“Write What You Want to Write” Author Andrea Stewart on the Convergence of Mixed Identity and Writing

Mixed Asian Media - August 30, 2022

By Charlie Mangan

Andrea Stewart is the daughter of immigrants and was raised in a number of places across the United States. Her parents always emphasized science and education, so she spent her childhood immersed in Star Trek and odd-smelling library books. When her (admittedly ambitious) dreams of becoming a dragon slayer didn't pan out, she instead turned to writing books. She now lives in sunny California and, in addition to writing, can be found herding cats, looking at birds, and falling down research rabbit holes.

When did you first start writing?

So, I think I started seriously writing in fifth grade. I wrote a couple little stories before. Apparently, when I was I think 3 or 4, I would demand my mom to write down whatever story I was dictating to her onto this piece of paper. But I didn't start seriously writing until when I was in fifth grade, where we did a creative writing assignment in class. My teacher really liked what I had done, and I thought, “Oh, like maybe I could do more of this.” So, my dad kindly set me up with his old computer, and I started just typing out stories.

Did you have any major influences throughout your progression of becoming a writer? It could be writing or any other forms of media.

Oh gosh, there are a lot of authors that I think I kind of draw inspiration from. So when I was starting out, there was the usual fantasy that you read when you're a kid. There's the Chronicles of Narnia, I started out with that. The Chronicles of Prydain as well, by Lloyd Alexander. That's another one that I really loved and got really into. The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. That was a big influence on me when I was a kid, and also one of those books that I keep coming back to, because it reads differently when you're older. You pick up on themes that you don't as a kid. When you're a kid, you're like, “Oh, it's a unicorn. Yeah, there's a magician.” It's great, but when you're older and you're like, “Wow, there are a lot of really deep themes in this book.” 

Nowadays, it's just my peers in the field. I read their stuff, and I'm like, “This is amazing.” Ted Chiang is one that I really love. He's one of those writers where I read his stuff, and I'm like “I will never be this good.” Most of the stuff I read, I'm like, “That's really neat what they did here. I could draw some inspiration from this. Or, maybe if I work hard enough, I could be this good someday.” But with Ted Chiang, it's this despair, but also this admiration like, no matter how hard I try, I will never be this good.

[laughing] I hear you! Just to pivot a little bit, how has your background of being a person of mixed Asian descent influenced your writing, and has the relationship between the writing and your identity changed over time?

Oh yeah. When I was growing up, the fantasy that I was reading, it was all white male protagonists. Especially some of the older stuff, like Robert Jordan and stuff — when I was in my formative reading years, it was all the white male protagonist. So, when I first started writing fantasy, that’s what I wrote: the white, male protagonist far, boy who becomes a hero, or there's a prophecy, whatever. I carried that with me for a while, and it wasn't until I got older and there started to be a little bit more diversity in the field that I started to think, “Oh my gosh. I don't have to write the white, male farm boy. That's not what fantasy is. It's not defined by that. So, I more recently started to bring some of my heritage and my background into fantasy; this is the kind of stuff that I wish that I had been able to read when I was a kid, where you kind of see yourself reflected in it.

I didn't intensely understand how much representation matters until I was watching Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I was like, “Oh my God, there's a half Asian main character, and then there's an Asian main character, and they're not related, you know? There's some Asian sensibilities in there as well. When she talks to her mother, I was like, “Oh my God, it's a conversation I've had with my mom.” It just blew my mind.

Totally. To bring it back to The Drowning Empire, how did the idea for this series spawn? 

I always like to say that the idea for stories, I call it a story seed, comes from one thing, and then it kind of branches out from there. The Drowning Empire actually started when I was having lunch with some other writer friends. We were at a food court in Texas, and my friend Marina Lostetter — who is an amazing science fiction, fantasy writer — got some food from a Chinese place there. And, you know, Texas is not the place to get Chinese food, so it wasn't very good. There was like a shard of bone in her food, and she almost choked on it. That got me thinking about, what if bone shards were used for magic in some way? That was kind of the story seed for that. My friends joke now that one of them has to go through a near death experience for me to get my next story idea, which hasn't been the case, thankfully for them.

It's obvious that there are clear Asian and mixed Asian influences within the world of The Drowning Empire. Can you speak to how those textures came about being? Were they part of the original process of this world from the get go?

They were definitely part of the world from the get go. The first thing I think of when I start building a world is, what does it feel like? What does it smell like? Kind of the textures of the world first, because if I don't have those down, then I can't do anything else. Everything else kind of falls from that: how the characters interact with the world, what they think about the world, the way they describe it as they're moving through. I can't have that unless I know what the world feels like first.

