Today is the day my book finally comes out. (Though there have been sightings in bookstores already and Amazon started shipping it a few days ago.) I woke today to a text from a friend saying, “Happy birthday to your book!” and that is kind of how it feels like. A cosmic release of energy. A letting go into the world of something that was only yours before.

And all morning I have really been thinking of all the people who have supported and helped me through the process:

–My writer friends, who read my early drafts and gave me so much helpful, constructive criticism. I learned so much about the characters from them, and that knowledge kept me going through all the revisions;

–My agent Lisa Grubka, who has unending energy, enthusiasm, and great ideas. Before and during the submission process, she truly always knew what was best for the manuscript; even now, long after the sale, she is still an absolute key part of the process and a wonderful advocate;

–My team at Simon & Schuster, especially of course, my editor Kerri Kolen, who is Incredible, I tell ya, Incredible with a Capital “I.” She is a force to be reckoned from, and she works mighty magic with my book. I’m also lucky I have on my side the brilliant Tracey Guest and the great Amanda Ferber;

–The folks at Simon & Schuster, who read the manuscript and started the buzz going. I don’t know them, and haven’t met them, but they sure do know me and my book!

–My friends on the blogosphere, who accompanied me in the year and a half journey toward publication; too many to mention, but folks like dkm, Anne Allen, Meghan Ward, Elizabeth Varadan, Judy Croome, Diane Wolfe, Aubrie Flutist, Natalie Murphy, Vicki Rocho, Rachna Chhabria, Holly Ruggiero, Karen Lange, Sarah Skilton (who just sold a book–hooray!), Milo James Fowler, Robert Guthrie, A.L. Sonnichsen (who just celebrated 12 years of marriage–congratulations!), Yvonne Osborne, Theresa Milstein, Medeia Sharif (whose book BEST. RAMADAN. EVER came out last week), Tess, Tricia O’Brien, Hannah Kincade, Sierra Godfrey, Lynn Colt, Pk Rhezo, Aubrey Flutist, Piedmont Writer, Julie Dao, Faith Hough, Amanda Sablan, Yat-Yee, Victoria Dixon, Solvang Sherrie, Dezmond Hollywood Spy, Stina Lindenblatt, Quinn Seeing Dreaming Writing, Molly WriterMamaDreamer Hall, Court Ellyn, Lynn Connecting Stories, Justine Dell, Lola Sharp, Kelly Polark, Jennifer Hiller, and Jonathan Arntson. I’m sure I’m forgetting someone. I really do love you guys, and I really appreciated the smart, kind, supportive comments I would get from you. You gave me advice, you helped me pick my author photo, you held my hand through it all. Thank you!

–The booksellers who have been championing the book. You have been amazing to me and the book and I thank you. Your enthusiasm and support has meant the world to me. And I can’t wait to meet more booksellers as I make my way through the country signing stock and doing readings. I love getting reviews of the book, but the ones from the booksellers are especially wonderful. Thank you!

–The book bloggers who have been writing about the book, especially A Casual Reader. Thank you for championing the book!

–My cadre of Chicago Indian women best friends–Reena, Rita, Harpreet, and Anjali! You have been as excited about the book as I have, and have been the recipient of countless sharing of news. Thank you for being happy for me, always.

–My L.A. friends–Neel, Maitraya, Jeehanger (all also, incidentally, Indian–I just noticed that), and all of whom must come to my reading next week or else.

–My friends who helped me get flyers out to the distant land of the burbs–Eric, Christina

–My friend who literally handsells my book to everyone she knows–Jeanne

–My colleagues at work who agreed to get the word out, especially Sheila, Arlene, Karen, Madhurima, and again Jeanne

–My family, of course

For all of you who lent a helping hand or even just offered a word or two of support: I know it’s cheesy to say this, but I really, honestly, completely feel like ALL of US have a book out today. When my book become an Amazon Best Book of the Month, one of my friends called me, delighted, and said, “I’m so happy! I feel like it happened to me, like it’s my accomplishment!” And I thought, that’s because it is! When you support someone else, a piece of their achievement becomes yours, doesn’t it? This is a great day, and thanks to everyone who helped me on the way!!!! (I’m not done asking you for help, by the way, I *will* need advice on my next author pic.)

