Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
Susie Yang was born in China and came to the United States as a child. After receiving her doctorate of pharmacy from Rutgers, she launched a tech startup in San Francisco that has taught 20,000 people how to code. She has studied creative writing at Tin House and Sackett Street. She has lived across the United States, Europe, and Asia, and now resides in the UK. White Ivy is her first novel.
Susie Yang's website
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White Ivy has one of the most memorable lines in contemporary fiction: "Ivy Lin was a thief but you would never know it to look at her." How did this line come to you?
I knew I wanted to create a protagonist whose outer appearance was incongruous with her personality so she would be underestimated and misjudged upon initial impression. When I had the idea of Ivy shoplifting as a teenager to acquire the things her parents wouldn't buy her, the first line came to me.
Ivy Lin subverts the "model minority" stereotype in countless ways, especially as an anti-heroine who dismantles its tropes. What is your relationship to her character? What emotions did you hope she would evoke in readers?
I both pity and admire Ivy. I think her admirable qualities include determination, adaptability, and resilience. She is a person who has a hunger for life in a way that I envy! But I also pity her because the very things she wants so badly in life—to be a part of a very white, very exclusive patrician world—are in fact self-delusions and ultimately things that will make her miserable. This is the tragedy of Ivy's character, and I hope readers will both understand her motivations and also see how her assumptions are misplaced and lead her to...
David Hopen is from Hollywood, Florida. He graduated from Yale College and earned his master's degree from the University of Oxford. The Orchard is his debut novel. (more)
If you enjoyed:
White Ivy
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Ayelet Gundar-Goshen is the winner of the JQ-Wingate Prize for Waking Lions. She is a clinical psychologist, has worked for the Israeli civil rights movement, and is an award-winning screenwriter. She won Israel's prestigious... (more)
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