One day in October, seven months into COVID lockdown, Lisa See was wandering her Brentwood home, feeling the isolation and gloom of not being able to do the thing that drives her historical fiction writing: the research. The libraries, the archives, the countries were all closed. But on this day, she glanced at her wall of collected research books, and one inconspicuous spine seemed to jump out at her. The book had been sitting unread on her shelf for 10 years. The spine cracked as she lifted it, inhaled that old book smell, thumbed through and landed on page 19, where one modest paragraph mentioned a name and a book: “Miscellaneous Records of a Female Doctor” written by Tan Yunxian and translated by Lorraine Wilcox with Yue Lu. It was a book published by a 50-year-old woman, a doctor, over 500 years ago, and it was translated and in print. Within 48 hours she had acquired the book and was working on her next novel, “Lady Tan’s Circle of Women.”
During one very pleasant hour of conversation with See, I discovered that her passion for writing was nurtured by a life-long apprenticeship with her family in Los Angeles. Her mother, Carolyn See, wrote 10 books, was an English professor at UCLA, and wrote book reviews for the L.A. Times and The Washington Post for 35 years. One day when Lisa was digging in the UCLA Special Collection archives, she found a letter from her grandfather, who’d written, “If you want to be a writer, you need to write 1,000 words a day.” This day-to-day approach to writing and the inspiration from her mother’s advice and career motivated her to become the prolific author we know today.
See has written a dozen books including her memoir, “On Gold Mountain,” three mysteries and eight historical fiction novels. When we chatted about the unique aspects of “Lady Tan,” she described her childhood memories of playing inside a massive 16th century marriage bed, housed in her father’s antique store in Los Angeles’ Chinatown.
“You walk inside and it’s like you’re in another world, another time. I think of children longing for an enclosed and private space, like blanket forts and hideouts. This is a place to imagine and dream, surrounded by beautiful, lacquered wood and intricate carvings. It became a centerpiece in the book, adorned with secret compartments and silk paintings.”
We also discussed the unique role medicine and gender played in this book, and particularly women’s medicine during the Ming dynasty. Lisa’s description of foot binding and its care is enough to make you squirm, but the focus on reproductive care, and the willful lack of knowledge by the male doctors, emphasizes how essential the knowledge of midwives and female doctors became during this time. See shares so much of her herbal research through these scenes, emphasizing the very great wealth of medical knowledge collected and passed down by women over five centuries ago.
“It was extraordinary what these women accomplished, to become respected, professional doctors during this time period, and perhaps even more progressive, was Tan’s grandfather allowing it to happen.”
This is the essence of what See writes about in all her historical fiction novels. “I feel very strongly that we’re only able to know and do what we can today because of the generations of women who came before us. And it motivates me to write about women’s history that has been lost or forgotten, or more likely, covered up.”
Lisa completes extensive research for each of her historical fiction novels, and when I asked her about researching “Lady Tan,” she mentioned a quote from Wallace Stegner’s, “The Angle of Repose.”
“I’d like to live in their clothes a while, if only so I don’t have to live in my own.”
She researches enough to know what it’s like to “live in their clothes,” saying, “I want to share what real life was like with my readers. Not just what they wore, but also what they ate, how their hair was styled, what their home looked like on the inside, and how it was heated. I wanted to know how long it took them to travel from one place to another, and how they got there. What was it like inside a palanquin? Was there a postal system and could they mail a letter? I want to know the details, even if it becomes just one sentence in an entire book, because I want readers to know what it’s like to be in the room with my characters.”
See is working on her next novel now, a chilling tale of the 1871 Los Angeles massacre of 10% of the Chinese population. It’s a Chinese immigrant story that focuses on three historical women and their fight to survive during an incredibly turbulent time.
As we wound down the conversation, we chatted about timing and the process of deciding what to write (or read) in the moment.
“Books are like wine,” she said, “they need to sit a while. I pulled that research book off my shelf after it sat unread for a decade, and then one day it inspired a book. I believe books come to you at the right moment.”
Roundabout Books is hosting Lisa See in Bend at Westside Community Center on June 26 at 6:30pm.
Visit the bookstore for event tickets and to purchase Lisa’s books.
This article appears in Source Weekly May 30, 2024.
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