In a world where politicians regularly portray the People’s Republic of China as an economic powerhouse and a threat to American democracy, it can be difficult to remember the many ups and downs that characterized the second half of the twentieth century under Chairman Mao and his successors. In The Immortal Woman, Su Chang tells this story through a mother-daughter relationship that, more than most, includes both love and conflict, reflecting in part the changing priorities of the society in which they live. Read on to find out more from my interview with the author.
What inspired you to write The Immortal Woman?
When I was growing up in China during the 1980s and 1990s, I was perpetually puzzled by the adults around me, whose daily arguments unveiled their hidden ire and pain, old grudges from a tumultuous time. But I could hardly trace that chaotic time in my history books, and gradually I came to see myself as belonging to a generation with no history. It was only after I immigrated to North America as an adult that I began to have access to the tabooed past of my birth country, to start making sense of the incongruency that had haunted my life. Over the years, I could finally see a clear line from the tribulations of my parents and grandparents to the conundrums and personal defeats of my own generation. Yet, even with more clarity, my first instinct was to move on from the past and become a productive member of my adopted society. But those unfinished murmurs eventually caught up with me, especially during the sleepless nights when I was under the influence of postpartum depression, when hyperalertness to danger and heightened sensitivities about heritage reigned supreme. I knew I had to get to work, to peel back the curtain of my hometown—now an ultramodern metropolis—and confront the bygone days, the voices lost and found, the origins of unresolved trauma still lingering in the blood of my generation.
The first character we meet is Lemei, the “Happy Girl,” although in fact her story is not so happy. What can you tell us about her as a personality, when we first meet her as a child? What does Lemei want from life?
Lemei is the daughter of a first-generation Communist revolutionary. She is beautiful, bookish, compassionate, and quietly rebellious. She has an independent and inquisitive mind and picks her friends based on character and common interests, instead of political classes. She is also a tough girl who doesn’t shy away from a necessary fight. As a child, before her life’s storm hit her, she wanted to read in peace and have a normal family life. But of course, that was not what history had in store for her.
The book opens with Lemei’s birth in 1954 but soon moves to the Cultural Revolution of 1965. What made this decade so significant for you?
The decade of Cultural Revolution carries significant weight for me as a child of its survivors. This period was marked by dramatic political upheavals, aiming to preserve Communist ideology by purging both capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society. There were widespread and brutal persecutions and profound chaos. My family, like millions of others, was torn apart as members were sent to labor camps or rural areas. Despite their best efforts to shield me, I grew up with a keen awareness of the trauma experienced by my parents and grandparents . Like so many of my peers, I also carry the burden of my parents’ unfulfilled dreams and aspirations, and a desire to unearth and understand the tabooed past so that the tragedy would not recur.
Lemei has an older brother, Feng, with a quite different personality and goals. What should we know about him?
Feng, in his adolescence, is a more typical Maoist youth who adheres to the Little Red Book and Communist ideology. A true believer. He shows little interest in books and refined culture; instead, he wants to climb the social ladder by being the best foot soldier for the Cultural Revolution. Of course, he still cares about his family, but his personal ambition trumps his natural instinct to protect those around him.
The children’s father has been a supporter of Mao since the days of the Long March, but that doesn’t seem to matter much in 1965. What happens to him, and how does that affect his family?
Jing Ba was a first-generation Communist revolutionary. However, during the Cultural Revolution, many older cadres were seen as part of an entrenched establishment that harbored either capitalist or traditionalist tendencies, which contradicted the radical Maoist ideology promoted then. Jing Ba was a person of honesty and integrity; his questioning of fake productivity reports made him a target, and his family altar for the Immortal Woman thrust him deeper into trouble. The tragedy that befalls Jing Ba—someone previously seen as immune from persecution—sends the family into a tailspin of crisis.
Lemei’s story intertwines with that of her daughter, Lin. We meet Lin in 2000–2001. Where is she, and what differentiates her goals from her mother’s?
Lin is raised by her single mother, Lemei, with a mission to become a true American one day. After she leaves China and arrives at an American university, she works tirelessly to erase her birth identity, abandons her Chinese suitor Dali, and pursues a white love interest (Sasha) who matches the American propaganda her mother raised her on. But her and her mother’s unprocessed trauma eventually catches up to her, leading her to a psychotic breakdown. Later, when her mother is slowly dragged into a nationalistic perspective, Lin feels betrayed, which plunges her into further conflicts with her mother and Dali. Lin’s story exposes the connection between unresolved trauma and eroded identities and internalized racism. It probes the tension Chinese immigrants often face—the push and pull between the pressure of assimilation and the allure of Chinese nationalism.
The Immortal Woman of your title, though, is neither Lemei nor Lin. Who, or what, is she?
At the most literal level, the Immortal Woman is the patron saint of Lemei and Lin’s ancestral village. She embodies tradition and hence a threat that Maoist China desperately sought to eradicate, as well as something the heartbroken Lemei, during her early motherhood, resolves to expunge from her daughter’s life. At the same time, the Immortal Woman also serves as a symbolic stand-in for both Lemei and Lin, who, despite decades of trauma, ultimately re-emerge into the light, resilient and enduring.
And what of you? Do you have another book in the works?
Yes. I am slowly working on a multi-voice crime mystery involving an accidental immigrant sleuth and her queer best friend, with tales from the Japanese occupation, the snowy mountains of Tibet, and a modern-day AI sweatshop.
Thank you so much for answering my questions!
Su Chang is a Chinese-Canadian writer, born and raised in Shanghai and the daughter of a reluctant Red Guard leader. Her fiction has been recognized in Prairie Fire’s Short Fiction Contest, the Canadian Authors Association National Writing Contest, the ILS/Fence Fiction Contest, and the Masters Review’s Novel Excerpt Contest, among others. Publishers’ Weekly called her debut novel, The Immortal Woman, “unflinching … powered by raw emotion … a cathartic account of a family buffeted by the winds of modern Chinese history.” Find out more about her and her book at https://www.suchangauthor.com.
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