Yi Jiang

Sabaa Tahir’s Heir kicks off a duology taking place 20 years after the events of her bestselling An Ember in the Ashes series. Heir follows Aiz, a lowborn orphan seeking vengeance; Sirsha, an exiled tracker who takes on a dangerous job; and Quil, the reluctant heir to the throne who faces a threat to his empire. Despite their vastly different backgrounds, all three cross paths as they grapple with a mysterious force committing horrific crimes throughout the land.

What led you to revisit the world of An Ember in the Ashes? Did anything in particular spark the creation of this new duology?

It was really working on the last book of the Ember quartet, A Sky Beyond the Storm, that had me asking questions about one character in particular: the future Emperor. That’s how Heir began, back in 2020. By that point, I’d spent 13 years in the Ember world and planned everything for the characters of the first series. Imagine my surprise when I realized that I didn’t know everything about this world, nor did I know everything about my characters. It made for a very unexpected writing experience!

“I want the conflicts and conversations and victories and heartbreaks and emotions, most of all, to feel real and believable.”

Heir can be read as a standalone, so readers new to the AEITA world won’t have a problem keeping up. But returning fans will be delighted by some callbacks to the original series: What are you most excited for them to encounter in this book?  

I’m excited for all the little Easter eggs I’ve left in the book for them, but I don’t want to spoil the book by giving them away! I’m also very excited for them to meet this new generation of characters, who have their own journeys and stories to share.

What was it like to weave together the complex storylines of Aiz, Sirsha and Quil? 

Complicated. I knew how I wanted them to intersect, but without giving anything away, I’ll say that Aiz’s storyline in particular posed a challenge. I ended up planning a lot of scenes out on notecards, laying them all over the floor and then figuring out how they all fit together visually. It felt a bit like knowing the picture I wanted and having half the puzzle pieces. I had to move them around to see exactly where they belonged and then fashion the rest of the pieces to fit the empty spots.

Which was your favorite character to write?

They each had their own appeal. Aiz was the most challenging to write—I think I learned the most from her. Quil was the most challenging to edit—he ended up needing a lot of time because he was hard to get to know, at first. Once I did get to know him, though, it felt as if a whole world had opened up. Sirsha was just a joy to write. I feel like she walked into my brain fully formed.

Read our starred review of Heir. 

What was it like to continue the legacies of beloved characters from the main series, 20 years later? 

It was so much fun, but also very thought-provoking. Laia, Elias and Helene are characters who have been through a great deal of trauma. How would that impact the way they transition into adulthood and ultimately parenthood? Figuring out the answer to that question was arduous and took many drafts. I also had to focus on letting Quil, Aiz and Sirsha shine in this story. It is in the Ember world, but it is certainly not an Ember book. Finding a balance between the past and present was tricky.

What’s your secret to bringing compelling romance into your fast-paced, thrilling plots? 

Well, romance is the ultimate wrench in the machine, is it not? In my books, my characters are already going through a tough time and then . . . they fall in love!  Their minds go places they tell them not to, their bodies misbehave. They don’t want to fall in love because it is deeply inconvenient, and yet . . . it has happened. It’s a challenging plot twist, it raises the stakes and it is such fun to write something so hopeful in the midst of all the drama. I think finding that joy, (as well as the longing and frustration along the way, of course) is what I focus on when writing romance into my fantasy!

You don’t pull any punches with your stories, especially in Heir—and your fans keep coming back for more. What do you think is the key to winning fans’ hearts with these emotional rollercoasters? 

I wish I knew because I feel like that would make writing much easier! Ultimately, I strive for authenticity. I want my books to feel true, even if they take place in fantasy worlds. I want the conflicts and conversations and victories and heartbreaks and emotions, most of all, to feel real and believable.

Your conflicts, despite taking place in a fantasy world, feel close to reality—for example, characters born into vast inequality are faced with difficult choices in their quests to break free. Is this aspect of your writing inspired by anything specific in real life?

