E-mail a friendLisa See
airdate August 24, 2007
Lisa See has been called one of the most significant Asian American voices in contemporary writing. Born in Paris, See grew up in Los Angeles, where she was active in the cultural affairs of the Chinese American community. The best-selling novelist shares her fascination with lost stories in her books, including Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, the China-set fiction Peony in Love and, her latest, Shanghai Girls.See was previously Publishers Weekly's West Coast correspondent and a freelance journalist.
Lisa See
Tavis: Lisa See is an acclaimed novelist whose previous books include "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" and "On Gold Mountain." Her latest book is once again a "New York Times" bestseller. The new book is called "Peony in Love." Lisa See, nice to have you on the program.
Lisa See: Thanks for having me.
Tavis: We were just talking before we came on the air. There are some people who say "Peony" and some say "Peony." What do you make of that (laughter)?
See: I don't know. I don't know if that's a regional thing or what, but I go with Peony.
Tavis: I'm sure somebody is going to send me an email. Some expert on that word will send me an email saying, "Mr. Smiley, here's exactly what it is and why it should be called Peony."
See: And I hope you forward it to me.
Tavis: (Laughter) Well, you're the writer. If you're waiting on me to help you, you're in a lot of trouble (laughter). But I'm glad to have you here. Obviously, you're a great writer, but what is that thread through these books that you write that connect to your fan base that allow them to hit the "Times" list consistently? What's that thread for you? I mean, if I asked John Grisham that question, I'm sure he'd have an answer. What's your answer?
See: I think for me, I always start just from the things that I'm most interested in. I'm really interested in these stories that happened in the past that are lost, forgotten or sometimes deliberately covered up. A lot of that has to do with women's history.
We think in the past there were no women writers, no women artists, no women historians, no women chefs. You could go on and on. But, of course, there were women who did these things, but their stories have been lost. So for me, it's to go back and find these lost stories and then write about them, you know, to fictionalize them.
So for "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan," I was writing about women in China who had invented and used a secret writing system. It's the only writing system to have been found anywhere in the world to have been used exclusively by women, but they kept it a secret for a thousand years.
With "Peony in Love," I was writing about what were called lovesick maidens in China in the mid-seventeenth century. They were part of this much larger phenomenon of women writers. There were more women writers in this one area of China who were being published than altogether in the rest of the world at that time.
You know, if you think about it, in 1650 there weren't very many women being published at that time. But there were over a thousand women writers who were writing, being published, traveling all around the country in the seventeenth century version of book tours. But their stories have been lost, so this is about the true story of three of these lovesick maidens, a particular group of these women writers.
Tavis: I want to talk more about this text, "Peony in Love," in just a second and the story line here. I did not realize until I started delving into the research for this conversation about your past what the connection was, what the interest was, in Chinese culture. I get it now. You can explain it to those watching who don't know your backstory.
See: Well, I'm part Chinese. My great-great-grandfather came to this country to work on the building of the Transcontinental Railroad. My great-grandfather stayed here and became the kind of godfather-patriarch of Los Angeles's Chinatown. He had four wives, twelve children, he was the first Chinese in America to own an automobile. He was really a pretty extraordinary man.
But if you come down to today in Los Angeles, there are about a dozen people that look like me, a little bit of a spectrum in between. The majority of the family is still full Chinese. I have about four hundred relatives here in Los Angeles and I really don't look like I belong with the rest of them.
Tavis: At the family reunion, you kind of stand out (laughter).
See: I do (laughter).
Tavis: In these stories, these pieces that you've pulled out to create these stories around, about these particular pieces of Chinese culture, as I said earlier, they obviously work as a book. What was it that interested you, that fascinated you, that made you believe that there was something in this culture that could be turned into a novel, but that would also be instructive and informative?
See: Well, I think that you can always go back to the kind of emotions and human relationships that we all have, that we all want. These lovesick maidens, one of the things they wanted most of all was love. Well, of course, that's something we all want today. What they also wanted was to be heard. Well, I think we all want that today. We all want to be heard for who we are and some of us struggle a lot to be able to find that in ourselves, to be heard by outside people.
So to try to find those universal elements in stories from the past that still pertain to today, I think that's what people connect to. Of course, that's what I connect to when I'm writing. What I hope happens to me as a writer as I'm going through the process will also happen to the readers.
Tavis: Tell me more about this particular story line for "Peony in Love." I'm really fascinated by this sixteenth century opera that made people lovesick literally.
See: Right. These young women aged thirteen to sixteen loved an opera called "The Peony Pavilion." It's China's greatest love story. It's their "Romeo and Juliet." These young women were never allowed to see the opera. They could only read it. And when they read it, they would catch cases of lovesickness and waste away and die, like the main character in the opera.
