In fiction, it's as if you enter a dream world that you created, but your characters have their own free will. They don't do what you want them to do - they get into trouble, do drugs, fight over petty things, and do outrageous things that you wouldn't want your children to do. In other words, you can only provide the background, the seeds - in my case the background of the Vietnamese refugee.
Andrew LamThat experience of losing home, longing for home, that yearning for meaning and rootedness and identity in a floating world, it's what often makes an immigrant story into an American story .
Andrew LamI always say that writing non-fiction versus writing fiction is a bit like architecture versus abstract painting.
Andrew LamI've been writing short stories for twenty years now, on and off ever since I was in the creative writing program at San Francisco State University.
Andrew Lam