We live on the unceded traditional territories of indigenous nations.
Ep 9 – Interview with Jackie Lau
Jackie Lau joins us for a lively conversation. We talk about indie vs. traditional publishing, writing ethnically diverse characters respectfully, writing humour that eschews damaging stereotypes, and having a great sense of place in a story.
Margrit watched Outrageous Acts of Science because hashtag children on holiday, but liked the diversity of the cast of scientists who comment on the intrepid amateur experiments.
Lin enjoyed Crazy Rich Asians for its authentically East-Asian scenes and its entertainment value. As a consumer of Asian media, Lin is baffled at how surprised Western audiences were by the quality of this film, and questions why the behind-the-scenes names were not as predominantly Asian as the cast.
Question of the Episode: Have ever found a book or a TV show with a great sense of place that transported you there or made you want to visit?
Follow Jackie on her website, Twitter and Instagram.
Join the conversation on Twitter at @World_ofStories or email us at worldofstoriespodcast@gmail.com.
Transcript
Margrit 0:00
Welcome to World of Stories. I’m Margrit and my pronoun is they.
Lin 0:03
I’m Lin and my pronoun is she and we’re here to talk about diversity in storytelling.
Margrit 0:08
And we have a special episode today on World of Stories because we have a special guest with us. Jackie Lau is a Toronto-based romance author who decided she wanted to be a writer when she was in grade two. I wish I knew what I wanted to do when I was in grade two.
Lin 0:24
I know, same here.
Margrit 0:25
Welcome, Jackie. Sometime between writing the Heart that Got Lost and the Land of Shapes.
Lin 0:31
Are these stories that you wrote?
Jackie 0:33
Yeah, those are stories I wrote in grade two.
Margrit 0:35
In grade two! My goodness.
Lin 0:37
That’s amazing. I love that.
Margrit 0:39
She later studied engineering and worked as a geophysicist before turning to writing romance novels. She writes romantic comedy with Chinese Canadian heroes and heroines and previously wrote erotic and contemporary romance as Laura Jardine. Jackie lives in Toronto with her husband and despite living in Canada her whole life, she hates winter.
Lin 0:57
And we are recording right in the middle of winter.
Margrit 1:00
It has finally snowed! January 3. Yeah. So when Jackie’s not writing she enjoys gelato, gourmet doughnuts, cooking, hiking and reading on the balcony when it’s raining.
Lin 1:12
I just have to say, I follow your social media with all your pictures of doughnuts. I’m so jealous every time, especially as I’m sitting in my like office cubicle and I’m like–
Margrit 1:22
Jackie is out again and she’s had this amazing meal again. Welcome to our podcast and thank you so much for being our first guest.
Jackie 1:31
It’s good to be here.
Margrit 1:32
Awesome.
Lin 1:33
So I finally saw Crazy Rich Asians. I’m a couple of months late.
Margrit 1:39
Well, you’re not about two years late, like I was last episode.
Lin 1:43
Not two years just to a few months. And you know, I thought it was okay. I don’t know. Have you guys…
Jackie 1:49
Yeah, I saw it in theatre on opening weekend.
Lin 1:51
Okay, that’s great. Yeah, that’s good. I mean, I think there’s so much hype around this movie, and I think it’s set my expectations really high. And I thought it was good. It wasn’t like mind blowing, oh my god. but it was an entertaining–it was an entertaining movie. I think there were certain scenes that were very Asian in like the way the characters responded to situations and stuff. And I mean, I don’t know if non-Asian people would pick up on that maybe, maybe it is more ubiquitous than I think, but I mean, I don’t know. I can’t think of any examples right now, anyway.
But yeah, I think the thing that really got me as I thought about it was that there was so much excitement around this movie, and so much surprise that an all Asian cast could put together a movie that was entertaining and fun. And I’m like, the entertainment industry in Asia is massive in like East Asia and Southeast Asia and in Bollywood. Like it’s huge. It’s like multi-billion dollars, and there’s like, tons of movie stars and actors and actresses that are really good.
Margrit 3:03
And it’s also global. Like it’s not just–
Lin 3:06
Yeah, exactly like here in Canada, like people are watching Chinese dramas and Korean dramas and Japanese dramas like all the time. And so I’m just really used to watching stuff with a bunch of Asian people in it that’s entertaining and fun. So I was like, I don’t see how this is any–like, why, how is this different from all the other stuff that I’ve watched? I don’t know. Anyway…
Jackie 3:30
Yeah, I don’t watch very much Asian media, so it was a bit different to me.
Lin 3:34
Okay, yeah, that’s fair.
Did you read the book first? I did not.
Margrit 3:38
Oh, I read the book when it came out.
Lin 3:40
Is it good?
Margrit 3:40
Yeah, it was funny. Very much fun.
Lin 3:42
Okay, maybe I’ll go check that out. So two interesting things that I picked up as I was watching the movie.
