Chinese-American writer Bill Cheng's debut novel Southern Cross the Dog, is wowing critics, especially those of the South.
The novel is set in the Mississippi of the 1920s and the great Mississippi flood of 1927 is a focal point of the novel's plot.
Cheng has been able to recreate the texture of the 20s South with such skill that he has been compared to William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor, two stalwarts of the Southern literary establishment. And these comparisons have been made by avid readers of Southern literature, especially the Southern Gothic.
Bill Cheng has never visited Mississippi or any of the Southern states. He was born and raised in Queens, New York and now lives in Brooklyn. He received an MFA in fiction from Hunter College.
Southern Cross the Dog began as a thesis manuscript.
My take on this unconventional, therefore refreshing, instance of an "immigrant" writer writing not about the expected Chinese-American experience, and not having a single Asian character in his novel, is a "bravo!"
Not only is it unusual for Cheng to have written a non-immigrant novel, but also the fact that he undertook to represent the American South, a cultural subject matter about which the Southerner is particularly protective (and possessive), proves his ability to transcend/defy labels.
Recently, an Indian-American novelist, Amit Majumdar, wrote of how fraught the category of the immigrant writer is, and I tentatively agreed, but upon reading of Bill Cheng's venture, I think it's possible for "immigrant" writers to crossover into native territories and represent, if not conquer them.
But then again, what's the big fuss about? If Adam Johnson can write about North Korea (The Orphan Master's Son) without setting foot on North Korean soil, and go on to win a Pulitzer for it, then why should it surprise the world that a Chinese American from Queens should be able to write about a geographical part of a nation in which he was born and raised?
My take on this unconventional, therefore refreshing, instance of an "immigrant" writer writing not about the expected Chinese-American experience, and not having a single Asian character in his novel, is a "bravo!"
Not only is it unusual for Cheng to have written a non-immigrant novel, but also the fact that he undertook to represent the American South, a cultural subject matter about which the Southerner is particularly protective (and possessive), proves his ability to transcend/defy labels.
Recently, an Indian-American novelist, Amit Majumdar, wrote of how fraught the category of the immigrant writer is, and I tentatively agreed, but upon reading of Bill Cheng's venture, I think it's possible for "immigrant" writers to crossover into native territories and represent, if not conquer them.
But then again, what's the big fuss about? If Adam Johnson can write about North Korea (The Orphan Master's Son) without setting foot on North Korean soil, and go on to win a Pulitzer for it, then why should it surprise the world that a Chinese American from Queens should be able to write about a geographical part of a nation in which he was born and raised?
A preview of the novel Southern Cross the Dog can be found here.
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