-
Book Club Questions
Since the publication of The Dancing Girl and the Turtle, I’ve visited book clubs throughout California and across Amsterdam, too. I’ve started to notice a pattern in the questions a book club will ask. I thought I’d share them with you, though you’ll have to come up with your own answers. history Do you see…
-
Martial Arts
This is me, age 14, on Judo Award Night. Notice that my brothers have already advanced to a yellow belt. I remain in white: the lowest possible level in judo. It seems to me that I got hurt a lot. I didn’t like throwing myself onto the mat. The award in my hand was probably…
-
Fujianhua
When I dream about Shanghai, I see the Bund, the Pudong skyline, the plane trees of the old French Concession. People from every nation once strolled under those trees. Japanese, Brits, Russians, Americans, Portuguese, German, French, and more. In my dreams, I hear their strange speech. I can taste their odd foodstuffs: pretzels from Germany,…
-
The Art of War
Sun Tzu is the name given to the author of the military treatise The Art of War. No one knows when the book was written or whether Sun Tzu is its true author. The name in the book is Sun Wu. He was a general and military advisor active during the Spring and Autumn period…
-
Labels and Charlottesville
last week I ran into an article by Lan Samantha Chang entitled Writers, Protect Your Inner Life. Sam’s day job is director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. When school’s out, she gives writing workshops in Paris (2014) and Napa (2016). At Napa, Sam gave a craft lecture on the interior life. She gave us a…
-
McTyeire School for Girls
The tricky thing about writing historical fiction is getting the details right. Were there ballpoint pens in Shanghai in 1937? (Yes.) Or plastic chopsticks in 1954? (No.) The average reader might not care but mine would. They already know something about China or they want to delve deeper. My readers want a story that feels…
-
Wanderlust
I like to wander. To travel without any clear sense of a destination. I call myself a wanderer in my new Instagram account. The photos there all come from a recent trip to Germany. Hence the title of this blog post. Originally coined in German during the 19th century, wanderlust means an urge, an impulse,…
-
Not the Booker Prize
Readers! You’ve come to this blog at just the right time. I need your help and I need it now. Every year, The Guardian newspaper organizes a contest for the best fiction published in the UK. They call it the Not the Booker Prize as The Guardian casts its net far more widely than the Booker…
-
Lost in Translation
When I first moved to the Netherlands, I worked as a translator. A catalogue for the Rijksmuseum, a Ph.D. dissertation on patients’ rights, an environmental law journal. I translated because it was a way for me to learn Dutch, word by word. It felt like an algebra exercise. Each sentence was an equation. All I…