Issue 14 - One World

Cara Chow

Interviewed by Jill Mackenzie

Hello WRN readers! We’re so lucky to be able to chat with Cara Chow, whose book, Bitter Melon has been nominated for Best YA Fiction by YALSA (the Young Adult Library Service Association.) Bitter Melon is a daring novel about one girl’s journey to break free from her cultural restraints to become the person she wants to be. So Cara, thanks for joining us today. We’ll start off by asking you the number one question we ask all of our authors… whatcha reading now?

Right now, I am reading Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids by Kim John Payne and Lisa Ross.  This book was recommended to me by my son’s occupational therapist.  I am also re-reading Chasing the Light: Improving Your Photography with Available Light, byIbarionex Perello.  I am also reading my camera manual in order to apply some of the ideas from Perello’s book to my own photography.

 

Wow! Sounds like you’re a woman of many talents. And I like that you’re tapping into a bit of self-improvement there, too, which I think we all should do from time to time. Anything else that you just can’t put down?

Just so you don’t think that I don’t read fiction, the book I read before Chasing the Light was Stealing Angel by Terry Wolverton. 

I haven’t read that one yet but I’ll definitely check it out. Now for the questions about your book:  When I first read Bitter Melon, I realized early on that Frances was taught that honor and tradition took precedence over individuality and freedom of thought. What compelled you to write this story, and did you draw on your own relationship with your mother while writing it? How autobiographical would you say Bitter Melon is?

Though I have a very good relationship with my mother now, we had a lot of conflict and misunderstanding when I was growing up, particularly in my teens.  My mother loved me a lot, but she was also very hard on me.  As I got older, I started to realize that how my mother related to me was in part due to cultural influences.  Though the events in Bitter Melon are totally made up, the dynamic between Gracie and Frances was informed by the dynamic between my mother and me when I was a teen.
                             
Another major source of inspiration was my maternal grandmother.  I experienced firsthand the deep love and loyalty, almost reverence, that my extended family had towards her.  This seemed to contrast with mainstream American culture, which glorified youth and seemed to ignore the aged.  I deeply admired my family’s loyalty to our family matriarch.  At the same time, I also wondered: what if a Chinese-American adult had to care for an aging parent who was difficult, even abusive?  What if she had no siblings and was expected to care for her parent by herself?  That question became Frances’s dilemma in Bitter Melon.

I love how you really drew on your own experiences to write Bitter Melon, and the heart you put into it definitely came out through each page. So, Bitter Melon is, essentially, a story of Frances’ need to fly free, while being held back by her own mother.  At the beginning of the book, Frances explains that her Chinese name, Fei Ting means both “fly” and “stop” respectively. Did you choose Frances’ name before you began writing the story, or did you go in search of a name that would fit Frances’ plight? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? J

In the first several drafts, Frances was only referred to as Frances.  Then it occurred to me that the adults in my own family rarely called me Cara.  They called me “Man-Huen,” my Chinese name.  I realized then that Gracie would probably call Frances by her Chinese name as well.  It also occurred to me that giving Frances two names could be an opportunity to show readers the two worlds Frances inhabits and the two identities she must straddle.  So I called my mother and asked her to pick a name that sounded like Frances.  Mom called me back a day or two later and came up with “Fei Ting.”  As I heard the pronunciation and the tones of those words, they sounded to me like the words “fly” and “stop.”  Then I looked up “Frances” on a baby names website.  According to this website, “Frances” means “free.”  I thought, “Wow, this provides a perfect contrast for Frances’s two identities!”

 

I love it! It seems that all the components that made Frances who she is came together like they were just meant to be! And I’m so glad you gave Frances a friend to help her achieve her freedom, too. Yet at the beginning of the book, Frances makes a point of shunning Theresa as a friend until Theresa saves her from a potentially embarrassing moment. Why did you choose an ally for Frances that shared her mother’s view of familial responsibility, rather than make her befriend someone from a totally different, neutral circle?

