Interview: Author Tori Eldridge

Hapa Mag- April 6, 2020

By Sam Tanabe

It’s 2020, and we’ve been holding out for a new type of hero long enough. How about one who immerses herself in the all-too-familiar misogynistic injustices of today? How about a multiracial American citizen who gives visibility to an underrepresented community? How about a modern-day kunoichi… a female ninja? Lily Wong is the main character in The Ninja Daughter by Hapa author Tori Eldridge, and Lily is all of these things.

Eldridge is quite the accomplished individual, with life experiences as diverse as her heritage. The Ninja Daughter is an homage to Eldridge’s Chinese Hawaiian mother and Norwegian North Dakotan father, as well as the Japanese art of the ninja. In the novel, Lily works for a nonprofit organization that helps women suffering from domestic violence, and it’s empowering to see a young, determined, mixed-race martial artist wielding the power in this story. Eldridge has so cleverly infused the mixed race experience into her book, that imagery and symbolism everywhere reflect the multicultural nature of Lily’s life. Another huge component of the book is Lily’s remarkable demonstration of Japanese ninjutsu, derived from Eldridge’s personal martial arts training.

I got to talk with Eldridge all about growing up Hapa, life events that eventually led to The Ninja Daughter, and how her personal experiences are reflected in the novel. 

You said that you drew from your own heritage and experiences to create the character of Lily. What qualities did Lily inherit from you, and how do you two differ?

Lily is definitely very close to my heart. I didn’t actually set out to write something that was so close to me, but I wanted a protagonist that’s different from what we usually get. I’m very proud of my heritage. My mother was Chinese Hawiian from Maui and my father was pure Norweignan from North Dakota. They met and married in Tokyo, and I grew up, of course, in Honolulu. I had all of these cultures around me, and each one was a huge and valued part of my life. I wanted to share that and to speak on the mixed-race experience in our country from a unique perspective that I thought people would really enjoy. 

I wanted to delve into my own Chinese heritage even more. It was a great fascination for me, which is why I made Lily’s mother an immigrant from Hong Kong. I also wanted to share a lot of my father’s stories, along with his North Dakota-Norwegian pride, through the characters of Bestefar (Lily’s grandpa) and Baba (Lily’s father). It meant a great deal to me to be able to put them in the novel. Lily and I share the same heritage, and we also share the ninja experience. I’m a fifth-degree black belt in the art of the ninja. Personality-wise though, I’m older and wiser.

I had a feeling this was where you probably veered from yourself to create the character.

Lily is young, idealistic, hot-headed, and determined. A lot of that is very conscious. I decided to make this character in her mid-twenties because that’s a time in life when we are the most confident, insecure, and self-doubting. It’s the time we forge ahead no matter what and make every darn mistake out there. We constantly change our direction, we want to help the world, and we think we’re invincible. It’s a really dynamic time. I started writing this book when both of my sons were in their twenties, so I was seeing it all again from a mother’s point of view, and, of course, I remembered what it was like to live through myself. So, personality-wise, Lily and I are not the same. We have similarities in practices and beliefs, but not all. By the way, her parents are nothing like mine. Their personalities came out of what they would need to be like in order to create Lily.

You’ve had a lot of interesting and very “mixed” experiences in your life. Tell me more about growing up in Hawaii, studying martial arts, making it on Broadway, and your transition into writing.

When you’re Hapa in Hawaii, you’re what the majority of people are and everyone wants to be. I always felt like I had the magic combination. I was part-Hawaiian, part-Asian, and part-haole. I felt like I fit in everywhere, and I would lean into one part or the other depending on what part of the island I was in or who I was hanging out with. When I left high school and went to Northwestern University in Illinois, it was quite a culture shock because I couldn’t find any Asians! Northwestern was a stop over on the way to Broadway, and I moved to New York City when I was 19. I was so lucky I didn’t get mugged. Fortunately I survived, and I managed to get my first Broadway show, The Little Prince and the Aviator, within a year.

Did you end up staying in New York a long time?

I called it my home base for about three and a half years. After The Little Prince and the Aviator, I went on the pre-Broadway tour of Zorba, then I came off that to work on a workshop of Smile, long before it came out on Broadway. Then after that I was cast in the original first national touring company of Cats.

Did you move to California after those three and a half years in New York?

Yes, I left Cats in Washington, D.C., and moved out to Los Angeles to try my hand in television and film. That's where I met my husband. He is the one who actually pushed me to audition for The Love Boat, which I was on for a year.

