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Woman on Fire

by Linda Cuckovich | Feb 5, 2007 10:00 am

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Posted to: Arts

Tinling%20Choong%20Reading.jpgTinling Choong took center stage at the New Haven Public Library on Saturday afternoon, despite her protestations that she writes “from the very peripheral.” Choong read several short chapters from her first novel, Firewife, answered audience questions, and signed books at the library’s latest Writer’s Live! event.

Choong’s novel, Firewife, deals extensively with ancient Chinese mythology that explores the struggle between archetypal forces of fire and water, along with yin and yang. The protagonist, Nin, is characterized as a woman who was born with a fiery spirit, but whose life had been shaped, even restricted by the demands of water.

Audience questions probed the writer’s background as well as that of her work. Born in Malaysia but ethnically Chinese, Choong conceived Firewife as the story of eight women of Chinese heritage who live outside China, scattered across several countries. These largely disconnected stories are unified by Nin, a photographer who leaves her corporate job in California to travel and photograph women throughout the world.

otherstudent.jpgSeveral in the audience who, like Choong, were native speakers of other languages, were particularly interested to learn that she had written the novel entirely in English. When asked how she made the transition to writing in English, Choong reminisced about an influential teacher; “She told me to let go of my editorial self.”

Such notions of writing as a largely uncritical process came up several times in Choong’s comments. She later noted that “Writing for me is very organic; I’m carried away by emotion.”

Choong also shied away from attempts to characterize her work exclusively in any tradition. Instead she emphasized her sense that she, and her work, are “straddling several different cultures.”

She also explained that the decision to situate all her characters outside China was “definitely a conscious choice.” Alluding to her characters, which include a young Thai prostitute, a woman who serves as a nude table for Japanese businessmen, and a young girl who rents her forehead to advertisers in Taipei, she explained, “These are the effects of Chinese diaspora.”

A Yale Ph.D. candidate, Choong has taken a leave of absence to promote Firewife. When a colleague in Yale’s literature department asked how her graduate studies had affected her fictional work, she responded, “It’s actually interrelated.” Her dissertation also dealt with evolving notions of Chinese women’s sexuality, a central theme in her novel. Ultimately, Choong’s background in literary criticism shaped her writing and her audience.

She did have to grapple with some difficult questions. One audience member commented, “Each of the women [in the novel] reinforce stereotypes” about Asian women. She wondered, “Where are you going with this?”

After joking, “That is the question I most fear,” Choong gamely responded, “I’m hoping that my readers will read them as a collection of eight women” and see in the stories “pure emotional truth” rather than stereotypes.

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