spotlight on author vanessa hua

​​An interview by Sue Staats

Sue
We love it when our Stories on Stage Sacramento writers return with brilliant new work. Vanessa Hua, whose best-selling new novel Forbidden City was published to universal praise in May, is returning on June 24 for her third appearance as a featured writer.  Three times in the past five years, we’ve been thrilled by her storytelling. Vanessa is a genius at finding interesting nuggets and expanding them into stunning, multilayered fiction. As she says, “fiction flourishes where the official records ends.”  With Deceit and Other Possibilities, she gave voice to immigrant families navigating a new America. With A River of Stars, it was the hidden business of shipping Chinese women to America to give birth and gain American citizenship. With Forbidden City, she uncovers a secret pleasure of Chairman Mao’s. Vanessa, will you get us started?

Vanessa
About a decade and a half ago, I saw a black and white photo of Chairman Mao surrounded by giggling young women, all dressed in plaid. They look like bobbysoxers. And I was completely intrigued, wondering what was going on. As it turned out, the Chairman was a fan of ballroom dancing, and in fact it was an American journalist, Agnes Smedley, who traveled to the rebel stronghold in 1937, who taught Chairman Mao the foxtrot and square dancing. And in the decades that followed, he had what were called “cultural work troops” of young women, who would partner with him on the dance floor, and some of them ended up becoming his companions. They had titles like Nurse and Confidential Clerk, and they would handle his correspondence and interpret what he was saying when his speech became garbled. And, you know, one of them met him when she was 18, and, at 31, was at his side when he died.  

And this raised two questions: First, what was it like for someone raised to believe that this man was a god to, suddenly, be a part of his inner circle and to be intimate with him? And second, how did these women survive the politics of the highest echelons of power, when so many rivals of the Chairman in those years fell by the wayside? 
The research I found was limited. The Chairman's physician wrote a memoir in which he said that for these young women, it was the highest honor of their lives, their most exhilarating experience.

I knew it had to be more complicated than that. And that's what got me on my journey of writing the novel. 

Sue
When was this? Just after you saw the photo?

Vanessa.
It was in 2007. I was in grad school. I finished the manuscript about nine months after graduation, got an agent who sent it out on submission in the fall of 2009, and it came close to selling but did not, which was heartbreaking. But, you know, all I could do was continue writing, I worked on what would become my short story collection, Deceit and Other Possibilities, as well as my novel, A River of Stars. But always, in between those projects, I kept returning to the book that would become Forbidden City. It just  couldn't quit me. It was a story that felt so important for me to tell. You know, she's just one example of the many girls and women who've had a hand in shaping history yet are not a part of any official record. 

Sue 
Did your character and her journey change over the period of time you were working on the novel, revising it. Did she evolve with the years?

Vanessa
When I think back on the earliest drafts, she probably was more of a passive observer. And I realized, there are ways in which she might exercise her agency, even if it was in a thought, or in the smallest of gestures that resisted the many constraints, that the patriarchy would impose on someone like her.  There have always been forms of resistance, so I would say that, over time, she became much more, she had much more agency as I proceeded with revisions.  Other changes were that in the original drafts the story took place maybe 30% in San Francisco’s Chinatown, and 70%, in China during the Cultural Revolution. Now, the Chinatown portion is just the epilogue and, and prologue. But, through it all, she was resourceful and could think on her feet. She reminds me very much of the factory girls I encountered as a reporter in China in the early 2000s, who had left their home in the villages and traveled thousands of miles to have a life different than the one handed down to them. So, she's part of that the long tradition of those who leave versus those who stay and in that sense, her character has remained consistent.

Sue
And she turns out to be a pivotal part of the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, which roiled China for the next ten years, until Mao died.
There’s part of this book that becomes increasingly unsettling, and that’s the seamy underbelly of the politics in it. It's Mao's China, after all, and the more I read and watch the current January 6 hearings, the more Mao's creation of the Cultural Revolution, his shaming, and his manipulation and his cruelty called a mind the current political climate and impact of certain politician. You hint at this very diplomatically, in your author's note at the end of the novel. Salon magazine recently was even more blunt: a recent article outright compared Trump to Mao. I was curious if the parallel became obvious to you as you worked on your novel over time, particularly in the last couple of years, and I'm wondering if interviewers ask you about this.

