Lin |
Author Photo Credit: Gregory Costanzo |
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Interview
by Sunny Woan |
We have
wanted to
interview Ed Lin since Kartika
started back in 2007. Finally, we got him, and right around the time
his third
novel Snakes Can’t Run (Minotaur
Books, 2010) is due out in stores. Snakes
is a novel that tackles the complicated trinity of the Vietnam War era,
the
Chinese (and the various disputing factions of “Chinese”) living in New
York
City, and human trafficking.
Lin first
caught our
attention with his debut novel Waylaid
(Kaya Press, 2002), which may best be described as provocative. Waylaid brought readers into a seedy Jersey
motel world of sex and more sex, witnessed by a 12-year-old narrator
working
the motel’s front desk. If that package isn’t enough to spark
controversy, the
heart of the book is about that 12-year-old’s personal mission to lose
his
virginity. Not exactly the archetypal child-of-immigrant-parents
Great-American-Novel material the mainstream literati dare to publish,
which is
why the novel initially received many “thanks-but-no-thanks” responses
from
publishers who were looking for Asian American fiction that better
conformed to,
well, “Asian American fiction.” Perhaps something about grandmothers
with
tragic pasts, abusive Asian father figures, or women in kitchens
cooking Old
World food. Fortunately, Kaya Press knew better, picked up Lin’s first
novel
and did the literary world a huge favor, did us APA readers a huge
favor.
Waylaid went on to
win the Asian American
Literary Awards in the Members’ Choice category. And then Lin won the
award
again for his second novel, This Is a
Bust (Kaya Press, 2007). Bust introduced
us to Robert Chow, a deeply-flawed but relatable Chinese-American
police
officer who goes on to become a detective in the sequel, Snakes
Can’t Run. The later novels shed light on the hard issues
facing New York’s Chinatown through the perspective of a Chinatown
native,
albeit a displaced one.
Yet it is
this aspect
of Lin’s novels that unequivocally distinguish it from previous fiction
set in
this community. Previous novels focused on outsiders, white knights
rushing in
to save the day; Lin gives us, perhaps for the first time in American
fiction, a
character raised by the community who stays around to make a
difference. That, in
spite of Detective Chow’s many flaws, is what makes him our hero. He is
the
activist who does not know that he is an activist.
Snakes
Can’t Run follows
Chow’s hunt
to track down the snakeheads that have been terrorizing Chinese
immigrants. Along
the way, he is forced to confront his father’s past, and how personal
history
intertwines with Chinatown legacy, with American legacy. Ed Lin, after
all,
writes about Americans in America.[1]
Interview
with Ed Lin
What
provoked you to write about snakeheads?
E.L.: I want to
address real issues in my
fiction and find emotional truths. It's
the norm that undocumented immigrants are exploited in Chinatown, but
it is
tolerated because the system in place can't work without them. Snakeheads, the people responsible for
smuggling people in, are as devious as the serpent who ruined the lives
of Eve
and Adam. Yet snakeheads aren't the
worst; the restaurant and sweatshop owners who exploit the shit out of
undocumented immigrants are.
The
packaging and even marketing of This Is a Bust and Snakes
Can’t Run have been more mystery-thriller, whereas Waylaid
was pitched to us readers as straight-up literary. We
understand that the writer usually has little control over such
matters, but
does Mr. Writer have any comments on this anyway? While you’re at it,
go ahead
and tackle the literary versus commercial fiction issue.
What’s literary fiction to you? What’s
commercial?
E.L.: It's not
like I want to have complete
marketing control -- I wouldn't really know what to do.
All I can do, really, is write the best book
I can and be open to all kinds of promotional tie-ins such as readings
and, er,
doing interviews. (Hell, I'm psyched to
do one with Kartika, though!)
Now, in the
opposite
direction, I hate it when writers complain that they have to do this
stupid
thing or that stupid thing for a book because, "I'm an artist. I don't want to be involved in the commercial
aspects." Well, tough shit.
A publisher has taken a chance on you for a
commercially viable product. If you
think "selling" is "selling out," then write shit on your
fucking blog and you won't have to deal with sales at all.
