Malinda lo biography examples
This is the third interview in a series; check out the previous interviews with Melina Marchetta and David Maciniss Gill.
I love unique riffs on fairy tales, and when I heard about Ash I was totally excited. This is partly because Cinderella is one of my least favorite fairy tales and I’m always hoping for a retelling that transforms the story elements I dislike, that redeems the too-familiar plot points and often-stagnant setting, and that offers a new twist or memorable characters. Malinda Lo’s Ash and its companion novel Huntress certainly didn’t disappoint. And then came Adaptation, a contemporary science fiction novel (the first in a series) that hits all my freaky conspiracy theories and aliens buttons perfectly.
While waiting for the sequel, Inheritance to be released this September, I’ve spent a lot of time over at Diversity in YA, the site Lo and author Cindy Pon created to explore and “celebrate young adult books about all kinds of diversity, from race to sexual orientation to gender identity and disability.” If you haven’t yet, do yourself a favor and check it out. (And if you’re going to be at the American Library Association’s Annual Conference in Chicago this weekend, make sure you add the APALA President’s Program, “Pushing the Boundaries: Presentation and Representation of LGBTQ Members of/by Asian/Pacific American Writers” to your schedule!)
Thank you so much, Malinda, for talking with me!
Always Something There to Remind Me
Please describe your teenage self.
Exploding with feelings. Suffocated.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be a writer because I’ve always wanted to be a writer. It’s the one thing that has been a constant my entire life, so there is no why; it simply is.
What were your high school years like?
I went to high school in Lafayette, Colorado. I did not enjoy myself there, and while I somehow Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! I’m embarrassed to admit I only just read this for the first time. I’ve read every other Malinda Lo book. I’ve had a copy since it first came out—in fact, I’ve owned two copies, because I also spent $100 on a signed hardcover (it was for charity, in my defense). In 2018, I read All Out, which contained a short story by Malinda Lo that would later be adapted into this book, and I said, “I’m eager to get my hands on the novel version“! I have no good reason for waiting three years to finally pick this up, but I’m happy to say that I loved it just as much as I knew I would. If you somehow missed this bestselling, award-winning YA novel, it’s the story of a Chinese American lesbian teenager growing up in 1950s San Francisco. When she discovers the existence of a male impersonator performing at the Telegraph Club, she can’t resist the temptation, especially when a classmate says she has been there before and offers to accompany her. What follows is a bittersweet first love and coming out story that weaves in the political and social realities of the time period. This is such an atmospheric, absorbing story. Lo does a great job of situating us in 1950s San Francisco Chinatown, and the inclusion of timeline pages show how Lily’s story plays out against bigger political events as well as her family’s history. Lily and her classmates do duck-and-cover drills in preparation of a nuclear attack. Her father is questioned for treating a supposedly communist patient. Her aunt works on technology that brings the U.S. one step closer to landing on the moon. I couldn’t help feeling for Lily. She’s a very sympathetic main character, initially being pushed towards a prescribed path by her family and best friend. When she discovers the Telegraph Club—as well Posted on September 1, 2009 Posted by John Scalzi 129 Comments Here’s a thought: What if the big idea about a book isn’t something in particular — it’s about the absence of something in particular? Does that count? And what does it do to the story you’re telling? The question is relevant to Malinda Lo, whose debut novel Ashis a retelling of the Cinderella story in a fantasy world that in some ways is a familiar one, but in one critical way is not. What is the difference and what are the implications of that difference? Lo is here to explain it all. MALINDA LO: My debut novel, Ash, is a lesbian retelling of Cinderella. But the big idea behind it isn’t that Cinderella is a lesbian. The big idea is this: Nobody in the book cares that she’s a lesbian. Let me explain. My first draft of Ash was, I admit, a relatively straightforward — and straight — retelling of the fairy tale. Ash, the Cinderella character, fell in love with the prince. But then I asked a friend to read it, and she did me the biggest favor ever: She told me that Ash and the prince lacked chemistry. She also pointed out that Ash had a lot of chemistry with this other character in the book, who happened to be a woman. Her feedback prompted me to look long and hard at that draft of Ash, and that was when I realized I had a choice: I could attempt to beef up the prince’s charm quotient, or I could take this book in the direction I had already subconsciously begun to go in, and rewrite it so that Ash falls in love with a woman. I admit, the idea of writing a “lesbian Cinderella” freaked me out a little bit. I’m queer myself, and at the time I had just started writing for entertainment news site AfterEllen.com, covering mainstream representation of lesbians and bisexual women. It was blatantly obvious that the mainstream has a long
You Need to Read Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo
Ash
and it starts out great - the writing is wonderful; it is very literary and lush and haunting. boy meets boy and keeping you a secret were so chatty and conversational - this one required more involvement from the reader, which involvement i have been missing in a big way. it's not a difficult read, but unlike the others, it is not all surface reading; there is depth here that elevates it to the ranks of "litterature," yessss.
but.
fairy tales are generally symbolic stories which mask universal human desires too emotional or frightening to deal with head-on. is this a universal truth, or am i letting my undergrad "psychology of fairy tales" class color my thinking here? let's say we all know this to be so. i simply do not understand this character's motivations, or what leads her on to her fairy tale ending. is it just a matter of "the heart wants what the heart wants", and we don't need to explain what attracts two people to each other? there was no "moment of falling". i never got a sense of character from the huntress; she remained enigmatic. strangely, she was even more enigmatic than ash's fairy-lover, with his intoxicating presence and fancy gifts and willingness to assist ash in all her assignations. am i the only one feeling bad for sidhean?? his was a "forbidden love", too, and he didn't even get any say in the matter. damn curses.
so as a fairy tale, it fails me, psychologically. and as a lesbian awakening novel, it fails me, too. we never see them fall in love, we never understand why. in the world of this novel, the same-gender love is not shocking, The Big Idea: Malinda Lo