It's a little bit embarrassing because I’ve had people write to me, asking, “What were you researching? What era was this?” I kind of play loosey goosey with the research. I'm terrible like that. I usually like to read a bunch of books giving that feel that I'm looking for. Am I trying to draw some from Imperial China? Am I trying to draw some from older island cultures? Then I kind of forget about some of the details and use what I got from there to build the world. So it's not anything specific, and a lot of it comes from my personal experiences. I'm very close with my Chinese side of the family, and so I drew a lot upon the meals that we've had, the time that we’ve spent together, the way that we interact. You know, family's a really big, important thing, and respect for your elders, and all of that.

There are a lot of decadent descriptions of food and the smell of food in this book. Do those descriptions come from your own life?

Definitely. My mom is an incredible cook. Obviously she cooks a lot of Chinese food, but she also cooks a lot of different cuisines from other cultures. I drew a lot upon that and the communal meals that we've had. Whenever my family gets together, a lot of times everybody makes a dish. Everybody's helping each other, and the kitchen's always very dizzy. It's kind of like this, this gathering place. So I thought a little bit about that and how it's different between the people that are in charge, where they may have somebody else doing all that, and then the people that are living like in the city where they are doing all of that together, which is a little bit more like how I grew up. I definitely drew a lot upon the sounds, smells, and the way people are interacting in the kitchen and you know, like making dumplings is a big thing.

There are beautiful interpersonal textures that speak to a mixed person’s experience, particularly in the character of Jovis. How do you go about implementing the little details of the mixed experience into your characters? 

I mean, some of it I wrote, as I wrote the rough draft, and some of it, I was like, I need to add a little bit more because you're not constantly thinking about your identity, right? Sometimes a thing will pop up and you're like, “Oh gosh, that's because of who I am, and I am mixed.” Some of the stuff I did go back in and add later, just because I thought he would have encountered a little bit more of this than he is right now. But I also wanted to make sure it wasn't too much. Like I said, you're not thinking about it all the time. I've had all of these kinds of experiences myself, especially when it comes to speaking the language. My mom sent me to Chinese school on Saturdays, and I haven't spoken it very much, so I kind of lose it, which is terrible, right? I remember one of my Chinese coworkers at my last job was like, “Oh, do you speak it?” I was telling her about how I'd gone to Chinese school but didn't remember all of it, and she was like, “So you wasted your mom's money?” She said it very lightly, but in that very straightforward way, you know? And I was just like, “Oh my gosh. Yes, it's true. I have.”

Can you speak a little more to the creation of Jovis as a character?

I wanted to have a main character that reflected that experience because I think, even now, as you're getting more and more diverse representation in books and media, there is not as much mixed representation, so I really wanted to have a main character who was mixed and reflecting some of those experiences that I've had because. As a kid, I would've really loved to have grown up reading like a fantasy book with a mixed main character in it. I knew that I wanted Jovis to be that way, especially because he often feels like a little bit of an outsider and not just because of his ethnicity, but because he's kind of wandering the seas by himself. He's not connected to anybody. I felt like that was a good way to kind of emphasize these aspects of his character. He doesn't really feel like he belongs. I think that that’s an experience that a lot of mixed kids have had. You look in school, and there's the Asian group of kids, then there are the other cliques and everything. You don't really feel like you completely fit into one or the other. It's like, you're not like white enough for this group. You're not like Asian enough for this group over here either.

Do you have any advice for any younger writers of mixed descent, trying to find their way of communicating their voice?

I would say I definitely read a lot of the stuff that's out right now. The newer stuff. If you look, for instance, at the recent Nebula and Hugo award winners, a lot of them are diverse writers, and I think that’s different from before. I know people always say, “Read the classics,” but I would say read the newer stuff that's coming up, because I think it's more reflective of where the genre is going. I also think it would give younger writers a little bit more hope. This is what people are reading now. They wanna see your perspective, and they wanna know your take on this genre.

One of the things that always bothers me is that people say things like, “Vampires are over. Urban fantasy is over. It's over saturated. We've seen it already. We want something new.” I feel like the more diverse writers haven't really had their go at it, so I really don't think it's over.

I don't think the younger writers should take any of that advice. Write what you wanna write. Don't think that a certain sub-genre or creature or whatever is over. If you wanna write that, then write it, and put your own perspective on it. It's going to be new. It's going to be something different.

Charles Mangan is a half Thai playwright, singer, actor, and theater-maker from Jenkintown Pennsylvania. Currently, he is preparing to embark on a Fulbright English Teaching Fellowship to Thailand, where he will be abroad until October 2023. Charlie’s first full length play, Dragoness, directed by Mila Fox, premiered at Vassar College’s Powerhouse Theater in 2022 to sold-out, standing ovation audiences, and won the Molly Thacher Kazan Memorial prize for distinished Senior Thesis Work. Charlie graduated cum laude from Vassar College in May 2022 with degrees in Drama and Neuroscience, and is also alumni of Vassar College’s Woodshed Theater Ensemble.