A Conversation With Chloe Gong

For this month’s Asian Diaspora issue in honour of Asian Heritage Month, I had the privilege of speaking to the New York Times bestselling author, Chloe Gong about her career and her journey as a writer. She is most known for her YA duo titled, These Violent Delights and Our Violent Ends, respectively. Set in 1920’s Shanghai and playing off of Shakespeare’s classic romantic tragedy, Romeo and Juliet, the Violent duo speaks of love in warfare, familial responsibility, Asian identity and most importantly, the notion of ‘soft colonialism’; the continuation or presence of an imperialist state within another independent state. 

As I virtually sit in her sunlit New York apartment on a Friday afternoon, Chloe chats to me all about her time as a young author in our current publishing industry, the importance of Asian representation in literature and our bond over the height of Tumblr fandom culture. 

RP: Firstly, happy Asian heritage month!

CG: Happy Asian heritage month!

RP: It's a big month for us (laughs). So for this month’s issue, we wanted to talk about the Asian diaspora and the Asian immigrant experience. From reading about your work and more about you, I thought you would be the perfect person to talk about this with so… I’m going to start us off by asking you how you celebrated this month and what does it mean to you?

CG: Good question because when this month rolled around I issued a statement - it wasn’t a statement it was an Instagram story being like, “I would love to be celebrating general Asian diaspora but I would like to make it clear that I am not an Asian-American. Since Asian Heritage Month specifically comes with a lot of American history, I am very cautious about the kind of space I take up as I always would love to be included in all things diaspora. However, in other Western countries, the kind of second-generation immigrant experience is very similar to how it is in the US but the US specifically has a very long history that I think, in New Zealand at least, we don’t have the exact same and so there is a specific form of celebration that I was like “I don’t want to take up space but if you invite me in, I’d be happy to be here!”

RP: I completely agree! I’m from Thailand, I have an American accent but I’m not American, and I live in London. Even with this issue, I felt like I couldn’t really speak on this, I should let everyone else take the lead on this. It’s not really my experience, you know, my experience is very different. It's not really my place to speak out during Asian Heritage Month but I still want to celebrate it with everyone.

CG: That’s exactly my take, I’m here for a good time, and I’d love to join the celebration but speaking to experiences, I think there is a very specific Asian-American experience that corresponds more to the nature of ‘heritage month’.

RP: Exactly. Going off of that, do you think you could give us a bit about your background, your life, and your career just for our readers to understand a little bit more about you?

CG: Yeah! So I was born in Shanghai in the dead of winter, I’m a Sagittarius.

RP: Yay! I’m a Leo.

CG: Love it! My parents immigrated to New Zealand with me when I was two. I grew up mostly in Auckland, New Zealand. I started writing at the start of high school because I had been a really really big reader and New Zealand’s library system is amazing so I was always in and out of the libraries with a giant stack of books. I loved the escapist aspect of storytelling so much that when I eventually ran out of books, my first instinct was I’m going to try to write my own stories. So I did that all throughout high school but I never thought of them as books, you know, I was just telling myself a little story here and there on my grungy Ipad 2 with the thick screen.

RP: I love it ahaha.

CG: Haha yeah! So it was always what I grew up doing and I thought of it more as a hobby rather than something I was going to pursue. But then, as I was graduating high school, I was applying to the US for college and I was thinking about going overseas and being located in the US where the major book market is. Since all the books that I have been reading about growing up, that I was a huge fan of, were mostly by Americans and mostly by, you know, this market. 

So, while I was researching college I was also kind of researching the publication process and you know I discovered that you can actually get published anywhere like, the American market can still distribute your book even if I didn't say yes but just because I was coming over like I just found out about that by like Googling and all that stuff so it was when I first started college that I decided this next book idea I have is going to be the one that I'm going to try to pursue getting published with and that ended up being These Violent Delights. So, my kind of journey coming over here to the States and trying to get published worked together and happened at the same time. Since then, I always had people from New Zealand being like, “You don't need to do these two things together” but I just happened to do it like that.

RP: It was for the experience!

CG: Yeah (laughs).

RP: So when you started writing, did you have a vision of what sort of stories you wanted to tell or did it just kind of come to you one day?

CG: Oooh… Most of the stories that I wanted to tell were in some way fantastical or speculative. I've always said that I struggled to write a book with no murder in it. Someone is always dying so I've written books in the past that were just murder mysteries like, there was no fantasy but someone's got to die like there will be blood at some point. I’ve mostly written young adult books and I think that's probably because I started as that target audience. That was the only type of book that I read and so I was very accustomed to you know that style and I was the audience who wants to read that kind of content. As I've gotten older, I also started reading more like adult fantasy/adult science fiction and I'm also probably going to you know expand into that in the future but mostly what I write is the stuff that I really love reading.