One is the story set in Singapore. And Singaporeans have a very distinct accent when they speak English. It they have this like, it’s called Singlish where it’s like half English and then half sort of local dialects that they’ve mixed into it, but when they speak like English-English, it’s still like a very distinct accent. And I think there was only like one or two actors in the whole movie that actually spoke with a Singaporean accent. And I was like, okay, I mean, I get it. It’s like, you know, technically an American movie and they’ve got actors from all over the world who are of Asian descent in it, but I would have liked it to feature more Singaporean actors, especially because like the story set in Singapore, all these people are supposedly Singaporean, but like, none of them sound like they’re from Singapore. So, I don’t know. That was just one thing I picked up.
And then the other thing, I don’t know, I don’t actually know if this is true or not, because I didn’t look into the people who were behind the scenes, but I was just watching the credits on the end. And there were very few people with Asian looking last names. So I don’t know, like photography and costumes and music, and I’m not sure how many people behind the scene were actually Asian. And I know that this is a critique of Indian Horse. You know, it’s is a Canadian movie about an Indigenous man who went to residential school when he was a kid.
Margrit 5:16
Which is an adaptation of Richard Wagamese’s novel.
Lin 5:19
Yes, also called Indian Horse. And so it’s about this–it’s a story about this Indigenous man, and–the movie had grand acclaim because, you know, Indigenous actors. But then the director is white, and the producers were all white, and all the people behind the scenes are white. And so they’re saying, well, the movie doesn’t really reflect what the book was because it’s being told through a white lens. And I don’t want to say that that’s what’s happened with Crazy Rich Asians, but it did make me think, well, if you’re going to say that something, some sort of product–creative product–is of a particular culture, then it should be from that culture from sort of the front and from the back, if that makes sense, right?
Margrit 6:04
Yeah. Yes. No, it it makes total sense. And it’s like sometimes there’s this desire to make things appeal to an audience that does not live that sort of experience, whether it’s a cultural experience or whether it’s like queer movies for a straight audience. Things like that. And so it’s like, it’s kind of like the variant of mansplaining.
I’m not sure that’s what you were–quite what you were hinting at, but–
Lin 6:36
What that like?
Margrit 6:37
That it’s made to appeal… like that it’s an Asian audience, like you were saying. Not an Asian audience, an Asian cast, but the movie is sort of intended to have grand appeal to the primarily white audience of the US.
Lin 6:53
So the idea is you have like the people from the intended audience explain something that seems foreign.
Margrit 7:00
Right, right, or it’s kind of like, you know, when you read a book, and the author has gone out of their sort of life experience, and sometime, if it’s not that well edited or not well thought through, the author feels compelled to put in all the research that they’ve done, and sort of explain everything. And so it gets into explanations that you, let’s say a character of a certain culture would never think that way. Right? Like they would never think and now I’m going to eat collard greens, because collard greens are something that, you know, Black Americans in the south eat traditionally. And it’s kind of like, well, no, like a Black character from the south would never actually think this way. Right? And so I’m not sure if that’s was what you were getting to.
Lin 7:44
No, I mean, I didn’t see any of that, right.
Jackie 7:46
No, I didn’t think it was too bad. And like, the mahjong scene they don’t explain. And I actually don’t really remember how to play mahjong very well, other than it being similar to rummy. But yeah, I had to look up the explanation of that.
Lin 7:59
Yeah. So I think from that perspective, it was fine. And the director is Taiwanese American? So, like, directors are ultimately in charge of what goes into the movie. And so I think he was able to at least, I mean, they did talk about like the, the director and the guy who wrote the book. They did talk about how there were other studios that wanted options for the book, but they wanted to make the heroine white.
Margrit 8:27
Yeah, I heard about that. Yeah.
Lin 8:28
And they wanted to, like really whitewash it. And they’re like, No.
Margrit 8:32
Well, good work from that perspective. I wonder who had the veto on that one?
Lin 8:38
I think it was the, well, the author had paired up with the director, I think really early on and together they were trying to option it. And they were both like, No, so yeah, yeah. But yeah, I liked the mahjong scene. It was pretty interesting. And a friend of mine did this like deep dive into the mahjong scene. Because there’s different variations of how to play the game with different rules depending on what region you’re from. And then she was like, because this is in Singapore, they would have been playing Singaporean mahjong, and the rules are like this. And so her giving up that tile has like significant meanings on all these different levels. And I was like, you totally lost me. All I knew was that this was the tile that the mother needed to win, and she gave it up. And so that was like, her showing of like, I’m just gonna have to accept it, I’m gonna go your way or whatever. And it’s like, okay.
Margrit 8:38
It was a big symbol.
Lin 9:31
It’s a big symbol. Yes. It was a fun scene. So, Margrit, what have you been enjoying this week?
Margrit 9:37
Um, well, it’s been the holidays. So I’ve been spending a lot of time at home with kids and stuff. And my kids really enjoy watching Outrageous Acts of Science, which is a show on Discovery Science. And it’s basically the sort of science equivalent of America’s Funniest Videos, because they show these wacky things that people do in their free time, or whatever they’re passionate about. And they have all kinds of expert scientists that who discussed those videos and talk about the science behind it, why it’s so cool that those people at home managed to do these feats, and what is the science behind it and what, why they could only do it so far, and so on and so forth. And one of the things that I really enjoyed about it was that the producers have done a really good job of bringing in a diverse group of scientists, as much as I can tell by just looking at the show. So there’s an even number of men and women, there are many people of color, there are people with different accents in English, and they don’t put subtitles when it’s not a standard.