So much of my writing is inspired by historical and current global events. I was an editor of foreign news [at The Washington Post]  after graduating college, years ago now, so I will always carry that interest in global affairs and history with me. The influences range from news stories about refugees, famines and aerial bombardments, to the poetry and literature that arise from the disenfranchisement of entire populations, occupations and those surviving despotic governments.

But ultimately, at the heart of everything I write is the question: Why do we treat each other this way? I think I ask that question because as a writer for young people, I wish to convey the hope that we can be better. And I think that being better, and seeing each other with empathy, begins with asking ourselves this question.

Are there parts of the AEITA world you still want to explore? 

Yes, so many. Entire countries and continents and epochs I haven’t gotten to. I think the stories in this world really are endless. It’s just a matter of if I go hunting for them or not!

Each Maghabol boy possesses a unique relationship to his cultural background. For example, Emil is an “assimilationist,” striving to replace his Filipino identity with an American one. On the other hand, his son, Chris, seeks out Filipino culture and tries to “self-educate” even though he’s coming from an outsider’s perspective due to his father’s parenting. How did you go about depicting these differences, with all their nuances? 

As I wrote their stories, I had to put aside my own opinions to get into each character’s head. I tried to depict each in such a way that you understand as much as possible why they possess the attitudes toward their cultural background that they do, in order to grasp how each boy’s identity was forged from the struggle to survive within his specific personal and historical circumstances.

What drew you to the specific moments of Filipino and Filipino American history that you chose to spotlight, such as Ferdinand Marcos’ dictatorship or the 1965 Delano Grape Strike in California?

I wanted each storyline to be impacted either directly or indirectly by both personal and historical struggles because I believe that’s what happens in real life. I also wanted to touch on pivotal moments in Filipino American history that I wish I had learned about in school or at home instead of having to self-educate later in life.

At one point, Chris is conscious of the “privilege of distance” he holds in being able to stay ignorant of Marcos’ brutal rule. Could you elaborate on this concept? 

The more directly a political situation impacts us, the more conscious we are of that situation because that knowledge can be necessary to survive. On the other hand, if our day-to-day existence isn’t immediately threatened, then it’s much easier to be ignorant of—or, to ignore—what’s happening, and fail to clearly see the ways in which everything is connected. While this distance can be literally physical, it can also result from other aspects of our identity such as socioeconomic status, gender, race, etc.

Enzo’s sections take place as the COVID-19 pandemic is starting, and you capture that time of isolation with such exactitude—staring at frozen Zoom screens, idly moving cursors around while on calls, doomscrolling, etc. What was it like to write about 2020? 

For a while, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to delve into it. As I started to work on the novel, my editor and I talked about if it was too difficult to understand the impact of the pandemic while we were in the midst of it. There were also a lot of conversations in the book world about when people would be ready to read about the pandemic—some saying never! But as a writer, I often go back to James Baldwin advising us all to bear witness and am always asking myself what I can bear witness to. Ultimately, as someone both experiencing the pandemic for myself and teaching teenagers who were living through it, I felt like it had to be part of Enzo’s story.

What advice do you have for young people whose adolescence has been defined by the pandemic? 

That’s a hard question, and I’m probably not qualified to answer it! But I’d say, think about how you experienced/continue to experience the pandemic, how it impacted you, how it still impacts you. Find ways to tell those stories and ways to listen to others’ stories.

Everything We Never Had often brings up the collective versus the individual: the power of unionizing; the safety to be found in numbers; even the contrast between how Francisco fished in the Philippines (casting nets together) and in America (each person using a fishing pole). Can you share some thoughts on this dichotomy? 

Good catch! (Pun intended.) Community vs. individualism is a tension I’ve thought about a lot in my life. I’ve come to believe a balance is necessary—as individuals and as a society—to be healthy. Overreliance on one can be just as destructive as overreliance on the other. Of course, it took me a lot of lived experience and reflection to arrive at this belief, and it’s going to take even more trial and error to find out how to achieve that balance practically. And maybe my views will shift in the years to come. In the same way individuals like me struggle with this tension, so do cultures. That cultural/communal struggle, however, is much slower and harder to steer.