RP: So, yeah, moving on to that, what do you like reading and what sort of things sort of inspired you now as well as back then? How does that seep into your storytelling?

CG: Yeah, back then, YA was kind of having its commercial boom so it was the major franchises that really gave me the love for reading because it gave me this idea of ‘fandom’ for the first time. I think the major fandoms that formed around The Hunger Games, Divergent, and The Mortal Instruments proved it was not just the experience of reading that book but like, the experience of talking about it with your friends or going online and like making fan edits and graphics and all of that on Tumblr right? It was such an experience -

RP: You had to be there.

CG: You had to be there! Like those graphics were like, “I'm a Shadow Hunter Demigod” , you know, that one that’s multi -

RP: Yes! The fanart and the tattoos…

CG: Yes! You really really had to be there. But that was -

RP: I think I truly peaked then. 

CG: Me too!  Absolutely me too. 

RP: No shame in that. 

CG: Yeah! it was that that kind of drew up my entire reader identity right? So as I got into writing, it was that feeling I was pursuing. Anything I needed to write had to make some other reader feel the way that I did when I was in, you know, my most Tumblr-heavy phase.

RP: Amazing. So, what would you say was your biggest challenge trying to find that balance and trying to recreate that feeling?

CG: I mean… I think doing it organically, right? Because there's an instinct of course to go into it and think, “Oh, I'm gonna write something that everyone's gonna love!” But that's impossible. If your book reaches a wide enough range, someone's going to hate it. That's just how art works so, for me, I wanted to write something that I, myself, love so much that I'm always going to be my own primary target audience. No matter who picks it up or who doesn't, I know that I loved this book so I believe in it enough that maybe someone else can also love it the way that I do. It was a careful balance of what works for the story, what is something that I want to see and what would create a fanbase that would have enough of the same energy that I went into these books with. Such as being like, “Oh, I hope these things happen, I hope these people get together” and all of that.

RP: Yeah, you nailed that… yeah.

CG: Aw, thank you thank you.

RP: So, besides you know, the crime and the murder that you love writing about, you also have like these themes of identity conflict or like ‘soft power’ that comes with colonialism and like Western influence. Was that something that came up, again, organically? Or was it something you intended to do, especially with These Violent Delights?

CG: Both. I think the organic part is that I have always wanted to write something in the 1920s and I also always wanted to work with Shanghai as a city. But when I was writing these materials, I was always very frustrated at the idea that you know anything that was written in the English language of the 1920s and especially, in 1920 Shanghai, was always from the Western foreigner's point of view. It was, you know, them coming into save the day then coming in to like, save the prostitute who's whoring herself out and there are always these themes of like the ‘Colonial Other’ and then the exotification of the Orient. It was either coming from their perspective or if it was the 1920 Shanghai local perspective, it was very inaccessible to me because my Chinese is not good enough to read like, primary source materials so I have to read the English language. And so, just being a member of the diaspora, I'm in this in-between area where there feels like there's nothing for me… 

So when I went into this, I was wanting to write for those in-between audiences and as a consequence, I needed to explore these ideas that we have to be seen over and over again in other English language texts and that may be that the Chinese language text isn't necessarily going to go into it because, being a member of the majority, they may not be interested in it. 

So, it was organic in that I knew I had to go in looking at it a certain way but as I was writing it… I really like that you mentioned the term ‘soft power’ because I studied international relations in college and, you know, these terms like ‘soft power’ and ‘hard power’  is very fascinating to me and was also so critical during these time periods. Yeah, so the more I picked up in class, the more readings I was doing, the more it seemed very relevant to the story I was writing as well so, I made a very conscious effort to have an international relations angle to it.

RP: Amazing! Yeah, so we’ve kind of touched on the Asian-American experience, your books and just like, media in general. So there was something we wanted to discuss in this issue in terms of like, Asian representation in media. We're seeing so much more of it and it's amazing but what are your thoughts on staying authentic over being stereotypical? Personally, I feel like the stories coming out are great but there are also a few tropes and a few storylines that just seem repetitive. Such as stories you usually see about trauma, generational trauma and belonging. So, what do you think is this balance - what's your take on the balance between authenticity over stereotypes when it comes to writing?

CG: I think this is such a tricky question and such a big question that is so hard to get just one take on it because it's so nuanced. On one hand, it is so important for us to be able to depict authenticity because having that in existence could be a make or break between some young person seeing their experience reflected for the first time or some young person feeling incredibly disconnected from their roots, right? On the other hand, I think it becomes so tricky when you know members of the community are trying to decide what is authentic and a stereotype right? It's like we walk such a murky middle ground. Sometimes there are creators that lean into the stereotype for the majority since it's for the white audience and sometimes a creator also leans into the stereotype because that's just their experience. That's what they have gone through and that's what they want to depict for other people who have gone through it as well. Yeah… so, at least for me, the way that I look at it is that there's almost no way to solve the stereotype versus authenticity debate until we just have so many stories that we -

RP: Like a norm.

