Why I Don't Want to Be the Next Amy Tan

I'm placing a bet now: when I publish my first novel, there's a better-than-even chance that someone out there will call me "the next Amy Tan." The reviewer will mean it as a compliment. But it won't make me happy.

Let me explain.

My discomfort does not stem from a dislike of Amy Tan. I admire her work, particularly the stories in her first book, The Joy Luck Club, and her insightful collection of essays The Opposite of Fate. I had the privilege of hearing her speak in the 2004 "Women of Substance" series at the College of St. Catherine (now St. Catherine University) in St. Paul -- she's a engaging and wryly funny speaker. Plus, she sings in a literary rock band with Stephen King and Dave Barry! In leather! With a whip! I'd love to be able to write as well as she does, to have a career like hers, to be as awesome as she is.

But for some reason, Chinese American writers mostly get compared to other Chinese American writers. Maybe other East Asian writers, but that's often as far as it goes. A quick survey:

Of Lan Samantha Chang's novel Inheritance, Library Journal wrote, "Readers who enjoy the works of strong women writers like Amy Tan, Gail Tsukiyama, and Hong Ying will relish this." It's no coincidence that those strong women writers are also all of Asian descent. Of Chang's collection Hunger, the Washington Post said it "invited comparisons to Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston." Reviewing Gus Lee's novel China Boy, the School Library Journal noted, "This timeless, magically told tale of growing up and coming of age is a perfect companion to Tan's Joy Luck Club or Kingston's Woman Warrior." But not to any other tales of growing up or coming of age? Kirkus Reviews described David Wong Louie's collection Pangs of Love as "a worthy (if more prosaic) companion to recent similar chronicles by Amy Tan, Maxine Hong Kingston, and others," and in reviewing Wong's debut novel, The Barbarians Are Coming, Newsday called Wong "funny as Gish Jen [and]...eloquent as Chang-rae Lee."

Even Tan herself is not immune. In The Opposite of Fate, she quotes a New York Times review of her novel The Kitchen God's Wife that compares her to Maxine Hong Kingston, Bette Bao Lord, and Nien Cheng. Somewhere in the Commandments of Reviewing must be written: Thou shalt not compare Asians to non-Asians.

If someone were to call me "the next Amy Tan," it would not be because -- or not primarily because -- we have similar themes or subjects or styles. Let's be honest: it would be because we are both Chinese American. And to be fair, it might not be "the next Amy Tan." It might be "the next Maxine Hong Kinston," or "the next Lan Samantha Chang." Again, I'd be lucky to be compared to any of those fine writers. But I want it to be for literary merit, not for our mutual culture.

A similar fate befalls writers of other minorities. Check any bookshelf of contemporary fiction and you'll see what I mean. Black writers get compared to black writers; Jewish writers to Jewish writers; gay writers to gay writers. According to the publisher's description, my friend Preeta Samarasan's novel Evening Is the Whole Day is "sure to earn her a place alongside Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai, and Zadie Smith." I teased her: a place on the shelf of Brown Women Writers. As someone of Indian descent, Samarasan can apparently hope to become a Bharati Mukherjee or a Jhumpa Lahiri, but not -- say -- a Toni Morrison or an A. S. Byatt. Or an Amy Tan, for that matter.

I suspect that Amy Tan herself might understand what I mean. In The Opposite of Fate, Tan comments on this phenomenon:

"The underlying message to the reader: These books are similar, but one book is better than the other, pick only one. Some reviewers tend to reduce the books to the most obvious and general abstractions: the themes of immigration and assimilation. They overlook the specifics of narrative detail, language, and imagery that make the story and the characters unlike any that have been written before." (p. 312)

Is this selective comparison a marketing technique? Absolutely. "Like The Joy Luck Club? Then you'll love this!" But it does writers and readers a huge disservice. Comparing Asian writers mainly to other Asian writers implies that we're all telling the same story -- a disappointingly reductive view. It places Asian writers in their own segregated Asians-only pool: you may be funny, but we can't compare you to, say, David Sedaris or Lorrie Moore -- let's see, who's funny and Asian? Worst of all, such comparisons place undue weight on the writer's ethnicity, suggesting that writers like Tan, Chang, and Kingston are telling first and foremost A Story About Being Chinese, not stories about families, love, loss, or universal human experience.

