Kevin Kwan: Yeah. I mean, my intention, you know, with all these books is really to just bring joy is really to channel joy is a joy for me to write them and it’s a joy for me to share them. And hopefully that flows all the way through, you know?
Interviewer: It does. Yeah, it really does. If you could just do a brief bio on bring me down from your from your grandparents to your parents, just just roughly speaking and and and what it was like growing up. And it’s close to starting in Singapore, if I have it right. Is that true? Well, it was through his family. And you could describe what it was like as a small child growing up in that environment. Um, I would love to hear some stories from them just about, you know, what your childhood was like in that regard as opposed to perhaps, you know, the kinds of things we’re seeing in your literature.
Kevin Kwan: Yeah. You know, it’s interesting because I have so many crystallized memories of my childhood, and I think it’s because I left at age 11. And the memory plays an interesting trick on you. You know, I think when you leave at that pivotal age, you remember so much of your childhood and it crystallizes like Amber in a way. And so I remember so distinctly, I’ve visions of moments, of parties, of random little events all throughout my childhood, because it was a very bisected, bisected life, you know. So I was born in Singapore and lived there till I was 11 years old and then moved to the US. But within that life there, you know, I think every child has a distinct lens into the world. And for me I remember from a very early age being much more fascinated by the adults that were around me than the other children I liked. You know, I think I was I was the youngest child. So I got away with a lot more. And I was the one that my parents always sort of dragged along to two parties. And so I would you know, here I would be five years old, six years old at one or 2 a.m. at a house party. And even then I was just sort of a fly on the wall, soaking things up. And so as a child, you’re only experience is your experience. You know, you think that’s a normal life. And so I felt I had a very normal life. I lived in a house with my grandparents and my parents, you know, as a multigenerational household. Um, we didn’t feel, I didn’t feel particularly privileged by any means, you know, it just seemed I got up, I went to school, I came home, I rode my bike with my friends. It was very idyllic. It was very, very Huck Finn. And then I left, you know, when I was 11, my father made the decision for our family to emigrate to the US, and he landed us in the middle of Houston, Texas, and in the middle of suburbia. And that was a shock to the system.
Speaker 3 Um.
Interviewer: I’m really. Yeah. Yeah. You think about the typical Indian experience, you know, I. You can hear me, right?
Kevin Kwan: I can hear you.
Interviewer: Yeah. So, um, you know. As opposed to, you know, some of this, you know, some of the stories. Well, taking his family, for instance, or the generation she grew up with. Mm hmm. Coming over, you know, the Seattle, San Francisco or Los Angeles, the coastal, um, you know, very, very by then, you know, some very well-established expatriate communities. And, you know, quickly finding people from Shanghai, if you’re from. Mm hmm. You know, and so it was a more kind of a as far as I can tell, it’s a process long underway. And I am very interested, if you your father, as I understand it, was it was a position.
Kevin Kwan: He was not. Oh, yeah. My grandfather was a physician. My father was an engineer. For 25 years of his life until we moved to the to the US.
Interviewer: But tell got one. He tell me his motivation for taking his family. And tell me about taking you to Texas.
Kevin Kwan: Yeah, well, you know, I guess I was pivoting to the point where I landed in Texas. It was a shock to the system because unlike most other immigrant families with their, you know, the Asian-American immigrant experience is you come here for a better life. And I felt like I had been severely downgraded. You know, as you know, from an 11 year old point of view, you know, I grew up in a large house. There was a lot of staff. I had a nanny that was, you know, with me basically 24, seven until the day I left for America. And here we were in the middle of suburbia. And my dad said, okay, there’s the lawnmower, go mow the lawn, you know. And it was really part of his master plan. So my my father had a very interesting upbringing. You know, he he truly grew up in privilege. So he was he was the grandson of, you know, you know, a very well-established businessman in Singapore. My great grandfather, you know, was one of the founders of the first bank in Singapore. And so he he really grew up with a golden spoon in his mouth. You know, I hear stories I’ve heard stories anecdotally, not from him, but from other people about how he would be chauffeured to school every day and not just chauffeured up to the doorstep. When he left the car, his maid would carry his briefcase into the classroom for him. So, you know, from this world of extreme privileged, he was taken out of that and he was sent to boarding school. I believe he was 13 years old and he was sent to Tasmania. And. Yeah. And there began his new life and he spent over a decade in Australia. You know, went from Tasmania to Sydney to University of Sydney. And I think that’s really, you know, that was his seminal experience growing up in Australia, you know, working in the summers, in the outback, on a ranch. And that’s the life he wanted. However, in his mid twenties, when he was having way too much fun, his parents decided to sort of reel in the rod, you know. And they said, Well, it’s time to come back to Singapore and be the dutiful son and, you know, play your role as as the dutiful son. And so he did that. You know, he went back to Singapore, got a job, started a career, got married, had kids, did all the acceptable things that he had to do as the dutiful son. But I think he always craved the life of the Western style. You know, he always craved the country life, really. And so that was part of why he moved us to Texas. He wanted his kids to grow up independent and self-reliant, and he didn’t want us to grow up as crazy rich Asians.
Interviewer: There’s something kind of kind of wonderful.
Kevin Kwan: Yeah. I mean, I think his plan worked out in a in the most beautiful, unexpected way, because I can’t imagine what I would be like if I had remained in Singapore all these years. I think leaving, you know, and having those memories crystallized in Amber was what gave me the seeds that I needed to write a book 30 years later.
Interviewer: Yeah. Well, and you having a balanced view of life and a broad view. And then you can move. You can move. I’m going to assume you can move effortlessly between just about any world. You know, I can relate to that. My parents definitely did not want me growing up in Hollywood. Mm hmm. And my mother was from Utah. And growing up, I was always I never spent time in New York. And she always had us out in Utah. And it was similar impulses, you know, similar thing about a different kind of a different kind of life. Interesting. Rooted to the outdoors or, you know, being not not getting overly sheltered. You know, I used to go to the Malibu colony sometimes with other kids that were children or researchers and stuff. And it’s always like, whoa. And so I really do kind of understand that. How was it how was it coming in as an East Asian into Texas with that? Was it hard for you? How did how did you hear the kids treat you or did you deal with a lot of, you know, racism or was it or is it hard in that regard?