New York magazine recently featured an article on Asian Americans that’s become fodder for increasing commentary and social media buzz. It’s a piece by Wesley Yang titled Paper Tigers: What happens to all the Asian American overachievers when the test-taking ends? I liked the piece overall, and especially how much attention it’s gotten nationwide. It’s fascinating to see a feature article like this show up in a national magazine, and being given so much prominence and attention. Until recently, the kind of critique Yang performs was mostly confined to ethnic studies classrooms and scholarly discussions in academic books. It’s impressive that Asian American issues–often confined to op-ed articles in cities with large Asian Am populations–have found such a large and significant forum.

Reading the article, I was reminded of a writing composition class I taught back in the day, a class that happened to be composed almost entirely of Asian American, Middle Eastern, black and Latino/a students. This was in Los Angeles, at a very ethnically diverse college, and the students had self-selected by choosing a sociology course about racial conflict. I remember two students particularly well, both Asian. One happened to be in a rock band and wrote endless drafts of his essays; I’ll call him “Defoe” since his own name took after a famous British writer. He spent almost thirty hours working on a single essay, and his work was spotless. The other, who I didn’t know much about, did the bare minimum and was often disruptive in class. I’ll call him “Ted,” after the time-honored Asian habit of parents naming their children after American nicknames.

Defoe was, obviously, my favorite student–I swooned over his papers and took credit for his brilliance, as young teachers often do. He had talent, but above all, he wanted to please his teacher. Ted, on the other hand, did not appear to care. Once, he was so disruptive, I had to do a little trick you learn in teacher-school on how to handle difficult students: I walked over from my desk, bridged the physical distance between us, and stood literally right in front of his desk. Usually, when I do this (and by usually I mean the one time I’d done it before, having decided after this never to repeat this cheap trick), the student quiets down and we move on. But with Ted, something unexpected happened: Ted, a big, burly kid who reminded me of the bully in The Simpsons, looked panicked and agitated when I stood in front of him. He literally looked like he might break into tears. Oh my gosh, I realized, he cares about my approval, just like the others. He just has a different way of getting my attention. 

Later, during a writing tutorial at a coffee house, I discovered that Ted in person was quite different from the inattentive, disruptive student that he was in class. In fact, he was funny, kind, and even sweet. Above all, he was young–he was very much an 18-year old. I found him immensely likeable. But he wasn’t getting an A in my class; he didn’t have the patience for the kind of continuous, sustained life of reading required to be a strong writer. Ted was the kind of Asian American kid who seems invisible in discussions of Asian overachievement, where the focus is on the Defoes of this world. What if Ted wasn’t going to be a doctor, or an engineer, or a CEO? I understood why he was so terrified when I stood in front of him in class. He probably thought I’d seen through him–you’re not a real Asian, you’re a regular person. What could be a bigger burden, at that age, than not living up to the Asian myth of being really good at school? What does that do to the Teds of this world? What happens to the Asian underachievers when all the test-taking ends? This obsession with achievement is not emotionally healthy, to say the least.

This past weekend Chicago hosted a number of writers as its annual Printers Row Literary Festival went underway. I did a Saturday afternoon panel called “Debut Fiction,” alongside Deanna Fei, Belinda McKeon, and Rebecca Makkai, and got to talk about THIS BURNS MY HEART at the Harold T. Washington Library Reception Hall. I’d never been inside the Hall before, which is in the lower floor across from the Pritzger auditorium. Going into it feels like walking through a museum, with closed walls leading onto open spaces, and large structural columns breaking up the room.

Before the panel, I ran into Fei and Makkai in the hospitality room. Fei wrote A THREAD OF SKY, which I’ve been meaning to read for a while and am now even more excited to. I’d seen an ad for the book on my facebook page, as its algorithm correctly guessed that a literary novel about four Chinese American women who discover themselves during a trip to China would be right up my alley. Curiously, the very same day I saw the ad and thought, “I’d like to read that,” the book showed up in my mailbox at my office, sent courtesy of Penguin Books. This is either because I teach Asian American lit at the college and they want me to adopt her book, or irrefutable proof that the “Secret” really works. At the hospitality room, I also hung out with Makkai, who turned out to be a Chicagoan like me, and whose book THE BORROWER sounds really amazing. It has been getting great buzz, with a spot in the June Indie Next List, and a blurb from none other than Richard Russo.

