Bruce Lee, Defying Stereotypes, and the Catharsis of Writing

Bruce-Lee_-Defying-Stereotypes_-and-the-Catharsis-of-Writing | BookTrib. Most writers embark on projects with a clear sense of what they want to say, often revisiting familiar characters, themes and settings. When my publisher agreed to launch Johnny Delivers , a standalone sequel to the award-winning Letters From Johnny , they likely had no idea of the deeper struggles I had in constructing the story. But then again, writers are notorious for deceiving not just readers and their publishers but themselves. Though I had the plot, setting and characters mapped out, the early drafts of Johnny Delivers were a struggle. I didn’t know what I truly wanted to say — I lacked emotional clarity and purpose. Worse, I was determined to avoid the overused Asian immigrant tropes of cultural conflict, duty, sacrifice, restaurant work and emotionally distant parents. Setting the novel in the 1970s meant revisiting an era when Asians were often reduced to demeaning caricatures — stereotyped, buck-toothed, humble figures. These depictions made me cringe, filling me with shame about my roots and identity. Confronting Stereotypes with Satire It wasn’t until I realized how necessary it was to confront the emotionally taxing experiences that I realized how important this story was for me to write. Memoirists (e.g., Lindsay Wong, Hollay Ghadery and Jen Sookfong Lee) often show remarkable courage by laying everything bare. From a craft perspective, I had to emotionally place myself within the story and feel the shame. Harvesting those emotional wounds yielded richer, more authentic writing. For me, it meant creating a new narrative that embraced some of the hard truths of the time. Take the twining of Asians with restaurants — a worn-out convention if there ever was one. Yet, almost everyone I knew worked in hospitality. It would have been novel but unrealistic to situate my fictional Chinese family in, say, a yoga studio. Similarly, cultural and generational conflicts, though cliché, were and remain real wedges in families. And while uncomfortable to admit, Hong Kong gangs did infiltrate Canada in the ’70s and are still active today. If I was going to write this story, I needed to confront […]

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