Yang Huang's Author Talks during the #AAPI month, on MY GOOD SON

MY GOOD SON is a Nautilus Gold Award winner and Lambda Literary Awards finalist. May is the AAPI month. I am excited to give five readings at the local libraries and UC Berkeley extension school. Hope to see you in person or on Zoom. Visit https://www.yanghuang.com/events for details.

Hercules Library Author Talk: Yang Huang on My Good Son

Wednesday, May 4, 2022, 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM

Register for Zoom: https://tinyurl.com/mygoodson

Oakland Library Lakeview Branch: In-person Author Talk

Saturday, May 7, 2022, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM

550 El Embarcadero, Oakland, CA 94610

Oakland Library Dimond Branch: In-person Author Talk

Wednesday, May 11, 2022, 6:30 PM – 7:30 PM

3565 Fruitvale Ave, Oakland, CA 94602

Walnut Creek Library: In-person Authors Gala

Saturday, May 14, 2022, 5:30 PM – 8:30 PM

1644 North Broadway, Walnut Creek, CA, 94596

San Francisco Public Library: In-Person Bilingual Talk

Saturday, June 25, 2022, 1:00 PM ­– 3:00 PM

Latino Room, 100 Larkin Street, San Francisco, CA, 94102

Lastly, I want to share with you a celebratory book cover.

Writing Loving before Loving: A Marriage in Black and White

Today I am excited to welcome an author I admire, Joan Steinau Lester, whose new memoir LOVING BEFORE LOVING: A Marriage in Black and White will be out on May 18. I will attend her virtual reading in Oakland. Join us to celebrate Joan’s extraordinary love story and support our local bookstores!

Joan Steinau Lester is an award-winning commentator, columnist, and author of critically acclaimed books, including Mama's Child and Black, White, Other. Her writing has appeared in such publications as USA Today, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Cosmopolitan, and Huffington Post.

Joan Steinau Lester's Website - www.joanlester.com
Joan Steinau Lester's Blog - www.joanlester.com/blog

Writing Loving before Loving: A Marriage in Black and White

If I had a nickel for each time a stranger has told me, “I know my life would be a bestseller!” I’d be wealthy. Sometimes they even offer their story, asking me to simply write it down. “My life has been so amazing, the book would write itself.”

Well, not really. Books do not write themselves, and the record of lives is not laid out like a script, awaiting only transcription. A memoir, like any other book, is a deliberately created piece of art, using, in this case, one’s life as the clay. But there are endless possibilities for shaping the raw material. What is the theme? The voice? Which events to include, which to highlight, how to connect them all? And why now?

Read More

My Favorite Interviews

Writing is a solitary journey, until the book is published. It is at once terrifying and exciting to meet the readers. Being interviewed is a true privilege. I especially treasured these interchanges when the interviewer discovered something I didn’t know about my stories and characters. For this reason I listed these interviews to be my favorite. I will add to this list!

Kaitlin Solimine is an accomplished fiction author and East Asian studies scholar. In this interview, she asked me about the role family plays within wider sociocultural forces. My fictional family lived during a time of momentous changes in China and the U.S. I reverse engineered the stories to piece together the world and social mores: some of it (materialism) became reality, while others (feminism) are still a work-in-progress. Most importantly, there are dreams (democracy) deferred.   

Showing the Human Face - Fiction Writers Review

Mitzi Rapkin is an insightful and generous reader. She asked me whether the elder sister in “Dream Lover” might have an affair if Xu tried. I hadn’t thought about this scenario until she mentioned it. So Xu does an honorable deed by rejecting her, although he looks down on her as being undesirable, even as a mistress. The double standard can work in the woman’s favor and keeps her from making a big mistake!

Aspen Public Radio First Draft

I have learned much from Scott Kent Jones’s podcast Give and Take, which helps me make sense of the current volatile political environment. When it was my turn, I had an “unbridled” conversation with my host and forwent my motto “Don’t air dirty linen in public” about the Chinese people and culture. I usually don’t tell the whole truth about people’s shortcomings and instead satirize them in fiction. I surprised myself in that interview, which was truly “Give and Take.” Have a listen.