So please don't call me the next Amy Tan, or the next Lan Samantha Chang, or the next [Insert Chinese American Writer Here]. Let's stop reflexively comparing Chinese writers to Chinese writers, Indian writers to Indian writers, black writers to black writers. Let's focus on the writing itself: the characters, the language, the narrative style. Because if a review compared me to Amy Tan on those measures, rather than on just our shared culture, I'd be proud.

Comments

[midgebrooklyn]

As an Asian-American writer myself, I understand -- and dread -- the inevitable comparisons. But I wonder if it's less about author's race than subject matter. It's not very sophisticated of course, but it explains, for instance, why Kazuo Ishiguro isn't really lumped in with the Asian crew. Margaret Atwood compared him to Ursula K. LeGuin in one review. In grad school, my work drew comparisons to people like Lydia Davis, but never Asian writers, because I don't write about Asian people. The forever bizarre Murakami has been compared to Bulgakov and Lewis Carroll and Raymond Carver; Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker was often compared to Ellison's Invisible Man, and Lee's work has also drawn comparisons to Richard Ford. (Of course, it's also drawn comparisons to Kazuo Ishiguro. Naturally.)

Anyway, just as a Lincoln biographer will draw comparisons to other Lincoln biographers, it's not all about "What race/ethnicity are you?" Write something with lots of quirky characters, you'll be compared to Dickens; write a story where something surreally transformative happens on the first page, you'll be compared to Kafka; write something flat about tough, unemotional men, you'll be compared to Hemingway. These things are true no matter what the race of the author. It just so happens that many people who write about, say, Asian-Americans, happen to be Asian-American themselves.

I understand your frustration though. As a test, I'll write a first novel with zero Asian folks in it -- I'll report back with the results. :)

[HacunaMatata101]

Thanks Celeste. This is is a great article, it brings up issues that deserve wider consideration--like categorization and demographics can get way out of control.

Great works can't stand out and be recognized if they are dismissed as "another book by a _________ author that a reader can only love if they are ________ color or already read A, B, and C's works. I would think the writer is hoping their voice can reach out beyond their categories, but the publisher seeks to keep the author in their categories.

To me, it is ironic that America sees itself as a diverse nation, but yet ignorance of the cultures that make up the population within America continue. if the ignorance weren't so profound, I would think maintaining demographics would backfire and become impossible. It would be too hard to track all the different genres being read by people of certain races, ethnicities, ages and so on. Attempting to sell those people what is superficially "more of the same" would be that much harder.

[MitChuzpe]

To me, the powerful point you make here goes beyond ethnic and racial issues and recalls the basic problem that women authors have experienced for centuries. Would anyone have been interested in reading the works of George Eliot, George Sand -- or even J.K. Rowling -- had their authorship been gendered female? I make this comparison not to encourage you or anyone else to adopt a nom de plume, but rather to point out that readers can be affected by any information they have about a text's author. By writing under your real name and by including even a small amount of biographical info, you are (for better or for worse) conveying facts about yourself that may change how a reader understands or receives your novel. I wish I could say these things don't matter to me, but with all of the material out there that I want to read, I use any tools I can get to help me select the best stuff as quickly as possible.

[Celeste Ng - Huffpost Blogger]

Absolutely. This definitely goes beyond ethnicity--readers will always make certain assumptions about your work as soon as they see your name. And as you point out, choosing a nom de plume won't necessarily solve the problem either; even a name like "Mary Smith" carries certain cultural connotations.

Do you think these assumptions could be avoided if all works were written (and read) anonymously? I'm not suggesting this, of course, but imagine a parallel universe. Would we lose something as well?

[Maya68]

maybe the reviewers are all caucasian? or at least not the racial group of the writer? as an Indian woman, I find Indian authors similar in the cultural approach yet different in that they write about/ from/relating to parts of India that are really not known to me. So imagine the plight of a non-Indian? I'm pretty sure that we all despise being labeled on sight, as Indian/Chi­nese/Black­/whatever because of the stereotypes. Yet human nature compels us to classify..... and the reviewers are just too lazy to look for other common factors and pull out the easy race comparison.

[msladydeborah]

I can totally relate to the points you raised in this post. It seems that there is this unspoken rule that does not allow reviewers to step outside of the authors cultural/ethnic background to make comparisons of their work. Perhaps there will come a time when this particular boundary will be broken down. It would be nice to see writers compared on the content of their work no matter who they are.