Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Julie Wu on "The Third Son"



Listening to Dad: Julie Wu on "The Third Son"

By Julie Wu | Photo of Julie Wu by Nierika Nims

    ​
    {in her words}
    I was 35 and expecting my own child by the time I listened – truly listened – to my father. I had been trying to write a Taiwan-based novel and could not, despite years of effort, make it work. I needed to interview him.
    He greeted me at his door with his usual kiss on the cheek.
    "So, where do you want me to start?" my father joked as I set up my tape recorder. "When I was a baby?"
    I laughed, almost convinced to dismiss his childhood entirely. But I said, "Yes."
    He leaned his head back in his recliner and the smile dropped from his lips. His jaw, square and handsome as any Hong Kong movie star's, set so a muscle bulged in front of his ear. Beside him were shelves filled with our old books and board games, and behind him, picture windows showcasing the lush New England landscape, the pine trees tiered in shades of green.
    He stared straight ahead, his voice gravelly. "My memories of my childhood," he said, "are not exactly happy."

    THE BEATINGS SHOULD not have surprised me. My parents, especially my mother, had always implied that my father had not been loved as a child.
    But I had never known the details. For a sixth-grade biography assignment, I had inscribed his birth date in my composition book, followed by his schools, his immigration to America. "Junior college in Taiwan," he said. "And then PhD in America. Not so easy."
    "Your father's a remarkable man," my sixth grade teacher said, handing back my composition book, and I looked up at her in wonder. My father was an electrical engineer who was home every day at 5:16 p.m. He liked bad puns and dozed through all my orchestra performances. The one way he differed from my friends' dads was his knowledge of, seemingly, everything. One summer he single-handedly poured the concrete foundation for an attached storage room, then topped the room with a deck, complete with built-in benches and room for a picnic table, grill, and bug-zapper.
    We did not always see eye to eye. After college, instead of applying to medical schools, I applied to opera performance programs. My father declared that artists were parasites of society.
    "All Chinese parents just want their children to be doctors!" I said.
    "That's not true!" he said. "I didn't want it for your sister and brother. Only you."
    And yet it was during that nadir in our relationship – as I sat at the worn Formica counter in my parents' kitchen – that an image came to my mind of a lonely, unhappy little boy on the floor of his parents' house in Taiwan. The image was so vivid that I rushed to write it down, to describe the dark floorboards, musty and worn, and the sandalwood-scented dust. I didn't know where the image came from. But suddenly, I knew what it was to write.
    I started a novel about that boy. I planned a masterwork of high drama, of romance and pathos and sociological importance. I wanted a hero slaying a dragon. I absolutely did not want to write a book about my bourgeois mom and dad.
    But I needed background on Taiwanese customs. I jotted down some questions and called my parents from Bloomington, Indiana. Their answers shocked me.
    "I never told you I had a brother who died – "
    My great grandfather had sold my grandmother for complaining too much. My uncle picked up a bag of family money at the bank and found it transformed into foil-wrapped chocolate. My mind reeled. How boring and small my novel now seemed. I stopped asking questions and abandoned the book entirely.
    I also left Indiana and went to medical school. I needed to experience more of life.

    "MY MOTHER WOULD hide behind the door," my father said, continuing in his gravelly voice. "Before I got to the door, I already knew what's coming, what to expect," he said. "I don't recall I ever lucked out."
    My own mother was cooking dinner in the kitchen, and as the savory smells of ginger and cloves wafted downstairs, my father continued staring ahead, telling me that he had, in one of the town's wealthiest households, become malnourished enough to require medical treatment for a year.
    It was my mother, he told me, who had been the first to believe in him, to get him to believe in himself. If not for her, he would never have come to America.

    AT HOME, I PLAYED back the recording of the interview. The microphone, to my horror, had been inadequate and I had to turn the volume all the way up on my stereo. I typed it all out right away, before I could forget it.
    I never had a role model. What a father was supposed to be like with a child and so forth . . .
    I did have a role model. What a miracle that was.
    I had my book. And through the years, my book became that novel of drama, romance, and pathos that I always wanted to write. I changed many facts – major ones – to increase the unity and drama of the story. But the emotional journey remains my father's.
    I can't help thinking that my image of the sad little boy on that musty floor was my father. Perhaps, when our relationship was at its most strained, my mind intuited why and suggested a means – writing – for us to stay close. I had taken the image of the boy and tried to wrest it into telling my story. I had to grow up to let the boy tell his own story and to find out that he was, in fact, the hero I was always looking for. Because being home for dinner can be an act of grace. And a kiss at the door can be, for some, a feat braver than the slaying of any kind of dragon.

