Writers from China's diaspora
Asian-American novelist Gail Tsukiyama attributes her success to luck and timing - which merged in the form of Amy Tan. 'Of course, talent is always involved,' she says. 'But there are a lot of talented writers who don't get published. And there are a lot of writers who may not have as much talent who are published.'
Her 1991 debut, Women of the Silk, tells the tale of a factory worker who flees Canton for Hong Kong at the start of the second world war, but Tsukiyama says the book's success came about because it appeared in the wake of The Joy Luck Club. 'I hate to say it, but I think if I'd written it 10 years prior, it probably wouldn't have been picked up.'
Tsukiyama regards Tan as the godmother of Asian-American literature. Just look at how many Asian-American writers there are now, she says, citing as examples Dai Sijie (Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress) and Ha Jin (War Trash).
Tsukiyama was born in San Francisco. Her Japanese father was an electronics guru; her Chinese mother was from Hong Kong. The Chinese influence proved the stronger, filling her childhood with vivid memories. Tsukiyama says that, during one Hong Kong stay, an uncle took her to a place where she saw stacked crates stuffed with bundles of metre-long, greenish brown snakes, whose bile was mixed with rice wine to enhance virility in men.
She finds such recollections 'almost enchanting'. 'You can't leave it behind,' she says of Chinese culture.
All the same, as she grew up, she tried to deny her heritage and be 'the American kid'. She avoided learning how to write in Chinese. Later, the short stories she wrote were populated by individuals called Joe and Edward.