Lin 10:51
American accent?
Margrit 10:53
Which doesn’t, you know, doesn’t happen very often. So it’s really cool to see like a diverse group of people, you know doing like talking about their expertise and being entertaining doing that, so yeah.
Jackie 11:06
So what’s like an example of one of the videos?
Margrit 11:09
Very good question and I remember one guy was trying to put together this, you know how like you can basically make fire with a thick enough lens and sunshine. So he was trying to put together the super amped version of this. So he had this basically a parabolic antenna that he had put–what is it–pieces of mirror onto. And so he was basically taking a bunch of–a ton of rays of sunshine and focusing it into one super ray.
Lin 11:53
To do what with?
Margrit 11:54
To put things on fire. He managed to leave it, I think, in sort of a greenhouse or something, and obviously the sun got to it. And he put that greenhouse on fire. Because it was such a–anyway. And so, obviously they say about all the things that you know, don’t try this at home. And so they were like explaining how you know refraction works, and how everything works and why that was not a very good idea to just leave that.
Lin 12:26
Wait, so was it on purpose that he set the greenhouse on fire?
Margrit 12:28
No, no, I don’t think he realized how powerful that was. And also that if he leaves it in a greenhouse that basically has no roof and the sun can just get through… his, you know, best outcome or worst nightmare, might come true?
Lin 12:41
At least it worked, right?
Margrit 12:44
It did work. And it’s really funny the way that the scientists talk about it, too. So yeah.
Lin 12:48
Did you hear there was um, I think this was in New York or something, that they’re, you know, building these big skyscrapers with a lot of glass, right? That’s like the modern architecture. Like a solid glass windows, and then the sun was hitting some building and it was reflecting the light and then it melted some cars down on the street. Yes this is actually how–I think it was in New York.
Margrit 12:48
How did it melt the cars, like the actual metal?
Lin 13:15
Yeah, because it was just like the angle was just right and the, like you said, the refraction of the sunlight was so strong that the cars just melted.
Margrit 13:25
Oh my goodness.
Lin 13:26
I don’t think anyone got hurt. Thank God.
Margrit 13:29
But still.
Lin 13:30
Yeah, so be careful with your mirrors everyone.
Margrit 13:36
So now that we’ve babbled on forever, it’s time to finally ask Jackie some questions. Let’s start easy, shall we? With easy questions.
Lin 13:45
Yeah, let’s get into it.
Margrit 13:47
How long have you been an author and how has your writing career meandered since you started writing?
Jackie 13:53
So I started writing in 2010. And I was more writing chick lit/women’s fiction then. Sort of like I read Bridget Jones, and I’m like, I could write that. And so the first two books that I wrote were more women’s fiction/chick lit. And I sort of then discovered that they were more kind of romance stories. So I started reading romance in 2011. And I read romance for a year before I started writing. I tried to write a romance novella, starting in 2012. And that on I actually did sell, and that came out in 2014. So I’ve been published since 2014. So I had books with four different small publishers as Laura Jardine. And none of them did very well. And I decided to start self publishing. So I’ve been self publishing for more than six months, and it’s been going pretty well.
That’s awesome. Yeah, that’s really good.
Lin 14:46
Yeah. As you said, you used to use the pen name Laura Jardine and then the books under that name featured predominantly white characters. And then now your writing as Jackie Lau and a lot of your books have characters who are Asian or other people of color. And so can you tell us about that journey? And how you got to where you are today?
Jackie 15:11
Yeah. So I think when I first started writing, I was sort of scared of what the negative impact of like, being a person of color and writing about people of color would be. And I didn’t really focus so much on that I still had some characters. And I think starting in 2015, I started to write a lot more characters of color, especially heroes of color. And so I do have some Laura Jardine books that have non-white–one with a non-white heroine and one with a non-white hero. But not as many and so when I decided to, it’s just sort of something that became more important to me over time as I spent more time in the romance community. I talked to more authors and stuff. It became more important and I started to see like, I don’t see really people that look like me in romance.
One thing actually–so I was buying books for Christmas presents. And my niece is almost seven. And I actually found a book that was about a half Asian–so my mom is Chinese and my dad, my mom was Chinese my dad’s white. So I actually found a book about a half Asian little girl, seven-years-old and wanting to be an author. I’ve actually found a book like that, and I hadn’t–I didn’t get it, because we would’ve had to order it and I didn’t have time. But it’s like, it’s amazing that that stuff exists. That seven-year-old me could have imagined. So it’s just sort of something that became more important to me over time. And so when I decided to start a new pen name, I decided to use a Chinese last name. And also it was sort of like part of my brand in the beginning to write like diverse romantic comedy. So I focused on that.
Margrit 17:00
I’m interested because you were saying that your–the books that you published with traditional small publishers did not do as well as now your indie publishing books do. Is there–have you thought about why that is? Or do you have a theory about it? That you would like to talk about.
Jackie 17:19
I’m not–so when I first, when my first book came out, like I didn’t even have like any social media under my pen name, and I didn’t do anything to try to sell it.
Lin 17:30
Promo? What is promo?
