Today I'm excited to feature Janice Y. K. Lee's newest story, The Expatriates. It sounds like a moving and emotional look at three American women living in a small Hong Kong community. Viking/Penguin provided this very insightful interview with Janice Y. K. Lee detailing her motivations and writing experience. Be sure to scroll down for a chance to win this stunning book packaged so beautifully!
Publication Date: January 12th 2016
Publisher: Viking/Penguin
Purchase Links:
Book Description:
Mercy, a recent Columbia graduate without a safety net, is adrift, undone by a terrible incident in her recent past. Hilary, a lonely housewife, is haunted by her struggle to have a child, something she believes could save her foundering marriage. Meanwhile, Margaret, once a happily married mother of three, takes every opportunity to escape from her life in the wake of a shattering loss. Chapter by chapter, the novel draws the reader into their stories and gives us glimpses of expatriate life’s surprising contradictions in Hong Kong, where these women are both insiders and outsiders, incredibly privileged but deeply unsatisfied, and attempting, above all, to connect with others and regain a sense of self that has slipped away. As each woman struggles with her own demons, their lives collide in ways that have irreversible consequences for them all.
A conversation with Janice
Y. K. Lee, author of
THE EXPATRIATES
Like The Piano
Teacher, THE EXPATRIATES is set in Hong Kong. As a writer, what draws you
in about this city?
I love Hong Kong and
have spent a little over half my life there. People view it as this
world city, which it is, but that’s only one of its many facets. It is an
amazing melting pot of cultures and experiences that, extraordinarily, still
manages to have the feel of a small village, at least if you live there. For
me, there is the additional push and pull of home. You want to be there; you
want to leave. Like New York, there is always a tide of new arrivals, and
those leaving. I’ll always have Hong Kong with me.
Did you do any research
to prepare to write THE EXPATRIATES? Or did you draw mainly on your own
experience?
I didn’t have to, which
was a different experience from my first novel, The Piano Teacher, which
was set during WWII in Hong Kong. As I came to realize that these women
lived in the same world I lived in, I find myself growing very thoughtful about
this place I inhabited. I was a constant observer in my own life, trying
to see patterns and behaviors. In a way, it was easy, because I just
needed to live my life, but I wanted to be considered and fair to all of the
people who were also living in this world.
As American expatriates
in Hong Kong, Margaret, Mercy, and Hilary share some concerns, but they are
very different women. THE EXPATRIATES alternates among their stories and points
of view. Which character did you find easiest to write? Which was the most
challenging?
I found a bit of myself
in each character. Poor, hapless Mercy. I felt for her, and felt I
could have been her in another, parallel life. And Margaret is the mother,
the one who has children throughout the book, so I have lived some aspect of
her life. Hilary, I also felt I knew. She didn't have children
while everyone around her was reproducing like mad. It must be
off-putting and frightening at times. Margaret and Hilary inhabit a more
similar world than the one Mercy lives in. For Mercy, I had to imagine
what it would be like to come to Hong Kong as a twenty-something, but I thought
it might be a bit like moving to New York as a twenty-something, which I did
know something about. I think human experience is more universal than we
might think, even when people are from vastly different cultures, different
generations.
In many ways, THE
EXPATRIATES is about loneliness and alienation, and about how the women feel
like outsiders even as others might consider them the ultimate insiders. Do you
think that the insular expatriate community is a useful lens for thinking about
how people feel this all the time, in many different settings?
I am always surprised
by how often you might find that someone you thought had it all, had it all
figured out and was completely together was actually having a complete meltdown
on the inside. We are all, by our too-human nature, so self-involved that
we necessarily experience life from our own perspectives, but wow, is there a
lot going on all around if you pay attention. Say, Clarke’s 50th birthday
party, there were so many stories going on in that room, just about the
characters we grew to know. There are thirty other novels that could have
been written about any of the other people who were there. This is a long
and roundabout way of saying that everyone who is living life in a thoughtful
way feels like an outsider, I think. I have always felt “outside” and I think
that is a good thing. It gives me perspective and distance. The
expatriate community is a microcosm of society, in many ways, so it is a good
lens to view what is happening on a larger scale outside.
As we see in the book,
so-called “trailing spouses” of businesspeople in Hong Kong are thrown into a
completely different world when they arrive—a world of drivers, nannies,
housekeepers and leisure that leaves them with lots of spare time. As you’ve
observed it, how does this change a trailing spouse’s sense of self?