    © 2013 by Julie Wu. Reprinted by permission of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. All rights reserved.

    Editorial Reviews

    From Booklist

    Growing up in Japanese-occupied Taiwan, Saburo feels rejected by his family. He finds love with Yoshiko, and, after their marriage, he leaves her and their baby son to find them a home in the U.S., but it takes years to get a college education and find work in Michigan, which will allow him to bring his loved ones to join him. The 1950s political history is always in the background—the aftermath of the occupation, the Chinese nationalist takeover—but it is the personal story that drives the narrative: the family fights, Saburo’s suffering as the unwanted child, his rage at his older brother’s privilege, and, in contrast, the tenderness of his relationship with his wife and child. The wry humor will also hold readers: he finally gets a job teaching what he knows nothing about, barely one chapter ahead of his students. And there is no slick reconciliation; his father’s visit to America intensifies the fury on both sides. Rooted in time and culture, Wu’s debut novel opens up the family immigrant story with no sweet resolution after leaving home. --Hazel Rochman

    Review

    “A boy growing up in Japanese-occupied Taiwan in the 1940s will do anything to escape his tormenting family and reconnect with his first love in this compelling work of fiction.” —O: The Oprah Magazine

    “A stunningly pure and inspiring love story . . . Deeply compelling.” —The Boston Globe

    “Wu's debut novel is an appealing coming-of-age story packed with vivid historical detail.” —The Christian Science Monitor

    “Wu presents an alluring story that hits all the right emotional buttons and maintains readers’ empathy from the first page to the last.” —Kirkus Reviews

    “You may have read other Asian American historical novels, but you've never read anything like Julie Wu's affecting and emotional The Third Son. It's one of the don't-miss books of the year.” —Beth Fish Reads

    “With great authority and skill, Wu depicts not just the grand events of the era, such as the Kuomintang (KMT)'s arrival in Taiwan and the brutal occupation that followed, but also the small, private moments of life . . . The Third Son should be the start of a very successful writing career for Julie Wu, and I hope she will not need long to write her next novel--I'm excited to read it.” —Fiction Writers Review

    (Reviews)

    Review

    “From the first page of her debut novel, Julie Wu effortlessly slips us into Saburo's world--a life that begins in hardship and cruelty in 1940s Taiwan, but eventually finds happiness and fulfillment in the American Dream. I was entranced by this tale of an immigrant who boldly makes a new future for himself out of the wreckage of a Dickensian childhood. The Third Son is about love lost, love regained, and--most of all--love's endurance. Julie Wu has taken the story of her own parents and turned it into a universal story that will have everyone cheering for Saburo and Yoshiko, two lovers whose faith in each other spans continents and oceans.” (David Abrams, author of Fobbit)

    “A talented young writer has arrived. And you'll be hearing a lot about her new novel, The Third Son. It's a wonderful debut filled with compelling characters and riveting drama. Do not miss it.” (William Martin, New York Times bestselling author of The Lincoln Letter)     

    “Clear your schedule! The Third Son is your next obsessive read. Julie Wu’s book reads like an instant classic. This electrifying story of human yearning, perseverance, and love, introduces an unlikely hero who struggles to prevail against the limitations of his birth in embattled midcentury Taiwan. His experiences are authentically foreign, as we see post-WWII America through his eyes, and yet compellingly familiar, as he endures trials of mind, body, and spirit, persevering against brutal circumstances to risk everything for love and for his future. Wu's storytelling is masterful.” (Lydia Netzer, author of Shine Shine Shine)

    “An epic and beautiful debut, Wu had me rooting for her hero right from the very start. The Third Son is a novel of chances and choices, love and loyalty, hope and heartache. A magnificently inspiring story of one man's odyssey to freedom.” (Carol Rifka Brunt, author of Tell the Wolves I'm Home)

    “This novel has it all:  mystery, family, the sweep of history, humor. Once you begin to read the story of Saburo Tong, you won't be able to put it down.” (Marie Myung-Ok Lee, author of Somebody's Daughter)