Jackie 17:32
I just sort of assumed that like, it would be like a needle in a haystack and nothing would come back. So I just didn’t do it. Yeah. And I also didn’t really have connections like in the romance community, I didn’t join RWA until 2015 and stuff so I didn’t even really writing friends. Not in romance. So I’m not surprised in retrospect, that although 2014 was a better time, sort of, I think with e-publishers than now that I didn’t sell very well. So the main reason I think I sold well this time is because Grumpy Fake Boyfriend was accidental marketing genius on my part for the title. I think that did actually help a lot. And when you get retweeted by like, certain people with much bigger audiences than you, like I got at pre-orders in one night. Which is more than I sold for most of my other books.
Lin 18:27
That’s amazing. Yeah.
Jackie 18:30
And I think like I have more cohesive branding and a lot more people in the romance community knew me at that point. That sort of helped.
Margrit 18:36
Yeah, I find it really interesting that you think that the, the entire onus of getting the word out there is on you as an author? Yeah. Even when you were published with traditional?
Jackie 18:48
I mean, yeah, it’s, I think, because in the early days, the publishers, they just didn’t have to do much. They put these books out and they sold not too bad. And as that started to change, they didn’t really keep up. And so, only at one of those publishers, did I really have like a marketing person who was assigned to me? All the other ones I think they would like post it on Twitter, but like–
Margrit 18:56
Right, so they would just log in expect people to just buy.
Jackie 19:18
Yeah, so the main thing–advantage of having one of those publishers is that you’re not putting money out of your pocket for the editing and the cover. That’s the main advantage, but I, I didn’t really find the advantage in terms of marketing and publicity.
Lin 19:34
I wonder if that has to do with the size of the publisher because I also have a book out with some small publishers, and I’ve found a big range in, sort of, how much work they’re willing to put in to help market the books I’ve got with them. And I wonder if that just like small publishers tend to be that way or if you end up with one of the big five houses, but you’re not necessarily a big name, then maybe I don’t know how much attention they would put or how much effort they would put into marketing those books either.
Jackie 20:10
Yeah, I mean, I think some of these small publishers, like they have authors who do well, and they focus more effort on them and promoting them. Yeah, I’m not really sure. But like, I didn’t, they weren’t really doing much for me in terms of marketing promotion. It was easier as a self-published author, because I had total control over–
Margrit 20:30
Over the message and your brand.
Jackie 20:32
And the brand. Yeah. And I think also, some of these publishers would have built-in audiences would go to read the books and with one of them, I’m pretty sure what happened is the book did not reach the right audience. Based on what the publisher already had, it was just completely the wrong audience. Whereas I feel like now when I look at the also-boughts, people buying stuff, I’m getting the audience that I would think would like my book.
Lin 20:57
And I think as an indie publisher or indie author, you have control of who do you want to target? And yeah, and try and figure out ways to target that audience, which might be tricky. Obviously, it’s not easy, but at least you have that control. Yeah,
Margrit 21:11
Yeah. So speaking about your brand, you’re very outspoken on social media about how biracial and multiracial characters are portrayed. So what are some of your pet peeves? And what advice do you have for authors who want to write by racial or multiracial characters?
Jackie 21:29
So my main pet peeve is that I think white authors often decide let’s put in a biracial character just to add diversity and they want to be like, just jump on the diversity bandwagon or like get cookies or whatever, for having diversity. And so they’re like, it’ll be easier if I have a biracial character. And then they think about characters like–they often seem to treat the characters as though they’re like, different looking and exotic looking. And then make them more or less white otherwise. Not that all white authors do this, just I found like, this is like a reoccurring thing and you don’t really think about it the first few times, but when you start seeing it over and over again, like this is kind of… Yeah, it’s kind of weird.
And also, one thing that I find is, they’re often raised by their white families, especially in historicals. They’re always raised by the white families and they don’t really touch on what kind of, you know, internal conflict that would have and sometimes they do, but in a very kind of superficial way, kind of internal conflict that would have in that person and then they’re basically the token person of color. And, I mean, I noticed when I’m the only person of color, yeah, I very aware of that. But you don’t really see that come across. So it’s mainly I feel like when you write these biracial, multiracial characters for the wrong reasons, it really shows, so if you just want to do it to add diversity, just because you think that’s fun or profitable, just don’t. So that’s my, really my main pet peeve.
Margrit 23:06
Don’t tokenize people. That’s a good advice for everybody.
Jackie 23:10
So yeah, just that. I often see biracial characters use that way. And it’s actually pretty rare to see biracial characters written by biracial people.
Lin 23:18
Yeah. I think, I mean, I feel like it would be more difficult to write a biracial character as opposed to writing someone who is, you know, just Chinese or something like that, right?
Margrit 23:31
Monocultural.
Lin 23:32
Yeah, monocultural. I, that’s just my perspective, I guess, because, like, I’m not biracial. And so I don’t know what kind of tensions there might be within a person as they’re trying to navigate through life. And I can imagine like, I wouldn’t even know where to start, necessarily, in terms of like, okay, what are the questions this person would be asking themselves or what are the things that this person would notice in this type of situation?
