Fae Myenne Ng, author of Bone, speaks with Don Swaim in this 1993 interview about her early life and her move to become a writer.

Ng is a first-generation Chinese-American born and raised in Chinatown in San Francisco. This close-knit community is where she learned about the opportunities available to her as an American, but she also learned about the fears, the degradation and the discrimination that she may face.

Bone is a novel full of symbolism. It’s about a woman, based on her mother, who left her culture and her country for the future of her family. Ng wanted to write about the type of woman who could make due with what she had – a common feature for women at this time. Bone exemplifies the closed environment in the Chinese communities. “It was like a glass globe,” Ng said. She could see all the possibilities outside of her small world, but it took so much courage for her to leave it.

Ng is looking to continue the saga of the family in Bone in her next novel. To hear more about her experiences as a writer and as a Chinese-American, click on the link below.

Download Free RealPlayer
or
Search the RealPlayer Archives
for a player that will work with older computers
(note: version 5.0 or higher is required)

For over a decade, many of the best writers of the English language found their way onto Don Swaim's daily two-minute CBS Radio show, Book Beat. His New York-based program was derived from longer interviews, sometimes 40-minutes in length. Found exclusively here, Wired for Books proudly webcasts these conversations in their entirety using RealAudio.