About the Interviewee: “XiXi Tian was born in China and immigrated to the United States when she was a year old. She grew up in central Illinois. She graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a degree in history and then graduated from Harvard Law School. She is a tech lawyer by day and a writer by night. Although she now lives on Long Island with her husband, son, and cat, she is a lifelong Midwesterner at heart” (Bio from author’s website).
Find XiXi Tian on the following platforms:
XiXi Tian: I thought of it as Stella continuing to try and have a dialogue with her brother, even after he is gone. In her mind, she is still talking to him, because it is the one place where he still continues to exist.
XT: It’s very difficult, but not at all uncommon, particularly in Asian-American communities. Without disclosing any specifics, I have known people personally to have struggled with the significant familial and academic pressures in college, and I wanted to bring that topic to the page in a way that felt grounded.
XT: I think often when people pass away at a younger age, the people who love them will have unanswered questions. I wanted Stella to have to grapple with not knowing the details and figuring out how to move on anyway. The uncertainty definitely feeds into the difficulty of the situation for her.
XT: I brought a lot of my own experiences to Stella’s story. Like many immigrants, I have often felt difficulty in knowing whether I fit in in a particular place. I really wanted to write about the good memories I had in my ancestral village in China as well, bringing the things I loved to the page in a way that I could memorialize them, in a way.
XT: This is another one of those things where I brought a lot of my own emotions to the story. It was important to me to show that the parents and Stella are both struggling in their own way. There isn’t a villain. There is simply a difficulty in connecting. I wanted her parents to be nuanced and well-intentioned, and so the breakthrough at the end reflects the desire on both sides to do better.
XT: I wanted to create a foil to Stella in the story. While she copes with her loneliness by withdrawing, Alan copes with his loneliness by trying desperately to fit in however he can. Outwardly, they come off as very different, but on the inside, I think they are actually quite similar with their struggles.
XT: I think it is just a realistic part of the teen experience—not for everyone, but for many teens, certainly even myself. For Stella, who is apprehensive about college already, it is one of the things that kind of confirms her anxiety.
XT: I personally enjoy ambiguous endings, but also, they feel more true for a slice-of-life story. The reality is that long-simmering family difficulties rarely resolve in one magical moment. I wanted to signify that this is a new beginning for Stella, with hope that she and her family will continue working on their growth.
XT: I’m working on an adult book! But it is still about complicated family dynamics and in particular, those between mothers and daughters. It’s got a bit of a horror element, and I’m excited about that. Fingers crossed that I will have more to share about it soon.
Sam Yanis, Pine Reads Review Lead Writer