Do you think it’s a myth?
By Shreya Khullar
Illustration by Selin Ho
Wang’s fiction is infused with liminal tension. I found my way to her work the summer after my freshman year of college, listless and in an unfamiliar city, asking myself the same questions her characters always ask: What am I doing here? What do I really want? Wang writes about people stuck between cultures, career paths, and romantic prospects. Her characters often struggle through experiences that mimic her own.
Thinking she would become a doctor, Wang earned her B.A. in chemistry. After a doctorate in public health and an MFA in creative writing, she published two novels, and her fiction and essays are frequently featured in The New Yorker. She teaches creative writing at Barnard and the University of Pennsylvania, and her forthcoming book Rental House will be out in December.
In our conversation we spoke about the problem with the model minority myth, innate creativity, and the science of writing.
This transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.
The Blue and White: After studying chemistry and public health at Harvard, how did you come to writing as a craft and later as a profession?
Weike Wang: I sometimes wish I didn’t enjoy writing so much. I feel like I would’ve been much happier following the route I did in college. I was pre-med at Harvard. I took the MCAT. I went the interview route. I think it’s just much more straightforward. Then I went to public health research, cancer epidemiology, wondering if I could compromise. I really enjoyed the humanities as an undergrad, but that was just not a viable route for me in terms of the expectations set on me. But inevitably I had to find my way back to writing. I love it. I don’t want to say it's a calling, but I always felt that I could do more with writing than I could have done in medicine or epidemiology research. I care a lot more about writing.
B&W: I understand what you were saying about the perception of writing not really being a “real” job, and, on a certain level, it’s not, because you’re not employed by anyone. You’re not working for a company. You’re in your room alone most of the time trying to make something. It can be hard to explain to people why that has value.
WW: It’s hard. I think my parents have no idea why I do it. None of my doctor friends have any idea.
B&W: What do you tell them if that question comes up?
WW: They don’t change. I try to avoid the topic. I’m never gonna change their mind. My parents grew up under Chairman Mao and the Cultural Revolution. That’s a formative 10 years of their life in which culture and art were not important. My generation are the children of immigrants who believe that STEM education is universal and can get you a high paying job. That’s true. Being able to code, engineering, doctors, those are skills. My parents and my community don't think writing isn’t a skill. It’s just that they don’t value art. And something that I believe very strongly about Asian American representation in this country is that if you do not get involved in the culture or the art, you have a very little voice. You are invisible. If you want a voice in this country, you can’t just be doctors and engineers. You have to be artists. You have to inject your culture into mainstream American culture. And art is one of the few ways to do that.
B&W: In a New Yorker article, you mentioned thinking that the model minority myth is not really a myth—
WW: Definitely not a myth.
B&W: What do you mean by that?
WW: Do you think it’s a myth?
B&W: Could you explain what you mean by that? That it's not a myth?
WW: Would someone like your dad exist if the model minority were a myth? Or my parents? Would they have existed if that’s a myth? A myth means they’re not real. They’re not true.
B&W: There are actually people [for whom the myth is] their way of living. I guess.
WW: I’ve never thought it was a myth. To say that diminishes a lot of people who allowed us the opportunities to do what we do. I’ve always been against that term. I don’t know what it means really. If it means compliance, another way to think about that is following rules can be helpful. Maybe you shouldn’t drive on the wrong side of the road. If [being a] model minority means learning science, and math, and having no creativity, that’s reductionist. I gained so much confidence in myself from STEM. I think it’s a tag word that people say.
B&W: My understanding of why it was a myth was along the lines of [being the way our parents are] isn’t necessarily innate to them as individual people, but more so that culture or economic necessities cultivated them to be that way.
WW: I agree with that.
B&W: But I understand what you’re saying that it is a reality.
WW: There’s a lot of attributes of that stereotype that I feel like this country could benefit from. This country glorifies bad behavior, you know? And I don't know why we punish good behavior.
B&W: Oh, what do you mean glorifies bad behavior?
WW: Well, Trump’s president.
