Foreign yet familiar
A sense of place is all-important to author Lisa See’s storytelling style
By Megan Sebestyen 08/27/2009
For Los Angeles-based novelist Lisa See, author of seven books including her recent best-seller, “Shanghai Girls,” writing is inspired by her ties to her rich Chinese heritage, sparked by curiosity about its history and influenced by the Chinatown of her childhood.
In “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan,” which sold more than 1.3 million copies in the United States, See tells a story set in remote 19th-century China, detailing the deeply affecting story of lifelong, intimate friends bound by oppression. See’s fifth novel, “Peony in Love,” again returns to China to bring to life an ancient time steeped in tradition. “On Gold Mountain,” a New York Times Notable Book, is the nonfiction distillation of the five years See spent interviewing her Chinese family members to tell of her grandfather’s immigration.
See’s collection of three mysteries exploring Chinese history began with “Flower Net,” a national bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book of 1997, a Los Angeles Times bestseller and Amazon’s No. 1 thriller of the year. “Flower Net” elegantly renders a portrait of two different and complex cultures: Beijing and the streets of LA’s Chinatown. See followed with “Dragon Bones” and “The Interior,” again drawing on her knowledge of China to create the setting.
One Book/ One Glendale named See as the author for fall with “Shanghai Girls,” a story strongly reflective of her connections to Los Angeles and Pasadena, where her family still owns a business. Having spent much of her childhood in Chinatown, See uses this familiar neighborhood as a setting for a novel following two sisters transplanted from China in the late 1930s.
“With ‘Shanghai Girls’ I have come back to Los Angeles,” See said, after writing five books which were set in China. “I was writing about a very specific time in part because that’s all disappearing; it is no longer the Chinatown of that time.
“Chinatown was kind of like a home base,” said See, since as a child her family moved around often in the LA area. “It didn’t change. You knew what it was.” The feel of those neighborhoods is captured like a family album with snapshots of culturally unique businesses and homes.
But the city has changed: “I can’t go back to that Spring Street Chinatown of my childhood,” said See. “The street is still there, but none of the businesses are there and a lot of the buildings aren’t there anymore either.”
And while “one of the things I really love about Los Angeles is that it’s always changing, at the same time I really mourn the things that disappear,” See said. “Writing ‘Shanghai Girls’ was very much about capturing that time and those places in Chinatown … to try to capture and preserve it in words before it disappears completely.”
This book also ventures off Spring Street, where See’s family owned their business, to include colorful interludes such as forays to the beach.
Conveying a sense of place is consistent in See’s work. “Every place has its own character and it should have all the elements of an actual character that you write about,” she said.
Living around LA all her life, See said she loves the city for its diversity. “It is a very layered place,” she said. In Pasadena See still gives guest lectures and visits her family’s store, the F. Suite One Co., which from various shops has sold Chinese antiques for over 100 years.
Not just a scribbler, See wrote the libretto for Los Angeles Opera based on “On Gold Mountain,” which premiered June 2000 at the Japan American Theatre. See also served as guest curator for an exhibit on the Chinese-American experience for the Autry Museum of Western Heritage — which traveled to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, in 2001 — and developed the Family Discovery Gallery at the Autry Museum, based on her biracial, bicultural family, filtered through a view of her father’s LA childhood.
See is responsible for the design of a walking tour of Chinatown as well as the companion guidebook for Angel’s Walk LA, which celebrated the opening of the MTA’s Chinatown metro station.
Currently at work on a “Shanghai Girls” sequel, due for release in May or June 2011, See said an upcoming movie version of “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan” should begin filming in November.
Still, See is content to call LA home, won over by the city’s diversity “that brings great food, this world experience where people bring their different cultures and different traditions into making Los Angeles a very vibrant and exciting community.”
The city offers opportunities “to meet a wide range of people and have a wide range of experiences. I think that is part of what makes life interesting.”
For a talk and reading in celebration of One Book/One Glendale, See will appear at
7 p.m. Oct. 28 at Glendale Public Library, 222 E. Harvard St., Glendale (818) 548-2042].
Readers can join book discussions about “Shanghai Girls” 2 to 4 p.m. Sept. 20 at the Autry National Center [4700 Western Heritage Way; Griffith Park (323) 667-2000], 6:30 p.m. Oct. 8 at The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf [763 Americana Way Glendale], 11 a.m. Oct. 10 at Pacific Park Branch Library [501 S. Pacific Ave.], 7 p.m. Oct. 13 at Glendale Central Library Special Collections Room [222 E. Harvard St.] and 6:15 p.m. Oct. 27 at Montrose-Crescenta Branch Library [2465 Honolulu Ave.].
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