Four Years of Living, Learning, Teaching, and Becoming Half-Chinese in Suzhou, China
| Home Page ABOUT THE BOOK Why a Memoir? Meaning of the Title Book Format What/Where Is Suzhou? Why Suzhou Is So Fitting for This Book Where Can I Buy the Book? SELECTED PREVIEWS Chapter 5: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? Chapter 20: A Precious Belt Chapter 29: A City Shuts Down UPDATES SINCE 2006 Our Story Suzhou's Story EXTRA PHOTOS Related to the Book Suzhou 2001-2006 Suzhou Since 2006 ABOUT: The Author My Next Book My SuzhouPlus Website |
  
WHY A MEMOIR?
When I first visited China in 2000, I expected to find a police state. I thought everyone would be dressed in Mao suits, trapped in a fashion time-lock that froze at 1976. Of course, the truth was nothing like any of that. I was astonished by my ignorance. As someone who was already interested in Chinese cinema and literature, how could I have been so wrong? Worse, I realized that most of America probably had similar perceptions, which probably persist even now, a decade into the new millennium. Robert L. Kuhn, who has published several books on China, once explained during a book signing why he also produced a 90-minute television series entitled, In Search of China. “When I returned to the United Sates [after each visit to China] I found myself frustrated because the American media and audiences, even some of my very smart friends, continued to have a very simplistic, naive, stereotyped and negative impression of China," Kuhn said. Similarly, in May 2006, David Youtz, President of the New York Chapter of Families with Children from China, wrote, “most Americans carry the image of the lone protester standing in front of a tank in 1989 as their current idea of China.” Kuhn and Youtz both expressed nicely what I had experienced and felt. By 2003, I knew I wanted to write something about what China was really like and how (and how fast) it was changing. I started making notes on my laptop about where I went, what I did, what I saw and heard, even bits of reconstructed conversation. This all gradually turned into hundreds of pages of text, some of it expository and much of it anecdotal, loosely organized by topics like homes, food, transportation, shopping, and schools with a catch-all section I labeled “leftovers.” In 2005, I went looking for a literary agent. Dozens of letters and attached book proposals to dozens of agents yielded, not surprisingly, dozens of “No thank you’s.” Until the day my proposal came back to me marked up like a student paper being returned by an English teacher. The terse accompanying note, phone number included, identified the returner as Patricia Snell, who with her husband Michael was a long-time literary agent operating out of the Boston area. In a phone call as cool and chastising as a student’s follow-up conversation with an emotionally distant English teacher, Ms. Snell laid her cards on the table. The idea was interesting, perhaps even a good one, especially with increasing American interest in China. But, and it was a big but, the book has to be rewritten as a memoir. “Think A Year in Provence or Under the Tuscan Sun,” she said. “If you’re willing to rewrite it that way, I’ll consider taking it on. Two days and 150-plus pages’ worth of reading in a hurriedly purchased copy of A Year in Provence, I called Patricia Snell and told her I would do it. At that point, she gave me the what turned out to be her most valuable bit of assistance for the coming two years – the phone number for Libby Koponen, a freelance editor and children’s book author. It was Libby who became my guiding light for turning a jumble of topical anecdotes into a coherent China-based version of Peter Mayles’s year under the Provencal sun. The rest, as they say, is history. A well-polished book proposal ensued, leading to a few publisher nibbles but no real bites. In the end, I opted simply to finish the book and self-publish (for now, anyway). So now, after endless rewrites and countless editings and proofreadings, it’s finally a book! |