B&W: …
WW: There's a shamelessness to it.
B&W: To switch gears into teaching, there’s a lot of discourse about how much of creative writing can be taught and how much is innate within the writer. Do you think that these conceptions of artistic ability are true?
WW: No, I don’t think artistic ability is innate. I’m always telling my students that talent is really not that significant. James Baldwin believed this—although James Baldwin was very talented—I don’t think it’s innate. Saying it’s innate cheapens the idea of learning, teaching craft, and revisions. So much of writing is perseverance, following through with the idea, and making it a habit.
B&W: Do you think all of writing can be taught?
WW: Yes. Just like all of science can be taught.
B&W: That’s interesting. I haven’t heard that before.
WW: I mean, I didn’t learn English from my parents. I learned reading from school. I didn’t enter college with a very strong cultural capital. I don’t come from a family of readers, so I kind of have to believe that it is teachable because that’s how I came to be.
B&W: You have a book coming out in December. What is the beginning of the writing process like for you? Do you know what the end of the novel is when you start writing?
WW: No, I probably know the end halfway through. A lot of that writing process is exploration. It’s research. If you’ve ever done research in a lab, you start with a question and then you’re exploring that question for many years. It’s really the same thing with writing. There’s so many similarities between basic science research and writing. You’re given this vast ocean to explore. It’s up to you as a writer to select pieces that you want in this book or in this project. You have to make choices. You have to answer questions. You have to problem solve.
B&W: It sounds like you see writing in a similar framework that you see research and science.
WW: Yeah. There’s a lot of similarities I think STEM people and humanities people don’t really want to admit. You’re exploring a question that you don’t know the answer to. The best writers ask the right questions, but they’re not giving you all the answers.
B&W: Yeah. The main character in your novel Joan is Okay is a doctor, and her identity revolves pretty heavily around her occupation. My father is a doctor and I feel connected to that world through him, and it seems to me that intense interconnectedness of personal identity and profession is something that’s particular to doctors. I was wondering if there is something about their profession, or the psyche of doctors in particular, that interested you?
WW: I started shadowing hospitals since I was in middle school, so that’s a world I’m pretty familiar with. That identity is almost like a master identity. It just takes over your whole persona. I think it’s because the training is so intense. The selection bias is so intense. It’s very skill oriented. Medicine is one of these things where the occupation does change cognition. I see that with my friends who are now attendings. They just think very differently than they did when they were in high school or college. There’s something immersive about that world.
But, I also say the same thing about art. Becoming an artist, or doing art, has also changed how I think about the world. I used to be much more black and white, because I was a coder, so it was just, is it running? Is it not running? Is it significant? P-value less 0.05? That was where my mind was operating. I think if I stayed in that field, that’s how my mind would operate. I’m fascinated by that. It’s like when you get into college admissions people ask are you a pointy person or are you a rounded person? Doctors are incredibly pointy. That’s what makes them fun to write about. Maybe not necessarily to hang out with, but they’re just interesting people. They’re just so pointy. They have so many quirks and idiosyncrasies.
B&W: What advice do you have for emerging writers?
WW: Oh gosh. I think if you really wanna do it, you have to really want to exist on the page. The best part of you has to be on the page. That’s how I feel—writing has always been the best part of me. Only go into writing if you feel like that’s where you’re at, otherwise you want to think about why you want to be a writer. Do you want to be a writer because you like the aura of a writer? I actually hate being a writer. I love writing. I hate being a writer. So if you just like the aura of being a writer, maybe there’s something else, like an editor or being in publishing. You have to really love writing, because all the other stuff can be kind of annoying. I always just ask my students, “Is there anything else that you can see yourself doing?” Because a lot of my friends who complained about being pre-med love it now because they have a stable job. They can go on these fancy vacations. They’re totally happy. So I’m always like, “Is there nothing you would love doing?” And I know that sounds discouraging but I’m not trying to discourage them. It’s a really hard road. If I loved it less, I might’ve done something else <laugh> and not have so much existential angst over my choices.
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