Kevin Kwan: You know, I have to say, I had a pretty enchanted time. I did not encounter any racism that I was conscious of. But I think it was interesting because. I had such a different lens into the world, you know? My issues weren’t with school and with school kids. My issues was, why am I even here? You know, I think for the first year, I was, you know, very much rebelling in shock. I, you know, as my father was whipping me into shape as an American kid, I was you know, I was quietly rebelling in that. I was I didn’t want to do the housework. I didn’t want to mow the lawn. I couldn’t understand, you know, why I didn’t have ten things to eat at breakfast. You know, so it was more of a lifestyle adjustment. I think that that was the cultural shock for me. I made friends very quickly. You know, we actually lived right behind my intermediate school, so I literally could hop the fence and go to school every day. And I think what was lucky for me was, first of all, it’s very different when you come into a new country speaking the language perfectly. You know, I had grown up in Singapore speaking English better than I do now. I think it’s you know, it’s been a downward spiral since 11 years old because, you know, there we learn the Queen’s English and proper grammar and proper pronunciation and annunciation and things like that. And I remember I had to lose my British accent by third period in order to to survive and not get shoved into a locker. I think, you know, so it was easy for me to adapt. First of all, you know, English being my mother tongue. And also in Singapore, you know, even in the seventies and eighties, growing up, it was already such a multicultural town. It was already so cosmopolitan. You know, I grew up in a house where my neighbors were from New Zealand, from London, Indian kid, across the street. It was you know, it was very, very international. So I was always comfortable around, quote unquote Westerners and kind of grew up colorblind. So it didn’t I didn’t have that sort of inferiority complex that I think a lot of Asian Americans grew up with, you know, being born into this country and realizing that you are part of being a minority. I had quite the opposite. I was born in a country where I was in the Chinese majority. And I think having that grounding at age 11 instilled a natural confidence to where I could come into an American middle school at age 11 and really find my way through that. And I think I was also, you know, being a kid that was always sort of interested in social structures. You know, of course, I didn’t have a name for that at that point, but. It was easy for me to find my crowd and to fit in and to make friends. And and I was fascinated by how an American school worked. You know, the popular kids sitting at the metal table, the high school jocks and the cheerleaders like that was it was fascinating for me. And I didn’t see that as a challenge or a barrier. And I remember even distinctly, I didn’t even you know, I had so little understanding of the Asian-American experience that I didn’t understand why the other Asian-American kids did not like me. And it took me many, many years to figure that out. You know, there were about three or four other Asian. These are native born Asian-Americans, of course, as opposed to me. I’m you know, I was considered to them a fresh off the boat kid, you know, and a really weird one at that. You know, I, I didn’t fit the stereotypes of, you know, the fresh off the boat kid. I, you know, I had a bowl haircut, but I spoke in this British accent. You know, I wore, I think a lot of times the same clothing all week long because I was so on parented, really, that I just didn’t care, you know. And so I had this unconsciousness and I talked to everyone. And I remember another Asian kid once saying to me, like, How dare you talk to her? You know, and he was referring to this very popular blond cheerleader, you know, Reese Witherspoon type. And I and I was just mystified. I was like, well, why shouldn’t I talk to her? I didn’t know my place and I didn’t even realize that. So it was just, you know, I was just being myself. So I think having that obliviousness actually worked in my favor. And it, you know, it took me a long time to really figure out what was truly going on. And Amy’s books were really seminal in helping me figure that out.
Interviewer: Yeah, I was going to ask you I was going to ask you when you first may remember when you first encountered her work.
Kevin Kwan: My cousin gave me the Joy Luck Club. This was an older cousin of mine who had moved to Texas years before. And so he was sort of like an older mentor. You know, he was always the one telling me what to read, what to listen to, you know, what movies to watch. And we we shared a love of books, of course, and I was a voracious reader from an early age. And this was not a book I would have typically picked up, quite frankly. You know, I was really into Scott Fitzgerald at that time, you know, so I was reading, you know, sort of the American canon, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, people like that. But he said, Give this book a chance. And I remember looking at the book, and this was the old kind of mass market paperback of the Joy Luck Club. I think it would have been the late eighties, if I remember correctly. You know, time sort of blurs. But I really distinctly remember there was a blurb on the back of the book that still resonates with me today. And I can’t remember for the life of me who wrote the blurb. I tried to research it, went on Amazon, tried to try to find the blurb, but all I found were blurbs from me, which is kind of horrifying. But whoever this author was said, you know, the most tragic thing I’m paraphrasing here because I’m going to get it wrong. But basically this author said, the most tragic thing about reading the Joy Luck Club is that you’ll never be able to read it for the first time ever again. And that intrigued me, and it completely stayed with me as I delved into this book and it just blew my mind.
Interviewer: What is it? Could you describe specifically what you felt, what you personally connected to? You know, I sort of see when I read your work, I mean, when you tell this, there’s so many interesting parallels. Mm hmm. There’s other areas where you guys are or, like, mining really rich material in certain directions. But I’m interested, from your point of view, Amy’s story and why it would have personally resonated with you so much.
Kevin Kwan: She was the first Asian-American author I had read. And she was the first person that was reflecting back to me, part of a world I knew. She showed me the glamorous Shanghai of the thirties. She showed me all these back stories that I knew about and could relate to from from my family story. So she was the first one to really showcase empowered Asians. In their place. You know, of course they were they were set in a different time period. But I remember reading it with such an exhilaration, first of all, to sort of discover that world and to to read about these worlds that I had only sort of heard about and that were hinted to me from my grandparents, from my aunts and uncles, you know, because I knew a little bit at that point about my family history, but but but not so much. And that really fostered a curiosity, first of all. And then the counterpoint of that was to showcase the Asian-American experience. The second generation of daughters who have to deal with these mothers who came from China. And it was interesting to see and really learn about. You know, their evolutions and their relationships. And there were moments there that I could so relate to, you know, here and there as an immigrant. And, you know, so I was able to find so many commonalities on that, but also to see. Asian-Americans being portrayed the way I saw, I knew them not as stereotypes.