The choice to create a friend from within Frances’s culture was not a conscious one at first.  That was what my imagination saw, so I went with it.  As I became more aware of the themes in my story, I saw that a friend from within the culture would present more opportunities for both closeness and conflict.  Derek is a great example of a (boy)friend from outside the culture.  He’s an ally who embodies the world that Frances would like to inhabit, but he doesn’t intuitively understand what Frances is going through the way Theresa does.  Theresa understands the guilt Frances feels and the power Gracie has over her.  At the same time, because Theresa lives in that world, she also buys into those values to some degree, so she says and does things that highlight Frances’s inner conflict as she tries to break free. 

The presence of Theresa and Nellie gives me opportunities to compare and contrast two different families from the same culture.  Nellie and Theresa represent a healthier version of the Chinese mother-daughter relationship, in contrast to the more dysfunctional one between Gracie and Frances.  Theresa and Nellie make up Frances’s social world at home, in much the same way that Ms. Taylor and Derek make up her social world outside the home.  Without Nellie and Theresa, Frances’s home life would only consist of Gracie.  In that vacuum, Gracie would look like an unsympathetic crazy person, rather than the product of cultural and economic influences.

 

Got it! This makes so much sense, especially because Theresa’s mother is very different to Frances’ mom. That being said, do you think these two mother-daughter relationships are representative of typical Chinese-American mother daughter relationships? Do you think they’re representative of all or most mother-daughter relationships?

Chinese-American families, like all families, are pretty diverse, so what you see in Bitter Melon can’t represent all Chinese-American families.  That said, the spectrum that exists between Frances-Gracie and Theresa-Nellie probably represents a large number of immigrant Chinese-American families.  This is my belief based on my experience with my own family, observing other families, and listening to others’ family stories.  Ironically, most of the letters I get are from readers who are not Chinese-American but who can relate to Frances.  This tells me that the mother-daughter dynamic in Bitter Melon is also a universal one.

 

Yeah, the mother-daughter dynamic you explored here, certainly does seem like a universal one to me! Nevertheless, when Bitter Melon first came out, the blogging world went bonkers with debate on the stereotypes you portrayed in it. What are your feelings on this, and do you stand by your perspective?

My goal was to write a compelling mother-daughter story.  I had no intention of writing towards and or against any stereotype.  Readers who have written or spoken to me about Bitter Melon are culturally diverse (i.e. male and female, different ages, different cultural backgrounds), yet they all relate to Frances on a very personal level.  A couple of readers wrote that, initially, they didn’t want to like the book because they were wary of the stereotype issue, but their resistance broke down as they became more absorbed in Frances’s world and her dilemma.  I think most readers understand that Bitter Melon features Chinese-American characters, but they relate to it primarily as a mother-daughter story or a story about overachievement. 
        
Your question brings up an important issue though, one that I became more aware of in college, and later when I worked at an ethnic museum and was active in the Asian-American arts community in LA.  Stereotypes are based on seeds of truth.  The problem with stereotypes is that they are overgeneralizing and oversimplifying.  They bypass the need to understand.  Stereotyping goes hand-in-hand with under-representation.  When an under-represented minority is featured in a book, TV show, or film, that character (and its author) can be saddled with the responsibility of being “the face” of that group.  If the portrayal is stereotypical or negative, members of that group will fear that the public will have a negative attitude towards the group as a whole.  But the solution to this problem isn’t to create uncontroversial characters who can serve as ambassadors to the mainstream.  The solution is to write and publish more and more honest, compelling, and three-dimensional characters and stories, the kind that reaches audiences both inside and outside the featured group.  This is what I set out to do when writing Bitter Melon, and I believe that I accomplished that purpose. 

 

Very insightful, important words on a sticky issue. But I do think you tackled a tough subject with grace and clarity, which couldn’t have been easy. In fact, I read that it took you eleven years and thirteen drafts before Bitter Melon was finally published. That’s what I call a labor of love. What gave you the motivation to keep going?

Initially, what motivated me was this burning drive to tell my story, the exhilaration I felt when I wrote, and the ambition that I would someday become a successful writer.  As the years passed and the drafts accumulated, these three things began to decay, and I had to dig deeper to sustain motivation.  Many times I knew that my draft had flaws, but I didn’t know how to fix them.  Sometimes I couldn’t tease out the spine of the story and even lost focus on what my story was about or why I was writing it.  My confusion fueled the anxiety that I would never finish my story and that I would never be a success. 

