Dana Liu's fiction, poetry and writing can be found in NüVoices, A Gathering of the Tribes, the International Feminist Journal of Politics, and the University of Hong Kong's AsiaGlobal Online journal. She received her MFA from The New School and lives in Taiwan. She has taught courses in Asian American literature, history, memoir, and storytelling for social justice at Hunter College and National Taiwan University. Please find her here on Twitter and Instagram.
C Pam Zhang’s novel, How Much of These Hills Is Gold, recounts the journey of two siblings, Lucy, 12 and Sam, 11, at the end of the American Gold Rush in the 1800s and their individual struggles to transform and survive. The prize-winning novel, long-listed for the 2020 Booker Prize and a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award among other honors, covers issues around race, gender, mythology and immigration in American history — themes especially resonant today given recent anti-Asian American hate crimes.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.