Lisa See

Episode Summary Bestselling author Lisa See joins Jeniffer and Chad Thompson to discuss her powerful new novel, Daughters of the Sun and Moon. Inspired by real women who lived in Los Angeles during the 1870s, the novel explores friendship, resilience, identity, racism, and survival against the backdrop of the largely forgotten Chinese Massacre of 1871. Lisa discusses how her deeply researched historical fiction emerged from personal questions and themes she was grappling with in her own life. She explores why Los Angeles' violent early history has largely disappeared from public memory and how court records, photographs, and other historical documents helped shape the novel. Throughout the conversation, Lisa reflects on the importance of confronting difficult histories and what can be lost when we choose to forget them. In This Episode: Lisa See's Literary Brand  How friendship, family, and women's relationships became recurring themes across Lisa's novels   Why authentic storytelling creates a lasting author brand   The importance of writing from personal curiosity rather than market trends  The Inspiration Behind Daughters of the Sun and Moon  The true stories that inspired the novel's three main characters:  Dove, a young bride brought to Los Angeles in an arranged marriage   Moon, wife of a prominent Chinese physician   Petal, inspired by women sold into prostitution who fought relentlessly for freedom   Why Lisa wanted to tell this story through the eyes of women  The Chinese Massacre of 1871  The little-known tragedy that serves as the novel's historical centerpiece   How 10% of Los Angeles' Chinese population was murdered during one night of violence   Why historians consider it one of the largest mass lynchings in American history  A Different Los Angeles  Why 1870s Los Angeles was considered one of the most violent towns in the American West   How the city's leaders later worked to erase this history   Lisa's theory about why Hollywood's rise contributed to the public forgetting Los Angeles' violent past  Researching the Novel  Examining original court documents at the Huntington Library   Discovering handwritten maps, trial transcripts, and historical records   Testing whether Chinese medicinal herbs could actually be grown on a windowsill, just as they are in the novel  Chinese Medicine and Cultural Traditions  The role of traditional Chinese medicine in the story   Lisa's personal connection to Chinese medicine and acupuncture   The symbolic importance of immigrants carrying soil from their homeland  Lisa See's Writing Process  Why she writes the final line of every novel before beginning chapter one   How the ending rarely changes, even when the journey does   Her unusual reading habit: reading the first chapter and the last chapter before continuing a book  Themes of Memory and History  The importance of remembering difficult chapters of history   Connections between historical anti-Chinese violence and modern anti-Asian hate   Why societies continue to repeat patterns when history is forgotten  Aphorisms, Wisdom, and Structure  How a poem by Lao Tzu shaped the structure of the novel   Lisa's lifelong fascination with aphorisms   The timeless wisdom that transcends culture and generations 

Sometimes the small act of delving into your past can open whole new worlds. In the case of Lisa See, her curiosity lead her to explore, research and write her first book about her family history. It started as a project she imagined would only be seen by her relatives, but that lead to so much more.