A conversation with Historical Fiction author, Iris
Yang.
Welcome back to Myths, Legends,
Books & Coffee Pots, Iris! What have you been up to since last we saw you?
In 2018, I achieved every
writer’s dream—my novels were accepted for publication by Open Books. The first
novel, Wings of a Flying Tiger, was
published in June 2018, and its sequel, Will
of a Tiger, was released in January 2019. Both books have received glowing
reviews and have been featured in a dozen newspapers.
Recently I was interviewed on National
Public Radio’s “The State of Things”—
“She infuses real-life events with her personal family
history stories from a very dark period in China’s history”
Listen to the full interview here!
I was an invited
speaker at the Authors Festival 2019 at Octavia Fellin Public Library in
Gallup, NM. I’ve been invited to attend the Flying Tigers WWII Veterans Reunion
in San Diego September 25-29, 2019.
Wow! You have been busy. If we may talk about your fabulous books
for a moment, I was wondering if you plan to write Will of a Tiger when you wrote Wings
of a Flying Tiger?
No, I
didn’t. I started writing this book several months after I finished Wings of a Flying Tiger. During that
time, I kept on thinking and imagining what might have happened to the
characters in the first book after their rescue of Danny Hardy, the American
pilot. Those characters became so real to me that I wanted to know how their
lives turned out to be. So, I started researching, not only about the War
Against Japan, but also Chinese history afterwards.
The more
I learned about the survivors of war, the more I realized how much adversity
they had faced, especially for someone like Birch Bai. Surviving the War Against Japan might have
been the beginning of his long battle. On top of physical disability, emotional pain, and survivor’s
guilt, he had to deal with the dreadful political reality—the
Chinese Civil War and the separation of the country.
Your books
have a strong military influence. Were you from a military family?
No, I didn’t have
any military experience. Nor did most of my family. However, my grandfather,
Yang Duanliu, served as the Director of the Audit Office of the Central
Military Commission in mid 1930s. He was an economist and a professor at Wuhan
University. Because of his immense
knowledge in economics, he had given lectures to Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of
the Republic of China. He was the only admiral who was allowed to wear plain clothes in the Nationalist Military. When
I wrote General Bai, I thought of my grandfather: gentle, intelligent,
principled, and disciplined.
Your
grandfather sounds like an amazing man. What drew you to write stories set in
the backdrop of war?
My mother asked me a similar question when I was young. She was
curious about why a quiet, shy girl liked to read books about war. I didn’t
have any answers at the time. I didn’t even know the reason. Now looking back,
I can see it clearly. I
was born a very shy and fearful person. I was afraid of pretty much
everything—darkness, height, insects, snakes, strangers, public speaking... It was because of my shyness and fear that I
loved reading wartime stories. I looked up to heroes. I admired their courage
and their spirit. I read books about those extraordinary people so that I could
be inspired by their heroic acts and hopefully learn from them.
Growing
up in a family of professors, I’ve always loved reading. Even before I was
born, my parents and grandparents had bought books for me. However, during the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards came to our
home and took most of the books away. I
read the few leftovers again and again because there weren't many books available—for almost ten years the libraries were
closed and the bookstores had nothing except political works. You can’t imagine
how hungry I was for books!
But I was lucky to have a wonderful father. My hometown, Wuhan, is one of the “Three
Furnaces” in China. We had no air conditioning or electric fans. In the hot and
humid summer evenings, we sat outside. Surrounded by neighboring kids, my
father told us stories—from Chinese masterpieces to Western classics, including
some of the most heroic tales such as Romance
of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, The
Great General Yue Fei, and Spartacus. Those
summer nights influced me in many ways.
So as a writer, I write what I love to read: heroic tales with
touching love stories. And I’m happy to say that I’m no longer a shy or fearful
person. I
have a private pilot license, and my admiration for the fighter pilots was
clearly conveyed in my books.
Thank you for taking the time
to speak to us today. Would you mind if we took a look at Will of a Tiger?
Of course!
Will of a Tiger
In 1942, Birch Bai, a Chinese pilot, and
Danny Hardy, a downed American pilot, become sworn brothers and best friends.
In the summer of 1945, both airmen’s
planes go down in Yunnan Province of China during one of many daring missions.
They are captured, imprisoned, and tortured by the Japanese for information
about the atomic bomb. Just days before the end of WWII, Danny makes
an irrevocable decision to save Birch's life.
For Birch, surviving the war is only the
beginning of the battle. He must deal with the dreadful reality in China—the
civil war, the separation of the country, the death of one friend in the
Communist-controlled Mainland and another under the Nationalist government, and
his wrongful imprisonment in Taiwan.
From Chungking to Yunnan, and from Taiwan
to San Francisco, the sequel to Wings of a Flying Tiger takes
readers along on an epic journey.
Pick up your copy of
Will of a Tiger
Iris
Yang
Iris
Yang, Ph.D. (Qing Yang) was born and raised in China. She has loved
reading and writing since she was a child, but in China creative writing was a
dangerous career. As famous writers and translators, her grandmother and her
aunt were wrongfully accused as counter-revolutionary Rightists, so Iris had to
choose a safer path—studying science.
After
graduating from Wuhan University and passing a series of exams, she was
accepted by the prestigious CUSBEA (China-United States Biochemistry
Examination and Application program). At age 23, with poor English, little
knowledge of the country, and 500 borrowed dollars, she came to the United
States as a graduate student at the University of Rochester.
Later,
she received a Ph.D. in molecular biology, trained as a postdoctoral fellow at
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and worked at the University of North Carolina.
Although she has published a number of scientific papers, she has a passion for
creative writing, and her short stories have won contests and have been
published in anthologies. Her debut novel, Wings of a Flying Tiger, has been
published in June, 2018, and its sequel, Will of a Tiger, has been published in
January, 2019.
Currently,
Iris is working on a story based on her grandmother, who was the first Chinese
woman to receive a master’s degree in Edinburgh in the UK. Iris now lives
between Sedona, Arizona and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Besides writing, she
loves hiking, dancing, photography and travel, and she holds a private pilot
license.
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See you on your next coffee break!
Take Care,
Mary Anne xxx