CG: Yeah, it's like, until we have so many stories that have covered every niche that exists in identity experience… Until we have that, people will always feel resentful if any other part of their experience is covered in a way that doesn't reflect them, right? They're like, “I don’t understand why you would do it that way” but then, for another person, that is not the same. So, again, it is really really hard just as a concept and I really don't think we're going to stop debating about it until we have like a bajillion average Asian stories in the same way.

RP: I completely agree because there's such a saturation of Western media already. There's not enough Asian representation already so when you see all these stories coming up, we can't compare it because like this has been centuries of you know, white-washing and just like all these stories that we've already seen everything.  So, we just need to keep doing more…I really like your take on that, yeah.

So, to bring it back to your writing, when it comes to writing about topics like this, is there any sort of process you go through to ensure that you keep this Asian narrative that you have for yourself in your writing?

CG: Especially when I'm writing young adult, I'm always writing for that teenage self and peripherally, I'm also writing for like, the Asian teenagers growing up now. Especially when I think about the types of books that I had available to me, it was either the white protagonists who I really adored or there were Asian side characters here and there and they'd be written horribly, right? Because at that point, it was like, “Oh look, we’ve got representation!” And it was like, I don't want it.

RP: Yeah, like a token character.

CG: Yeah! Like tokenised or described in ways that were hateful or just terrible terrible ways of doing it. It wasn't until - I always cite that Jenny Han’s Burn for Burn series is the first time that I saw an Asian or East Asian character on a cover so I picked it up and then that was the first book I read where I actually got to see an Asian character being fleshed out. By that I mean not just a nice Asian character in a way where it's like, “Oh, I'm gonna defy how people usually write them” like meek or shy but because she got to be really really mean. In a way that felt real and it felt human and for the first time, I was realizing what it meant to actually have a character be written by an author who is actually fully trying to give them three-dimensionality. So much of it comes back to intention and I think in my own writing process, so long as you know my way of going about it is, “How does this character be a fully-realized human being? How do their identities fully inform every way they see the world?” It's probably just how you create good characters, I guess.

RP: I agree. Yeah, um… I know you have a book coming out in July, is that right?

CG: Yes that's right! My adult debut, yes. 

R: So can you tell us a little bit more about that? Does it sort of follow a theme or is it like a complete redirection from your previous work?

CG: Yeah! My adult debut is… it's a bit of a pivot. It’s an Anthony and Cleopatra-inspired fantasy set in a city that resembles the Kowloon wall city in Hong Kong in the 1990s. It is a secondary world fantasy so, it is not actually 90’s Hong Kong but it very much rolls off of the feeling of what it once was. It was the densest place in the world and I kind of merge it with the rise of the Roman empire which, you know, I always loved just completely merging things that should not be merged. When I sat down for this, I was like, “Okay, 90's Hong Kong… rise with Roman Empire… let's just see what that makes.” I kind of pitch it as if Wong Kar-Wei had directed The Hunger Games and if Clove and Cato are star-crossed lovers instead.

RP: Oh my god… 

CG: I think you really get the elevator pitch better if I actually elevator pitch a book ahaha. But the book itself is about a criminal princess who has killed her own parents in an attempt to completely get rid of the monarchy in her city. However, she still has to get rid of her uncle to fully kill the bloodline so the only way to get access to him is a battle to the death because he only greets the Victor of these games every year. So, she has to team up with an exiled aristocrat and try to win these games but no matter how good of a pair of allies they are, ultimately only one person can win these games.

RP: (visual slow clap) I love it, I’m so excited.

CG: In July! 

RP: I’m so excited for that! So do you speak to people when it comes to like curating this world or do you just sort of write down all the possibilities and narrow it down? Do you collaborate? Do you speak to historians, how does it all work at the end of the day?

CG: My world-building is always either historically influenced or contemporary influenced, right? So, These Violent Delights was quite a straight path for me because it was just - it was a period of history that I could go to textbooks, I could go to professors or historians and ask questions about it. I could also ask my relatives because they all grew up in Shanghai and even though it was a bit later on, the kind of feeling was still the same and they had a lot of knowledge about buildings, streets, areas of the city and all that. So I had a lot of primary sources and resources for These Violent Delights and I was also still in school which meant I could easily just ask all my professors. I could just show up at office hours and I didn't have to actually seek out a historian… Yeah, since graduation, you know, I've lost all that.

RP: All the privilege…

CG: I know! I didn’t know how good I had it until I lost it.

RP: It’s so true though…like access to libraries and all these people who had so many ideas.

CG: Yeah… god but I’m never doing that again though, that’s done. 

RP: Yes, we’re done with that, we’re done with that.

