PHOTO: Lisa See, acclaimed author, celebrated for her evocative portrayals of women’s lives and histories across cultures and centuries.
Celebrating Courage Culture And Connection
Lisa See shares the inspirations behind her historical novels, exploring women’s lives, friendships, and traditions across centuries with meticulous research, heartfelt storytelling, and a passion for uncovering hidden histories.
Lisa See has long been celebrated for her gift of transporting readers into hidden histories and overlooked lives, weaving stories that are as intimate as they are expansive. With novels such as Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, and The Island of Sea Women, she has illuminated the voices of women who might otherwise have been forgotten, bringing their courage, struggles, and friendships into vivid focus. Her writing is at once meticulous in detail and deeply human, reminding us of the power of storytelling to bridge centuries and cultures.
What makes her work resonate so profoundly is the way she balances rigorous historical research with an emotional truth that feels timeless. Whether exploring the endurance of female divers in Jeju Island, the intricate traditions of the Akha people, or the resilience of women bound by friendship in Ming dynasty China, her novels reveal the universal themes of love, loss, loyalty, and survival.
See’s narratives are also shaped by her own heritage and perspective, drawing from her Chinese American family’s history while reaching far beyond it. She has an instinct for finding lives lived in the margins of history, then rendering them in prose that honours both their specificity and their universality.
Her latest novel, Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, continues this tradition with grace and depth, bringing to life the story of a woman who challenged the constraints of her time through medicine and sisterhood. It is a testament not only to the past but also to the enduring strength of women’s bonds, and the legacy of voices that demand to be heard.
What inspired you to reimagine the life of Tan Yunxian in Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, and how did you balance historical accuracy with creative storytelling?
There was a day during the Covid lockdown when I was walking by the bookshelves in my office and the spine of one of the books jumped out at me. It was about pregnancy and childbirth in the Ming dynasty. I read to page nineteen and found a mention of Tan Yunxian, a female doctor in the Ming dynasty, who, when she turned fifty in 1511, published a book of her medical cases. I was intrigued, and down the rabbit hole I went.Tan Yunxian lived at a time when elite women were very much confined by Confucian strictures: A good woman is an uneducated woman. A good woman should never take more than three steps beyond her front gate. Although she gave the appearance of a proper Confucian woman—she was married, had children, and managed her husband’s household—she broke many barriers by practicing the medical arts. All her patients were women and girls. She connected to them in ways that male doctors never could. Many of her remedies are still used today. She was, and continues to be, a truly inspiring woman.
I try to be as true to the history as I can be. That said, not that much is known about Tan Yunxian, so I drew from other contemporaneous stories of real women, doctors, midwives, and coroners.
In The Island of Sea Women, you depict the haenyeo divers of Jeju Island. What drew you to their story, and how did you approach researching their unique culture?
In many ways I feel that the haenyeo—the diving women of Jeju Island—called to me. I was sitting in my doctor’s waiting room, leafing through magazines, as we all do. I came across a tiny article—just one paragraph and one small photo—about these remarkable women. I ripped the article out of the magazine and took it home. I hung onto the article for eight years before I decided that now was the time to write about the haenyeo. They have a matrifocal society—a society focused on women. The women hold their breath for two minutes and dive down sixty feet (deep enough to get the bends) to harvest seafood. They are the breadwinners in their families, while their husbands take care of the children and do the cooking. In the past, women would retire at age fifty-five. Today, the youngest haenyeo is fifty-five. I was and am amazed by their bravery and persistence, as well as the camaraderie—sisterhood—that they share with each other. It’s said that in about ten years, this culture will be gone from the world. I felt compelled to write about them while I still could.
I approached doing the research the same way I do with all my books. I go to libraries and archives. I talk to scholars who’ve spent their careers studying an aspect of the time, people, culture, or history that I’m writing about. Most importantly, I go to the place I’m writing about. In this case, I interviewed many haenyeo in their homes or on the seashore as they were preparing to dive or had just come out of the water.
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane explores the Akha ethnic minority. How did you immerse yourself in their traditions to authentically portray their way of life?
The same way as I just explained, but with Tea Girl there was one other avenue of research. Drinking tea! Drinking, sampling, and tasting lots and lots of tea! I started the book as a tea lover and ended up as a total tea snob.
Your novels often highlight strong female friendships. How do these relationships drive the narratives in your stories, particularly in Lady Tan’s Circle of Women?
Female friendship is unique. A woman will tell her best friend things she wouldn’t tell her mother, boyfriend, lover, husband, or children. That intimacy is wonderful and a true blessing, but it can also leave you open to betrayal and hurt. So, for all the good things we get from friendship—someone to laugh with, a shoulder to cry on, a person to hike or go to the movies with—there are dark shadow sides. Wherever I see those dark shadows, that’s where I want to go.
Having grown up in Los Angeles’ Chinatown, how has your personal heritage influenced the themes and settings of your novels?
I didn’t grow up in Chinatown. I lived with my mother, but I visited and stayed with my grandparents for long periods of time. I have red hair and freckles, so I most definitely didn’t look like the other 400 relatives who lived in Los Angeles when I was a child. But when I looked around me what I experienced was Chinese faces, Chinese culture, Chinese language, and Chinese food. All that was my mirror to see who I was, and it’s the reason I write the kinds of books I do.
Your writing process includes extensive research and detailed outlines. Can you share how this approach shapes the development of your characters and plots?
Research is my favorite part of the novel-writing process. I love it! I look at it as a treasure hunt. I never know what I’m going to find. And what I do find inspires me. How can I use something like the story of the worm in Lady Tan? Or that one of the main ways the diving womenin Sea Womendie iswhen they’re harvesting abalone? Or that the Akha people I wrote about in Tea Girl had a traditional of killing twins? Do I put it at the beginning, the middle, or the end of a story? What’s the ripple effect?How will one of the examples I gave effect not just the main character but all the characters?
Many of your books, like Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, delve into historical periods. What challenges do you face when bringing these eras to life for modern readers?
For one thing, we aren’t all that familiar with ancient China through movies, books, or television, so I must research everything—what did people wear, how did they style their hair,what did they eat, what were their houses like, how did they get from here to there. Then it’s taking all these tiny details and weaving them into the story so readers feel like they’re in the room with the characters.
What advice would you offer to aspiring authors seeking to write compelling historical fiction that resonates with contemporary audiences?
Write a 1,000 words a day, five days a week, before you do anything else. At the end of a week, you’ll have twenty pages—a chapter. If you do it first thing in the morning, then you won’t get distracted by all the things that tempt you not to write. You also need to be passionate about what you’re writing. Otherwise, why do it? Last, consider whether there are things in your historical piece that will connect to readers today. History repeats itself,after all, and we as humas seem determined never to learn from the past in general or from our mistakes in particular.