But, to be honest, one of the really fun things about doing a Lit Fest is the social part of it. On Saturday, the great Eleanor Brown invited me to come out to dinner at Trattoria No. 10 with some other folks in town for the festival, including Meg Waite Clayton, Kelly McNees, Kristina Riggle, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Tayari Jones, and Melissa Fraterrigo. It was a really fun dinner, with conversation ranging from twitter to book tours to tax tips. With only about a month left before the pub date for THIS BURNS MY HEART, I got some lovely advice about everything from reading reviews to what to do on one’s pub date.

The Printers Row Lit Fest was a lot of fun, and I’m glad I could be a part of it. I also had a chance to use my new digital camera for the first time (it had arrived only a day earlier). The top picture is from the dinner honoring Edwidge Danticat, where I got to hang out with Nami Mun, and the one below is from the author dinner at Trattoria No. 10. Hearing about everyone’s experiences and being around so many other authors made me look forward even more to the release of my book.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that every author with a blog must, at some point, do an ARC giveaway when his or her book is about to come out. So here it is: the ARC giveaway for THIS BURNS MY HEART! (Drum roll, please.)

The ARC is quite beautiful: It has the height of a hardcover, the pulpy cover of a paperback, and it is fully designed on the inside. The text is the same as the finished, bound book, with the exception of a few typos that we decided to eliminate (Go figure).

Putting modesty aside, THIS BURNS MY HEART has been getting some lovely reviews so far, with Kirkus Reviews calling it “captivating…first-rate” and Publishers Weekly delightfully describing it as a “dramatic, suck-you-in chronicle of a thrilling love affair.” I’m very very proud of my work in this book and I’m even more excited to share it with the world. And some lucky folks will get an early peek thanks to the Goodreads giveaway.

Enter to win here

Back in the day, as an undergraduate at Stanford, I interviewed the writer Lan Samantha Chang about her work. I was 19, she was probably in her late 20s; I wasn’t a writer yet, and she wasn’t the acclaimed short story writer and director of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Sam (as she was called back then, and maybe still is), told me something I never forgot: “I write about my family, people I have deep, deep feelings for.” I’m paraphrasing here, but the point she made was that writers have intense, complicated feelings for their parents, perhaps even more so than for their lovers.

Samantha’s point resonated with me very deeply, and over the years I discovered other writers who felt the same way. I paid particular attention whenever I heard a writer dedicate a book to their parents instead of husbands (Malcolm Gladwell, Janice Lee), or who chose to write about their parents in their fiction. This seemed particularly true of ethnic writers, who conflated parent with nation, and used each to gain insights on the other. In Nam Le’s remarkable short story “Love and Honor and Pity and Compassion and Sacrifice,” for example, the narrator cannot separate his understanding of his father with his father’s memories of his childhood in Vietnam. Vietnam=father=story.

Why do writers obsess so much about their parents, especially their mothers? To me, the answer lies in Amy Tan’s THE JOY LUCK CLUB, in the section where Waverly Jong, the chess prodigy, loses her powers. Up to that point, prodded by her mother’s proud and unblinking gaze, Waverly wins match after match. Then, one day, after a fight with her mother, Waverly begins a losing streak from which she never recovers. Tan implies that Waverly’s ability did not come from herself, but from her mother, who gave her those powers through her belief in her. In Hinduism, this is known as “power karma,” in which a parent’s thoughts provide a protective shield over the child, and can propel the child’s success. I suspect it is really a metaphorical way of thinking through the financial and emotional investments done for one’s child, but I think it’s fun to reinscribe parent-child relations within mystical, other-worldly language. In the immortal words of Rosie O’Donnell’s character in Sleepless in Seattle, “I know it’s not true, but it feels true.” In some of this literature, it really does feel like a parent’s thoughts can affect the child’s destiny.

Right now I’m reading Jean Kwok’s glorious novel GIRL IN TRANSLATION, about a teenager working at a Chinatown sweatshop while attending a prestigious Manhattan prep school. The book is based on Kwok’s own experiences, and for me, the passages describing her mother moved me the most. The narrator never romanticizes her mother, even though the mother is a tragic figure: a former music teacher in Hong Kong, she spends her time “finishing” skirts in a dust-filled room, in slave-like conditions. Kwok never asks the reader to feel sorry for the mother, who is filled with dignity, self-respect, and who will do *anything* to help her child succeed. She is self-sacrificing in a matter of fact way, as if it were as much a part of her job as placing the skirts onto hangers.

