Steph Cha answers 13 questions in a Booker's Dozen.
 |
TPQ: What are you currently reading?
SC: Sabrina & Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine. A superb debut short story collection that focuses on the lives of Coloradan women, many of them with Mexican and indigenous roots that run deep in the land around them.”
TPQ: Best book you have ever read?
SC: Impossible question, but a recent addition to my all-time favorites list is The Known World by Edward P. Jones.
TPQ: A must-read before you die?
SC: The Remains of the Day, another favorite of mine, is probably a good book to read at some point in your life, preferably long before you die.
TPQ: A preference for fact or fiction?
SC: Fiction grounded in fact.
TPQ: Favourite female author?
SC: Hard to pick favorites, but these days, I'm kind of obsessed with Sara Gran.
TPQ: Favourite male author?
SC I have a complicated relationship with him, but I do have a special place in my heart for Raymond Chandler.
 |
A Berlin Book Tower in memory of the Nazi book burning.
|
TPQ: First book you ever read?
SC: The first book I remember reading, anyway, is Sayonara, Mrs. Kackleman, a fantastic picture book by Maira Kalman.
TPQ: Favourite childhood author?
SC: Norton Juster, not that I've read anything of his other than The Phantom Tollbooth.
TPQ: Any book you point blank refuse to read?
SC: Plenty of them. No Mein Kampf for me, and no books by living Nazi psychos either.
TPQ: Any author you point blank refuse to read?
SC: Only the Nazi psychos, really.
TPQ: Pick a book to give to somebody so that they would more fully understand you.
SC: Can't get more on the nose than my own books, especially the most recent one. As for books I didn't write, I connected powerfully with Forgotten Country by Catherine Chung and Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee.
TPQ: Last book you gave as a present?
SC: The last book I gave as a gift was a coffee table book about L.A. fashion. I'll mention a few books I think gift particularly well, though––The Wangs vs. the World by Jade Chang, Good Talk by Mira Jacob, and Ben Loory's short story collections.
TPQ: Book you would most like to see turned into a movie?
SC: I'd love to see the Highway 59 books by Attica Locke turned into movies. I also loved a book called The Which Way Tree by Elizabeth Crook that I think would be marvellous on screen.
 |
| Steph Cha is an novelist living in Los Angeles. |
I think this review throughout might help the reader understand Ms Cha. At least my understanding of Ms Cha is that human relationships, lives, and loss of roots are what are important to her; and have been from an early age -or at least her first memorable book. And if I am not over stating it, she does not like Nazi's; which I assume to mean irational extremists beyond the narrow definition of Nazis.
ReplyDelete