Vanessa
Oh, definitely. Interviewers, and readers as well, they'll mention just how It echoes our present moment. I didn't set out to shape the chairman in the mold of Trump, but it just shows that demagogues are a persistent part of our history. What I do find interesting is when interviewers try to make the Cultural Revolution seem like something that could only happen in China, or that it's somehow  something in the Chinese character that makes them open to being swayed by a demagogue. And I just have to kind of bring it back around and say the past is never as distant as it seems, and demagogues are never as distant as they seem. Even the novel’s discussion of female bodily autonomy is very salient to the kind of Supreme Court decision that may get handed down this week. And it just speaks to the fact that things can be timely and timeless, because the issue itself remains intractable. 

Sue
It’s fascinating to me how these teenaged girls survived and had influence in the middle of all intrigue and turmoil. I’m wondering if you’ve talked with any teens who have read the book, and how they respond to a powerful, yet very young and flawed, teenage character like Mei.

Vanessa
I have had teen readers from my previous books, and they've responded strongly to the stories. I haven't yet heard from a teenager with this book. But it is interesting. I've had a couple of grandmothers or mothers say, can I get this for my daughter, or granddaughter? And at first I wondered, but then for example, one of them went to Berkeley High School, and I thought, you know, she’s better equipped to deal with these issues than I was as a teenager. Or, if they've watched that HBO show Euphoria, then they are exposed to these things. I would love to hear from teen readers. 

Sue
Speaking of being a teenager - there's a wonderful, quirky website called Earlywork, http://www.earlywork.net/ which has a couple of stories from you. The first one is about the revenge of a witch you wrote at the age of eight. But the second is remarkable: you were seventeen and a junior in high school. What's clear to me is that, even then, you were already a writer who was very confident, who already had a tone, and a style, which is not exactly the same as you employ in your novels and short stories now, but a baby version of it.  And I'm wondering if you always knew that writing was what you wanted to do? 

Vanessa
Oh, definitely. That website is a really fun collection of early work of writers. And about the witch story: I have a distinct memory of sometime in elementary school, like, second or third grade. We wrote stories in class, and either the teacher read them aloud, or we had to read them aloud, and people had to vote by raising their hand on which one was their favorite, and mine won. Then I immediately saw a classmate lean over to her friend and say, I only voted for hers because it was the longest. So it was my first public recognition and first snarky review.  

I think it also has to do with the fact that I'm the American-born daughter of Chinese immigrants. So from early on I had this double vision.  I was aware of how the world inside my home was different than the world outside of it. And I sought out answers, either through observation, or through books. And in those books that I read as a kid, whether Jo March of Little Women, or Anne of Green Gables, or Laura of Little House on the Prairie, there were all these strong-willed girls who dreamed of becoming writers and who did so. I think that just opened up the possibility of wanting that to be me. So yes, it’s something I wanted to do since I was very young.

Sue
You had to have had parents who either implicitly or explicitly encouraged you.

Vanessa
Definitely. My father was a structural engineer and my mother, a scientist. But they weren't stereotypical Chinese parents. Actually, I don't know of anyone who really is a stereotype. But I do remember that they let my brother and me draw on the upstairs walls. They didn’t discourage our  creativity. And they eventually just painted it over when that stage was over. But they let the kids experiment. 

Father's Day is coming up, and my father passed away about a decade ago. And, you know, I still think about him all the time, and how his sort of faith and encouragement of me was so important, and how that, in those many hard years of trying to get the novel published, like he was very worried, but just having that support and encouragement was, you know, it's a lifelong thing. And that's part of what has helped me keep going over the years.

Sue
That’s powerful support. And now I want to know about you. Here’s what I’ve gleaned from your website, interviews, and your Facebook page: you’re a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, journalist and essayist, a novelist and short story writer, a wife and mother of twins, a runner, and among the many interests you have is one you picked up during pandemic walks with your family, foraging for wild foods. I am absolutely astonished how one person could fit this all into one life. How do you organize your day? And how do you manage your time?

Vanessa
So it varies from day to day. And obviously, the pandemic can upend things, even when you're not trying to manage any one of these responsibilities. It’s not necessarily a set schedule, but sort of, I would say, there's an overall maxim of how I make the most use of the time that I do have. 

For example, I use an app on my phone that converts PDFs to voice. So I will listen to my manuscript in progress, or say, student manuscripts, whenever I'm out for a walk, or commuting, or, honestly, I've done it while lifting weights so I can still be in the world of whatever I want to think about or be working on. 