Interviewer: Q When it went into one of the parallels, is this just extraordinary? If you guys do this extraordinary job of capturing the profound passion and depth and profundity of connection between mothers and their children? I think, you know, the bond, the family bond and the importance of mother plays in the in the families in both of your work. It it’s it’s very kindred, you know, and I just wondered in your in your wife, you know, as a as a put together in the story here, I mean, it’s it’s it’s driven. It’s driven so much of what it is done on that particular relationship. I’d love to hear from you about your relationship with your mother and in what ways she inspired you and is informed your storytelling over time because your. For me it is a Katy loving flood of relatable you know is so well-rounded knowing it in spite of all the external wealth and all the accouterments. It’s that you strip all that down and and it’s the same degree of love and fear and hopes and desires for the children. And I wondered, do you have do you consider yourself having a particularly strong relationship with your mother?
Kevin Kwan: Well, I think it wouldn’t be an understatement to say that most Asian kids have a complicated relationship with their moms. And, you know, I would definitely be a member of that club. Yeah. No, I think I’ve I’ve always been close to my mother. But beyond that, you know, having grown up in a multigenerational household, there were always so many strong female characters in my life beyond my mother. My nanny, for example, who really did most of the raising the actual day to day raising of me was was really, you know, a key figure in my life. And, you know, she was old. You know, she was a Cantonese, traditional Cantonese momma. I don’t know if you know much about that, but it’s a very specific these were women who it was a group of women who basically, beginning in the turn of the century, would leave China and basically enter into a contractual obligation with a family where they pledged their allegiance and they basically gave up their lives for an entire family. They would take a vow of chastity and they would basically integrate with the family. And the exchange, of course, aside from a salary, was that the family was obligated to take care of them for the rest of their lives. So these were this very specific sort of clan of southern Chinese women who took on this role. And they were they were known as black and white Alma’s because they wore this uniform of, you know, a white blouse with these black tailored pants, you know, all all in silks. But you could recognize them from from from a mile away. And it was a very specific couple of decades, I would say, where these women were coming from China to different parts of Southeast Asia and were participating in the raising of children and really integrating with these families. So, you know, we had a we had a few different black and white mamas in our family that would go around from family to family, you know, raising the kids and and becoming really an important part of the family. So, you know, my amma was was really to me just really such a special character. And then beyond that, there was my grandmother, you know, who was who was truly the family matriarch. I mean, she really ruled the roost. And the household basically was run according to to her pleasure and her demands. I also had an aunt that lived in the household, and she was a pioneering journalist like early feminists. Amazing artist. She was the one that first really got me into reading books. So there were all these female influences. So I had several mother figures from a very early life that were, I think, contributing to create the screwed up creature that you see here today.
Interviewer: Well, as I say. So let’s let’s move on. Thank you very much. So this is great. Yeah. And. And so here you are. And then you go to Parsons.
Kevin Kwan: And then I go to Parsons.
Interviewer: And I’m so interested in it. From what I understand, you went to grow up, you went to imagery, you went to graduate, she went to design, you went to style, you went to you know, it it wasn’t immediately right into literature. You had this whole other career.
Kevin Kwan: Actually, I have to correct you here. So I first went to University of Houston where I did get a degree in journalism and literature. That was that was my first foray at the rodeo, basically.
Interviewer: Instead of actually just kind of tell me. Okay.
Kevin Kwan: Yeah. So my my first degree was in media studies and literature and creative writing. So my foundation really was in writing. I know and has always come from writing. And it was only after that degree actually I started grad school. I was going to do a master’s in creative writing at the University of Houston. And in the middle of the first semester I had an epiphany and realized that I needed to live before I could write anymore. You know, at this point, I was 20 years old and I’d written all the teenage angst I possibly could at exhausted all my stories, and I needed to have an adventure. So I thought, what better way to do that than to go to art school in New York? And so I did not. That became the parson’s adventure and many others.
Interviewer: Yeah. So tell me tell me about your work there, because it’s it’s not like you just sort of bounced around. You did quite a bit of work there and see how it works. You know, in thinking about New York in particular and what you know of New York, which is so much. How do you feel that your your time in that world informed your writing?
Kevin Kwan: I think it had a tremendous effect on my writing. I always say I would not have been able to write the novels that I that I’ve written if I had just done it. Fresh out of creative writing school, you know, at age 21 from University of Houston, I needed to live as I as I sort of had a hunch I needed to have these adventures and to experience something new and different. And I think it’s it’s all the collective experiences, not just of my Singapore childhood and my American teenage years, but the next two decades of life in New York. That really helps to inform these books and make them what they are. Especially, you know, with the design and the visual and the cinematic elements. Because even as a writer, I remember in the early days this was back at University of Houston when I was in the creative writing program. Um, my, one of my professors, he called me the designer poet, which I didn’t take kindly to at the time. You know, I took that as a criticism, but, you know, I would use words like Armani esque in a poem, you know, and there were all these you know, there were a lot of visual tropes and a lot of homage to Donald Judd, for example, and and directors that I loved and things like that. So there was always this visual side that was unsatisfied. And so I felt like I needed to go to art school and really explore that part of me. The design part, the visual part. You know, I had all these dreams of being a photographer, of being a filmmaker, of being a designer. I didn’t know quite what I wanted to do. And so I did that. I went to Parsons and because it was my second degree, you know, I’m one of these strange people that has two bachelor’s degrees because I really wanted to have a full article experience and not just do a grad program. I was able to write my own ticket, so I created my own degree of what I called visual communication. So I took film classes, I took interior design classes, I took art theory classes, I took lots of photography classes and I sort of created my own visual degree. And after doing that, I, you know, I began working in New York in the design and creative world. That was a 15 year old adventure.
Interviewer: When it hit one of the best having grown up in York and went to Dalton. Is that you talk about social stories.
Unidentified Or certain ones.
Interviewer: You know, your ability to capture certain things and certainly it extends everywhere else. You’ve got that privilege. It’s not Asian American. It’s not the talking about old world New York City privilege in a big, big way. I mean. I, you know. Whoa. Where did your exposure to to the sort of the old world War I, littlehampton Upper East Side come from. You got that. Well all those guys I to for business that the reading with all these private school names and you know sort of the the introduction of everybody to the schools they went to in it you know. But you really nailed the whole community that you know a lot of people. Yeah I think of guys like Rich Stillman.
Kevin Kwan: Oh I love Whit. Love his work.
