An Evening with Vanessa Hua

It was in the outskirts of eastern San Francisco that Vanessa Hua first learned to fit the white suburban mold. When asked to share what she had eaten for breakfast that morning in an elementary school classroom, Hua borrowed a friend’s answer: cornflakes though she had readily enjoyed a bowl of hearty beef stew in her pajamas just hours before. Ms. Hua described the duality of her life in Northern California where there were very few families that looked like her own. Inside her own there was a different world from the one just beyond the plastered walls. When she began to write, Hua conjured up white characters. Theirs are the stories she had read all throughout her childhood and young adulthood. Fast forward several years, Ms. Hua explores the intersection of her two childhood worlds in her writing including her novel A River of Stars and her short story collection Deceit and Other Possibilities. An example of such a crossroads is Hua’s pregnant character Scarlett who secures a spot in a maternal care facility in the United States. She makes the long journey from her home in China to guarantee American citizenship for her coming child. Hua explores the clash herself and society, dual cultures, and the strategy of straddling tradition and change in her riveting prose. Thank you to Ms. Hua for allowing us some time for a lecture and book signing.