At this point, two things kept me going.  One was the knowledge that I had invested so much time and didn’t want all those years to go to waste.  When people ask you “How’s your book coming?” the only reply worse than “I’m still working on it,” is “I quit.”  Not only would I have disappointed my loved ones, who were rooting for me, but I would have disappointed myself because I knew that I still had a special story to tell. 

The other motivating factor, ironically, was learning to invest less of my identity in my writing.  I used to equate my self-worth with my professional success.  This is a great way to kill inspiration.  Over time, instead of seeing myself as a writer, I began seeing myself as a person who writes.  This change in perspective disentangled my ego from my writing and freed me to relax and be more creative.  It allowed me to enjoy writing again, so much so that I decided that my book was worth finishing, even if it never got published.  That is how I found the courage to finish.

 

Oh my god, I LOVE this! You found inspiration in learning to be free with writing, just like Frances found freedom within public speaking. It’s so clear that your passion for the process was as much a driving factor as completing (or publishing) the story itself. With that in mind, is there one particular scene in Bitter Melon that was particularly heartbreaking or uplifting for you to write? One that still haunts you or excites you to this day? If so, we’d love to hear it!

There are many scenes that fit that description, so it’s hard for me just to name one.  That said, I really like the last scene between Frances and Theresa.  Until the very last draft, I had Frances turn to Theresa for help to get to Scripps.  In these drafts, Theresa, disheartened by Frances’s betrayals, says no.  Both my agent and my editor, two brilliant people I trust, commented that the ending felt very disquieting.  My agent told me that the ending should feel uplifting, so that readers get a payoff for following Frances on her difficult journey.  In response to their feedback, I re-read the ending, marked all the parts that felt dark and downbeat, and realized that one big downer was the breakup of Frances’s friendship with Theresa.  So I went back and rewrote that last scene so that Theresa ends up helping Frances.  I probably rewrote this scene five or six times, until I finally struck the right emotional note.  I also had to rewrite several scenes prior to this one so that Frances “earns” Theresa’s help.  Bitter Melon isn’t just a story about mothers and daughters.  It is a story about friendship too.  I like this final scene between the two friends because it shows how their friendship has changed them.  Frances learns to appreciate Theresa, and Theresa must betray some of her old values to help Frances.  This scene would not have existed without my editor and agent, so I am grateful for their input.

 

Ooh! The final scene between friends is one of my faves for sure…although it’s so hard to pick one! Thanks so much, Cara, for taking the time to talk about Bitter Melon. It’s such a thought-provoking, sensitive read, and will always be on my “most-loved” stories list. Before we go, Can you tell us one random thing about yourself that our readers might find interesting?

When people see the cover of Bitter Melon, their first reaction is, “Wow, that’s a gorgeous cover!”  Their second reaction is, “Is that you on the cover?”  At first, I was surprised to hear that, until I saw my author photo on the back flap.  It just so happens that the girl on the cover has windswept hair and is placed in front of an ocean background.  I have windswept hair in my photo, and that picture was shot under the Manhattan Beach pier, also an ocean setting.  Both the cover model and I have angular features.  Also, because most people assume that the book is autobiographical, they conclude that the girl on the cover must be me.  That wasn’t the reaction I wanted, but I guess I shouldn’t complain.  After all, I’m being confused with someone twenty-two years my junior.  That’s better than being carded!

 

Ha ha! Yep, who could complain about that?

Another random, author photo-related fact: in the original picture, I was posing with my son, who was 15 months old at the time.  It was supposed to be this beautiful mother-son photo, but my son was having a meltdown.  Nonetheless, I liked how I looked in the photo, so I asked my photographer to crop my son out so I could use it as my author photo.  If you look carefully at the area just to the right of my chin, what appears to be my hair is actually my son’s hair.

That is so touching, and sweet, just like pretty much every ounce of this book. Thanks again, Cara. We just know our readers will love Bitter Melon as much as we did. And hey readers, if you’re looking for a way to reach Cara, or to check in on her future endeavors, visit her author site at www.carachow.com