This opera tells the story of a young girl who's so protected, so cloistered, that she doesn't even know her family owns a garden. One day she goes out into the garden, she's so overwhelmed by what she sees. She falls asleep, dreams of a young man and, when she wakes up, she's in love with him, has a case of lovesickness, wastes away and dies.
But she comes back to earth as a ghost and, in her wanderings, she meets that young man she dreamed about and, through true love, he brings her back to life. Now in real life, when these girls read this story, something did start to happen in their minds.
These girls, from the moment they were born, were told things like, "It's better to have a dog than a daughter," "You're a worthless branch on the family tree." They had their feet bound when they were five years old, their toes broken, their mid-foot broken, their foot really crushed and reshaped until it was about the size of your thumb, one inch wide and about three inches long.
Then they were set up into these arranged marriages at sixteen years old where they went sight unseen into their husband's homes where they were told, "Have a son, have a son, have a son" and, if they didn't have a son, they could be discarded out into the street or they could be sold away.
These young women, when they looked forward into their lives, they had no hope that they would ever receive love or that they would ever be able to give it. So when they read this opera, they thought perhaps in death, maybe only in death, will I find this one emotion, this love, will I be able to experience it. This one emotion, again, that all of us want even today.
Tavis: You just hit on it now just briefly, but I want to probe a little further. As a writer, why do you find that that L-O-V-E subject matter is, by my read, inexhaustible certainly for writers? I mean, not just for writes, but for artists, for musicians. It is an inexhaustible well of possibility.
See: Right. Well, you know, it's interesting. In English, we have one word to describe this emotion. In Chinese, there are many different words to describe the different aspects of love; gratitude love, respectful love, pity love, mother love. Mother love is a written character composed of two elements. One part means love, the other part means pain, but that's a mother's love.
Of course, there are the kinds of love that we experience when you fall in love for the first time and you're infatuated and you're a teenager. That's very different than when you decide to get married or when you've had children or when you've been married for thirty, forty or fifty years. So we have all of these different kinds of love.
What I think is why we struggle with this a little bit, this idea of love, is because it's so full and yet we have just one word. It does impact on every part of our lives. I think going back to that idea of pity love, respectful love, gratitude love, I can say that and I hope you know exactly what I'm talking about. Yet we don't have a word for those different kinds of love in the English language.
Tavis: Although the older I get, the more I realize, at least for me, I'm not sure there is a word or words for love. The older I get, at least for me, it becomes something that is almost impossible to talk about, to write about, and much easier to express. As people, I think oftentimes we'd rather do the former than the latter. Write about it, talk about it, but not do what it really means to express love to everyday people, to other people.
See: That's right. I think that's true. But again, I think we sort of struggle with that as individual people. How do you express it? What happens when you're hurt and what happens when you've lost love? Now you have to go forward, so I think that's why you find love in books and music and theater and movies because we all are looking at it, again, inside ourselves.
Tavis: Let me ask you two quick personal questions before we leave. You referenced earlier at least by hand design. You did something like this. Do you write in Chinese? Can you write in Chinese?
See: I can do some characters, not too many.
Tavis: I was just curious about that. Finally, I want to go back to something you said earlier. I suspect there are people watching right now who, in all sorts of ethnicities and nationalities and races, find themselves the odd person out physically when they gather with their families, whether you're Black at a white family reunion or whatever the case may be.
How have you processed that over the years, looking a little different than most of the four hundred relatives you have here in Los Angeles?
See: For me, I think so much of my writing - and this doesn't really make it into the books, but just the process of writing for me - is about looking at that. You know, where do I fit in when I don't look like I belong in my family? Do I belong, you know, here? Do I belong there? Do I belong anywhere? Do I belong nowhere?
I actually think that most of us do feel that and it doesn't necessarily have to be a racial thing. It can be do you have curly hair or straight hair? You're too tall or you're too short? All of us sort of struggle with that, I think. So, again, that sense of where do I belong and not necessarily belonging, looking like I belong in the larger American culture and yet sometimes I don't get it. I just don't get what's going on.
Tavis: Between the two of us, that sounds like a good book idea. I'll give my address to you and Random House to send me a check (laughter).
See: Okay (laughter).
Tavis: You heard it here first. That's Lisa See's next book. You heard the suggestion on the Tavis Smiley Show. Anyway, Lisa See's new book on "The New York Times" bestseller list as we speak, "Peony in Love," or Peony if you prefer, a novel by Lisa See. Lisa, nice to have you on the program. All the best to you.
See: Thanks so much for having me.
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