Interviewer: Really reminded me. Yeah. Um, and I got to hear you talk about how how did you how did you learn and understand your that?
Kevin Kwan: You know, I think, first of all, I had a fascination with that world from a very early age, from, you know, from Reading Fitzgerald, first of all, you know, as as a 13 year old. And then from that, you know, I had such a hunger for sorry, you know.
Interviewer: With that world, to be more specific.
Kevin Kwan: Okay. Yeah, there’s a there’s a plane. There are lots of planes.
Speaker 3 So why don’t we do it? We’re going to just take a pause and change the batteries.
Kevin Kwan: They’re going to take a pause and change the battery. Hold that thought.
Speaker 3 So tell him your picture will go away for just as.
Kevin Kwan: Your picture will go away for 1/2.
Speaker 3 Okay. And let’s roll camera. I mean, that’s got to be art. Okay. Cameras and B are now rolling. Really?
Kevin Kwan: We are rolling.
Interviewer: Okay.
Kevin Kwan: Okay.
Speaker 3 Where were we?
Kevin Kwan: I completely forgot what we were talking about.
Interviewer: How you got to know the upper echelon of Old World New York.
Kevin Kwan: Yes, exactly. I think I had an early interest in that. First of all, an early interest in reading up about the elite world of New York. It started early, you know, when I was this goes back to when I was 11 years old and I first come to the U.S. and was in complete shock at my circumstances. I got very depressed. And that Thanksgiving, my mom, I think, who was equally depressed because she had also, you know, come to the US kicking and screaming, wondering why she was suddenly in the kitchen for her first time in her life. She took me to New York. She took me to visit some friends in New York. And I remember arriving in New York and going, okay, this is more like it. You know, this is like Singapore. You know, we’re in a big metropolitan city with high rises and stuff like that. But I think our friends had, you know, they were. Pretty high up in, you know, on the social pecking order, I think. And so they showed me that side of New York that I otherwise as a tourist, probably wouldn’t have ever seen. The first place they took me to was T at Plaza Hotel. I remember, you know. So they gave me the grand old tour of New York. We went to MoMA, we went to the mat. Their daughter, you know, she was a was an equestrian. So, you know, I got to see the stables on the Upper East Side where she rode. So that was my immediate entree into that world. And then, of course, they took me to their favorite bookstore at Doubleday Books on Fifth Avenue, which, you know, long loop around there, my publisher now. But I remember being there and coincidentally on that day, Diahann Carroll was doing a book signing. So here I am, you know, at Doubleday Bookstore on Fifth Avenue. I already love bookstores. I love books. And a limo pulls up. Diahann Carroll comes out a fur coat. You know, there’s fans, it’s crazy. People are signing. And I was like, okay, I want to be here. This is where I belong. And so while I was still back in Texas, you know, everything I craved was New York focused. So I began subscribing to Interview magazine, for example, and I would read everything I could, everything I could find on New York, from Scott Fitzgerald to Joan Didion to Dominick Dunne to Tom Wolfe. So by the time I came to New York, I was already primed to sort of sort of understand this world. I never thought I would infiltrate it. First of all, you know, I was in art school. I was doing my thing. You know, this was one of the many facets of New York that interested me. But what happened was I. I took an internship. I was in trying to get an interview magazine. And I made friends of a coworker. She was a fellow intern. And she just happened to come from one of these, you know, old guard New York families. And we just became fast friends. And it just so it just very evolved naturally that I just had this immediate entree into her world. And what really struck me was how immediately comfortable I was in that world, because it reminded me so much of my childhood in Singapore. I think the mores and the value systems of, you know, WASP, Americans are very, very aligned with the old Chinese. You know, there there is an appreciation for thrift. There’s an appreciation for everything in your house looking very, very old and dusty. You know, there’s a love of animals and there’s a love of gardening. You know, so many things. There’s a love of tasteless food. Not so much. Not actually. But. Oh. So, yeah. So I took to it like a fish, you know, fish and water.
Interviewer: Wonderful. So tell me what’s getting into your writing. Tell me about, uh, do you recall that you recall when you tell me about writing crazy with your turn towards writing these books? I’m curious, were you. Or is it a grand plan with you? Always see it as a trilogy. Did you follow one foot in front of the other or could you set up go back to before you started writing and working with into in what you were hoping to accomplish before you started writing. And as you look to where she.
Kevin Kwan: You know, I think I always had this long held dream. Starting from my creative writing school days of writing the great American novel. You know, everyone that goes to writing school wants to be that. And I put that aside, you know, for for almost 20 years. But the story was still gestating in my mind and just marinating and just growing and growing and growing, I think. And I always had this thought that, okay, I’m just going to live my life. And maybe when I’m 65 and retired and living somewhere on the Italian coast, I’ll start writing this book that’s sort of based on my childhood. And then something happened. My dad got sick in 2009. You know, he was he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. And I took. But six months off work and went down to be with him. He was getting treated in Texas and I got to spend a lot of time with him, you know, drove him to his chemo and his radiation appointments every day. And it was really the first bonding time we’ve had in over a decade. You know, I would see him on family vacations and things like that, but this was really a lot of time spent in cars, you know, in rush hour traffic every single day. And so I just would I would just quiz him on his life really, you know, and his memories, because I you know, it felt very important for me to to know a lot of things while he was still around. And so as surreptitiously and covertly as I could, I was basically interviewing him, you know. For for many months because I wanted to sort of. Recorded My mind has memories of a world that really doesn’t exist anymore. And I also in doing that. Was able to visit my childhood and I have a new understanding of why things happened the way they did. And it really inspired me to really want to put these down, you know, put these thoughts down onto paper. And I it was never my intention to get this published. This was just a personal story I wanted to tell. It was a hobby. And I thought I would just start writing, see what happened. And maybe I would self-publish this shared with a few friends. That was my grand plan, but it became more important to me. As the year wore on to to start writing this. And I think I found great solace in doing that, you know, because I was I was down in Texas. I wasn’t working. I had a lot of spare time in between its treatments. And so I started writing then.
Interviewer: That’s extraordinary. You know, I don’t know if you’re aware of that, if you’re just totally echoing Amy to where she was coming from when she wrote. I did write it.
Kevin Kwan: I had no idea. I had no idea. Yeah.
