Sympathy, Empathy, Fiction And Deceit

Sweet crabapples

An Interview with Vanessa Hua,
Author of "Deceit and Other Possibilities"

Vanessa Hua is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, where she writes lovely essays about personal life, family life and how these things intersect with the social and the political. She's also an old friend of mine, from back in the days when our desks were near each other's at the old San Francisco Examiner. Vanessa recently published her first book of fiction, a collection of short stories, called "Deceit and Other Possibilities." It opens with the story of an American-born Chinese man whose career as a star in Hong Kong's movie industry has unraveled after a sex scandal. Back in America, he proves utterly incapable of changing his ways. Needless to say, these are not the kinds of stories you'll find in the New Yorker every week. They're funny and often poignant.

Vanessa was kind enough to answer my questions over Facebook Messenger.

Many of the stories in "Deceit and Other Possibilities" concern second-generation Americans in immigrant communities, and often involve a kind of in-between status, where they have some relationship to their parents' homeland, but not as locals. Also, some of them are unsympathetic -- sometimes hilariously so. How did you decide to write this kind of story? Does the fact that immigration is such a hot-button political topic make you nervous about creating unsympathetic characters?

America prides itself on being a nation of immigrants – it’s our origin myth – and yet the more established have always had complicated relationship with the more newly-arrived. We have a presidential candidate who questions the loyalty of immigrants and the children of immigrants. He denies them their humanity and their motivations. He doesn’t want to hear their story, to tell their stories—but I do.

As the American-born daughter of Chinese immigrants, I’ve long been fascinated by stories from the diaspora, and how people are torn between their ancestral and adopted homelands. I don’t know if that’s what I set out to do thematically as collection. I wrote it story by story, but looking back over the body of my work, I see how I was compelled to explore these ideas for more than a decade.

I’m glad you found certain characters hilarious. As for the characters being unsympathetic, I wasn’t on a mission to portray upstanding model minorities. There’s a place for those stories, but I wanted to examine different aspects of the immigrant experience. We are not a monolith: not in a community, not in a family, not even in ourselves.

To my mind, sympathy is different than empathy, which I was attempting. I wanted to understand my characters and their motivations and their actions, to get inside their reasons for behaving badly (very badly.)  I can empathize, even when I’m judging them, even if I wouldn’t trust them to tell the truth. I’m not nervous about writing about a hot-button topic—immigration, sex, religion or whatever the case may be. I can’t control how my work will be interpreted. I have to write about what compels me.

When I met you, you were a reporter for the business section at the San Francisco Examiner. Today, you are a columnist writing personal essays for a newspaper and you have just published a book of fiction. How are these styles of writing similar, and how are they different?

Whether I’m writing fiction, a column, or a news story, I’m guided by my curiosity, by my desire to make sense of the world and to shine a light onto untold stories. With each of these forms, I’ve returned repeatedly to stories of immigration and identity.

Writing for a newspaper got me in the habit of writing daily, and trained me to examine the global economic, historical, and political context that shapes lives. Writing fiction taught me to consider stakes, how what you want most in the world filters everything that colors your vision. With essays and now my column, I’ve been pushing myself to make an argument, to have an opinion in ways that I couldn’t when I was writing a neutral news story.

What also differs is the amount of time it takes to complete each form: I’ll spend years on a book, a week or so on a column, and several weeks (or as little as a day) on a news story. Shorter deadlines keep me sane. I like mixing it up, the sprint of a daily and the satisfaction of publication soon after, compared to the uncertainty and marathon slog of a book – though now it’s been quite marvelous to hold it in my hands and to share it with the world.

Tell us more about how you developed your craft as a writer of personal essays and fiction. I know you kept a very well-regarded blog about your family. How did that lead to becoming a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle?

In college, I took creative writing workshops, and I started to get interested in journalism, too. After graduation I focused on that career for a few years.

Journalism gave me the discipline of writing daily, and provided an amazing opportunity to apply my curiosity to the world, asking why, why, why.  But I still missed writing fiction and after re-reading some of my old stories,I started to worry that I'd forgotten how to write one, how to build characters or create a scene, so I started taking community writing workshops, going to writing conferences, and joining critique groups.

I got up early and wrote before work, and on weekends, but eventually I decided to take the leap.  I went to grad school to get an MFA, where I had space and time to work on a novel and stories alongside great students and faculty. These days, I belong to the San Francisco Writer's Grotto, a wonderful community of writers and journalist in San Francisco. I belong to a writing group – going strong since 2001! – and to trade work with critique partners.

As for blogging, after I moved back to the Bay Area about 3 1/2 years ago, I decided to start a blog about three generations living under one roof. I wrote every day for a year, trying to capture that experience. Within months of starting the blog, I submitted it for consideration to the New York Times for inclusion on its parenting blogroll. The editor picked it, bringing in hundreds of readers each week via the New York Times website.  Half a year later, an editor at AARP magazine found my blog and approached me about doing an interview and photo shoot of our family. It was wonderful to hear from readers, who shared their stories, and the blog helped establish me as someone with expertise on this subject. 

These days, I update it with a teaser to my weekly column in the San Francisco Chronicle, where I continue to write about family dynamics, parenthood, immigration and identity and social justice issues.  I still love reading blogs, home to such diverse voices and opinions – and as I launch my book, I’ve been so grateful to you and other bloggers who have generously taking the time to read and review my work.