Lan Samantha Chang, director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, wrote her latest novel “in conversation” with a classic she has long loved: Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov.”
Her book, “The Family Chao,” centers around an Asian American restaurant family in the fictional town of Haven, Wis. When the tyrannical head of the family is found in the restaurant freezer, the Chaos, and their intense family dynamics, are forced into the spotlight. Chang will discuss her book next month during the Wisconsin Book Festival.
Q: Can you start by telling us about the book?
A: I think of “The Family Chao” as both a literary caper and a restaurant succession drama. It’s about an Asian American restaurant family living in a small city in Wisconsin. There’s a tyrannical but charismatic restaurant owner, Leo Chao, his wife Winnie, and their three sons. Each of the sons has adapted to immigrant life in America in a different way. They’ve also had to adapt to growing up with Leo as their father. As in “The Brothers Karamazov,” the primary conflict is between Leo and the oldest son, whose name is Dagou. In my novel, Dagou, having failed to make it on the East Coast, returns home. He wants to be made partner in the restaurant and his father refuses him.
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Q: And amid that drama, the father dies?
A: The morning after an eventful and raucous Christmas party, Leo is found dead in the freezer. That’s exactly the middle of the book. In the second half of the book, there’s the exploration of the circumstances surrounding his death and the questions surrounding Leo’s death. It becomes clear that the death is deliberate.
Q: Among these main, male characters, there’s also the mother, correct?
A: Yes. When I started writing this project way back in 2005, the gist of the story was very different. It was about an unhappy marriage involving characters similar to Leo and Winnie. In the early version, Winnie allows Leo to become interested in another woman so that she can be alone. In “The Family Chao,” Winnie becomes so frustrated with her marriage that when her youngest son leaves for college, she departs the household and goes to live in a Buddhist nunnery. She’s just tired of the drama. She wants tranquility.
Q: The book takes place in a small town in Wisconsin. What is your connection to Wisconsin?
A: I was born and raised in Appleton and I lived there until I was 18. I can remember being one of the only Asian kids in town. I think it’s a common experience for many Asian Americans. Employment of some kind brings the family to a part of the U.S. where they are culturally isolated. This experience is imprinted on me, is to some extent the basis of my identity.
Q: Your book is split into two parts, much like “The Brothers Karamazov.”
A: Yes. In the first half of the book, readers learn about the complex family dynamics that bring the Chaos to the point of the Christmas party. In the second half, the family drama becomes public. The second half of the book explores some of the tropes through which Asian Americans can often be seen in the media, particularly in the courtroom scenes.
Q: The premise sounds very serious, but I understand there is humor, too. Why was that important to include?
A: Humor was always a part of this project. For example, I find Leo Chao’s lack of political correctness funny. Not all the readers feel that way. I think that it’s important to be able to see (situations) from all angles. As an Asian American, if I didn’t laugh, I think I would be a pretty grim person. I wanted to give all readers a chance to participate in this experience. Some readers have approached me saying, “I was afraid to laugh.” I tried to make it clear in the book that readers have permission to think it’s funny.
Q: I understand you had the idea for “The Family Chao” for a long time before coming back and finishing the novel. How did the book finally come about?
A: As I said, I started writing in 2005, but I wasn’t sure about the project. I wrote 100 pages about an Asian American family living somewhere in the Midwest. The mother was Winnie. She was frustrated with her husband, but had not yet discovered the Buddhist nunnery. I loved the voice of the project; it was much funnier than what I had been writing. But I let it sit for many years. I wrote another novel during that time, published in 2010. Things were busy at home and school, but I was reading “The Brothers Karamazov.” I held informal classes at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, in which I encouraged graduate students to read the novel over Thanksgiving break. We’d meet and discuss it for hours. In 2013, it occurred to me that the present-tense narrative voice I was interested in actually worked well with the structure of “The Brothers Karamazov.” In that book, time unfolds incredibly slowly for about 500 pages. Hundreds of pages are devoted to the events of a few days. I thought I would like to try to use the present-tense voice work with the idea of three sons and their father, but they would have to be Chinese American. It was a real pleasure, a lot of fun to write.
Q: “The Family Chao” came out in February. Has anything that happened at your events surprised you?
A: After almost every event, I hear, “I, too, was the only person of my background in my town.” Maybe they’re from the only Asian family, or perhaps the only family from Russia. They all had that experience of feeling sort of invisible in the way that the Chaos were invisible in the first half of the book. Almost every time I give a reading, someone like that comes up to me. I feel we have something in common immediately.
Q: You’ve talked about how important the book “The Brothers Karamazov” has been to you, and how it influenced “The Family Chao.” Did you take a break from reading the novel while writing yours?
A: When I decided to write in conversation with that book, I had to stop reading it. It’s such a great work, it would have just overwhelmed my efforts and I’d have felt inadequate to the task. I stopped reading it for six years. When “The Family Chao” came out last spring, I decided to read “The Brothers Karamazov” again. It was fascinating and surprising to be reminded of elements that I had not remembered were in that book, elements that made it into my book and became themes.
An example is the way my characters’ secret lives are conducted in back alleys. Living in Iowa City, I’ve been interested in the alley system. The alleys were originally built for trash pickup, ice deliveries and other less front-facing activities. I realized “the back way” is delineated in “The Brother Karamazov.” Also, both books contain dogs. My novel has the French bulldog, Alf. He’s a significant character. He doesn’t often appear, but he becomes very important. I had forgotten there is also a dog in the second half of “The Brothers Karamazov.”
Q: Do you feel a lot of pressure, as director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, to write a fantastic novel?
A: The first book I wrote as director was about a poet who went through a program like the Workshop. It was inspired by many observations about writing and writers in the 15 years before I became director. I found the subject slightly embarrassing; in order to begin writing, I had to tell myself the novel would never see the light of day. Ultimately, I had to break through the embarrassment and learn to live with peoples’ reactions to the novel. I do think there’s a kind of pressure on me. The only way to get work done at all is to ignore this pressure by setting myself an impossible task.
When I was writing this book, I focused on the real challenge of trying to write in conversation with a book I adore so much. I had to stop thinking about the Workshop. But the Workshop is also a great plus for my work. I have noticed while teaching that there’s a certain real excitement in reading the work of my students, and a kind of jolt in the work when the writer is writing as if they’re discovering how to say what they have to say for the first time. There can be a moment when they start to really feel the permission to move forward. They find their voice. Being surrounded by people who were in that process made me value the process in my own book. I felt inspired to come up with something new.