Kwok seems emblematic of a recent generation of writers who write fictionalized versions of their mothers: Nami Mun’s MILES FROM NOWHERE comes to mind, as well as Eugenia Kim’s THE CALLIGRAPHER’S DAUGHTER. Both novels imagine their mothers’ experiences, in an attempt, I suspect, to recover their suffering and sacrifices, and provide consolation through the redemptive powers of representation. Both who is being consoled here? Is it the mother, whose experiences gain a validity in the public realm that it previously lacked; or is it the writer, who can finally expiate some of her own guilt as the recipient of the parent’s sacrifices?

In Le’s short story, the narrator’s father eventually throws away the manuscript that the young man is writing about his father. The point, perhaps, being that representation cannot possibly make up for the sufferings of the parent. No matter how hard the writer son tries to understand the father’s sorrows, it cannot do justice to the reality. But the son tries, and spends the entire short story taking different stabs at writing that story, ultimately landing on a post-modern solution that calls into question the very strategies of representation. Ultimately, he cannot let go of the father, and seems more bound to him than the parent himself.

Sociologically speaking, immigrant children often benefit from their parents’ sacrifices, and end up landing in a different world than the one their parents inhabited, in terms of class, opportunity, and resources. The myth of the Korean seamstress whose daughter goes to Yale may be a myth, but at times is the reality, too. It’s a story that resonates because of its reaffirmation of the American dream, though that’s only on the outside–the neat resolution that celebrates the logic of capitalism. On the inside, there’s the inherited grief of the child, who emulates the parents’ traumatic wounding of immigration, of self-denial, of loss of identity. There is a lot of pain there.

Immigrant parents make the kind of sacrifices only expected of lovers in traditional Western fiction–traversing lands, enduring suffering, persevering over obstacles. They’re culturally conditioned to do so–though in return they expect their child’s duty and obedience. They’re bound to each other. When it comes time to write their stories, it does not surprise me that these writers cannot separate themselves from their parents–the stories are too bound-up together, too messily feeding each other.

My own novel, THIS BURNS MY HEART, was inspired by my mother’s experiences. This would seem obvious to anyone who reads it, and wonders how I came to mimic a woman’s point of view the way I do. My mother is now a character, Soo-Ja Choi, a character that I created and invented. I love the topsy turvy quality of that, the notion that the son can “create” the mother by offering her a version of herself that did not previously exist. Ultimately, the writer ends up giving birth to the mother, who has been gestating for years in her son’s creative mind.

Eugenia Kim, author of THE CALLIGRAPHER’S DAUGHTER, a critically acclaimed novel set in Korea during its turbulent years as a Japanese colony, has a new post on the RED ROOM about historical fiction. It’s very much worth reading.

Here’s my favorite sentence:
Historical events play their part not as the instigator of plot, but as history actually does play out in lives–a footnote in a day, or an extended happening that lies in the background and becomes interwoven into the lives of the characters.

I agree with Eugenia wholeheartedly. We are all experiencing and living history, and what happens to the “common man” often sheds more light into historical events than the events that get written about and show up on the front pages of newspapers. The telling detail in the “background” can reveal even more about a certain period than the images on the foreground. The essay, entitled, “Two More Reasons to Read,” looks in particular at two much-buzzed about recent books: Tea Obreht’s TIGER WIFE, and Alexi Zentner’s TOUCH. I love how Eugenia imagines the young writers’ joint early apprenticeship, as well as her analysis of the happy coincidences of their works’ timing and even cover art. The post is worth reading, and so is Eugenia’s book, which was a runaway success.

Eugenia was one of the authors who blurbed my novel THIS BURNS MY HEART. I wrote to her out of the blue, and ended up reaching her at the worst possible time–when she was busy grading her students’ stories. But she did end up coming through, and sent my editor a lovely, lovely quote. It was very special to get a read from her, as our work has a lot of similarities: they are both historical novels set in Korea and centering around a strong, smart heroine. More importantly, our books are both inspired by our mothers’ lives. I haven’t met Eugenia in person yet, but next time I’m in D.C. (where she lives and is a creative writing professor), I have a feeling we’ll have lots to talk about.

