Conversations with Ann Liang: a glimpse into her literary fiction
Grab a cup of tea, and lets discuss Ann Liang's up-coming release "I am not Jessica Chen", her approach to representation, routines, and more! We will be publishing extra Ann Liang content soon.
Bread and Butter Magazine (that’s us!) is dedicated to showcasing diverse voices. How do you approach themes of identity and cultural representation in your writing?
This is something that I always try to give as much thought to as possible because it's part of my own cultural identity. Every time I’m writing books about these Asian girls, I want to do it justice and be as nuanced and genuine as possible. I think I always try to tell myself everyone’s lived experience is going to be different, and something that I’m so grateful for and happy about is the fact that we have so many incredible authors out there! Someone was asking me the other day about how my dear friend Chloe Gong and I know each other and how we could just hang out and have dinner. I genuinely just gravitate to these intelligent, lovely people who don’t even live in the same country as me and we’re randomly meeting up. There’s so many more of us now compared to before, so I have that support system and can go to an author I know and ask questions related to diversity, character, and specific cultural details. Having the ability to go to writers that understand and seeing that you’re not the only Asian author is such a privilege. Something that I love to think about is that when I’m writing and translating my own lived experiences into a novel, I’m so honored and touched if readers see themselves in that but I also know that now, there’s so many more books to showcase themes of identity. All of these other authors are so innovative in vast genres and age categories, so having these people to look up to as writers and people has been important. It’s impossible to definitively capture the “Asian coming-of-age experience” because it’s so unique. For instance, the more stereotypical or traditional use of tiger-parenting is common, so when I’m approaching my character’s relationship with their parents, I want to see if I’m reinforcing that stereotype. I don’t want to be writing in reaction to a stereotype if that makes sense, but I know that there’s definitely parents out there who do put pressure on their children. I try to write in a nuanced way and get stories from people I know or my own life, like the relationships are not two-dimensional, they are complex. That’s the problem with writing stereotypes, it’s reducing this whole group of people into just one thing when there’s so many shades in between. People in real life are contradictory and special which is what makes writing these characters so interesting.
Can you walk us through your typical writing process? Do you have any rituals or routines that help you stay inspired?
I think I sort of have like… (to be continued)The blurb you find in the book or the description is what I used to describe my vision and show my publishers to get that green light and second source of support. And from then on, I use something called “My Notes and Phrases” document which is where I get incredibly specific, and it HAS to be on Pages. Pages to me, seems less intimidating and serious than Microsoft Word. I kind of have tiers, least serious being my Notes app; basically where if I think about a random scene on the plane and I’m imagining things, that’s where I’ll write it down. The next level is my Pages document where I compile all these quotes and scenarios but I organize them a bit more, where I start writing out a brief chapter outline (maybe just a few plot points for each chapter). I give myself some flexibility, it doesn’t have to stay the same. I’ll jot down things about each character and what to remember, like physical appearance or a job that their parents work on. From there on, I open up the Microsoft Word document, when I actually start to draft. I feel like with my first drafts, I’m really picky; the reason why I’ve been able to release books at the rate that I have, well first of all, I have a lot of privilege and I’m very lucky. I don’t have children, I don’t even KNOW how authors manage to balance raising a whole human being with a writing career. I can barely take care of myself! The fact that I don’t have to worry about anything except feeding myself and the book, it’s really helpful. Also, just in terms of my drafts, I’m so picky about the words and the plot, I try to write my first drafts in a way where my editor would be able to read it fully. There needs to be a lot of work done from there, but someone needs to be able to read it and see a story somewhere in there. That means that I don’t have to go through too many versions of a book, the version that is my first draft is the one I build on. Some people take a more exploratory approach but for me, it’s hard to do that in the early stages because I like to narrow things down and not have too many iterations.
How do you hope readers will connect with I Am Not Jessica Chen? Are there particular emotions or thoughts you aim to evoke?
