Gene: I think of American Born Chinese as fiction with autobiography sprinkled in. Parts of the Jin storyline are lifted directly from my junior high experiences. Much of the dialog of the Timmy character, for instance, came from a group of kids that used to torment me and my Asian-American friends. The three strands started off as ideas for three separate stories. Somewhere along the way, I decided to try to bring them together, almost as an intellectual exercise. They're thematically connected, but I wanted connect them in a more concrete way.
His next book comes out in the spring of next year!
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