Normally when I participate in book tours I write a detailed review of the book the tour company has sent me. This time I’ve decided to do something a bit different. I’ve included a blurb from Publishers Weekly about the book below, but figured I would make the main focus of this post about the author chat experience.  Last month my book club had the pleasure of speaking with author Lisa See after reading her newest novel Shanghai Girls.

The soft spoken Lisa spent almost an hour talking about her various books to the women in my club. We found out about her family history (Lisa’s great-grandfather was Chinese) and how her own relationship with her sisters inspired her to write her newest novel.

We also learned that Lisa took her own family transcripts of time spent on Angel Island as a basis for the story of her Pearl and May in Shanghai Girls. Never heard of Angel Island?  According to this website, from 1910-1940 Chinese immigrants were detained and interrogated at Angel Island immigration station in San Francisco Bay. U.S. officials hoped to deport as many as possible by asking obscure questions about Chinese villages and family histories that immigrants would have trouble answering correctly. Apparently Angel Island was created when immigration laws were passed because American workers were upset that Chinese workers would do their jobs for less wages. I had first heard of Angel Island while watching the PBS miniseries Becoming American The Chinese Experience but it was just so interesting to hear Lisa talk about her own families experience while being detained.

Lisa was even nice enough to answer questions about one of her earlier novels, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan as three of us had read it previously and had questions about her extensive research of the book. I also found out that the village where Snow Flower was based on is close to the region of China where my youngest daughter was born. I was able to share a bit about my own trip to the cities of Nanning and Guilin in south-west China with Lisa and my book club.

We also found out that Lisa is the author of seven books, including a work of non-fiction called On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family which chronicles Lisa’s remarkable family history. I’ve already added that one to my wishlist! 

Lisa is currently almost two hundred pages into writing a sequel to Shanghai Girls, where she will focus on the next five to seven years of Pearl and May’s lives. Lisa also shared with us the possible title of her novel (which we all agreed would be a perfect fit) but don’t think I can share it online since she hasn’t gotten the thumbs up from her publisher yet!  

All and all it was another successful author chat. If you’ve yet to experience an author chat with your book club, I would highly recommend doing so. A lot of authors have sections on their websites dedicated to setting up book club chats. With a little creative coordinating, your book club could have the chance to talk directly with an author and get a real glimpse into the life of a writer. 

Thank you TLC Book Tours for sending all of my book club members a copy of Shanghai Girls to read and to Lisa See for taking time out of her busy schedule to chat with us. To find out more about Lisa See check out her website here.

ABOUT SHANGHAI GIRLS (FROM PUBLISHERS WEEKLY):

See (Peony in Love) explores tradition, the ravages of war and the importance of family in her excellent latest. Pearl and her younger sister, May, enjoy an upper-crust life in 1930s Shanghai, until their father reveals that his gambling habit has decimated the family’s finances and to make good on his debts, he has sold both girls to a wealthy Chinese-American as wives for his sons. Pearl and May have no intention of leaving home, but after Japanese bombs and soldiers ravage their city and both their parents disappear, the sisters head for California, where their husbands-to-be live and where it soon becomes apparent that one of them is hiding a secret that will alter each of their fates. As they adjust to marriage with strangers and the challenges of living in a foreign land, Pearl and May learn that long-established customs can provide comfort in unbearable times. See’s skillful plotting and richly drawn characters immediately draw in the reader, covering 20 years of love, loss, heartbreak and joy while delivering a sobering history lesson. While the ending is ambiguous, this is an accomplished and absorbing novel.