CG: Just to say though, in Immortal Longings, the adult debut was a little different because it was only inspired by ancient Roman history and then I was inspired by 90s Hong Kong and so what I did was - you know, a huge resource I used was a photography book that managed to capture inside the walled city before it was torn down because that was the only way I could get a vision of what the world would look like. Recently, I've also been working on doing a sci-fi next so I'm not looking at history anymore and instead, I'm looking at our modern world and the kind of technology we have and where that could possibly go into my real world-building research.

RP: Very interesting hm… Yeah, so I know you just kind of created this world for Immortal Longings but is there some sort of story or characters you aspire to create in the future?

CG: Ooh… I think what I'm creating right now probably because I've been sitting on this very long time. However, with the move of what we're seeing in the news these days about - I think given my international relations degree I've always studied Sino-American relations very specifically and I think with it being in the news all the time I'm very… I guess I think there is so much value in creating speculative worlds that look at two nations and their relationship. So much science fiction is about one nation… It’s about the government about the, you know, the ruling faction or it's about the monarchy so, it is always some sort of civil conflict, not always! But like, the usual conventions and tropes in speculative fiction is civil but I think there's so much value in bilateral relations as well so that's probably where I'm going to go next.

RP: Would that be more dystopian?

CG: I think so, yeah.

RP: Ok yeah, I really like that! This next question is just a fun question but do you have a favorite character that you’ve created so far?

CG: Oh I really like Alisa. It's a bit… it's a bit of an oddball, it's a bit of a left-field answer because, you know, when she was first written to These Violent Delights she was just the little sister. She was the 12-year-old that kind of ran around and obviously, she served plot because she was the one who fell sick first and all of that but as I kept going through the books, she was the final chapter of Our Violent Ends which I really liked because it was that voice of innocence being able to narrate at the very end. Then going into Foul Lady Fortune, the spin-off, she was 17 because of the time jump and I was like, “Oh, you're getting… Oh, you're… She's always been interesting!”

RP: Yeah, she's complicated now.

CG: When she aged up, she was like the interesting 12-year-old but she's like, so chaotic as a rogue teenager and I have a lot of fun writing her. You never know what she's gonna do so yeah, she's really been a bright spot across all four books. 

RP: And is there a second book to Foul Lady Fortune?

CG: There is! Foul Heart Huntsman, coming out in September. 

RP: That's the next one I'm gonna be reading following Foul Lady Fortune. So finally, do you have any sort of inspiring words or advice for anyone who is in your position five years ago/ ten years ago?

CG: Oh I mean… I think when it comes to you know being a writer and even specifically trying to bring Asian representation into the world of like Arts and Media, it is something that is non-stop. You think you can just get your foot in and you're like, “Okay I'm safe, I'm steady” but it is non-stop. At any point, the status quo is always trying to shift back into place and I think we're seeing that a lot, you know, there are such threats on literature right now… There are book bannings and such that I think are really affecting marginalised groups right now that are affecting the Asian diaspora but we can't just let it affect other marginalised groups because eventually, they're gonna come for everyone, right? 

So it is a constant work in progress in the same way that like, learning how to write is a constant work in progress. There's no stopping. You just keep pushing and if it's the matter of entering publishing, you just keep throwing spaghetti at the wall until something lands then shove your foot in there and then you keep having to keep your foot in there because at any point, it is easier to give up than it is to keep going. So I think my general wise sage advice is that if there are a bunch of people that want you to give up, then you shouldn't give up because you should just write and keep true to yourself. Get your spot in there.

RP: Correct. I love that. I just thought of a question hold on… it was um… yeah so, the publishing industry. We've talked about the history of it and putting your marginalised voice out there and just like, trying to make something stick. Do you see where that will change in the future? I know now working with like, AI and with genres coming back like a dystopian renaissance, where do you see the publishing industry going?

CG: I mean, I hope that publishing will continue to value voices over shortcuts to money, right?  Especially… like when you mentioned AI, it's such an interesting topic because there are so many better uses for AI like saving lives and cleaning the oceans than creating art. It's something just so completely absurd to me like, my boyfriend is an AI engineer and I see what he does that is actually useful and then I go open up like publishing Twitter and it's like, “We're gonna use AI to write books” and it's like why? That’s literally not the use for it.

RP: It is like you said, it’s a money shortcut. 

CG: It’s capitalism!

RP: So true, it is. 

CG: People are just trying to find the easiest way to make a quick buck and I don't see how because it doesn't carry any longevity whatsoever. As a larger industry and as there are major publishers who are gatekeepers, I hope what they ultimately value is not only human voices but art and marginalized voices that we have not heard enough of because they are the ones that can bring them (marginalised voices) into prominence.

Chloe’s new YA novel, ‘Foul Heart Huntsman’ comes out this September and her adult debut, ‘Immortal Longings’ comes out in July.