Asia Society Hong Kong executive director’s must-reads for a desert island: five books Alice Mong can’t do without
Mong’s essential list includes a novel about a North Korean mole in the Vietnam war, Malcolm Gladwell’s debut release, The Joy Luck Club, her first self-help book and a memoir of growing up in the Appalachians
Taiwan-born Alice Mong emigrated to the US with her parents and two younger siblings in the 1970s, living first in Virginia and then in northern Ohio where her parents worked in the restaurant business. She went to Ohio State University and began her career working for the state of Ohio promoting trade.
She came to Hong Kong in 1992 to work at the Ohio trade office and quit in 1995 to join Hang Lung Group. In 2002, she returned to the US to work for a couple of non-profit organisations and then served as director of the Museum of Chinese in America. She returned to Hong Kong in late 2011 and helped with the opening of Hong Kong’s Asia Society, where she is now executive director.
Here are the five books she would take to a desert island, in her own words
by Viet Thanh Nguyen, 2015
The story is about an anonymous narrator who is a North Vietnamese mole in the South Vietnamese army. The book goes back and forth through flashbacks. The narrator’s identity is never made clear – he’s half white and half Asian. I enjoy his voice as he navigates these two roles and there’s plenty of dark humour. My favourite part is when he describes being a Hollywood consultant about the Vietnam war: it’s an excellent depiction of the film director. When you look at Hollywood it’s as though Asians don’t exist, they are props, not characters.