    “This novel opens with a blast of machine-gun fire, as a schoolboy delivers a girl from death during World War II.  Julie Wu spins a fable of borders—between childhood and adulthood, Taiwan and America. In deceptively simple prose, Wu evokes the heartache of people caught in the middle.” (Pagan Kennedy, author of Confessions of a Memory Eater)

    (Unpublished endorsements)

    From the Inside Flap

    “An epic and beautiful debut, Wu had me rooting for her hero right from the very start. The Third Son is a novel of chances and choices, love and loyalty, hope and heartache. A magnificently inspiring story of one man's odyssey to freedom.” —Carol Rifka Brunt, author of Tell the Wolves I'm Home

    In the middle of a terrifying air raid
 in Japanese-occupied Taiwan, Saburo, the least-favored son of a Taiwanese politician, runs through a peach forest for cover. It’s there that he stumbles upon Yoshiko, whose descriptions of her loving family are to Saburo like a glimpse of paradise. Meeting her is a moment he will remember forever, and for years he will try to find her again. When he finally does, she is by the side of his oldest brother and greatest rival.

    Set in a tumultuous and violent period of Taiwanese history—as the Chinese Nationalist Army lays claim to the island and one autocracy replaces another—and the fast-changing American West of the late 1950s and early 1960s, The Third Son is a richly textured story of lives governed by the inheritance of family and the legacy of culture, and of a young man determined to free himself from both.

    In Saburo, debut author Julie Wu has created an extraordinary character who is determined to fight for everything he needs and wants, from food to education to his first love. A sparkling and moving story, it will have readers cheering for a young boy with his head in the clouds who, against all odds, finds himself on the frontier
 of America’s space program.
    --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

    About the Author

    After graduating from Harvard with a BA in Literature, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, Julie Wu received an MD at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons. She has received a writing grant from the Vermont Studio Center and won a 2012 Massachusetts Cultural Council fellowship. Her website is www.juliewuauthor.com.

    Interview with Julie Wu, Author of The Third Son

    Debut novelist Julie Wu
    Debut novelist Julie Wu
    Jaime Boler: Julie, thank you for allowing me to ask you these questions.  The Third Son utterly captivated me from the first page and transported me to 1940s Taiwan.  Once I started reading your story, I couldn’t stop!  I know readers are going to love The Third Son just as much as I do.
    Julie Wu: It makes me so happy to hear that—thank you, and thanks for having me!
    JB: You are a physician.  How did you get into writing?
    JW: The writing actually came first.  I always loved fiction, and actually my undergraduate degree was in Literature.  I started writing soon after college, when I was in graduate school, studying opera at Indiana University.  I realized then that writing would be my ultimate occupation, but I also realized that my sheltered life experience limited my writing.  I wanted to see and experience all I could of life, and meet all kinds of people.
    I’d previously been thinking of pursuing medicine, and I thought that a medical career would not only be personally rewarding but would also enrich my point of view as a writer.  So instead of MFA programs, I applied to medical schools.
    JB: I did some searching and saw where The Third Son is your father’s story or loosely based on his experience growing up.  Can you explain?
    JW: I would describe The Third Son as “inspired by” my father’s story.  The emotional journey is very close to his, but the actual scenes and events of the story, large and small, are essentially fictional.
    JB: I also discovered you began working on this novel in 2001.  What has the journey been like?
    JW: Long.  A learning experience.  Torture.  A joy.  I have learned a lot about myself, about writing, about the writing industry, and about Facebook.
    JB: Your first agent suggested you write The Third Son as a memoir.  Why did you want to tell your story in novel form?
    JW: I enjoy the immersive, emotional aspect of fiction.  Writing a non-fiction book was not going to give me that, especially since my father does not recall a lot of sensory detail or actual dialogue.  And I did not want to write a story about myself and my relationship with my father because I have had a pretty good, privileged life and a pretty good relationship with my parents.  How boring is that?
    JB: How many revisions did the story undergo?  And how different was it then compared to the final, printed book?  Was all the revising and rewriting worth it?
    JW: I lost track of the number of revisions.  I didn’t even print them all out, but I have drawers, trunks, and filing cabinets filled with drafts.  Someday I’ll have a big bonfire.
    The book is about 98% different from the first draft.  The first draft, I’d say, was a somewhat tentative family chronicle.  At some point I committed wholeheartedly to fiction, and the finished book is a real, dimensional, and hopefully satisfying novel.  I think it’s the best book I could have written, so yes, it was worth it.
    JB: How does it feel to finally see it in print?
    JW: Awesome!  I’ll admit I didn’t jump up and down hyperventilating when I first saw my galley, but I do hold it and flip through it a lot.  I think seeing the hardcover with all the blurbs on it, in bookstores, will be very exciting.