Interviewer: It’s a little different but yeah. But the chief thing being that it what our expectations were and why and she tells a story about being in Hawaii and got a call that it was a route back in the States. It turned out that it was a false alarm, but she had made about herself that if her mother survived the heart attack, that she was going to spend time with this and her real life and her background and the past and to really try to understand things that she had just never really quite understood. And her writing started out as absolutely bad as well, which is just sort of telling the story, not imagining this is going to really publish anything really serious. Mm hmm. She’s working as a as a copywriter, doing things. Her first episode, she said it was actually not her fiction. It was. It was a book called IBM. And you. Hmm.
Kevin Kwan: Really?
Interviewer: Technical journals? Yeah. Over 80,000 copies. They qualified her as a bestseller.
Kevin Kwan: Indeed.
Interviewer: Jamming away, right? Yeah. Technical stuff. And it felt like, you know, deepening her understanding of a poor family and connecting with her mother was really a way of sort of deepening a relationship. So she did a very, very similar thing. I mean, did not, you know, and and things just sort of evolved and and she was increasingly pulled into and attracted to it. So it’s really interesting to see these. Mm hmm. The school system. So, um. Can you hear me now?
Kevin Kwan: Yeah, I can. Thank you.
Interviewer: Yeah. So, um. When did you know? I asked Amy this as well as it. There’s her reaction as well when she got a book deal and she’s choosing the maybe you’re in this situation to sort of that her situation is that she is. She’s never written out a contract. I’m her agent back in 8990. Right off the bat, series of short stories that she agreed to convert into a book. It was supposed to be a novel. So it looks like she wrote a series of short stories and then three and posts her intrusive characters in the novels. And so she’s written. She wrote in a contract to write the novel. So the delivery expectations were there from day one. This is a published author. Mm hmm. And so she had this whole story right off the bat, were writing under under contract. But she thought she’d do this book. And six months back to writing tactics. She thought it would be fun and interesting, but she really did not anticipate her voice resonating so broadly, particularly outside of Asian American culture. And when she talks, it will get a little into that about how meaningful that was to her. So important for her to that her worth was universally embraced. I was wondering, in your case, the scale of of of what you did. When did you when did you realize. Oh, my God. What’s going on here? Yeah. This is not just going to be shown to my friends. Can you describe the feeling of. Oh, that awareness that, like your works?
Kevin Kwan: Yeah. But first, I want to point out another parallel, which I was not also aware of. Crazy Rich Asians really began as a correct collection of short stories. I, you know, I, I really wanted just to collect these tales, and that’s why it’s broken down from character to character. And I thought it would be a book filled with just these different, idiosyncratic characters they would write about from Astrid to Dr. Goo to Jacqueline Lang. And it was only after I probably worked on it for about half a year that I really began to see it as a as a novel. So it’s it’s that’s one interesting parallel. But getting back to your original question. Yeah, perhaps because I actually have a little more seasoned experience in the publishing world. You know, Crazy Rich Asians is my fourth published project. Before that, I had done some nonfiction projects. I knew what I knew what the draw was, which is basically you create a book, you write it. If it gets published, you’ll have one nice party of some champagne, of some friends, and it will promptly be forgotten. And that was what I was basically expecting. You know, I was very lucky enough to get a book deal. You know, that’s a whole story unto itself, how that happened. But when it did happen, I really came into it with zero expectation. You know, just having a very sort of pragmatic view of publishing and and how hard it is to, number one, get a book published. Number two, to make top any traction with the media. Number three, to have a second print run, you know. I had no illusions. And so I was like, you know, it’s good enough that it’s getting published and it will exist and maybe some people will read it. And that’s fine with me. Going to, you know, go back to what I did which which is what I was doing. I was actually still doing consulting and had all these different clients. And, you know, I think I was working on a project for Kate Spade at the time Crazy Rich Asians was published. And then it very quickly exploded. It’s interesting. It exploded first in Asia. It became an instant bestseller in Singapore. In Hong Kong, you know, all all over Asia. And then it became a national bestseller in the US. But. Within a few months, we realized that, oh, wow, this is this is maybe something that has has legs, you know. And then my publisher said, okay, we want you to do the second novel. Please write. Please start it now. And it’s due in nine months, you know. And so I had to basically dump my clients and begin writing in the next book. But yeah, it was, um. It was a gradual realization because in the early days, you know, I wasn’t traveling to Asia. First of all, I was in this vacuum of I was working. You know, I had my career. The book came out. I had a party in New York. A friend threw me a lovely party. I did some signings around town. That was basically it. And then there was this lull. There was an interesting lull and I think it took a while for the it probably took about a year and a half before the book really caught on with Asian-Americans, actually. I remember the first year, any event I did, I’d be in a room full of white people, you know, and they loved the book. You know, the New York, the Upper East Side crowd gave me so much love the fashion world. You know, Anna Wintour was an early champion at Vogue. She serialized the book. So all the love was coming from, you know, my New York crew. And I remember I went down to Austin and I did the Texas Book Festival, and I was speaking in the rotunda of the Texas Capitol Building. And I would look out and it was just a sea of white people, you know, in the crowd listening to me and enjoying the book. And a dear friend of mine who lived in Austin was in line, and she had a stack of books with her and she was trying to buy a stack of books. And she tells me the story of how. She was in line with the stack of books and there was a Chinese-American woman standing me beside her, sort of giving her kind of stink eye, you know. And and she looked at her and she smiled and the woman said, You know, that book’s racist. And my friend, my, you know, Texan friends up. What? What are you talking about? She’s like, that’s a racist book. Crazy Rich Asians. And so my friend spent the next 5 minutes telling her, actually, it’s not a racist book. I’m going to tell you what this book is all about. But it’s you have a misconception of what this book is. But those I think that was the early reaction of a lot of Asian Americans to my book, and I completely understand it. You know, Asian-Americans have been so abused historically by the culture, you know, by the misrepresentation, by the lack of representation, that along comes a book called Crazy Rich Asians. And of course, they would assume that it’s garbage. Why would they ever want to read a book like this? So it took really word of mouth to start growing before, I think. The Asian-American community sort of came around. And started reading. Yeah. That was a mouthful. Sorry.
Speaker 3 Oh, really? Yeah.