John Burnham Schwartz is one of my favorite authors–he wrote THE COMMONER, a fictionalized history of the Japanese Royal family. He has a new book out I’m dying to read: NORTHWEST CORNER, which follows up on the lives of the characters from his hit novel/movie RESERVATION ROAD. John is not only an incredible writer, but a classy, classy act. I asked him to blurb my novel, THIS BURNS MY HEART, and, in a moment of temporary insanity all too common to myself, I addressed him by the wrong name, as “Jonathan.” And then, on top of that, I failed to send him an ARC of my novel. Now, I think most writers would’ve been a bit annoyed after this succession of gaffes, and at the very least, chosen not to give their hard-earned attention to my novel. (And by the way, not to delve too far in my personal psychology, but can you say self-sabotage much?) Much to my surprise, within only a week or so, John sent me the loveliest, nicest blurb. Now THAT’s class.

Anyway, here’s some information about his book, which coincidentally comes out the same week as mine. His book is already a hit on pre-orders, and garnering incredible blurbs. I’m predicting a front cover review on the NYT Times Sunday Book Review, and best seller sales. Click to buy NORTHWEST CORNER here

From the publisher:
The New York Times Book Review called Reservation Road “a triumph,” and the novel was universally acclaimed. Now, in a brilliant literary performance by one of our most compelling and compassionate writers, John Burnham Schwartz reintroduces us to Reservation Road’s unforgettable characters in a superb new work of fiction that stands magnificently on its own. Northwest Corner is a riveting story about the complex, fierce, ultimately inspiring resilience of families in the face of life’s most difficult and unexpected challenges.

Twelve years after a tragic accident and a cover-up that led to prison time, Dwight Arno, now fifty, is a man who has started over without exactly moving on. Living alone in California, haunted yet keeping his head down, Dwight manages a sporting goods store and dates a woman to whom he hasn’t revealed the truth about his past. Then an unexpected arrival throws his carefully neutralized life into turmoil and exposes all that he’s hidden.

Sam, Dwight’s estranged college-age son, has shown up without warning, fleeing a devastating incident in his own life. In its way, Sam’s sense of guilt is as crushing as his father’s. As the two men are forced to confront their similar natures and their half-buried hopes for connection, they must also search for redemption and love. In turn, they dramatically transform the lives of the women around them: the ex-wives, mothers, and lovers they have turned to in their desperate attempts to somehow rewrite, outrun, or eradicate the past.

Told in the resonant voices of everyday people gripped in the emotional riptide of lived life, Northwest Corner is at once tough and heart-lifting, an urgent, powerful story about family bonds that can never be broken and the wayward roads that lead us back to those we love.

Advance praise:
“I was enthralled by Northwest Corner, reluctant to tear myself away even for a moment from a tale so delicately assembled, so well paced. For me, Schwartz evokes Steinbeck and Updike in his magical ability to weave, out of a regional story of family, a broader chronicle of America. I had the sense on every page of a writer whose abilities are at their peak, the parts of this tale interlocking just so, and yet being anything but predictable as Schwartz defines the nature of atonement, the many shades of love, and the face of redemption.”—Abraham Verghese

“Families may exist just to witness one another’s disappointments, and the tribes in John Burnham Schwartz’s riveting, poetic new novel have plenty to gawk and wonder at. This is the first set of characters I’ve come across in years to compel attention not just with outside action, of which there’s plenty, but with psychological depths that reward study. It’s rife with tragedies and redemptions, a wise book without being wise-assed, and you should read it.”—Mary Karr

“The masterly Northwest Corner is that finest of things—a moral novel about mortal events.”—Dennis Lehane

“Stark and deeply effecting . . . readers will grow to care deeply about whether and how [the characters’] lives can be redeemed.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“[Schwartz is] exceptional at describing the chemistry of desire, creating emotional tension, and making his characters feel more like flesh and blood than fictional constructs. Imaginative and taut, Schwartz’s writing is seamless and infinitely inspired.”—Publishers Weekly

Before I started this blog, I had another blog entitled Daily Pep for Writers, where I wrote about the “emotional” side of being a writer, i.e. the need for self-encouragement and self-motivation. I learned a lot, over the last few years, about what gets me out of writers’ block, and the blog was an opportunity to share some of those insights.

When I started this new blog–focusing on the publication of my novel THIS BURNS MY HEART–I decided to close my old blog, as I figured that two blogs would be confusing, and, more importantly, difficult for me to keep up with. But I’m going to repost some of my posts, and I’ll do so over the course of the next week or so. (By the way, for old readers of my old blog, if you click on it and it says it has been set to “private” and you need an invite to join, it’s just crazy Blogspot talk–I just didn’t want to delete the blog altogether, and that was the only option offered.)