Speaking of fishing, it plays an important role—does it have any significance for you personally? 

Growing up, I definitely went fishing with my dad occasionally. But that detail found its way into the story thanks to Roy Recio of the Tobera Project, who was a great resource for my Watsonville research. He emphasized the need to convey the manongs [early 20th-century Filipino immigrants] as more than just field workers and suggested the idea of fishing as something that could be shared across generations. I then thought about how each character’s relationship to fishing might change over time.

The novel explores several beautiful, warm friendships between male characters. Do you think there’s been growth regarding the ways boys and men are taught to interact with each other? 

Yes and no. There’s definitely been progress in terms of topics like toxic masculinity, patriarchy and male loneliness hitting mainstream discourse in recent years, thanks to decades of work by feminists like bell hooks. Those are things we need to understand for there to be growth. I also personally see a lot more parents consciously trying to raise their boys to be fuller, more empathetic human beings. On the other hand, I think there are those who view such discourse as vilifying instead of healing because much of it—in the mainstream, at least—critiques without offering models of a way forward. As a result, some people have doubled down on a lot of those foundational identity markers of patriarchy.

Your descriptions are so poetic. What writers are you inspired by?

So many! To list a few, in no particular order: James Baldwin, Sandra Cisneros, Jacqueline Woodson, Patrick Rosal, Haruki Murakami, Jason Reynolds, Elizabeth Acevedo, Ocean Vuong, Sabaa Tahir. And so many others!

What made you decide to set the novel in California, Colorado and Pennsylvania? How were you able to create such distinct atmospheres for each setting? 

I’ve lived in all those states and was, therefore, already familiar with them to some extent. I also generally liked the idea of the family physically moving farther east with each generation. I did additional research for the sake of historical accuracy, especially about Watsonville and Stockton, California. Primary sources such as photographs, oral histories and periodicals were invaluable when it came to visualizing the details of those times and places.

Rosena Fung’s latest graphic novel, Age 16, explores the complicated relationships between three generations, jumping in time between the experiences of three 16-year-old girls: Roz in Toronto in 2000; her mother, Lydia, in Hong Kong in 1972; and Roz’s grandmother, Mei Laan, in Guangdong in 1954.

How did you come up with the narrative structure of Age 16? What inspired you to pick 16 as the specific age that connects your three main characters?

I knew I wanted to explore the lives of a girl, her mother and her grandmother, and how they intersect and are interwoven with each other. From the beginning I knew that I wanted multiple timelines to show how their lives and choices affect each other. Sixteen is such an intense time for many people, and in particular it was a time of major upheaval and change for my mom and my por por. It was a good way to parallel these lives together to show its many contrasts but also how the characters are so similar to each other. I owe a lot to my editor, who helped me sculpt this story into its final form.

Read our starred review of Age 16 here. 

In your author’s note, you describe how the book is based on your own family history. What was the experience like of writing characters based on real family members, with all their messy vulnerabilities and tender humanity?

Writing characters based on real stories and real lives can be so hard. I try to be accountable to the people I’m writing about, to make sure I’m being honest about my emotions but also to honor their own stories and where they’re coming from. Trying to inhabit their lives is part of the writing process, and also imagining how it will be received by them. It is often a precarious act of juggling these factors, while staying true to upholding the story I’m telling. Writing this book was definitely an emotional one as I confronted my own feelings and memories about my mom and grandmother!

This book brims with life—piles of glittery accessories in 2000s Toronto; fruit stalls crowded together in 1970s Hong Kong; fields full of laborers in 1950s Guangdong. How did you go about capturing a unique sense of place in each section? What kind of historical research did you have to do?

It was a combination of going through a LOT of photo albums, plumbing through the memories of both my mom and my own teenage self, and research about historical movements and context as well as many photo archives. I wanted to make sure each place was a character in its own right, because the spaces we live in inform our sense of self and growth. Throughout my life, I have visited both Hong Kong and Guangdong multiple times, and I hold on to those memories dearly. Sometimes a wayward scent or cacophonous noise in Toronto will bring me back to those places in an instant and suddenly I can see all the colors, the landscape, the food. I wanted this kind of vibrancy present in the book.