Margrit 23:54
Yeah, and I think people who people of color who aren’t biracial, are often aware of that, whether or not they write the characters, but they’re often aware that writing a biracial character isn’t just some easy…. well, write them white on the inside situation. Yeah. But white people not so much, I mean, of course, a book about a biracial character doesn’t have to be really about them being biracial, as a central part of the story. But just the ways it’s sort of handle is…
Lin 24:21
Right. Yeah, I do. Yeah, I can see that. There’s this, um, I listened to a podcast called Codeswitch. And they did a episode on kids who are people of color who are adopted by white parents. And I think there’s an author who wrote a book on this. She’s originally of Korean descent, but was adopted by white parents.
Jackie 24:44
Oh, I know the book you mean.
Lin 24:45
The book is called All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung. And so I think she is actually interviewed in the episode but they also got listeners to call in or to write in their own experiences about being like Asian or Black or Latinx and in having white parents and the different kinds of experiences that they had, like some parents just completely ignored the fact that their children didn’t look like them and didn’t try to explain or help them understand or adjust or connect somehow to their original, biological birth culture, I’m not sure what the right term is to use there. And then other parents who are a lot more proactive about helping them understand and adjust and all of the questions that they might have.
Margrit 25:36
Yeah, so one thing I have been thinking about since Trump was elected actually, there is an article about I think, a woman, she was originally from Korea or China and adopted by a white woman in the US. And this woman voted for Trump and so this Asian daughter like they just couldn’t see eye-to-eye on anything and I sort of started thinking a lot about white parents raising non-white children, both when they’re adopted or in the case of being biracial. I sort of started thinking a lot about that because I think even in cases where like a person of color marries a white person, sometimes that white person really doesn’t have much of a clue as you think.
Lin 26:17
Do you remember?
Margrit 26:17
Lin and I were at a conference. You tell the story.
Lin 26:22
So we’re at this RWA conference, the New England RWA conference, and I think it was–
Margrit 26:31
Andie J. Christopher.
Lin 26:32
Yes. So we’re in this like workshop led by Beverly Jenkins. And Andie asks a question about something about being like a person of color, writing in romance, whatever, whatever.
Margrit 26:45
Oh, the question that she asked was, okay, I’m, I’m biracial and I’m writing a biracial heroine. And so in my book, do I give people the 101 version, the 200 version or the grad school version of what being biracial means? Yeah, that was her question.
Lin 27:01
Yes. And then before Beverly Jenkins can respond to the question this white man–
Margrit 27:07
The only white guy in the room.
Lin 27:10
And he goes, oh, well, my wife is Black. And so you think you have it hard, but I have it harder because my wife is Black. And everyone’s just like silent and staring, like, what are you talking about?
Margrit 27:26
It was quite the moment.
Jackie 27:29
So as Jackie Lau, I have one book with a biracial heroine so far. I mean, it doesn’t really talk so much about her identity as being biracial but about all the tensions in her family because of the interracial marriage of her parents. None of her grandparents attended the wedding. So that was more about that and I have another book coming out this May that originally I thought might be the first of the series that I was like, this is too much about biracial identity. What if people like–
Margrit 27:55
Right, the grad school version?
Jackie 27:57
Yeah. What if people don’t, you know, relate it or whatever, so I’ll make a book too. And that one’s very much about her experience being biracial and having a father who doesn’t really get it. He’s not like totally clueless, but like, he doesn’t really get it. And so in that case, I did what I hate doing, I killed off her Asian mom, gave her no siblings. But her mom raised her, like her mom died when she was–when the character was 20. So I kind of did what I hated, but it was, there are a lot of people of color in the book. The hero is and all his family. And it was partly because of my experience of losing my mother, when I was 25, not long after I started writing and sort of what that does to your identity when you’re biracial. And I think it’s made me want to think about the Chinese Canadian experience a lot more than I did before. I feel like when I was younger I really didn’t care that much. But when you lose that parent, it’s sort of, for me anyways, it sort of changed how I thought about myself. And so that was sort of a book about that kind of experience. Yeah.
Margrit 29:12
I find it really interesting that you mentioned that you were struggling with when to publish that book and when in the series, because I think this is something that a lot of marginalized people struggle with, when they want to include parts of their experience in, in their books. And I think part of it comes from the publishing industry that says, you know, especially if you’re writing genre, that says, oh, you know, people are not going to be able to relate, they’re not going to be able to–and when they say that, there are a lot of assumptions about who those people are, who their audience is, and it’s, it serves to further alienate marginalized people and it also serves to have sort of a 101 version of a lot of marginalized experiences in books, that ends up being super didactic and it ends up as the marginalization being the issue in the book. And so that is, I hear a lot of marginalized people saying, I’m tired of, you know, reading books or seeing movies that are about this, you know, my being so and so marginalized, or, you know, people talking about being invited to panels to talk about diversity, just because there’s–
Jackie 30:21
There’s no other panels.
Margrit 30:22
Right? Yeah. And so I think this is a question that a lot of creators struggle with.
Jackie 30:27
Yeah, I mean, most of my books, it’s not really an, like an issue and I have never written an interracial relationship where that was the issue. Like in the book with the biracial heroine, with her parents, it was this big issue with their families or whatever, but like things have changed in the past 40 years. So I, I don’t usually write it as an important issue, but just this book, like because it was so much from my own experience. I kind of wanted to write that. Yeah. But yeah, I like to just write people of color as just–
Lin 30:56
As people.