Interviewer: Once we. The second part. So this whole business, you know, I mean, whether you’re a musician or third estate, when you when your first word catches on bit the following. But success is on any level. You know, it’s just these issues and any any talks at great length about how hard it was to follow up Toilet Club because when she wrote Toilet Club, it was it lacked any self-consciousness. Mm hmm. It was personal, deeply personal. Driven by her own emotions and intuitions in which she knew with it. She did not have the burden of anybody looking. And she described it as a child loving her little, small, inner Amy. As you’ll see when you see the movie. She’s an extraordinary artist. And she draws like you cannot fucking believe, you know? I mean, she could write for Autumn on. She has exactly 2 hours a day in birds and drawing birds.
Kevin Kwan: I’ve seen her work. It’s astonishing. I mean, yeah.
Interviewer: She is. As a kid in private, she was just secretive. All the creativity. She. It was where she went to escape craziness. And so her first book was written from that place. And and then suddenly, like you, it’s like, okay, let’s go to. And when she turned around to write number two, suddenly everything had changed. She had this awareness that the public was aware of her. She had become a prominent voice. And what started to creep in very quickly, this pressure. And, you know, and then there’s the literary criticism. And then there’s all these other things that are coming in. And she describes everybody started invading her room. No, it had made it really hard for her because she kept a second guessing yourself. What did they like about that first book or what did they do? I don’t understand why. Why did this connect? How do I reconnect? How do I recreate? What was it? You know, all these, you know, exploding. Mm hmm. Challenges to the follow up for her. And I think pretty quickly, she started to get pressure based on feedback about what the community was and was not responding to, in her words. So I was just curious for you, since you came into it with a similar sort of I don’t know if it’s innocence, but certainly a purity of personal intensity. It did describe or what ways the second book was a challenge for you and if it was at all or.
Kevin Kwan: It’s interesting. I think I was luckier than Amy in the sense that when the Joy Luck Club hit, it really hit. It was a revolution. You know, in in the whole genre. She basically created her own genre of Asian-American literature, in my opinion. For me, I started writing trying to which girlfriend? Three months after the first book was published. So I didn’t have that heat on me yet. At that point, we know the book did well. We know it was a national bestseller. We know it was an international bestseller. But the Asian-American community had not yet begun to. Impose into my psyche, at least, I suppose. And so I really you know, I had already mapped out the whole idea for this trilogy of telling this very complete story. So my challenge really came with and they always say, you know, book two is always the middle project is always the hardest because it’s a bridge between the first and the last. So for me, the challenges were different. The challenges were what was what was finding that bridge and where that bridge was. And the further challenge was it’s trying to reach girlfriends, you know, which I very mischievously called crazier, richer Asians just to myself, you know. But I was looking at a new world. I was looking at the world of Chinese money, and it was not a world I knew all that well. So for me, it was more of an internal artistic pressure to to get it right, to be as authentic to that world as I was to the world of Singapore, old money. So, you know, I did a lot of research. I talked to a lot of people. I visited China, got to meet, you know, some of these China rich. So that was that was the set of challenges for me was was really trying to find that story and the authenticity of that world. There were really no external pressures beyond that from the larger public or my or my readership. I would have to say, you know, I think I’m my own worst critic and I’m hardest on myself more than anyone else. So for me, it’s always like how to get this perfect for me, you know, how to make this authentic and how to make it resonate with the actual people that I’m portraying. And do them justice. You know.
Interviewer: Well, it really was extraordinary. It’s it’s funny what happens because, you know, you come in the world of Singapore. You know, when you when when you when I saw the movie. And then I think back on the perspective of like compared to mainland China, it was I thought it worked very well. I felt like. I think you felt the. The best. The ground in pressure is the history of an encoded way of such a deeply embedded, encoded way of seeing the world. It’s inflexible. It’s based on thousands of years in just introducing a new mechanism, which is modern world. But, man, I mean, I thought you did a great job.
Kevin Kwan: Thank you so much. Yeah.
Interviewer: It really overwhelming. I mean, forgive me for not I freeze when I’m talking to authors about their names, but the the daughter of the main theme through Colette. Well, that is a beautiful, beautiful character, because all the way through the book, you’re on the fence. Mm hmm. You know, she’s got these qualities, and she has is she is, you know, her desire to not get married. And she’s fighting against the principle that she has these moments in which she’s sympathetic and sees things. And then there’s that extraordinarily true. Yeah. Mm hmm. I mean, the idea that. When when she senses that someone saw her did it unleash this well and you get the colors I always wanted was powerful, you know? You know, because suddenly it all just comes. It’s all there. And it was really powerful.
Kevin Kwan: So thank you for saying that. I think she tends to get overlooked in that book. You know, I really tried. You know, I try to make every character. Relatable and multidimensional and multifaceted. But, you know, I think you’re the first person that’s really kind of. Talked about Colette with such sensitivity and understanding. And that’s yeah, absolutely. You know, she gets eclipsed, I think, by Astrid in the book for most of the fans and most of the readers. And, you know, but for me, like, I really enjoyed going to the psyche of of a modern, contemporary Chinese girl of extreme privilege, you know, and yeah, the bargains they make to exist in the world that they do, you know. Well, thank you.
Interviewer: Well done. Yeah. So I’m going to move on to the movie.
Kevin Kwan: What movie?
Interviewer: Yeah. Oh, my God. Um, you know, it it seems to me it’s just so ironic that the movie came out right at the 26th anniversary of It’s already closed. So there is now it’s just getting going. You know, I it was I had interviewed Amy for a completely different documentary about adult hobbies and passions and pastimes of what people do counteract stressful lives and what they do when they have when they feel like they need something outside of their usual identity. And so it’s focusing any on the rock bottom remainders of your time playing in that rock band. And it wasn’t until I interviewed her for that, the whole story. Before that first interview, I was like, Oh, screw this, I, I ran home and then I got to watch her story. This, you know, this got to be a great doc about Amy. And it just was. And I and that scared me because then I realized there was an opportunity. And then if I didn’t get this opportunity, I was going to kill myself.
Kevin Kwan: So that’s how it happened.
