![]() When we read fiction, we want to catch the author telling the truth." At times, I feel like I set a trap for myself by writing my novel the way I did. Tayari Jones said it perfectly: "When it comes to memoir, we want to catch the author in a lie. While reading Cutting Teeth, I entered “Julia Fierro young children” into the search bar and worried that my wording was creepy, that I would be added to a neighborhood watch list in the nicest part of Brooklyn. In This Is How You Lose Her, I googled endlessly trying to figure out if Junot Díaz actually lost his fiancée by cheating with fifty women. I’m extremely guilty of this, drawing tenuous parallels between fact and fiction. Neither is the presumption from readers that the main character is the author, or that the mother figure is modeled after an actual mother. ![]() Writing stories based in personal experience, in family lore, is nothing new. It’s difficult not to draw conclusions, and while I always searched for a satisfying response, I answered this question incorrectly for months. When I describe my novel to someone new and they hear it’s the story of a Chinese-Hawaiian family, while simultaneously seeing my Chinese-Hawaiian face, I inevitably get the same question: So, is this book about you? Is Diamond Head based on a true story? It becomes even harder to deflect when they see the cover - a girl with the same coloring as me, who could easily be my blood relation. ![]()
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