What is
"literary," anyway? I've had
talks with editors about "literary" manuscript submissions and they
all look for "story arcs" and "transformations" -- yet they
accuse "commercial" fiction of being chock full of conventions!
The
"literary" or "commercial" labeling doesn't really apply to
me, though, and many other writers of color.
Like Junot Diaz says, writers of color are already labeled in
their own
genre. By the convention of marketing,
"Asian American literature" exists and I'm in it. Waylaid,
This Is a Bust and Snakes Can't Run
are all in it. But the reality is that
when you walk into
the Asian American Writers Workshop to presumably see "Asian American
literature," what you actually see explodes all possible boundaries and
labels and you see the individuality of writers.
No matter how
you
slice it, though, book sales are important.
I just had this conversation with a writer friend who told me he
wished
I had a bestseller on my hands. I was
like, "Aw, I just want to be best loved." He
said, "If you have a bestseller, you
will be loved by everyone -- most importantly, by your publisher!"
The
cover art on Snakes
depicts a woman with a tattoo on her back of a famous Chinese saying, “bi shang liang shan,” a literary
reference to one of the four great classical Chinese novels, Water Margin[2],
which happens to be about gangsters, like Snakes.
The saying, loosely (and imperfectly) translated, means “forced to
ascend Mount
Liang,” or “I don’t want to rebel, but I am forced to.” What
significance does
this reference hold for you? For the novel Snakes
Can’t Run? Why did you include it? Were you trying to draw any
connections
between Mount Liang[3]
and
Chinatown?
E.L.: I love Water Margin, aka Outlaws of
the Marsh and All Men Are Brothers.
I read the entire four-volume unabridged
edition (in English) and I would miss subway stops because I was so
into
it!
Yes, the book
is about
criminals, but they are like Robin Hood's gang; the country is corrupt,
so the
only way to be righteous is to rebel against the government and join
the
outlaws on Mount Liang. In particular, the phrase relates to Lin Chong
(a
Lin!), a government official who becomes disgusted by the actions of
his
colleagues and joins the rebels.
Yes, it is
one of the
celebrated books of China, but the Chinese underworld in particular
interprets
the work as justifying their criminal operations.
For me it
represents a
part of a cycle. The government becomes
corrupt or ineffective, it gets replaced by a just government, and then
sooner
or later the new government also takes a turn for the worse and gets
replaced. As far as it concerns Snakes Can't Run, you have to realize that while you can
round up
the snakeheads, the demand to be smuggled into the U.S. will still be
there and
it will be met one way or another.
I wanted it
on the
cover because there is so much meaning in those four simple characters.
I don't
think there is a single Mount Liang in Chinatown -- there are several
of them,
all filled with people who justify what they do because they're doing
what's
"right." You got your KMT guys
over here, you got your commies over here, you got your native
Taiwanese here,
you got your Southeast Asian ethnic Chinese over here. . .
After
Waylaid, book reviewers described your
writing as minimalist, and then came This
Is a Bust, which (in contrast to Waylaid)
you have described as a “pretty nice paperweight.”[4]
One rationale for this is Waylaid
focused directly on the narrative of the boy, while This
Is a Bust took numerous historical detours, as did Snakes
Can’t Run; hence the meatier
books. Why did or how did that particular aspect of your writing style
change
between the debut and sophomore books?
E.L.: I don't
think my writing style has
changed. I write in the first person, so
the narrative has to change according to the thought process of the
speaker. A 12-year-old kid isn't going
to have terribly deep thoughts (until near the end) or have much of a
historical context as to who he is. He
doesn't even know the difference between China and Taiwan.
This
Is a Bust and Snakes Can't Run are both narrated by a
guy who is sort of in the thick of it.
All these old rivalries brought over from the old country and
being
fought out on U.S. soil, as if the Chinese civil war was still on. Robert Chow has to give a context for what is
going on, not so much for the reader, but for himself.
I don't know
about the
"minimalist" label, but I like to think of myself as a concise
writer.
