Q. The question of shame appears throughout your book, Secondhand World – a child is ashamed of her parents’ immigrant behavior; her parents are ashamed of their daughter’s assimilation; there is the secret shame of death and responsibility. Do you think the issue of shame is magnified in an immigrant community? How did the idea of shame contribute to the development of believable and effective characters?

A. Shame is a huge part of Asian culture, as opposed to guilt, which seems more a Judeo-Christian notion. It is defined by a deep sense of responsibility to society, and the belief that an individual’s actions reflect directly and profoundly on the community to which one belongs. I do think that shame is magnified in an immigrant community, particularly Asian, because both within and outside the minority culture, its members are expected to represent their race, and are not afforded the same individuality as the dominant culture. Having said this, I don’t think that Isa’s parents are ashamed of her assimilation, but they feel threatened by it, and they feel left out of it.

Q. Isa Sohn, your protagonist, seems to embody a dual identity as she vacillates between her self-definition and the definition her parents’ desire. She even signs a letter to her family using both her Korean and American names. How did creating a character with such an oppositional identity help shape the story? And does this echo your own experience?

A. To be a child of immigrants is to learn early on that there are two ways of being, one inside the home and one outside. It’s a constant negotiation – take off your shoes inside the house, use chopsticks, eat kimchi; outside the house, put on make-up, smoke cigarettes, make out with boys. I wanted to depict the kind of dual identity that I knew, but it went beyond Korean and American opposition, it was also the kind of double life that any teenager understands, the struggle between needing your parents, and the longing for a greater freedom.

Q. The idea of fissure is emphasized throughout the book, suggesting a crack that runs through our lives. But more than that, there are literal cracks, on the ceilings and walls.

How does this idea of fissure relate to the concept of otherness in the story?

A. I see the cracks in the book as chasms that divide ourselves from others, and from aspects of our own selves. The fault line found on Isa’s mother’s face when Isa confronts her about her affair, along the DMZ that separates Isa’s father from his sister during the war, in the crooked part in Isa’s dead brother’s hair. But it is also the flaw that runs through us all, that makes us human, that is close to the Korean concept of “han” – it is the sadness, the mystery, the dark and terrifying parts of life that cannot be denied or passed over.

Q. The book is peppered with literary references. Do these references serve to underscore the isolation Isa feels in her life and family – her loneliness, her otherness – or do they suggest an unconscious alignment with her mother, who also embraces literature even as she rejects Isa’s personal autonomy?

A. Wow, these questions are smart. I think that, for Isa, one of the earliest aspects of her differentiation from her parents is her cultivation of a hyperfluency in the English language. Her parents have accents and misuse articles, and Isa, who looks as Asian as they do, feels the need to be more literate than most Americans. Also, this is a bit of a cheat because I wanted Isa’s first person narration to push to high lyricism at moments, and I was trying to justify her ability to use big words and have insights that are somewhat precocious for a girl her age. Now, I was kind of a kid like this, so I don’t think it strains credulity too much, but I wanted to have a reason for her ease with language.

Q. Isa seems initially determined to surgically enhance her eyelids, giving her a more western look, but then later she decides against it. How does this subplot describe Isa’s growing understanding and acceptance of her Korean background?

A. I don’t think Isa ever wanted to have the surgery. It’s one of her mother’s beautification projects. Isa’s mother is a great beauty and Isa is not. Her mother keeps trying to get Isa to wear certain clothes, to do certain things that will transform her. Ironically, it is this idea of having round, Caucasian-looking eyes that her mother thinks will make Isa more attractive. So in a funny way, by rejecting the surgery, Isa is embracing her Asianness, but she is also rejecting her mother’s notion of her shortcomings.

Q. How did this book evolve for you? Was it something you’d attempted to write in the past? How did you plot out the book?

A. I had written many short stories about Korean American girls and their Korean fathers, the cross-cultural conflict that exists in immigrant households, and Secondhand World is the apotheosis of these stories. (I promise never to write another word about this particular topic.) The idea for the novel came from an incident in my extended family; I was interested in the notion that it is when we are young, with the least life experience, that we are the most judgmental – we see moral issues as black and white – and that the process of maturation is one in which we realize that there is in fact a whole lot of gray, and that it is hard to judge anyone. Coupled with this is the mystery of our parents, how it is almost impossible to see them as existing outside of our own life and selfish needs. Isa learns the hard way about her father’s secret past and her mother’s secret present, and how who we are is very much informed by things that happened to our parents before we were born, things we may never know about.

Q. Can you discuss the ways in which in writing this novel differed from writing your short stories? How do you as a novelist and short story writer separate the two mediums? Do you prefer one over the other?

A. I have a Calvinistic notion that you are either a novelist or a short story writer, and those who do both never do both equally well. I am a short story writer by temperament. I like perfection, transcendence, moments. I had to trick myself into writing a novel by writing it in very short 2-3 page vignettes, something I stole from Evan Connell and his brilliant novel Mrs. Bridge. I would write one of these scenes and then write another, until there were a substantial number of pages in my pile, and I thought, Okay, I can do this. Then I discovered that this fragmented, short hit kind of consciousness worked structurally and logically with the way that Isa was recovering from the trauma of her parents’ death and the fire. I realized that she would only be able to glance back, peripherally, at first, that these quickglances were all she could manage. Later on, the chapters get longer, as she is better able to examine what happened.

Q. What has the feedback been since publishing Secondhand World? What do we have to look forward to from you?

A. The experience has been entirely gratifying. Feedback has been wonderful. It got great reviews and is being used in college curricula, and read by book groups.

My second novel is called The Fetishist. It’s a black comedy about Asian fetishism, stalking, blowfish, and Alma Mahler. The only thing I can say about it at this point is that I am far from familiar territory and it’s fun.

Q. Name a writer who is currently making you jealous.

A. I am not in the habit of jealousy. But writers I admire currently are Per Petterson, Elizabeth Strout, Junot Diaz, Michael Ondaatje, J.M. Coetzee.

Q. What kind of child were you?

A. Precocious, talkative, and a liar.

Q. What is your relationship with rejection like?

A. Well-acquainted but uneasy.

Q. What book did you suffer for the most, and why?

A. The current one.

Q. What was the greatest surprise for you in your most recent writing?

A. How little having published a novel helps you in writing the next one.

Q. What writerly habit would you most like to break?

A. Only being able to write at artist colonies.

Q. What did you have for lunch today?

A. I didn’t have lunch today.