'Taipei Story' is a more personal novel from 'Yellowface' author R.F. Kuang
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What is the premise of R.F. Kuang’s new novel *Taipei Story*?
Hey, it's MPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. I get a lot of emails from book publicists along the lines of, oh, this thriller writer is out with their first romance book, or this romance writer is out with their first sci-fi book, or oh, this crime writer is out with their first literary novel. Implicit in these pitches is this idea that authors generally stay in their lanes. The guy who writes legal thrillers will now and forevermore write legal thrillers, same for the woman who writes family dramas that span generations. But why? RF Kwang is a writer who has broken this mold. She got big for writing huge, chonky fantasy books, came out a few years ago with a satirical novel, and is out now with a
Literary novel about language and family. It's titled Taipei Story, and she talked to Hironaus Indira Lakshmanan about the book, but also why she wants to do everything. That's after the break.
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For many American children of immigrants, visiting their parents' homeland is an awkward pilgrimage to an unfamiliar culture. Visiting relatives they barely know, muddling through conversations they barely understand. In her new coming of age novel, best selling author R. F. Kuang tells the bittersweet story of the search for identity through language. Taipei's story follows Lily Chen, a Chinese American student in a ruling Chinese immersion course. Lily wants to become fluent so she can ask her grandfather about their family history, but he dies before she gets that chance. Lily's summer abroad is one of mistranslation, miscommunication, and being a different person in a different language.
How does Lily Chin’s summer in Taipei mirror R.F. Kuang’s own immigrant experience?
Joining us now to talk about Taipei story is R. F. Quang. Rebecca, welcome back to the show.
Thank you for having me.
So this book is far more grounded in present-day reality than much of your previous work, and it feels more personal. Like your protagonist, you were born in China and immigrated with your family as a young girl. Like her, you're a student at Yale who did a rigorous summer program in Taipei. Like her, you have immigrant Chinese parents. How much of Lily Chen is drawn from your own experiences?
I'd say a lot. Primarily I was in Taipei three years ago when my own grandfather passed away. I was a lot closer to my grandfather than Lily is to her grandfather in the book and I couldn't write for a long time after because the whole reason why I had become a novelist and wanted to tell stories was so that I could understand my family and and honor everything that they had been through and I kept putting off all these opportunities to sit down with my grandfather and hear his stories and interview him and record him and get all these details because I was just so embarrassed at where my Chinese was. I was too ashamed to speak up and now I'll never get that chance. So I decided instead to explore that grief and guilt and shame and humiliation altogether, but dial it up to a ten.
So I'm thirty, Lily the protagonist, she's nineteen. She's dealing with the same kind of grief, but without a support system, without friends, she's so much more alienated and disoriented and upset and that's what fiction allows us to do. It a allows us to ask, How could everything feel so much worse? Um, which is cathartic in its way.
There's this deep regret that imbues your whole story that I think many children of immigrant parents might have of losing the thread of the family story and being unable to recreate it.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the premise of R.F. Kuang’s new novel *Taipei Story*?
0:02–2:29
2
How does Lily Chin’s summer in Taipei mirror R.F. Kuang’s own immigrant experience?
2:29–5:22
3
Why does the loss of Lily’s grandfather become the emotional core of the book?
5:22–8:04
4
What motivated Kuang to write all of the novel’s dialogue first in Chinese?
8:04–10:13
5
How does switching between English and Chinese reshape a character’s sense of self?
10:13–11:19
6
Why do family members in the story (and in Kuang’s life) shut down conversations about trauma?
11:19–12:21
Speakers
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