Jackie 30:56
As people.
Margrit 30:56
Who go through life.
Jackie 30:59
Yeah.
Lin 31:01
That’s something I’ve been thinking about recently actually, about stories that are with marginalized characters and then the story revolves around some aspect of their identity, versus just having sort of a person who happens to be marginalized, but the story has nothing to do with that. And how I think it’s kind of important to have both. I don’t know if, you guys think.
Jackie 31:27
I agree.
Lin 31:28
Because I think that to completely ignore the fact that somebody is marginalized in whatever way that they might be, is, I mean, in one aspect is important because they are human beings that are more than just their marginalization, but also the fact that that is something that they probably have to deal with or interact with, and it is part of their daily lives. Right? And, you know, when we started this podcast, we said we wanted it to, we think of stories as being both mirrors and windows, right? To like mirror, our own experiences, but also windows into other people’s experiences and, you know, I’m, I only have my own identity and there are stories about other people’s identities that I’d like to understand what they’re dealing with. And so if they’re dealing with, like homophobia in a certain way or you know racism in a certain way that I’ve never experienced, then I’d like to at least see one representation of what that looks like.
Margrit 32:26
Because when you ignore that, we ended up with what Jackie was talking about earlier, when you know, you tokenize people and they’re just there to sort of serve a quota or something and you ignore all the microaggressions that a person of color deals with on a daily basis and all of those other things. Absolutely. Yeah.
So um, a lot of your books feature some kind of family gathering, and I adore this about your books, and sometimes it gets out of hand or most times it gets out of hand. And that’s to a hilarious effect, but it also serves to illustrate the great sense of community for the characters. And is there a personal reason why you like to include these kinds of scenes?
Jackie 33:03
Well, it’s partly, I think going back to like these biracial characters and how their non-white families are killed off, is that I really like seeing families of color in books. And I want to see more of that. So that’s partly why I write it and also I just find writing family interactions fun. Because there’s just so much opportunity for humor, I think. Yeah. So that that’s, I mean, that’s the main reason I do it. I just find those things fun. Like I really like writing meet-the-parent scenes because–
Margrit 33:31
The potential for hilarity and conflict.
Jackie 33:36
Yeah, so I don’t know, I just I just like writing those things.
Lin 33:38
Do you have a favorite, meet-the-parents or family scene that you want, that you can share with us? Or one that just comes to mind?
Jackie 33:39
I can’t really think of one. One of the family scenes that I was writing in my next–in my Pie Day book was the, sort of, Asian thing of fighting over the bill, which we don’t actually do in my family.
Margrit 34:04
We do this in Romania.
Jackie 34:05
I see a lot of people, like it’s a thing a lot of people do. But for some reason, no one in my family does it. And so, like I use that to like comic effect too. Like trying to sneak to the washroom–
Lin 34:18
Yeah.
Margrit 34:18
With the bill.
Lin 34:21
So many times.
Jackie 34:26
That’s one of the family ones I’ve written recently.
Margrit 34:28
Right. I love that scene you have in, I don’t remember the name. So the second one in this series with He’s Not My Boyfriend. What is the second one in the series?
Jackie 34:41
He’s Not My Boyfriend is the second one.
Margrit 34:42
No. So that was–what’s the first one, sorry.
Jackie 34:44
Not Another Family Wedding.
Margrit 34:45
Okay, Not Another Family Wedding. And so the hero and the heroine are at the heroine’s house and it’s like at her parents’ house. And the parents are not really kind of getting along very well. And so it’s a very explosive kind of a scene and in very hilarious ways in which there’s all kinds of, sorts of conflict that comes out. But you handle it like, so well, but it’s not sort of overblown and it’s super like, I can see that happening. And so when we talk about big family scenes, I think that’s very relatable as well.
Jackie 35:23
One of the things that I’ve been thinking about lately too, so the grandmother in that series, um, so she is mainly used for comic effects. Not entirely, but mainly. But the thing is, when I started thinking, I read an article, someone–I forget what Christmas movie it was, like maybe The Christmas Story or Christmas Wish. It was one I’d never seen. There’s a scene that I watched after reading this article where they basically go to a Chinese restaurant and they make fun of them for not being able to say “fa la la,” expecting “fa ra ra,” and then serving the whole duck with the head. Yeah, the first one was like, yeah, this is like, you know, this is pretty terrible and I’m sort of thinking about how when people, Chinese people are used for comic effect, it’s often situations like that.
But in this book, I had a grandmother and who, whose English is not perfect. She learned it later in life. And she’s a common character but it kind of had to make sure I avoided any–any of those sort of making fun of… so she–I never used her phonetics, her accent, and I did tone down the, the sort of the incorrect grammar and sentence structure just because there’s this long history of, you know, making fun of Asian people being used as a source of humor for something like that. And I didn’t want any–
Margrit 36:48
Making fun of any non-English speaking, like, the amount of times that people put in let’s say, a Russian accent in a movie just to signify to that’s an evil character. Is a–right?
Jackie 37:00
Yeah. And so with the Asian, the Chinese characters it’s not usually that they’re evil, just that they’re–
Lin 37:06
Yeah, they’re silly.