Also, I know when my hours and power are, and for me, it's morning. I try to do the work that's most important to me, that matters most, in those hours. I save invoicing, let's say, for another time of day or another part of the week. But of course, this all varies, due to like, various responsibilities, or if I have a deadline coming up. 

Two more thoughts. One is, I like to create a “to do” list, but I also, at the end of the day, try to reflect upon what I did accomplish. Because sometimes I feel like I’m spinning my wheels, and just understanding what I did get done is very helpful in terms setting the tone for the next day. And the second: just realizing that the first draft is not the last draft and that the work is incremental. 

Oh, and there’s a third, which is, make the most use of the material that you have. I call it the roast chicken method. On the first day you roast chicken. The second day you pick it apart for sandwiches and the third day, you boil the bones for stock. So extract everything you can from the material. With A River of Stars,  for example: I did research into this postpartum birth practice and wrote an essay about that practice, looking at science studies and braiding in my own experience, and some of that ended up in the novel as well. So yeah, so yeah, those are just sort of my Maxim's to live by.

Sue
I love the roast chicken analogy. Words to live by! 

I’m also wondering if you’re a quick writer. When you’re on deadline, say for the Chronicle column, do you dash it off or do you labor at it?

Vanessa
It depends. Some weeks, it'll come more easily than others. Or sometimes, if it’s a busy stretch with lots of competing responsibilities, I'll jot notes or openings of paragraphs, and I'll voice dictate it into my phone, and then I'll upload it to my computer. And I'll realize I've mapped out a pretty good rough draft. So I make use of even interstitial time. In a certain way, I’m always working. I don't know if it's good or bad. If you can jot those notes to yourself, then then it can come together quickly. 

Sue
Sounds like you take advantage of technology to manage your working day, rather than having to make time to sit down with pen and paper, or even at a keyboard.

Vanessa
Well, you know, the iPhone is  handy. I just taught a workshop over the weekend, actually. And it was interesting. Some people did all their writing exercises by hand in big journals, and I haven't done that in a while.

Sue
Forbidden City is a national bestseller, as was A River of Stars. With this success with your fiction, will you continue to do your journalistic and essay work?

Vanessa
Oh, yes, I love being able to work in different genres. And in fact, in addition to working on my next novel, I'm putting together an essay collection proposal. So I want to be able to continue to work in those forums. And I'm extremely grateful to be a national best seller. You realize how everything is such a team endeavor. And I thank the sales reps and the booksellers and librarians and the readers and people like you who form such a wonderful literary community, that promotes emerging and established writers, and I'm grateful for that. 

Sue 
It's has been a miraculous and amazing thing to watch writers like you appear with an initial collection and then appear again and have something bigger and then appear again and have something even bigger.  It’s our reward to watch and appreciate writers as their world expands. So for us, the gratitude is a two way street.

Sue
And now, the last question. Your braids. They’re quite an unusual author signature, and I hope you keep them forever. I wanted to ask if they’re a salute to Mai and her braids, which are frequently mentioned in the novel. Or, did you just stop cutting your hair during COVID , when we weren’t going to hairdressers, and end up liking it? 

Vanessa
Well, the braids are definitely on the cover. It’s from a revolutionary poster, which features a young woman with the twin braids. The style at the time was they either had a very utilitarian bowl cut,  or they had these two braids. And so my hair? I have not cut it since the pandemic began. I was doing it in solidarity with one of my twin sons who was growing his hair out. He didn't cut it until ages five to 11 could get vaccinated, and he could get vaccinated. And he's still keeping it rather long. And I think some time in elementary school or middle school, I got some book on how to braid your own hair. So I'd known how to French braid my hair for most of my life and sometimes I’ll pull it back in a ponytail or the French braid, but doing the double braids definitely was an homage to Mei. 

I’ll share something special that happened: on the night of my San Francisco book launch my fellow members of the Writer’s Grotto in San Francisco secretly got together and said, we're going to wear our hair in braids and form a braid brigade, just like Vanessa. So I walked into the reading. And 20 or 30 people had their hair in braids, including one man who even bought a wig that he braided. It was extremely heartwarming and yes, I I've been wearing it braided, especially for public appearances. You'll definitely see it on the 24th.

Sue
We’re counting on it. Thank you Vanessa.