If you take it in the
most positive way, it allows you to have more time—that most precious of
resources. All the labor of taking care of the house, washing all the
sheets and towels your baby threw up on, preparing meals, grocery shopping,
having someone to receive all packages—all of that is subtracted from your
life, leaving you free to... what? And therein lies the rub. What
do you do when you discover 8 extra hours in your day? Who do you want to
become? I've seen people change drastically during their time as an
expat, sometimes to become more free, evolve into someone completely different,
and sometimes to become even more who they were when they arrived. It's
an opportunity to grow, and to change, away from the constraints of what is
your “normal” life but everyone reacts differently to the experience.
Motherhood, in THE
EXPATRIATES, becomes a central, defining purpose for women, for Margaret and
Hilary in particular but also for their friends and acquaintances. What
happens, then, when a woman can’t conceive or faces a family tragedy?
Motherhood has been
such a transformative and intense experience for me. In the past thirteen
years, everything has been refracted through the lens of motherhood. It
is central to my life. So, I wrote this book while I was in the throes of
that. What struck me was how final it was. Once you have a child,
you are a mother. That is it. However you get this child: birth,
adoption, whatever, when you do, you pass through this door and you cannot
return from this new world. A mother is a mother whether she loses her
child or not. For women without children, I think it must be awfully
tiresome to be around mothers! There is a large and vibrant part of
society that doesn't have children, but luckily they have a lot of other things
to occupy their time with. Although since they themselves, since
everyone, has mothers, I think they would find something in this book to
connect with.
You lived in Hong Kong
as an expatriate for ten years. Can you talk about the experience of moving
abroad and being part of the expatriate community, and about your recent
decision to return the United States?
When I moved to Hong
Kong, I wasn’t your typical expat because I was returning “home” to a place I
had grown up and where I still had family. So I didn't go through the
typical settling-in pains because I had a lot of local knowledge. Still,
I had to make friends, find a place to live, find schools for my
children. I loved my time in Hong Kong. I made friends who I will
remain close to for our entire lives, had wonderful experiences, experienced so
much of Asia. I liken it to college in terms of how formative it can
be. Because you are together for a temporary period, everything is
heightened and intensified and there is also the sense that it is not “real
life.” Real life is waiting for you back “home.” And that is why we
decided to move back. I wanted my children to start their lives in what I
thought was the right place for them, long-term, as Americans.
What were the biggest
challenges you encountered in the writing of this novel? The biggest pleasures?
The biggest pleasure
was... I really can’t say. Writing is difficult. The biggest
pleasure was probably finishing!
How was writing a novel
set in the present day different from writing historical fiction (like The
Piano Teacher)?
Research is really
wonderful because it allows you to work without writing. I cannot direct
my writing at all. It comes in fits and starts, so with The Piano
Teacher, whenever I would get stuck I would head off to the library to
research and read and some interesting fact or historical detail would usually
loosen a knot in my head, or knock something loose. With The
Expatriates, whenever I got stuck, I just had to wait to get unstuck.
I would find inspiration and solutions in everyday corners of my life, but
never know when that was going to happen. So I had to learn to be
patient. Both books took around five years to write and I think that's my
gestation period for a book, regardless. These stories unspool slowly and
I've learned to wait for them.
Janice Y. K. Lee was born and raised in Hong Kong, the child of
Korean immigrants. She went to the United States for school and
graduated from Harvard College with a degree in English and American
Literature and Language.
After college she moved to New York and worked for several years as an editor at Elle and Mirabella magazines before getting an MFA from Hunter College and starting her first novel. The Piano Teacher was published to critical acclaim from the New York Times, People, and O magazine, among others. It spent 19 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, was a Richard and Judy Summer Read pick (UK), and was translated into 26 languages worldwide.
Janice’s writing has appeared in ELLE, Mirabella, Glamour, and Travel and Leisure, as well as numerous other publications.
She lives in New York City with her husband and four children.
After college she moved to New York and worked for several years as an editor at Elle and Mirabella magazines before getting an MFA from Hunter College and starting her first novel. The Piano Teacher was published to critical acclaim from the New York Times, People, and O magazine, among others. It spent 19 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, was a Richard and Judy Summer Read pick (UK), and was translated into 26 languages worldwide.
Janice’s writing has appeared in ELLE, Mirabella, Glamour, and Travel and Leisure, as well as numerous other publications.
She lives in New York City with her husband and four children.
Connect with Janice Y. K. Lee:
The lovely people of Viking/Penguin have provided a galley copy of The Expatriates by Janice Y. K. Lee packaged soooo beautifully (see picture below) with French flaps and in a gorgeous box with magnetic closures *sigh*. The giveaway is open to US residents only.
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