Jackie 37:07
They’re silly. They’re stupid.
Margrit 37:09
Yeah. Sort of the trend that started with Peter Sellers who was playing a Chinese character in some movie in like the 60s?
Jackie 37:18
Oh, well, there’s Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Margrit 37:21
Okay. So there’s a–there’s a whole series of–
Jackie 37:24
Yeah, so I look at that character, like, I was kind of aware of that, like history. And there are some cases where like, it’s funny that she misuses phrases a little bit. But like, a lot of it’s kind of more like, a generational thing. Yeah. You know, she does like say spring chicken for anyone who’s under 85.
Lin 37:48
Yeah, I kind of, I mean, I think it’s a very fine line being able to walk that.
Margrit 37:51
It is a very fine line because immigrants are very sensitive about their accent. And so one of the things that if when I meet people who are immigrants, and I tell them that I’m an immigrant, the first thing that they say is, well, you must have come here when you were a child. And I say, no, I was an adult. And then they all, they’re all super taken aback about the fact that I don’t, I don’t have a noticeable accent in English, because this is a super big thing for immigrants. It’s a barrier in getting jobs. It’s a barrier in being taken seriously a lot of the time. And so I think that’s a super sensitive point for people who do not speak standard accented English.
Jackie 38:26
In this book, like it was mainly like, if anything, her granddaughters express admiration that she learned English like when she was in her 70s. Yeah. So mainly, they, they sort of admired the fact that she was able to do it later in life after being discouraged by her husband and stuff. Yeah.
Margrit 38:44
It’s super hard to learn a language, let alone learn it when you’re–
Especially my grandma doesn’t really speak English. And she’s been here like 60 years.
Lin 38:52
Also English is a really hard language to learn. It’s like it’s I mean, for some, for people who, you know, speak it everyday, maybe we don’t think about it so much, but it’s really, really hard. I’ve had people ask me, like, why is this pronounced this way? But then you change one letter, and suddenly it’s pronounced in a totally different way? And I’m like, I don’t know. That’s just how we do it. Yeah. It makes no sense.
Margrit 38:52
Yeah, it makes no sense. Yeah. Like the writing and the pronunciation, a lot of times, especially for the old, for the words that come from Old English. There’s no coherent explanation.
Lin 39:24
Yeah, absolutely not. And like sometimes the grammar it’s just like, well, why do you structure a sentence this way? And it’s–I don’t know. That’s just, don’t ask me why, it’s just sounds correct. That’s the way I do it.
Margrit 39:36
Why is hanged and hung? Why do they mean different things? Why do both versions of the past tense exist? Yeah. Anyway, we can go on about this forever.
So one of the things that I love about your books is a strong sense of place. I love books with a good sense of place and I especially love that you’re–Toronto really shines in your books and is there’s something that makes these stories really Toronto specific or utterly Canadian, do you think?
Jackie 40:04
Yeah, I’m not really sure. Like, it’s not something I thought too much about when I was writing. It’s just like I’ve lived here my whole life, except when I was in university and like, I really like it here so it’s just sort of something that naturally came into my writing. And yeah, I don’t know about anything that’s super Canadian specifically.
Lin 40:24
I find that sometimes people write stories where it’s kind of just like generic big city or generic small town and they never like mentioned exactly where it is, you kind of assume like, oh, it’s some sort of like western North American place.
Jackie 40:37
So I do like in some of the books, like the ones that are like, going for this long walk around the city and like, go to different neighborhoods and like, I kind of focus on the diversity of the city and like, all the different types of food, because I really like food too. So just like I end up putting so much food in my books.
Follow Jackie’s Instagram because she always posts amazing food in there.
Lin 40:58
So good.
Margrit 40:58
Yeah. And you have–in Not Another Family Wedding, the sisters skate on the Rideau Canal in Ottawa, right?
Jackie 41:03
Yeah. So my husband and I usually go to Ottawa in the winter to do that once. So that’s–and there is a, I mentioned there being like, I think a poutine shwarma restaurant. I find that funny because there is one, on like Rideau Street in Ottawa and there’s–
Margrit 41:09
Yeah, I think all the shwarma places actually sell poutine I think it’s just it’s like–
Jackie 41:23
It’s like a late night kind of fatty food, right? Yeah, not sure you would find that many places.
Margrit 41:29
Probably not. Although, poutine has really taken off everywhere now. I think you’d probably find it in the States too.
Jackie 41:36
Yeah.
Lin 41:36
But it’s not the same.
Margrit 41:37
It’s not.
Lin 41:37
No.
Margrit 41:38
Okay. No offense to our listeners from the US. But your poutine is just not that good.
Lin 41:43
A question actually, what do you guys feel–how do you guys feel about naming places that actually exist in your books?
Jackie 41:54
So like, do you mean real cities and towns or like actual…
Lin 41:59
Not so much cities and towns.
Margrit 42:00
Like a fictional variant in New York, or?
Lin 42:02
No but more like, there’s this store on this corner and like it actually exists and I’m gonna go reference it in my book.
Margrit 42:09
Oh, I don’t do that. But like, I often reference things that are like compilations or similar to something else that you would find, but I tend to like just make up all the businesses.