Interviewer: You know, going full bore. And it was right during the summer, um, the movie came out and it was just so fascinating. And of course there was, I think a couple of overlaps with the casting. But in any case, um, you know, it’s, it was another remarkable thing to have followed up with a movie. And I was wondering, you talk about in Amy’s case, her feeling about these movies that started out this was resistant to it because she was in the midst of it. She was afraid that it distracted and not able to write. And it leads to an intimate moment to see. Oh, I could see how one can lose track of oneself in this process, get distracted by all these other projects and avenues to go down, when in fact, essentially when I’m a writer and I don’t want to lose that. So it really took her bass, the screenwriter, to convince her and Wayne it’s her to to okay it number one. And then it was one base. It really felt like couldn’t we did not want to do the movie without her participation. Hmm. To some degree. So I was just curious, in your case, could you could you lay out for you the origins of the movie and how you define your role? And then how was it for you to be a producer on that film?
Kevin Kwan: Absolutely. Let me just quickly ask, do you guys want to do anything about that crew or should I just keep on going? Just go for it. Okay. Yeah, there’s a.
Speaker 3 There’s a.
Kevin Kwan: Very noisy bird right above us. Okay.
Speaker 3 Um.
Kevin Kwan: Could I get a tissue for 1/2? Do you mind just one very quickly. Yeah, yeah. No. Just 1/2. Just. I feel like. No, no, I’m good. I just. Yeah, there’s just something in my eye. Oh, yeah, totally. And we’re going into a very meaty question, so I just want to make sure it’s some. I do my best. Yeah. So you can scare that crew away.
Speaker 3 Just don’t piss her up. Yeah. I’m sure they got crow. Crow. Crow filters and, you know, tools and way. Yeah. It’s the part of the question. Oh, yeah? No.
Kevin Kwan: Okay. I think we’re good.
Speaker 3 It’ll be weird if you’re in a living room where I interview from, like. Okay, no, that’s awesome. Yeah.
Kevin Kwan: No.
Interviewer: It’s good.
Speaker 3 Right? Does either beat over the next day how many minutes you guys are? You have 48 minutes, you have up to 64. Great. Let’s do this.
Kevin Kwan: Okay. The crow is gone.
Speaker 3 Okay.
Interviewer: Reroll the baby gunner air rifle.
Kevin Kwan: I think we just waved.
Speaker 3 Is what is in a tree that’s a little ways away. So what if Peter if he’s clear, I would say let’s go for nothing we can do. Just let’s go. Okay, we’re ready.
Kevin Kwan: Roll. We’re okay. Go. So it’s it’s kind of amazing how the whole movie came together. It really began with a phone call to my editor. She got a voice mail one night from someone who just very rapidly said, Hey, I want to buy the film rights to Crazy Rich Asians. Please call me back. My name is Wendi Deng Murdoch. And so my my editor called me up and said, I just got the weirdest, you know, voicemail. I don’t know if it’s for real or if it’s a prank, but Wendi Deng Murdoch just called up and wants to buy the film rights. So very quickly, you know, the connection was made and I think it was four days later, I was sitting down to lunch with Wendi in in New York. And, you know, for me, I didn’t write this book to make a movie. You know, I wrote this book, first of all, as a hobby. Right. I never expected to be published. The fact that there was any movie interest, I took everything with a grain of salt, quite frankly, because it just seemed so pie in the sky, just out of this world that anyone would ever want to make a movie out of this. But we sat down and she was utterly charming, and she had a complete vision for how she wanted to do this movie. You know, she got my book. She loved it. She was already casting in her head. She was showing me on her iPhone who would play who. And she wanted Ang Lee to direct the movie. And and so it became very, very real, very quickly. And we had a very nice series of conversations about it. And then it process to the deal stage, you know, once the agents get involved and Fox was it was I think it was Fox features or, you know, the film company she was attached to, they got involved and the deal ultimately didn’t work out with her. But by that point, there was already so much interest. You know, once you know, you know how it is in Hollywood, once one person is interested, people start getting more and more curious. So at that point, I began meeting all these other producers and, you know, sharing their visions for how they would see this book. But I would have to say, I have a gratitude for Wendy, first of all, because she set the bar so high. You know, she gave me running out the gate a vision of what was possible. You know, if you want to do this movie, let’s do it right. Let’s say we’re the best darn director we can find. And let’s cast this international array of the best Asian talent there is in the world. And so I never lost sight of that. And, you know, thankfully found amazing partners in Color Force, you know, Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson who really shared that vision. You know, it was interesting how. Everyone was committed to the vision of making this movie and making a hit from them from day one. I was the skeptic here, you know. But it was it was great to have such great cheerleaders and also. To be involved from from the very start. You know, I always felt like, why wouldn’t you want to involve the author? You know, I know this world better than anyone else. So you will have to work with me because I want to make sure we get this right. Knowing the history of Hollywood, knowing how badly things can go. You’re going to, you know, sorry, you’re gonna have to involve me. And I will be that agitator, too, to make sure it goes right for me. And thankfully, we didn’t have to do that. Thankfully, we were all so in sync that we together, you know, were able to create this beautiful movie. Yeah. It was, um. It was probably one of the most important factors in the film for me.
Interviewer: Most important.
Kevin Kwan: The portrayal of men of Asian men in my film, because in my books, you know, they are empowered and attractive and sensual. And, you know, there are multifaceted characters who really confound the stereotypes that I think that that a lot of Westerners have about what it is to be an Asian man. And I remember wanting to be very purposeful with that, especially because, you know, I had many friends who were actors, for example, Asian, Asian, male actors. And one of them actually sat me down and said, you know, like, Kevin, this is going to sound really weird, but will you promise me that you’ll have at least one shirtless scene? We’re a guy where Nick or someone can be shirtless in your film because just too, you know, in that one little way sexualize an Asian male will just do so much for my ability to get roles, new roles, you know, that are just beyond the scope of all the clichéd little parts that I’m offered. And so I, you know, really took him to heart. And I sat down with Jon Chu, the director, and I said, listen, we need beefcake here. We need we need as many shirtless scenes as we can get. And, of course, we were casting these, you know, extraordinarily good looking actors. You know, it’s like we have to we have to, like, flip the stereotype, you know, and really kind of play off of this because for so long, the Asian male in the Western gaze has been emasculated, whereas the Asian female has been fetishized. So what can we do to really upend that? And boy did we.
