How can we retell the story of America? In the United States of Amnesia, why does the Western celebrate cowboys but not all people who built this country? What does a Chinese-American hero look like in the 21st Century?

Tom Lin is an American writer whose 2021 debut novel The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu chronicles the story of a Chinese American outlaw seeking revenge during America's railroad boom. The book won the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, making Lin the youngest Carnegie winner in the prize’s history. Tom Lin is currently pursuing an English doctorate at the University of California Davis.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

I think The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu is an act of increasing representation, which I feel has become sort of a contentious word. In the US, I observed this growing awareness of representation of historically marginalized populations in fiction storytellers introducing these more diverse casts, but also on the other side, people are questioning this kind of "representation." Like there's the issue of throwing in characters for the sake of representation and superficial political correctness, etc. So as someone in the literary world, in the US, what do you think of the direction that representation and diversity in fiction are going in right now? 

TOM LIN

When I was growing up, it was all about representation. I think that was the thing that was being championed: we need more people of color in books, movies, across all media. And then I think what we saw was an extremely cynical and capitalistic-minded ruthless optimization of that, where someone said: Oh, you want representation? Then we'll just throw in token people of color into projects. And then we'll check that box. And I think that became so prevalent in so many pieces of media that that became what we thought of as representation. I think it's a salvageable concept because, I mean, when I encountered books growing up, they were all with white people in them. Front to back, start to finish. It was just white characters. And so when I started writing stories of my own in school as a middle schooler they - surprise - they had white people in them, right? There were just white people talking about other white people. I went to public school in Queens. I knew very few white people. And so I think what representation does at its best is that it informs the boundaries of possibility. By seeing yourself represented in media, you become able to imagine your own stories transpiring in media and being made available for everybody else to witness.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

The story you tell portrays a world that was certainly not part of my American history books. So I'm wondering about your research process because even finding the record of that time that includes Chinese and Chinese Americans is difficult. So what were you surprised about in your research process and how did that inspire some scenes from your book

LIN

And so I did research to avoid writing. And what I would do is I would take these drives out into the desert, and I'd take notes. I went along the route of the Transcontinental Railroad east to west, west to east a bunch of times. And I went to all these history books and all these historical recovery projects that are being run.

There's the project of Chinese and America and all these history books and synthesizing this sense of being in a place and time where I was not. And I think some of the things and some of the experiences that I felt while doing that research, I felt was necessary to preserve in the text because I think the text is always produced out of confluence with the body.

And so in order to portray something in text, you have to pass it through the body and through the senses. And as a result, it was really important for me to go to these places and have that physical experience with the body in order that I would be able to put it down in the book and have it be true.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

It's really interesting that you say the ideals persist, even though reality sometimes falls apart and rebuilds themselves. That we should face the future with a sense of optimism and ideals we started out with and not be cynical about how we came up with them and whether they should remain unchanging through time?

LIN

And for instance, something like climate change and this anthropogenic mass extinction that we're seeing going on, and we're losing enormous fractions of our biodiversity with every passing year. That's bleak. And it does feel like the end of the world is upon us. And we're entering into an unsurvivable planet. And it's okay to know that and to think that and to still strive for something because I think at its extremes, hope becomes insane. And you have to do something to fight it because otherwise, we are going into the apocalypse, I think there's no question. And to preserve hope against that possibility, I think that's difficult. And so that's what I strive to do.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

The passage you shared in that reading, it made me reflect on our success in whatever countries we have adopted. I've been adopted by a few countries by now. In some way, our success is built on the bones of our ancestors and the struggles that they often cover in silence. Sometimes success is about not remembering: Don't think about the past, just move forward and focus.

LIN

I think so much of acceptance by foreign countries as immigrants, I think, lies with this ideal of assimilation. And assimilation in one respect, it's the negation of your own heritage and your own identity. Because it requires this kind of knowing adoption of a different set of standards and cultural practices, which are alien to you. And in order to assimilate, you have to make them feel as though they're your own. And I think that as a society we're trying to move past assimilation as an ideal for acceptance and moving into a more heterogeneous understanding of a culture that is able to absorb and tolerate different cultural practices and still preserve a common sense of identity that doesn't require necessarily assimilation.

My parents used to say, "You keep your head down, and you just try to do better than anyone else. And that'll be enough."

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

That sentence you said, “Too Chinese to be American. Too American to be Chinese.” That double sense of alienation. How do you navigate that grey space, treating it maybe as a friend instead of an enemy?

LIN

I use writing as a way of thinking, and as a result, I write very slowly because I think very slowly. And I think that we're all trying to figure out stability for ourselves. Not necessarily having an answer for every Asian American or every Chinese American, but just trying to come to an equilibrium for myself. I would like to stop oscillating between the two, and I would like to reach someplace where I can hold the two together.

And I think with each new project, with each new writing thing that I take on, I think I get a little closer. I have no illusions as to being able to get an answer soon or ever because I think the equilibrium point does shift. And there are external pressures as well.

I think writing is a space of play. Storytelling is a space of play. It's almost like the mechanism of dreams in the story where you have a space where there are no consequences, but there are, right? So you have this duality where you can lose. You can lose the game. You can play badly. And then when you're done, you can return to the real world. But the fact that the game has happened, the fact that the play has happened is still there. And so that might have consequences beyond the fact that it has no consequences, which is very like Zen koan about it. But I think it is this, this null space where you get to construct worlds and see how they work and then step back from it. And I think that is the joy of fiction and the joy of writing is being able to build and exit and return.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

As you think about the future and the importance of the arts, what would you like young people to know, preserve, and remember?

LIN

I think I would like young people to preserve everything. I think so much of historical work is going back and trying to piece together the things that have not been preserved. And so even with biodiversity and the planet, I think we should try to have less impact on our surroundings and more impact on each other. There's less and less investment in the humanities, and that really saddens me. I think art is important because it's something that we do as humans that has no purpose beyond how it makes us feel.

And something like that is valuable because it is hard and because it is directed at other people. The making of art, the consumption of art, I think is what makes us human as opposed to animals. If we are going to draw that line, I think that's where it is. And I think the purpose of artists is to preserve the feeling of being alive and to communicate that to others.

Images courtesy of Little, Brown and Company & Tom Lin

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk and Henie Zhang with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this episode was Henie Zhang.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).