Asian-American Ed Lin lives the Great American Dream

Ed Lin was born in New York City and raised in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where his parents, immigrants from Taiwan and the mainland, owned small hotels. A financial journalist who has been described as the voice of a new generation of Chinese-Americans, Lin is the author of five novels, including a crime series set in New York's Chinatown. His 2002 debut novel, , based on his childhood, was adapted into a film, (2006). Lin's latest novel, , is a murder mystery about a young night-market foodstall owner in Taipei who tries to find out who killed his high school girlfriend. As in the crime novels of one of his literary mentors, Raymond Chandler, Lin's prose is frequently image-laden. is also an excellent introduction to Taipei's food culture - readers are likely to head to the nearest noodle shop after they're finished the book. Lin spoke to about his writing life and what it was like growing up in the United States.
 

It's a very Asian-American experience that your parents probably own a business and as a child you're one of the primary workers there. There's something special about the Jersey shore where I grew up. It has an accelerated environment and awareness in terms of sexuality and blue-collar working life. In the summer, all these people come in from New York City and kind of invade your town. And your town is not really in love with these people, but they need them for the tourist revenue.
 

We lived in this really small town that had an active Ku Klux Klan chapter. I was one of three Asians in the high school. One of them was from a family of refugees from Vietnam. And there was this other guy who told me he learned English from watching [a 1970s TV series about two cops]. It's funny that people who learn English from TV shows … also pick up the body language. This guy behaved like a extra. I got the sense I wasn't really welcome in this new community we'd moved into. I remember walking through the hallways and people muttering "Vietcong" behind my back. But I feel all that sharpened my narrative voice as a writer.
 

Those novels are set in New York's Chinatown in 1976, which was a pivotal year because the two sides that fought the Chinese civil war were dying off. Historically, it was the Nationalists who had hegemony over Chinese communities all over the world. But in 1976 the balance changed in favour of Beijing.