Authors Electric

I grew up reading Louise May Alcott. I still have copies of all her books: dog-eared, broken-backed, and beloved. On the rare occasions when I get sick, it’s a toss-up between Alcott and Jane Austen as comfort reading. One of Alcott’s books, Eight Cousins , features a white character (Annabel) who marries the “highly satisfactory Chinaman” (Fun See). I remember the scene distinctly but it never affected me particularly until I read Maxine Hong Kingston’s response. Fun See was still exotically “other,” with his long fingernails and queue, his yellow skin and peculiar manners. That’s me, Kingston thought. She realized that she would never be a March sister. “I felt like I was popped out of her writing,” she said. “Out of American literature.” Hua Hsu, “The Making of Americans” in The New Yorker, 8/15 June 2020 The Other in the Room Maxine Hong Kingston Somehow, Kingston managed to pop herself back into American literature. She mined her own life and the st...

Revision is an ugly word among writers. It means that what you’ve written is no good and you know it. It may mean that you’ll have to start fresh, over and over, the way J.R.R. Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings . Or maybe you need to dig a whole new tunnel to enter your story. Whatever form of revision you’re contemplating, you know this for sure. You're not going to be done any time soon. I’m in the process of revising my novel manuscript for Peace Court . For better or for worse, I revise the Tolkien way. It’s a page one rewrite, a step off a cliff, a fumbling toward a vision of a novel I can just barely see. The fact that I’ve started revision at all is a huge moral victory. You see, in order to revise, you first have to overcome rage and fear.   On Rage The rage comes from feeling misunderstood. You project that rage onto all those stupid readers who question your authorial authority or don’t get your cunning references. Rage is for arrogant writers like ...