Another Interview

Donna George Storey, author of Amorous Woman and a writer friend, interviewed me for Eclectica, a cool literary magazine. Donna begins the interview with this question:

DGS     The first work of fiction I read about the Cultural Revolution was back in my grad school days—Wang Anyi's A Lapse of Time. This author wrote from the perspective of a privileged member of the generation who had already reached young adulthood in 1968. Thus, this ten-year period was like a long night of insanity sandwiched between two periods of "normal" life. Some of your older characters have similar experiences, like the father in "Men Don't Apologize." But many of the protagonists in Apologies Forthcoming were children and thus barely remembered any different life. Later they have to struggle with the death of the ideals they were taught. One narrator asks herself, "Which is better: to have a false belief and be content or to break the false belief and feel empty?" Do you have an answer to her question?

 Read the complete interview here.