Meng Jin: On the Public and Private Self, Writing Perspective and Her Debut Novel, "Little Gods"
In Meng Jin’s debut novel, Little Gods, we encounter a story of love and ambition. Su Lan is a woman on a mission. As a quantum physics, her studies often outweigh anything else in her life as she questions time and its relationship to the self and family. Can we rewrite our pasts to improve the future? Jumping back and forth in time and told through multiple perspectives we learn about Su Lan’s live which is enmeshed in secrecy. There is, Zhu Wen, her neighbor in Shanghai who helps Su Lan after the birth of her daughter, Liya, while also trying to understand this “beautiful confident woman without a husband.” Yongzong, a former classmate, recalls how Su Lan toyed with his affections and those of his friend and academic rival. And through all this Liya, now grown, mourning the recent death of her mother, returns to China in 2007, to unravel the mystery of her father’s identity and the circumstances of his death.
I spoke with Meng over the phone where we discussed remaking and unmaking ourselves, the notion of the private and public self, creating multiple perspectives in a narrative and writing her novel, Little Gods.
Kailey Brennan: Little Gods is very much about heritage and history and parents and finding out where you came from to understand who you are. I was curious if there were specific questions you sought answers to while writing this novel. Why this story now?
Meng Jin: When I'm writing, I don't really think very consciously about what questions I'm answering. I know that there's a desire within me to explore something and some sort of obsessive impulse that I'm trying to get to the end of. But when I’m writing and working on something in progress, I don't articulate those questions. After I wrote this book, it became clear that there were questions that came up over and over again. And one of those is exactly you as you said, the question of how we make and unmake ourselves and remake ourselves. Especially for people who the question of making themselves is more urgent because it's not immediately clear who they are or perhaps they're not satisfied with who they are born as. As I've been talking to readers and looking at my book more as a reader myself than as the person who wrote, that's a question that's been coming up over and over again.
KB: Do you have a background in science, like your main characters or have a particular interest in the subject?
MJ: I don't have a formal background in science. I studied the premed sciences as an undergrad so that's my background in science. (Laughs) But I've always really enjoyed them and loved them. Especially when I was writing this book, I was reading a lot of books about physics. Sometimes I would find the language of science of physics so beautiful. I would read them sort of like poetry, not really thinking about understanding everything 100 percent. But just the beauty of the language and for some metaphorical potential that they lit up in my mind.
KB: There is a line at the beginning of the novel when Su Lan’s outfit and the way she presents herself is described. The narrator wonders if Su Lan sees herself as two different people, “one that moved through the world and the one that created the other apparent self.” I’m very interested in this duality that I think most women can relate to, who you are and how you present yourself to the world to be perceived a certain way or to showcase your intelligence or strength. Can you speak about this a little more?
MJ: I agree with you. I think it's something that everyone has to an extent— the private self and the more public self. Or the private self and the performed self. I think in Su Lan’s case she wants to be the person that she's presenting to the world and she's doing it as a way of making herself into a different person. I thought of Su Lan as a character who, at least in the beginning, tries to have so much control over her life and of her narrative, who feels that if only she were the person who could make herself entirely— instead of whatever mysterious forces make a person—she could have her way in the world. I guess that's also just part and parcel of being an ambitious person who wants to be upwardly socially mobile. She's also definitely aware that she's a woman in the world and that there's a way that she can use beauty as a tool. I think that Su Lan is a person who sees the way things are and is more interested in changing herself in order to come up on top of whatever system is there, rather than an activist or someone who's tried to change the system.
KB: I was curious why you chose to have all the other characters talk about her instead of us hearing her thoughts directly. We don't have a chapter with her narrating so I was interested in how you made that choice.
MJ: That was definitely a contentious choice throughout the whole editing process and writing process. A lot of times I was questioned by people about why Su Lan didn't have her own section, but that was one of those things that I would not budge on. I just knew from the beginning that that's how I wanted the book to be. Partially it made sense to me in a very literal narrative sense. She's dead, right? She’s inaccessible. If the other characters can't access her memories and her consciousness anymore, neither can the reader.
I'm a writer who's very driven by form and structure and I've always loved novels that are narrated from a sort of slant perspective. I think the most obvious classic example is The Great Gatsby, where you have a narrator who's in the story but looking sort of magnetically focused on someone else. The more contemporary example is Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels. I just find that type of narration so compelling as a reader because it felt like it wasn't just about the story, but about how the story was told. That sort of narrative structure allows for insights into the characters that are being looked at, but also into the person who's looking. I knew I wanted to write a book that was like that. Then when more characters started to pop up, I realized that they would sort of be like these people orbiting around Su Lan whose intentional absence is at the center. Then the book became, for me, about sort of how we present different parts of ourselves to others, to different people and how no one is fully knowable. Even by those who are closest to them.
KB: So you knew right away that you wanted it to be a multiple-perspective novel?
MJ: You know I never thought of it as a multiple-perspective novel. I still don’t think of it as a multiple-perspective novel. (Laughs) Because when thinking of those types of novels they feel like a collage. And I don't feel like my book is a collage. I feel like it's a system if that makes sense. Because for me, there's a strong through-line of everyone looking at Su Lan. It's always about her.
KB: In the writing process, were there any particular challenges you faced with writing from different perspectives?
MJ: Yeah, certainly. Writing itself is always a challenge in so many ways. I wanted to make sure that every voice was equally alive and real. The first voice that I had that actually felt very right to me was Yongzong voice. And so for a long time, I was sort of panicking being like, why? How come the one male character is the most real? (Laughs) So I rewrote and revised and tackled the two other perspectives many times until I felt that they were fully realized.
KB: How long did it take you to write Little Gods?
MJ: I think maybe around six years. I started writing it before I knew how to write anything. So I was learning how to write and the novel changed a lot throughout the years.
KB: Did you ever keep a specific writing routine or do you write just when you feel like it?
MJ: I usually try to start writing in the mornings. Generally, I feel once I start checking my email, it's over. I was lucky enough to get some fellowship and grant support that allowed me to really focus on the novel. So when I was deep in, my routine was just wake up and write until my partner came home.
KB: Can you talk a little bit about your writing journey? What got you interested in writing and literature? Have you always had a love for it?
MJ: I think my love for writing started like most people, with a love for reading. As a young person, some of my most wonderful experiences of being alive were while reading books. I'd always had this feeling that writing a novel was probably the best thing a person could do. Not the best as in the best thing for the world, but the thing in my mind that was the best thing. I didn't study English or creative writing formerly until I was an adult. Then I sort of just read as much as I could. I got an MFA and did the emerging writer hustle where you’re doing a lot of part-time jobs and trying to find time to write until I was lucky enough to get a few grants and fellowships in a row and just focus on the book.
KB: Are you currently working on something new?
MJ: Yeah, I have a second novel in the works, but I haven't had an assertive good chunk of clarity and time to work on it yet. So I've been working on stories which are more instantly satisfying just by virtue of being shorter.
Meng Jin was born in Shanghai and lives in San Francisco. A Kundiman Fellow, she is a graduate of Harvard and Hunter College. Little Gods is her first novel.