Give and Take

Writer’s Bone is a wonderful podcast featuring a diverse group of writers. Hosts Daniel Ford and Sean Tuohy are writers and staunch supporters of their peers. Daniel called me “an old soul,” which is a high compliment. I answered with my mission statement and vision, because seriously, few people would have cared. Readers want the words on the page. In a way the author’s intention doesn’t matter. Still, that is the reason those words are on the page. Thank you, Daniel, for letting me say it!

Writer's Bone

Lastly, my TV interview with Jiayu Jeng at KTSF Channel 26. Okay, I spent more time getting dolled up. Jiayu is a beautiful, caring, and witty journalist. I translated my English interviews into Mandarin and practiced speaking them fluently. I also worried about my mother hearing me say things she doesn’t like. But when it aired, I realized I spoke appropriately. This proves that my internal censorship is alive and well, despite that I have lived in the U.S. for 28 years, much longer than I had lived in China. I chose to write in English to lose my internal censorship.

Uploaded by KTSF Channel 26 on 2018-04-30.

This blog is an ode to the literary community that supports writers in their lonely endeavors. Thank you, everyone, for reading, empathizing, and challenging the writers!

Why I Write in English

I wrote an essay “Why I Write in English” several years ago. At the time I gave all my reasons, with an old family photo. Since then, my grandma passed away at the age of 93.

I was four years old, and my brother was three. The back row from left to right: my auntie, my parents, my younger uncle, my older uncle and his newlywed wife.My grandparents sat in the front row. My brother wanted to run away, so my grandma put him…

I was four years old, and my brother was three. The back row from left to right: my auntie, my parents, my younger uncle, my older uncle and his newlywed wife.
My grandparents sat in the front row. My brother wanted to run away, so my grandma put him on her lap and held his hand. I was the good girl, furtively playing with my coat and exploring my pocket. 

I realize there is more to that narrative. I was born in Jiangsu province with ancestral roots at a seaside village in Zhejiang province. My name was recorded in the Huang family tree book. Ironically, my children and spouse aren’t recorded, because I am a woman. My children don’t bear my last name, so I am no longer part of the Huang family, despite that I kept my maiden name.

2005

2005

2018

2018

Here is my family: the first photo of our family of four alongside the latest. My elder son was pegged to be an engineer at the age of three. As a baby he loved to play with toy trucks, trains, and grew up playing baseball and soccer. Unlike me, he’s a good athlete. I rarely saw him do homework until the 5th grade. Now in the 9th grade, he’s bound to the books, laptop, and even has a new ambition: studying to become a lawyer.

Call it the teenage whim. We were puzzled. Both my husband and I are computer engineers. We can help him, if he wants to become an engineer. But no, he has to choose a profession that we know nothing.

This reminds me of someone I know: his mother! Two decades ago I decided to write in English, an impulsive decision that bewildered my parents and friends: What? Why?!

I gave my reasons in the essay, but that’s only the logical answer. There is also an emotional side of the story. I have to begin with my ancestors. The couple who started the family tree were originally from Fujian province. The woman was the young daughter in a wealthy family. The man was a hired hand working for her father. She fell in love with the tall, handsome, and penniless young man. Her parents disapproved of him, so they eloped to Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, and settled at the secluded seaside village surrounded by green mountains. Her family set out to look for her (only a wealthy family could afford to conduct an extensive search) but failed to find them, who were determined to elude her family. I have often wondered: did the brave woman miss her parents? Did she reach for her mother’s hand when she cried out with birth pang?

For more stories see my Chinese blog 《温州家乡的奇事》

Now the Huang clan has more than 2000 families, and the family tree is a thick book. My brother's son, born in Canada with last name Huang, is included, but my Berkeley-born children are not in the book. No matter, all of us descended from the hot-blooded ancestors who ventured out for a new life, their hearts brimming over with love and hope.

That is why I write in English.