The contrast between each era is striking: China in the brutal aftermath of war is very different from Y2K Toronto. How do you balance grappling with the harmful behaviors of older generations, while considering the difficult—even unfathomable—circumstances from which those behaviors are born?

I think everyone has depths that even they can’t always see, including how past experiences and trauma influence their present-day choices and behaviors. It took a long time for me to understand this, how a person can hold so much but we only ever see the most surface layer. With this, I try to consider why someone would act in ways I don’t understand—not to justify or absolve harm, but to understand why, and from that place try to move forward together. I never got along with my por por, but through the process of researching and writing this book, I gained more clarity and admiration for her as a person.

When Roz, Lydia and Mei Laan get hurt, they often end up hurting others. How do you think one breaks this cycle of lashing out? What does forgiveness mean to you? 

This is a really hard question! I think this is something many struggle with, and I don’t have a clear answer. In the book, I try to show that each character gains a deeper understanding of each other and how the way they grew up, or the ways others have treated them, affect how they in turn treat others. Trying to know someone deeply is a start, and then isolating their harmful actions as a reflection of that trauma rather than internalizing it as deeply personal is a way to distance that harm. But that of course sounds easier said than done, and can be a lifelong process. Forgiveness to me means letting go. I don’t mean absolution or the absence of accountability for harm and its aftermath. But I mean getting to a place within yourself so that those words, behaviors or actions lose their barbs. I think forgiveness can’t happen if the other party can’t meet you halfway. But sometimes (often), life gives us no closure and we have to choose to move on—with or without the one who hurt you.

I try to be accountable to the people I’m writing about, to make sure I’m being honest about my emotions but also to honor their own stories and where they’re coming from.

In a world that is unkind to women’s bodies, food haunts these characters. But food also provides comfort and connection, especially in the context of Chinese diaspora culture. What thoughts went into your nuanced portrayal of food and how we treat our bodies?

First of all, I love food and any chance I can draw it or include it in stories, I 100% will. Food, consumption and bodies are such fraught battlegrounds where history, politics and misogyny play out. Women in particular are taught to deny ourselves food, pleasure and desire. Through this book, I wanted to make explicit the ways in which social expectations of how female bodies should exist are highly problematic and dangerous, and how we internalize these ideas as a given. But it was also important for me to highlight how women and girls are often forced to make certain choices to survive, depending on the context they grew up in. And some of these lessons (needing a husband to survive, needing a desirable body, fatphobia) get passed down to daughters. Many people have such painful and toxic relationships with food (girded by a capitalist industrial complex that benefits from our self-hatreds), and problematic conceptions of “good” or “bad” food, that I personally am trying to untangle and unlearn.

“The world can be made to fit you” is a gorgeous adage repeated throughout this graphic novel. What else would you tell your 16-year-old self, if given the chance?

“Keep all your Sailor Moon cards and lip glosses and magazines because one day you will be nostalgic for all of it and you will have to pay a lot of money to buy these things back again.”

Roz fantasizes about prom, but has to make a hard choice when she’s also invited to anti-prom. What would your ideal anti-prom night be like?

I am a homebody, so cozy in bed reading a book with a cozy cat and snacks next to me sounds like true bliss. BUT I would also love a party with a lot of glitter and sequins, all my friends, a drag and/or burlesque show, and a buffet. And Taylor Swift. The after party would be either at a Chinese restaurant or a diner. Or both, one after the other.

Can you speak more on the presence of cats (dear Millie!) throughout this book? 

I LOVE cats. SO MUCH. Millie is an amalgamation of my cat Foomy that my mom and I had when I was 16, and my current cat Coco (aka Bean). She is a mix of Foomy’s sass and habits with Bean’s sweet gray, beautifully rotund body. I wanted to use cats as a motif throughout each timeline to affirm repetition in the characters’ lives, but also as an excuse to draw them. My cat (and my partner) have been a source of support and an anchor while I wrote this book. They are my North Stars!