Asheville-based author Jennie Liu’s latest project,Girls on the Line, is a young adult novel about two teenage girls coming of age in contemporary China. She’ll launch the book at Malaprop’s on Wednesday, Nov. 7.
While Liu is the daughter of Chinese immigrants, she says she really didn’t find a passion for her own heritage until she went to college. During an interview in the children and teens section of Pack Memorial Library (“I have two kids,” she says. “I truck down here a couple of times a week.”), Liu explains. Her parents allowed her and her siblings to pursue their own interests, and while she did read a lot as a teen, “I probably spent more time trying to assimilate into the white culture.” In college, however, her attitude changed, inspired in part by reading authors such as Amy Tan, but also by what her sister, an Asian studies major, had discovered about their family’s history.
“Growing up, we lived in very tight quarters, but we didn’t know each other very well,” she says. So it was a revelation for Liu to read her sister’s thesis about their father’s experience fleeing the Japanese occupation of northern China in the Sino-Japanese War.
As the Japanese advanced, Nationalist Chinese leaders put out a call to save the children caught in the conflict. This campaign manifested as a poorly planned march across China.
While Liu is the daughter of Chinese immigrants, she says she really didn’t find a passion for her own heritage until she went to college. During an interview in the children and teens section of Pack Memorial Library (“I have two kids,” she says. “I truck down here a couple of times a week.”), Liu explains. Her parents allowed her and her siblings to pursue their own interests, and while she did read a lot as a teen, “I probably spent more time trying to assimilate into the white culture.” In college, however, her attitude changed, inspired in part by reading authors such as Amy Tan, but also by what her sister, an Asian studies major, had discovered about their family’s history.
“Growing up, we lived in very tight quarters, but we didn’t know each other very well,” she says. So it was a revelation for Liu to read her sister’s thesis about their father’s experience fleeing the Japanese occupation of northern China in the Sino-Japanese War.
As the Japanese advanced, Nationalist Chinese leaders put out a call to save the children caught in the conflict. This campaign manifested as a poorly planned march across China.
Genres: Young Adult Fiction
New and upcoming books
Novels
Girls On the Line (2018)
Like Spilled Water (2020)
Enly and the Buskin' Blues (2023)
The Red Car to Hollywood (2025)
Like Spilled Water (2020)
Enly and the Buskin' Blues (2023)
The Red Car to Hollywood (2025)
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