    JB: All the early reviews about The Third Son are positive; some are positively glowing.  How do you feel about the wonderful early praise your book is getting?
    thirdJW: It feels great.  One of the reasons I wrote the book was to shed light on the modern political history of Taiwan, which is so little known in the West.   The more successful my book is, the more people will be learning a bit more about Taiwan and the Taiwanese people, which is wonderful.
    JB: What kind of research did you do for your story?
    JW: I interviewed my parents extensively.  For the Taiwan sections, I read as many books and articles as I could find on Taiwan before, during, and after that period.  I was able to use the internet to find photographs.  I had traveled to Taiwan in 1990 with the intention of writing a (different) book set in Taiwan, so I also had extensive notes from that time.
    For the sections in America, I consulted books and magazines from and on the fifties and sixties, watched some old movies, and read a lot about the International Geophysical Year.   I also visited MIT’s Haystack Observatory to speak with a slightly puzzled atmospheric scientist.
    JB: When you were writing the story, did you have any sense how big it could be?
    JW: I knew the story had the potential to be big.  My job was to realize that potential.
    JB: My favorite characters in the story are Saburo and Toru.  Do you have a favorite?
    JW: Oh, that’s like choosing among your children.  I really do love them all.   One of the things I’ve learned over the course of revising this book is that even your minor characters must have richness and purpose.  I’ll say I’m particularly fond of my mathematician-gardener, Professor Chen, in part because he did not exist until my latest revisions and now he’s not only kind of fabulous, but also a core part of the book.
    JB: Your story is so emotional, especially when Saburo is mistreated and/or abused.  Yet, this is based on your own father.  Did you ever get emotional while writing it, so choked up to had to stop and leave it for a while?
    JW: Interestingly, I did not.  I really thought of Saburo as his own character.  While writing I was imagining what this person Saburo would feel, think, and do.
    JB: What do your parents think of the novel?
    JW: It’s difficult for them to read it with any objectivity, of course.  They are on some level disappointed that the novel isn’t their true story.  At the same time they recognize that the story I’ve written is much more page turning and appealing to the general reader than one that would have stuck to the facts.  And my father still finds reading the book to be a very emotional experience.
    JB: What do you like to do when you aren’t writing?
    JW: Gosh, lots of things.  I like to sing, read, garden, snuggle with the kids.  When the kids are older I’d like to get back to painting and playing the violin.
    JB: If you could have dinner with any author, living or dead, who would you choose and why?
    JW: Tolstoy.  I’d love to pick his brain.  I’d also love to tell him how many former Taiwanese political prisoners I’ve spoken to have listed him as one of their favorite authors.
    JB: What book is on your nightstand right now?
    JW: My nightstand is covered in piles of books—novels, biographies, writing craft books, children’s books, and parenting books.  I can’t even see the clock anymore.
    JB: If you could describe yourself in one word, what would it be?
    JW: Keen.
    JB: Are you going on an author tour?  If so, which cities will you visit?
    JW: Yes.  I’m still waiting to hear where I’m going.
    the third sonJB: What do you hope readers take with them after reading The Third Son?
    JW: I’m hoping readers will feel moved and empowered.  I’m also hoping they’ll have learned a bit about Taiwan and the Taiwanese people.
    JB: Are you working on anything new?
    JW: I am working on a book inspired by the former political prisoners I interviewed in Taiwan this past October.  It will cover the same approximate time period as The Third Son, but will be about people more directly involved in the February 28 Incident, the subsequent massacres, and the White Terror.  The book will take place partly on Green Island, a wind-swept volcanic island off Taiwan’s coast, where political prisoners—mostly apolitical university students—were kept for years, forced to build their own prison and grow their own food.  In the early years the prisoners interacted with the island’s poor inhabitants, teaching them in schools and in the fields, and providing medical care.  These people were, and are, amazing.
    JB: This story, so grim, is full of hope.  I felt as if I were reading a Jamie Ford or Janice Y.K. Lee novel and not a debut novel.  You are so amazingly talented, and I thank you for agreeing to chat with me about The Third Son. Good luck with the book, Julie!
    JW: Thanks so much, Jaime!  This interview was a pleasure.

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