The last time I rode the subway into Manhattan, in early March, it was to catch up with Frances Cha. Seven or eight years had passed since we’d last seen each other face-to-face, and it felt like we had both lived entire lifetimes since our days as young, single Korean American journalists plying our trade together in Seoul. Over dim sum at Union Square’s eerily empty Tim Ho Wan, where servers were already wearing surgical masks and rubber gloves, Cha filled me in on her experience of motherhood, marriage, and, of course, the writing life.
At the time, she was six weeks away from the publication of her debut novel, If I Had Your Face (Ballantine), a story about how even the most casual of female friendships can evolve into fierce bonds. Cha, who grew up in the United States, South Korea, and Hong Kong, was worried that her mother and brother, who live in Seoul, wouldn’t be able to travel to New York for her book launch due to coronavirus. “Well, I’ll be there,” I reassured her as I cradled the advance reader copy that she gave me, feeling fully confident that all would proceed as planned.
Within mere weeks, of course, New York City would go “on pause,” and by the time I interviewed Cha in early May, our lives would feel drastically altered yet again.
This time, Cha spoke to me via Zoom, against a backdrop of empty batting cages in New Jersey—her in-laws, whom she was quarantining with, had closed down the small sporting complex that they run, and Cha’s young children were using the vacant space to enjoy the precious outdoor time during our interview.
—Hannah Bae
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Hannah Bae: I read that you started working on If I Had Your Face while you were in your MFA program. What were the very early seeds of your book?
Frances Cha: When I was in my MFA, I remember reading a series of books, all fiction, that were all about white protagonists, about adultery in marriage, and I was so sick of it. For the longest time I wanted to write about Asian characters, but I had never really tried it. There was some internal hurdle. I kept writing white characters, and now I am astounded that I did that.
I had just come back from living in Korea, and I wanted to write a story about Asians who have no adultery. Instead, I focused on friendships between women, set in Korea, and I wanted it to be a very modern take that was different from the Asian American novels and memoirs that I had read, which were very historical.
(Note: You’ve read just an excerpt of the entire essay first published here. (The Asian American Writers’ Workshop)
The excerpt is posted with permission by Hannah Bae.
For more blogs by Hannah, click here.