Interviewer: What? A Watergate. Yeah.
Kevin Kwan: But I will say it did really begin with Amy’s film. It really began with the Joy Luck Club, which to me, to this day, number one, it’s one of my favorite movies of all time. To me, it was such a beautiful adaptation of her book. And it was for me the first time. I had seen. A glimpse of that empowered Asian male, you know? You know, on the big screen, like I remember when the movie came out, I must have seen it five times on the big screen. I was there opening night and I would take groups of friends. You know, this was back in Texas. I was still living in Houston, and all my friends were white. But I was so proud to show them this movie, you know, of English speaking, contemporary Asians. You know, and and it’s a movie that showcased the beauty of Shanghai in the art deco era. You know, we had Russell Wong, you know, I think I don’t think he was shirtless, but he you know, he was very, very memorable in his scenes. You know, all the beautiful performances. So I was I was really it was a watershed movie for me that I was so proud to just showcase and help promote in my little small way, you know, in Houston, Texas.
Speaker 3 Yeah.
Kevin Kwan: So I think subconsciously it worked its way in as we were doing Crazy Rich Asians because this was only, you know, the third time in Hollywood history that we got a chance of an all-Asian cast. So we had to get it right.
Interviewer: So Amy talks about being. She talks about wanting to be seen as an American writer. That and not just as an American, the Asian American way. Right. She talks about what it means, the pressures of it. She would describe it. I think when you become such a big voice, an important voice, then the literary community, the academic community, you do all these things that say, well, you know, Amy, you need to do this, you should do this. You’re not doing this. You’re not doing that. And you know, the pressures to sort of write the social roles and address those in her work to become more of an advocate. Mm hmm. You know, there’s a feeling that, you know, there’s there’s been some criticism of her that she hasn’t taken up the mantle of using your literary voice somehow to. But more directly would be to go back to even even to go back to some of the original criticism she got as she was initially held up by some criticized for some for sort of depicting exotic tropes or. And then some people felt that she wasn’t doing justice to men. I think, you know, the movie will hopefully address some of this. But how do you how do you feel yourself? Have you gotten much pressure yourself to step outside of what you just want to do? Because it seems to me as a fiction writer, you know, the only way she made a breakthrough with kitchen gods is she tossed all that shit out, all those pressures, and she answered a question that her mother asked her was, Why don’t you just tell my story? And it was like, Oh, yeah. And going back to the simplicity of that and putting everything else aside and distrusted who she was as a storyteller and and and embracing the idea that, first and foremost, she’s just a writer, is just a storyteller. It’s just, you know, now she’s not a. It’s just not fighting on the front lines and social justice issues. He saw to its creator. This was who was to you that you had you had to face any of those kinds of questions just so. You know, I.
Kevin Kwan: Think I’ve been very lucky in the sense that there hasn’t to me been any overt pressure. You know, I haven’t received that sort of negative feedback or, you know, the the sort of activist voices coming out saying, why don’t you do more? And I think maybe also it’s because I really create a lot of boundaries and I really filter out the noise. And I don’t really read comments. I don’t really read the press. I’m also very stubborn and I just do what I want to do, you know? And so I think I’ve been. Maybe I’m oblivious to what the chatter is out there, but I pay very little attention to it. At the same time, you know, with this new novel I’ve just written Sex and Vanity, it’s been interesting to see the spectrum of responses because there have been some critics who have come out. You know, book reviewers who basically have insinuated, how dare you write about white people? You know, stay in your lane. You know, give us these books on these crazy rich Asians. But. How dare you try to satirize? Satirize the WASP establishment? And I find that highly amusing, given what the book is ultimately about. You know, that’s it’s interesting. It’s it really tells me how much more work needs to be done, quite frankly. Because there are so many cultural blind spots. Out there establish, especially among the establishment, you know, especially among the establishment media and the reviewers and, you know, the literati. And so personally, I always feel like I’m trying to push myself to evolve, to grow as an artist, as a writer. And there’s always been an activist spirit in me. And so that comes out in the books, I think. Hopefully, you know, in much more subtle ways, but it’s there. But I don’t feel like I need to, you know, march down the street sort of, you know, with a war chant. You know, I’d rather catch the beads of honey. And with humor and satire. That’s what I try to do.
Interviewer: Amy. Amy just stops reading reviews, stays focused, attention doesn’t.
Kevin Kwan: And she does it so well. You know, I would have never known, you know, the struggles that she’s had.
Interviewer: Well, you know, I. I was just curious, you know, as a kid, when you when you were taking your friends to the movie. So it didn’t your impression when you saw the movie or were reading of what your reaction was, oh, she’s being unfair to men or women or or that you didn’t have you didn’t personally respond to those?
Kevin Kwan: Not at all. Not at all. You know, I was really rooting for the characters and. You know, there were some nasty men in her book, and I think they were portrayed accurately. And, you know, in the movie, as you know as well they should have. So.
Interviewer: Well, looking back, what do you think is the sort of weird to a club? Do you think it. What do you think is the greatest impact in terms of providing opportunity or opening doors for you, which is love to hear you. You’ve you’ve requested a few things on this point, but what is what do you see has been the broader cultural impact throughout the club? And what what is it done for the Asian-American community or even the East Asian community historically that opened other doors to other female Asian offers that you think it had an impact on the way the average American sees Asians or Asian Americans? I just wondered if you could summarize in your in your own words, the ways in which that approach has played out in the broader cultural landscape. That’s a big question.
Kevin Kwan: Yeah. No, not at all. I really feel like. The impact of the Joy Luck Club was cataclysmic. Quite frankly, not to do any disservice to the amazing Asian-American writers that came before, Amy, but I think this was the first book to really cross over into becoming a mainstream. Mass market. You know, New York Times best selling success. And I think it opened up this genre where people where readers really wanted to experience these new worlds. They you know, I think if people fell in love with Asia. Through Amy’s book. And I think it had such a huge impact and paving the way for other writers of color to tell their stories. First of all, and personally, you know, it it inspired me in a way that I don’t think any other book has. It gave me license to not even think about, you know, to not even have a moment of self-doubt about, Oh, I’m going to just go tell my story. So it’s it’s I think it’s profound and it’s a beautiful, beautiful, timeless book that I wish I could read for the very first time all over again.
