A small Chinese woman took the stage on the sixth floor of the Baruch College library building after several faculty members introduced themselves and the college’s Harman Writer-In-Residence Program. The woman had thick shoulder-length black hair and a face so alive, so animated, without a spot of makeup.
Author Gish Jen was so enlivened and so charmingly awake for her conversation at the Harman Writer-In-Residence semi-annual event this Tuesday night. Once a semester, the designated Harman Writer-In-Resident is featured at a conversational event, the public is invited, and the writer can choose to speak about their work, their life, and then answer questions from the audience. Gish Jen chose to feature a slideshow during a talk about her latest novel (and first non-fiction novel) called Tiger Writing about the rich and winding history of her family in China.
As I have not had her as a professor but had read excerpts of her writing both fiction and non-fiction, I wasn’t sure what kind of speaker she was going to be. She absolutely blew me away. To a student’s question she was asked about the Chinese culture and what it had been like when she visited, Jen replied with gumption, including, “We don’t need anymore misinformation in this world, honestly.”
A theme that seemed to develop in some of her replies during the Q and A portion of the evening was that of a literature-less childhood. It was the story of a poor Chinese immigrant family who couldn’t afford books for the children. Of her childhood, Jen said, “I grew up in New York! I knew more Yiddish than I did Chinese!”
We learned that Jen dropped out of Stanford’s business school and pursued creative writing at the prestigious Iowa Writing Workshop at the University of Iowa.
Jen’s demeanor was proud, but not too proud, laughing so humbly and warmly that it felt as if we were all out to dinner with her, and we were all her guests. Dressed in a dark velvet blouse that draped over her arms, Jen’s graceful motions and course of speaking were without flaw. She reminded me of a woman wading through water and silk with her hands, the rest of us in the room simply gasping for air around her figure.
Gish Jen spoke about her writing process, which she essentially described as haphazard and without order. She described a beautiful ideal situation for her writing to flourish: in a cabin in Vermont, alone, not to leave for hours at a time, or until her writing for the day is done.
As people began trickling out during the Q and A session, Jen remained patient and answered thoughtfully to the queries asked. To each question, she began her reply with, “Very good question,” with such sincerity that nobody seemed to notice the repetition.