I did name restaurants in one of the books that I wrote. That is not published, so it’s fine, it’s all good. But then, I was thinking, you know, maybe I should change references because they were all like Ronnie’s Oyster House. What is it called? The one on King? Yeah, yeah. And then there’s an Ethiopian restaurant that I love and I put it in, and then I changed the names because I’m like, well, what if they take objection to being named in a book?
Lin 42:36
Yeah. I’m not sure, actually, what the legal–
Margrit 42:47
Did you ever do that?
Lin 42:49
I’m trying to think now. And I think that, maybe?
Margrit 42:55
Like in your Hong Kong book, you have a scene in restaurants, in a restaurant, right? Did you put in the actual name of the restaurant there? Will people from Hong Kong come and sue you now, Lin?
Lin 43:05
I hope not. Please don’t sue me. I don’t have any money. I don’t know. Yeah, I’m not–I don’t know if I’ve mentioned any specific names or restaurants, but it is something that I think about because, I’ve like, as you said, sort of, having a strong sense of place in my books and having like, so for instance, maybe not a restaurant or the name of a store, but in Inside Darkness, it’s set in New York and I referenced like, the 1 Train and I referenced like if they get off at this station and at this station. And it’s like actual places.
Margrit 43:39
Yeah, I do reference like intersections and the streets, but then when it comes to the businesses…
Lin 43:43
Yeah, that’s true. I have fake news networks. Yeah, they’re big and I don’t want them to sue me.
Margrit 43:54
No CNN.
Lin 43:55
No CNN.
Okay, so where can we listeners find out more about you and your books.
Margrit 44:02
Okay, so you can go to my website, which is JackieLauBooks.com. And then that has links to my different books where you can buy at online retailers and stuff like that. And I’m also pretty active on Twitter. So you can follow me on Twitter, the links are there too, as well as Instagram.
Lin 44:17
Great. And we’ll put links to all of that in the show notes. And how about, tell us some of the books that are coming out in the next few months.
Jackie 44:26
So I have, in March, I’m putting out a book called The Ultimate Pi Day Party, which is–
Lin 44:32
Sounds awesome.
Jackie 44:34
So the hero is Asian and he is a CEO. I say I don’t like CEO romances and then I wrote like three of them. But it’s mainly like I’m tired of white, white man’s CEO. So I don’t like white guy CEOs. He owns like an app development company. So he’s like a small time CEO, and he hires this woman who owns a pie shop to cater his a pi day party. That he’s sort of, he has this long, he and his dad aren’t really in speaking terms. So he’s trying to like, get his dad to come to Toronto and thinks that his dad would come for something like this. Um, so that’s book one in my Baldwin Village series.
So Baldwin Village is, sort of, this small section of Baldwin Street in Toronto where there’s a lot of diverse restaurants.
Margrit 45:27
Your sense of place! It’s right there!
Jackie 45:26
It’s near Chinatown and there’s just a lot of different types of restaurants. So it’s a fictional version of that street, basically, where I make up all the restaurants, but it’s supposed to be the same kind of feel of that. And people in Toronto would recognize the name. I don’t think anyone else would, but–so that’s what that series is. So that pie shop is on the street.
Lin 45:49
Awesome.
Jackie 45:49
Um, and then the book that I have in May, is right now called Ice Cream Lover. I don’t know if I’m going to change it.
Margrit 45:56
Is it durian ice cream?
Jackie 45:58
No. So the durian book’s after. So this is another business on that street, is an Asian-inspired ice cream shop. Which there are a bunch of ice cream and gelato places like that in Toronto. There actually is one on Baldwin Street that’s gelato and this is ice cream but yeah anyway, so that just about a woman who owns the ice cream shop and she’s biracial. And the hero is Chinese Canadian and he hates ice cream.
Lin 46:27
Sacrilegious.
Jackie 46:31
His ex-girlfriend left him at the altar and then wrote a book called Embrace Your Inner Ice Cream Sandwich, as a kind of Eat Pray Love kind of self-help book. She like destroys him in the book and like he basically loses any interest in ice cream after. So that’s why he hates ice cream, it’s not like he’s always hated it or he’s lactose intolerant. He just has–
Margrit 46:57
A very good reason.
Jackie 46:58
Very bad memories. So that’s um, like those two characters, and then that’s all that I’ve written. I’m supposed to have–so the third book in that series is supposed to be called Man Versus Durian. And so I haven’t written that book at all.
Margrit 47:12
But we’re already super excited about it.
Jackie 47:15
But like, hopefully that will come out near the end of the year, like in October or something. I have like a romance parody novel I wrote a bunch of years ago that I might put out, but haven’t really decided yet what I’m going to do with that.
Lin 47:28
All right.
Margrit 47:28
Well, thank you so much for joining us.
Jackie 47:30
No problem. I had lots of fun.
Lin 47:32
Yeah, I had a lot of fun talking, as well. Do we have a question of the episode?
Margrit 47:40
What are some good books or maybe TV shows with a great sense of place that make you feel like you’re in the moment, in the place, right then and there?
Lin 47:50
Or makes you want to visit the place if you’ve never been there before. Yeah, that’d be great.
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Margrit 48:05
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