Q&A With Su Chang 

Su Chang is a writer, reader and the author of The Immortal Woman. I’m excited about doing this Q&A and I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy of her novel! 

Q: Su, would you like to give a brief description of The Immortal Woman? 

A: Thank you for this opportunity to talk about my novel with your readers. Here is a brief description:

A Chinese mother and daughter wrestle with the demons of their past. The mother, once a student Red Guard leader in 1960s Shanghai and a journalist at a state newspaper, was involved in a brutal act of violence during the Tiananmen Square protests and lost all hope for her country. The daughter is a student at an American university on a mission to become a true Westerner. She tirelessly erases her birth identity, abandons her Chinese suitor, and pursues a white love interest, all the while haunted by the scars of her upbringing. 

Following China’s meteoric rise, the mother is slowly dragged into a nationalistic perspective that stuns the daughter. Their conflicts and final confrontation result in tragic consequences, exposing the constant tension Chinese immigrants face – the push and pull between the pressure of assimilation and the allure of Chinese nationalism. How does unresolved political trauma lead to internalized racism and eroded identities? What’s the path to genuine belonging in a hostile geopolitical climate?

By turns wry and lyrical, The Immortal Woman is a generational story of heartbreak, resilience, yearning, and ultimately, hope, offering a rarely seen insider’s view of the fractured lives of the new Chinese immigrants and those they leave behind.

Q: Where did you get the idea for The Immortal Woman & how long did it take you to write the book?

A: When I was growing up in China during the 1980s and 1990s, I was perpetually puzzled by the adults around me, whose daily arguments unveiled their hidden ire and pain, old grudges from a tumultuous time. But I could hardly trace that chaotic time in my history books, and gradually I came to see myself as belonging to a generation with no history. It was only after I immigrated to North America as an adult that I began to have access to the tabooed past of my birth country, to start making sense of the incongruence that had haunted my life. Over the years, I could finally see a clear line from the tribulations of my parents and grandparents to the conundrums and personal defeats of my own generation. Yet, even with more clarity, my first instinct was to move on from the past and become a productive member of my adopted society. But those unfinished murmurs eventually caught up with me, especially during the sleepless nights when I was under the influence of postpartum depression, when hyper-alertness to danger and heightened sensitivities about heritage reigned supreme. I knew I had to get to work, to peel back the curtain of my hometown—now an ultramodern metropolis—and confront the bygone days, the voices lost and found, the origins of unresolved trauma still lingering in the blood of my generation. I had to write in the interstices of time when I wasn’t working or parenting, and it took me five years to write and edit the book.

Q: What emotions do you want readers to feel after they turn the last page and what lessons do you hope readers learn as a result?

A: I went back and forth on the ending of this book, ultimately, the novel ended on a note of hope, and I want readers to feel a sense of relief. But there was still a sinister note lurking in the background, especially in the final dialogue between the mother and daughter and in the last paragraph of the book. The women were in a blissful bubble, which could burst any time, but it was important for them to hold onto this sense of belonging for a precious moment, after everything they had gone through. I hope that sense of danger and brittleness was clear, because ultimately, I was not writing a fairytale. Let’s not be naïve about it.

What lessons do I hope readers learn? I hope to inject nuanced perspectives into the discourse about China. I also seek to shed light on a unique and under-examined source of “colonial mentality” and internalized racism. Although China as a whole, was never formally colonized by foreign powers in the last 200 years, its tumultuous modern history, especially since the Communist Party’s takeover in 1949, has resulted in widespread internalized racism among the Chinese people throughout the 1980s and 1990s. This phenomenon, explored through a mother-daughter narrative, links the political trauma experienced during the Cultural Revolution to the inferiority complex prevalent among later generations. 

Moreover, new Chinese immigrants in North America often live in a constant state of tension. On one hand, many of them carry trauma from their country of origin, often making them skeptics, if not downright critics, of China. But to be constantly critical of one’s country of origin erodes one’s sense of identity and pride and eventually becomes its own source of pain. On the other hand, it can be challenging to find belonging in their adopted country, due to their status as visible minorities from a perceived “enemy state,” according to the Cold War mentality displayed by the Western government and media. Their conflictual feelings for their country of birth and the suspicion of “dual loyalties” can take an unrelenting psychological toll.  I hope this book can provide a narrative framework that enriches discussions on the future of multiculturalism in our increasingly divided world. 

Q: Can you reveal the plot details of your next book? 

A: It’s too early to divulge all the details. I am slowly working on a crime mystery involving an accidental immigrant sleuth and her queer best friend, with tales from the Japanese occupation, the snowy mountains of Tibet, and a modern-day AI sweatshop.

Q: If Hollywood were to get the rights to The Immortal Woman, who would be your dream cast to play the characters you created?

A: My dream cast would be Stephanie Hsu or Constance Wu as Lin (the daughter), Simu Liu as Dali, Paul Mescal as Sasha, and Joan Chen as Lemei (the mother). Joan came of age during the Cultural Revolution and was dubbed “The Elizabeth Taylor of China.” I grew up watching her Chinese films and later, her recurring appearances in Twin Peaks. Her performance in the recent movie Didi solidifies my belief that she is the quintessential “insider-outsider” and she has a visceral understanding of the adult immigrant experience and the psychological chasm between Chinese immigrant mothers and their American children. In terms of director, either Lulu Wang or Yung Chang would be fantastic.