I really wanted to dive into that mentality of the overachievers and the girls who are struggling with comparing themselves to others and the insecurities and perfectionism that comes along with that. I really hope that readers who have felt that way see themselves in Jenna, the main character, and I feel like especially with all the insecurities she faces, where she doesn’t really recognize her self worth, it’s like; usually we’re able to see other people’s good traits, when they’re struggling, we tell them that it’s so untrue. And so, I hope that having a character like that will allow readers to get that distance and see that she’s thinking all these terrible things about herself, she’s deep in her head, and her thoughts don’t reflect reality. The people in Jenna’s life are also trying to show her that even if things about her don’t change in the situations and circumstances she puts herself in.. Readers will see that she’s being too harsh about how she is and then take a step back and view themselves in that same way, and lend the same compassion to themselves that they’re lending Jenna or their friends.
What imagery or themes do you envision representing I Am Not Jessica Chen?
With IAMNJC, I definitely had a strong vision in terms of tone and atmosphere. I definitely consider IAMNJC to be darker than my other books, so when we were looking at the cover or just like in general when I was visualizing the themes, I thought that I wanted the writing to be very ominous and convey a mood of dark academia, old libraries, shooting stars across the night, paintings with disappearing faces, so on and so forth. The cover captured everything I was thinking about in terms of imagery, I got so lucky for this cover because usually, authors send in a mood board or some sort of palette, and I really wanted there to be a sense of ambiguity and her face to be smudged and blurred, and also with like the flowers on the side (magnolias). As Jenna is erased from existence, her face just kind of disappears, and I guess you can see it as an ode to the Picture of Dorian Gray if it helps you to see what I was thinking about when it came to the cover. The cover is such an important visual touchpoint and I hope as people read the book, they see how the art relates to the story.
What inspired you to write I Am Not Jessica Chen, and how does it reflect your personal experiences or observations?
I’ve had this idea brewing in my head for a long time, longer than any of my other books. We did a creative writing exercise when I was in university and I remember coming up with the title even before that and writing a very short introduction piece for an assignment. Not that many elements stayed the same but Jenna’s feelings of being inferior did translate into this bigger book idea. I’d always been playing around with this idea of comparison and wanting to live someone else’s life, and what I love to do with my speculative books is to turn the metaphorical into literal and vice versa; with IYCSTS, Alice feels unseen and then does actually turn invisible! I definitely know how it feels to be an impostor as I went to a highly academic-oriented international school in Beijing, and I looked at my past high school experience to kind of put myself in Jenna’s shoes. After that school, I went to this private girls school in Melbourne, Australia, and it was so academically rigorous and dependent on compliments from others. Some of that external validation comes in the form of mentor praise as well, when teachers and other people are saying “you don’t even need to study,” or that “you’re going to do amazing in life.” That can actually heighten those feelings of impostor syndrome; which is definitely one of the main themes and it’s something that I was thinking about a lot when I put the plot together. When putting the literal with the metaphorical, Jenna does go through a very literal sense of impostor syndrome where she is essentially trapped in someone else’s body and so, I really wanted to give this tangible basis to how it feels. Everyone is like saying you’re so successful and amazing but Jenna feels that the person that they’re complimenting isn’t her, and that she’s not deserving of such superlatives. She’s going to all of these intensive classes with intelligent students and thinking that she’s the only one here who doesn’t understand what’s going on, which is something I really wanted to explore with this book. So a lot of flashbacks to my academic experiences as I was writing it, and I think also when I was revisiting my own high school experience, I was very relieved to be about it! I’m very glad to be able to process this through the lens of fiction and I don’t have to actually relive it, it reminded me of how hard it was which reinforces the reason of why I wanted to write IAMNJC, to give readers an outlet and show how everybody does go through this.
I feel like at my school at least, there’s this culture where everybody is trying to seem casual and say that “I didn’t study that hard but I just happened to do really well!” They’re under or overemphasizing how stressed they are for an exam but at the end of it, they just appear cool, calm, and collected. With international schools, there’s an expectation for every student to go to an Ivy League school, and it's so stressful and there’s so much pressure to go to something like a Top 50 or something. It’s so hard to talk about when you’re trying to act unbothered but I’m sending a ton of love towards everyone going through that right now, know that there is light at the end of the tunnel and you’re doing so good regardless of whatever outcome!