Writer gives students glimpse into his culture

As part of Asian American Heritage Month, Shawn Wong, a notable Asian-American writer, gave a lecture titled "The Secret Life of an Asian American Writer" on campus Wednesday night.

As a part of his lecture, Wong discussed his search for Asian-American writing---he claims he taught this branch of literature to himself during college---his novels "Homebase" and "American Knees" and gave attendees a preview of the upcoming film "AMERICANese"--a film adaptation of his novel.

Kimberly Baker-Flowers, chief diversity officer at ECU, introduced Wong before his lecture.

"Wong has a lot of information to share and we should all enjoy it and take advantage of this opportunity to learn about the rise of Asian-American Literature," Baker-Flowers said.

From a very young age Wong knew he wanted to be a writer, but it wasn't until he reached the age of 19 that he truly knew he wanted to pursue the art of writing. Enrolled as a pre-med major, he said that students in the pre-med program also had to choose a secondary major, so he chose English.

"I knew I had to do what I wanted to do first," Wong said. "When I was a young high school student, I was highly influenced by Thomas Wolfe. All of his books involved angst-ridden characters who were often depressed and somewhat angered."

Wong cited that he knew that a Chinese-American wanting to grow up to be Thomas Wolfe---an American born writer out of Asheville, N.C.---was unique.

"It was very tough for me at first, especially to tell my conservative Chinese-American father my dreams of writing. Especially since I think he planned on me becoming a doctor," Wong said.

A family friend of Wong's went so far as to leave him a trust fund in his will, in order for Wong to go for a doctorate degree.

"The family friend of ours said that the money was only for if I went to receive a doctorate degree," Wong said. "I knew this left the option open for me to pursue a doctoral degree, but first I wanted to pursue an M.F.A. in creative writing."

Around this time Wong, began his lifelong journey of learning about Asian-American literature. Studying at UC-Berkeley, Wong searched libraries for Asian-American writers, using the old-fashioned card catalogs, but found nothing.

"In my college years, we only read … dead British writers and UC-Berkeley was so conservative that they wouldn't even allow American literature courses to count for graduation requirements," Wong said. "I decided that I was going to major in Asian-American literature outside of the university."

Wong received his first teaching offer at Mills College, an all-women school, in which he taught for four years. The average size of each class was around eight people and according to Wong, he learned everything about teaching in his first years at Mills College. He went on to teach at several other universities until finally he ended up at the University of Washington.

"I had no teaching experience; I was 22 years old with no publications to my name and yet they wanted me to teach a then unheard of Asian-American literature course," Wong said.

After a long search without any luck, Wong found three other Asian-American writers who joined Wong in writing an anthology--the very first of Asian-American literature.

"At first no one would publish it," Wong said. "We even got introductions from famous writers who thought it was an important work of writing.

Wong and his other colleagues eventually got it published by a new publisher at the time, the Howard University Press.

At the time of his job offer, there was only one other Asian-American literature teacher in the entire country, a friend of Wong's.

It was during his time spent at the University of Washington in which he conceived his idea for the novel "American Knees." In the novel, Wong wanted to involve situations that he felt were missing from other works of Asian-American literature.

"During one of my lectures, several of my students [asked] a number of interesting questions, " Wong said. "Most of the Asian-American literature up to that point involved the older generation and they were all very sad and [depressed]."

Wong took it upon himself to write a book involving funny situations, romance---of the erotic kind---and with characters of mixed-race ancestry. And to coincide with his film adaptation of the novel, Wong wanted it to retain the values of his book as well as show intimate chats between characters and failed relationships that weren't due to Chinese cultural elements--something several films in the past have focused on.

"We go to college to understand what questions to ask and this helped me figure out exactly what I wanted to do. I took this path to pursue writing by simply asking myself a question," Wong said. "My real question to myself is why it took me so long to ask myself if there were any Asian-American writers out there."

This writer can be contacted at news@theeastcarolinian.com.