Lisa See
Lisa See
Lisa See is an American writer and novelist. Her paternal great-grandfather was Chinese, which has had a great impact on her life and work. Her books include On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family, a detailed account of See's family history, and the novels Flower Net, The Interior, Dragon Bones, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Peony in Loveand Shanghai Girls, which made it to the 2010 New York Times bestseller list. Both Shanghai Girls and Snow...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth18 February 1955
CountryUnited States of America
Some of what I am doing when I am researching is looking for things people in my family have done and finding out what those things mean, why they did those things and seeing how I fit into them.
Nu shu means women's writing. And it was a secret writing system that was invented by women, used by women and kept a secret by women in one very remote county in China for a thousand years. It's the only language that was invented and used by women to have been found anywhere in the world.
One of the things that's pretty unique about nu shu, when you look especially at these old letters and stories that have been saved, is that there are certain lines that are very standard that are used again and again. It's almost like a formula in a sense, so that these certain lines come up again and again.
But, you know, I just did a big trip in the spring to Vietnam and Cambodia and Thailand, and that's when I bought a Kindle. I have like 15 books on this one little gizmo. But when I came home, the first night I picked up the book that was on my nightstand and I went right back to that.
A book is one kind of an art form and a film is a different art form. I think as a writer you just have to say, well the book is one thing, and the film is a completely different one.
Opera tells stories through the pure emotion of music. An exhibition has to tell a story purely visually. I've tried to incorporate both of those things - pure emotion and being more visual - into my writing.
While she is lovely, we need to remember that her face is not what distinguishes her. Her beauty is a reflection of the virtue and talent she keeps inside.
But there are certain books I would never put on a Kindle because you want to be able to look at graphs and photos or the footnotes and maps. You can't see that.
a laotong relationship is made by choice...when we first looked in each other's eyes in the palanquin I felt something special pass between us--like a spark to start a fire or a seed to grow rice. But a single spark is not enough to warm a room nor is a single seed enough to grow a fruitful crop. Deep love--true-heart love--must grow.
I know a lot about women and their suffering, but I still know almost nothing about men.
If it is perfectly acceptable for a widow to disfigure herself or commit suicide to save face for her husband's family, why should a mother not be moved to extreme action by the loss of a child or children? We are their caretakers. We love them. We nurse them when they are sick. . . But no woman should live longer than her children. It is against the law of nature. If she does, why wouldn't she wish to leap from a cliff, hang from a branch, or swallow lye?
Let those who believe, believe. Let those who doubt, doubt.
I've come to believe that part of lovesickness comes from this conflict between control and desire. In love we have no control. Our hearts and minds are tormented, teased, enticed and delighted by the overwhelming strength of emotions that make us try to forget the real world.
Maybe we're all like that with our mothers. They seem ordinary until one day they're extraordinary.