I recently
wrote a
short fiction piece and an essay for the first issue of the Asian
American
Literary Review, published by the University of Maryland.
Those were both written in my most neutral
voice, and the fiction piece is my first in the second person. Check it out!
In
an interview
conducted by Bryan Thao Worra in 2008[5]
you mentioned that the conception of This
Is a Bust came mid-stream through writing Waylaid.
This often happens to writers, where we’re working on one
novel and halfway in, we get involved with a different idea for another
novel.
How did you handle the schizophrenia?
E.L.: I think one
can't help but work on more
than one thing at a time. If you try to
ignore a voice in your head, it just gets louder and louder until you
can't
focus on the work at hand.
Waylaid was such an
"external" sort of
book, This Is a Bust grew out of a
natural reaction to turning back inwards and self-reflecting. The first draft of Bust
didn't even have any dialog in it. It was
all thoughts.
You
also
mentioned to Worra that you are a coffee addict. Tell us, in as much
detail as
possible, about the perfect cup of joe. Any bean preference, brewing
methodology, cream and sugar ratios, flavored creams, any particular
mug or
carafe that it should be poured into?
E.L.: I am not
very particular at all, but I
would of course prefer Fair Trade or otherwise ethical beans. I drink it black because I admire
strength. I prefer it cold and my
favorite kind is probably day-old cold coffee in a French press that's
been
sitting in the fridge.
This Is a Bust
and Snakes Can’t Run
are being said to have reclaimed Chinatown from the clutches of writers
who have
been exotifying the enclave for decades.[6]
What is one of your personal favorite (tongue-in-cheek “favorite”)
portrayals of Chinatown?
E.L.: Probably
the Chinatown in Gremlins. Good
ol' mogwai!
How
much of the
character Lonnie is inspired by your wife, Cindy Cheung?
E.L.: Little
to none. Lonnie's much too docile and
naive at this
point to be anywhere near Cindy.
In
your blog
post “My Life in ‘Community’ Service, part 3”[7]
you discuss your parents’ initial reluctance to giving their blessing
for your
pursuit of a journalism degree. “You want to write books? Become a
doctor first
and then you can write books at night!”
Let
us indulge
in a hypothetical. Imagine that a 17-year-old has just told her parents
that
she wants to become a writer, that she wants to write literary fiction
for a
living, get her MFA instead of her MD (or even MRS degree), and her
parents
have issued an ultimatum: if she majors in something artsy-fartsy, they
will
cut off all funding and the girl will become the black sheep of her
family, or
she can do her parents right and become a doctor. Now you, Ed Lin, get
to
appear magically before parents and child. You get the opportunity to
say
something to the parents on behalf of the child and something to the
child on
behalf of the parents. What would you say?
E.L.:
I would say to the parents that China's cultural strength is the
arts. Every Chinese home has paintings
hanging in it, accompanied with a poem.
Even that nutbag conservative Confucius (author of the Classic of Poetry and the now-lost Classic
of Music) recognized the value
of music, poetry and the arts in a just society.
I would also
note to
the parents that it's only in the last century or so that Chinese
culture has
been perverted by war, genocide and migration that the arts have been
devalued
in the Chinese Diaspora (including Chinese America) in favor of
"professional education" that comes in handy when you are on the run
from Japanese/Communists/KMT/angry ghosts of ancestors.
But there's nobody chasing anymore and we
have to adjust our behavior away from "flight and migration" and
reclaim our remarkable literary heritage.
To the
17-year-old, I
would say, write as much as you can and live your life as widely as
possible. Do crazy things, scare
yourself and tell the tales. Don't ever
be discouraged. There is a lot of
disappointment
involved with every step of writing (and publishing!).
Believe fully in yourself -- that's the most
important thing. While nobody else can
give that to you, nobody can ever take it away.
You’ve
mentioned before that you do not like to talk about
your works-in-progress while they are in progress, but we must ask
anyway. Is
there any tidbits you’re willing to disclose to Kartika readers
about future publications?
E.L.: Shucks,
I'm not ready to talk about
it, but swing by www.edlinforpresident.com
to stay informed about my latest doings.