5 Books that Helped Me Reimagine the Craft of Fiction Writing

It has, once again, been a while since I wrote a post that was not a book review. Some of you might have heard that I have a short story coming out in Awakenings: A Cute Mutants Anthology (edited by SJ Whitby) on March 1st (see here for preorder links). And some of you might know that while “Island Burnt by History” is going to be my first published story, I have been dedicating myself to writing fiction over the past two years. There are a few short fiction pieces that I hope would see the light of day sometime soon. I will keep you updated.

Foreword

This blog post, or essay if you will, is inspired by my self-reflection of what it means to be a reader and writer of color, of diaspora, of queerness. This is not a post about books from the point of view as a book reviewer. I am relatively new to the writing scene where I interact with other writers as a writer even though I grew up writing stories in both English and Chinese.

And here is where this post stems from: I used to read almost exclusively stories about cis, straight, white characters by cis, straight, white authors in English set in North America and Europe, and cis, straight East Asian characters by cis, straight East Asian authors in Chinese set in East Asia (some are translated from Japanese).

Yes, that is a lot of cishet-ness.

Since moving to the US in 2020, during the height of the pandemic, the height of overt anti-Asian racism, in a sense, I have become part of the Taiwanese diaspora despite being hesitant to say so. It wasn’t like I grew up in the US, experienced the microaggression against people of color, or that I was Taiwanese-American. How could I possibly know what diaspora meant? And yet, there would be these little moments where the image of nighttime Taipei flashes through my mind and an ache blossoms in my chest. Those instances where I miss mundane things like walking in dark alleyways at midnight (it’s mostly safe to do so in Taiwan) and speaking Mandarin to strangers and buying steamed buns from a corner bao bun shop. I miss the noise in traditional markets and the traffic and parked motorcycles jammed together on the sidewalk.

It is not the kind of diasporic feeling children of immigrants experience. I did not grow up feeling the sense of not-belonging because of my race and cultural heritage. I do not look at my parents and think what it must have been like to grow up in another country that isn’t mine. But I do, multiple times a day, long for Taiwan, the island that is mine, the country that is mine.

This is not to say I understand the immigrant experience because I do not. I am an international student, an adult, who came to the US to pursue higher education. But when I read about children of immigrants, I could see bits of emotions that I feel, too, and sometimes, the books give me a pause because I did not know stories could make me feel like this.

I did not know stories could be like this.

I had no idea that English could deliver stories with experiences so close to mine. And this is the point of this lengthy post: the books that make me realize a world of fiction in English beyond the cis, straight, white narrative. (It is also important to note that I am not disabled, and the books mentioned in this post are still mostly centered around the non-disabled experience.)

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5 Books that Helped Me Reimagine the Craft of Fiction Writing

The following books are by no means book recommendations, though I do wholeheartedly recommend every single one of them. They are the stories and essays that helped me reimagine what crafting stories in English could be, books that expanded my idea of what a story is.

Reimagining Folklore and Myths

SPIRITS ABROAD by Zen Cho

I have read more than 300 books since 2020 and countless others before that. It wasn’t until the end of 2021 when I finished Spirits Abroad (my review) that it suddenly hit me: stories written in English could feel like those in Chinese (and Malay, in this case, but I wouldn’t know), too. The way Zen Cho incorporated Asian mythology into the stories with enough context yet without explicit explanations made me realize that I do not have to explain myself in my writing. I do not have to elaborate on what a youtiao is and why my hypothetical main character is having it with soy milk, nor do I have to describe the origins of why Taiwanese people barbecue on roadsides on Mid-Autumn Festival. I could choose to do it, but I do not have to. Zen Cho helped me notice that most fiction assumes their audience to be white people whose first language is English, and as a writer, you can assume that you are writing for your people instead.

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Reimagining History and the Bible

SORROWLAND by Rivers Solomon

Sorrowland remains one of the books with the best plot I have ever read (my review). Rivers Solomon pulled references from Black and Indigenous history in the US as well as biblical ones and weaved all of them into faer Black, intersex, disabled horror romance novel. While I was not raised Christian, I grew up reading a lot of biblical stories, some Bible verses, and went to a Catholic middle school. I have rudimentary understanding of what happened in the Bible (both the Old Testament and New Testament). The combination of history and classics in storytelling is something I aim to do in my writing, and Sorrowland showed me that not only could it be done, but also in an artful, reimagined way.

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Diaspora and Familial Backgrounds

PORTRAIT OF A THIEF by Grace D. Li

I recently finished an uncorrected proof of the book, and it was a great inspiration for this post you are reading. Portrait of a Thief made me rethink my relationship with my home (Taiwan), my family, myself, and my dreams. This is Grace D. Li’s debut novel that won’t be out until April, and I have already preordered it because I love the feelings it incited in me. And, of course, I loved seeing Chinese-American sapphics owning their lives. It is the first book I have read with two diasporic queer Asians falling for each other. On top of Li’s beautiful writing of colonialism and family and diaspora—because this book is really not about the thieving and heist but the relationships—it also showed me what it was like to dream big again (something I have lost over the years) and just be. Portrait of a Thief meant more to me than I could have possibly imagined.

affiliate preorder links (I get a small commission at no extra cost to you): Kindle, hardcover.

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Oppression and Liberation in History

CANTORAS by Carolina De Robertis

Did you think I wasn’t going to mention this book (my review)? In Cantoras, the five main characters built their world under Uruguayan dictatorship and created a found family of queer women. What I love most about the story is the writing and character study. Carolina De Robertis shaped this historical fiction through the characters, their surroundings, and external events due to the dictatorship. Around the same time, Taiwan was under martial law, too, and Cantoras made me wonder what it was like for older queer Taiwanese back in the days. This is one of the first books I’ve read about queerness that isn’t centered around white Americans, and it showed me how a story set in a non-American city could feel so close to my heart.

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On Craft and Workshopping

CRAFT IN THE REAL WORLD by Matthew Salesses

This semester, I am enrolled in CW 404 Fiction Workshop III. It is by far my first workshop experience, but after all this time, I still feel disoriented writing in a class full of cis white peers (in a class of 18 students, I am the only Asian, perhaps one of the only two non-Americans, and one of three writers of color). I often include seemingly unimportant details in my story—like names, food, cultural customs—to build metaphors and imageries. Those would be lost on most non–Mandarin speaking readers. I struggle to decide what to explain and what not to.

I picked up this nonfiction work by Matthew Salesses per R.F. Kuang’s recommendation on her website. In short, be unapologetic to write for your intended audience and not for a workshop or the cishet white audience. Be mindful of what you are doing in your story and who your target readers are. Craft in the Real World also helpfully included some workshop ideas and revision prompts that I am sure to revisit soon. I binge read the whole book yesterday since my class is going to workshop my queer Taiwanese short story that is heavy on regional history in two days. Reading Craft in the Real World is my way of mentally prepare myself for it. This book would be the most helpful for writers of color (as R.F. Kuang had pointed out) and those who participate and engage in workshops. White writers will also benefit from learning how to respect and not insert their assumptions when reading works that are not intended for them.

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Thank you for reading this longish post, and if you choose to pick up any of the books mentioned, I hope you would enjoy it as much as I did. Let me know what you think of this post in the comments below. Given the current global situations, I also hope you are doing as okay as you could. Support Ukraine, Russian civilians, trans and gender non-conforming kids in Texas, queer kids in Florida, the Palestinians, Asians in the US (especially in NYC), and many others.

Stay kind and safe and soft.

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