When I started seeking work aside from The Love Boat, I found that casting directors were looking to target specific audiences. They didn’t want just any ambiguous, ethnic actor. They wanted somebody who would speak to the Latino market, the Black market, the Asian market, and they started getting very specific. The difficulty was that I don’t even look like what I am. It was kind of toxic because I did all sorts of things to my appearance to look more like whatever I was auditioning for. I started to become very discouraged with how I looked, and I realized it was very unhealthy. That was one of the things that made me want to get out of performing.

Eventually you turned to writing.

I did. I had always been an avid reader, and writing had always been a great strength of mine, so I tried my hand at writing screenplays. People who read my first screenplay told me I should be writing novels, so I took their advice and wrote a novel. I enjoyed the process and the product but realized if I was really going to get it published, I was going to have to commit to it in the same way I had committed to my singing, acting, and dancing. At that time I had two young sons, and I really wanted to be a stay-at-home, hyper-involved mom. So I put my novel away for 13 years. In that gap of time, I raised two adult sons, earned a black belt in karate, earned a fifth-degree black belt in to-shin do ninjutsu, and wrote and published a nonfiction book— Empowered Living: A Guide to Physical and Emotional Protection. After doing all these things, I went back to fiction writing and picked up that novel I had written. I knew that this is what I wanted to do for the second half-century of my life. I stopped teaching and training in ninjutsu and committed myself completely to fiction writing.

What inspired you to create a modern-day kunoichi who acts as a protector of women, helping them escape abusive relationships, horrible #MeToo scenarios, and victim-shaming?

It all emerged from one scene I wrote in a short story, and that scene is in the novel. It’s when Lily inadvertently tracks down the rapist/murderer of her sister. It’s a very dramatic scene and a defining moment in Lily’s life. That’s when she decides she is going to become a protector of women, and a big sister to a city. As you know, there is great responsibility in an Asian family for siblings to look out for each other, and in Lily’s mind, she failed that mission. That’s how she gets involved in the women’s shelter. She’s looking for women who are in vulnerable, violent situations, who don’t have somebody to help and protect them. Once she realizes these are the people she wants to protect, all the crimes against women become what Lily has to deal and cope with. I didn’t realize that I had written a heroine for the #MeToo era until a Library Journal starred review told me so, and that resonated with me. It all came out of Lily’s desire to make good with the memory of her sister.

You use a lot of very powerful imagery throughout the book, but the description of Lily’s bedroom is an example that really stood out to me. Can you share what the symbolism in its setup means to you?

Lily lives above her Norwegian father’s authentic Hong Kong cuisine restaurant, so there’s that right there. In the middle of her apartment is a Japanese dojo, with a Japanese Shinto temple. One side of her room has this cabinet that acts as an altar for her Chinese heritage, ancestral worship, and Buddhist practice, and on her bed is an amazing quilt made for her by her Norwegian grandma, who took the care to stitch in elements representing Lily’s culture.Then there’s this antique Chinese screen that separates all these things.

Now if you were to come into my home, you would see that I furnished it with heritage. Almost all of the furniture in our house has been passed down from my parents, so it has this Asian flavor, much of it picked out by my Norwegian father. Then we have all this antique American furniture passed down from my husband’s side of the family. It all blends together in a very unusual but synergistic way that feels peaceful. I wanted Lily to have that kind of quality in her home, but in a way that was unique to her spirit and purpose.

You had Lily study both Chinese wushu from her heritage and Japanese ninjutsu for her destiny. Why did you choose these?

Well, one of the reasons I set the book in Los Angeles is because it’s a macrocosm of Lily and her cultural experience. She’s pulled in several cultural directions, and I wanted her martial arts to reflect that. Wushu is a very popular Chinese kung fu, and it’s a logical thing for a girl in L.A. to have studied because it’s a competitive martial art. It’s beautiful, flashy, athletic, roots you in Chinese culture, and can be done openly with pride. I wanted her to do ninjutsu in secret, which, of course, is what it’s known for. I wanted the way in which she studied to reflect that nature of the art itself, and I wanted to make a point to show how unusual it is to have a Chinese ninja. Chinese and Japanese have not historically gotten along all that well, so to have Lily study a Japanese martial art from some middle-aged Japanese man in a park was something she had to keep secret. I also studied both.

Interestingly enough you’ll find in book two that Lily also has a background in boxing, which, by the way, so do I. You see a third cultural influence added, the American. This aspect was revealed in book one through her weapon of choice. It’s not a Japanese shuriken or katana. It’s a very American, modern-day weapon: a karambit. I wanted these multicultural aspects reflected in Lily to be repeated over and over again.

Well, I am excited for the next book and to see where Lily takes us next. Thank you so much for sharing with me and the Hapa Mag readers.

The Ninja’s Blade will be released on September 1, 2020.