Hello!  I’m quite excited today to welcome Cara Chow, author of Egmont USA‘s Bitter Melon, to Galleysmith to speak about how her novel came into existence.  Is it auto-biographical?  Is it a little bit of her life or is it a little bit of fiction?  Read on to find out:

Though Bitter Melon is a work of fiction, the number one question people ask me is “Is Frances you?”  Because Bitter Melon is a mother-daughter story, the unspoken question they are also asking is “Is Gracie your mother?”  Some are so attached to the idea that Frances could be me that they have even asked me if the girl on the book cover is a photo of me when I was a teen.  My response to that is, “No.  I was not that pretty.”

The question of whether Bitter Melon is autobiographical is difficult to answer because the answer is both yes and no.  Let me explain.

Though my mother and I enjoy a very positive relationship today, we definitely struggled a lot when I was a teen.  My mom wanted me to be the best, and her way of motivating me was by being very hard on me. Unfortunately, her parenting strategy did not have the effect on me that she had intended.  I wanted to make her proud, but I always felt like a disappointment to her, and this really affected my confidence and self-image as a teen.  Those tumultuous feelings became compost for my imagination as I created the fictional world of Frances Ching a decade later.

When I began the first draft of Bitter Melon back in (gasp!) 1999, I was twenty-seven years old.  I was still processing the things that had happened between my mother and me, and our relationship dynamic was still similar to how it had been in my teens.  That messy first draft was the most autobiographical of the eleven drafts.  My long-time writing teacher had said that writing a memoir is particularly challenging because the writer is processing her own life while learning how to write.  Though I was not writing a memoir, this rule certainly applied to me.  For the first time, I was having to learn how to plot a story.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t tame my plot because an unconscious part of me needed to write about my life, and my life, with its multitude of characters and issues, refused to fit with a greased shoe horn into just one story.  Another shortcoming in my writing at the time was how I depicted Gracie.  I was told by two different writing teachers that Gracie needed to be more three-dimensional, that they wanted to be able to sympathize with her, even as they disapproved of her actions.  I tried very hard to heed their advice as I rewrote, but I was given this same feedback about Gracie over and over.  Years later, I realized that the problem was more psychological than mechanical.  I couldn’t depict Gracie in a sympathetic manner because I hadn’t forgiven my own mother and was unwilling to view her in a sympathetic light.

All this changed a year later when I had a freak, life threatening medical emergency, resulting in a major surgery.  I spent the next year recovering from this surgery and other health issues that I had ignored up to that point.  This experience really shook me up.  I felt like I had been given a second chance at life, and this motivated me to let go of many old resentments.  After being estranged from my mom for a year, I decided to reconnect with her.  Meanwhile, my mom was doing some soul searching of her own.  Within a short period of time, a few life-changing events forced her to reflect on her own life.  Our relationship had become almost non-existent because of our differences.  She was facing retirement and had achieved her life-long goal of financial security, yet she was wondering, “Is this it?”  Also around this time, my older sister gave birth to her first child.  Not long after, my mother’s mother passed away.  Over the next few years, my mom and I had many conversations about how she raised me.  I learned that, by withholding praise and criticizing me harshly, my mom was really trying to push me to achieve more because she believed in me.  My mom learned that, instead of motivating me, she was actually damaging my confidence.  I learned that she was really hurt that I didn’t appreciate how much she had sacrificed to give me everything I had.  On her end, she learned that shaming and guilt-tripping do not inspire sincere appreciation.

So how did this change my book?  In a nutshell, my life and France’s life diverged.  I had made peace in my own life, so I was able to get out of my own way and focus on the craft of writing.  For the first time, I was able to let go of the need to demonize Gracie.  Though she continued to be a tough antagonist, I was able to show the fear and insecurity that fueled her cruel actions.  My protagonist also became more three-dimensional.  Frances was no longer an innocent victim but instead a flawed hero whose selfishness got her into trouble.  The complexity of my characters reflected a more complex understanding of human nature.  I also gained more objectivity about my plot.  After years of confusion, adding subplots to an already complicated story, I was finally able to see the spine of the story, and I axed multiple subplots that detracted from the main story.  Gradually, a clean, clear story line emerged.  I almost forgot that the story I had created had been inspired by something that had happened in my own life.

Ironically, years after having moved on, I must once again revisit my past because of the publication of Bitter Melon and the question “Is Frances you?”.  Adding to this is the recently published Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua.  The tsunami of questions regarding Tiger Mothers doesn’t just come from media people.  I can’t push my stroller down the street without a neighbor mentioning Chua’s article.  Even my contractor, who remodeled my kitchen, had to put in his two cents about Tiger Mothers.  (He was one of the readers who asked if that was me on the cover.)  Recently, I did an interview that was titled “Raised by a Tiger Mother.”  I wonder, will people remember me as a Tiger Mother survivor first and a novelist second?  Will they view my mother as the Chinese Mommy Dearest?  How many will know or remember that this is the same person who said, “Though you are grown, I am still learning how to be a better mother,” or who supported my book by offering me encouragement, helping me with research, and booking me a reading with her senior alternative health class?

My long-time writing teacher once said that one’s life informs one’s art but one’s art also in turn informs one’s life.  This has definitely been the case for me, in a much deeper way than I had ever imagined.

Thank you for stopping by Cara, it’s always fantastic to learn more about what goes into making a book.  Please check back tomorrow when I post my review of Bitter Melon.