This blog post is authored by Niki G. a member of the Biblio Lotus Team.
Michelle Yang, debut author of Phoenix Girl: How a Fat Asian with Bipolar Found Love, is an advocate whose writings on the intersection of Asian American identity, body image, and mental health have been featured in NBC News, CNN, InStyle, Shondaland, and more. Yang earned an M.B.A. in marketing from the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, and a B.A. in International Studies/East Asian Relations from the University of Arizona. She has extensive experience in project management, brand strategy, and marketing. She’s spoken about humanizing and normalizing mental health illnesses as another part of the human condition on platforms such as NPR and Michigan Public. When not writing, she loves exploring new areas with her family and smoking up the kitchen with spicy recipes.
Michelle will be at Martha Cooper Library in conversation with Rachel Spitz on May 14 from 5:30 to 7 pm.
Please note, this event is currently full, but we encourage you to join the waitlist.
Michelle will delve into her memoir, which chronicles her journey from a tight-knit ethnic Chinese enclave in South Korea to her new life in Phoenix, Arizona, and beyond. In addition to being a translator for her parents, Michelle worked in her family’s Chinese takeout restaurant starting at 12 years old, overcoming challenges and taking initiatives that shaped her into who she is today. With unflinching honesty, Phoenix Girl explores Michelle's struggle with Asian American identity, body image, mental health, and her eventual diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Ultimately, Michelle finds love, not only the romantic kind, but an enduring self-love, which allows her to heal, never give up, and thrive while successfully managing what later becomes a bipolar 1 diagnosis. A proud University of Arizona alum, she is thrilled to return to Tucson for this special event. Books will be available for purchase and signing at this event. Michelle is also slated to be at next year’s Tucson Festival of Books as an indie author.
Niki
When did you first know that you wanted to write your memoir and share your story with the world?
Michelle
I was in my 30s and I worked for one of the largest corporations in the world and my company had just been through a merger and acquisition and I was miserable. My team had gone through almost 100% turnover, I was under immense stress, and I wasn't sleeping. This was not okay for me and as someone who lives with bipolar disorder, this mental health strain is life threatening. Until that point, I had been hiding my bipolar disorder from my workplace because the stigma was so strong and I was afraid that if my work found out that I wouldn't advance, and that people would treat me differently.
A few years before that, I joined NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and became their support group leader so I was starting to find my voice as a mental health advocate. Even though I was this high achieving individual with a master's degree and all this work experience, this was dangerous for me, and it was time to reflect on “How did I get here?” and “What is the true calling in my life?”
I realized that it is to share my story. When I was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder at age 20, I was terrified, and I didn't know if I would have a future and there was so much shame. I went to the library and there were no memoirs or biographies that I could find by an Asian American author or any BIPOC or immigrant writer.
I wanted to find someone who was leading a normal life to show me it was possible, but I could not.
I came across the quote by Toni Morrison, “If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
And I knew. That's when I started to write my story.
Niki
What was the most challenging aspect of writing your memoir? Did you keep a diary, or did you need to reconnect with folks to piece together your past?
Michelle
I have always been cursed and gifted with a very good memory in that I remember a lot of detail and so I tapped into my memory a lot and I had a lot of emails I could reference. I had some difficult conversations with my brother, understanding where he was during those moments because I know how I remember many of the scenes that I write about, but learning what he was feeling during that time of our lives resulted in some very emotional conversations.
The challenging part was writing and sharing the most traumatic and difficult stories of my life. I had processed these memories in therapy for years before I started writing about them and it was a challenge to process them further and write in a way that I thought would be accessible, helpful, and usable to readers.
Niki
I liked that you wrote short chapters and that each chapter has a theme which helps when processing challenging scenes.
Michelle
That was very intentional. I put a lot of energy into it and there were a dozen rewrites of the manuscript to get to where it is today. I even paid attention to dark moments versus lighter moments, and made sure that there was enough balance so that it didn’t get too dark all at once. I wanted the book to ultimately be optimistic and hopeful because there aren’t enough mental health narratives that are optimistic and hopeful. There are a lot of books that contain “trauma porn” and dark stories and I don't need to contribute to more of that.
Niki
Had you ever thought about fictionalizing your story versus making it a memoir?
Michelle
My bipolar disorder was the skeleton in my closet for 20 years and for me to suddenly share it with the whole world was terrifying. I had thoughts like is there any way I could do it under a pen name or fictionalize it? But I'm writing this memoir as a mental health advocate and to fight stigma and tell people that there is nothing to be ashamed of, that your life is not over because you have a diagnosis. You can still live a full happy life with bipolar disorder or other mental health conditions. There's no way I could do that while hiding behind a fiction label and saying that my story is made-up. I could not use a pen name because it’s my story – I had to use my face and not be ashamed. There were scenes that I would force myself to write because I knew that I needed to write it and then afterwards I would be bedridden for a week and it was hard, especially as I had a young child and a family who depended on me so it was hard to sustain but I'm glad I did it. It was ultimately worth it and healing.
Niki
Were you able to have a self-care routine or embed some self-care throughout the writing process?
Michelle
I stopped forcing myself to write when my body was telling me to stop, I would listen because I would get sick when I was trying to meet a deadline and pushed myself too hard. I started listening to myself, being softer with my deadlines. And I took baths! I think a lot of writers seem to like baths because the water is healing.
Writing can be a privilege because no one is paying you while you’re writing your book. There's a reason why the literary field isn't very diverse. I quit my corporate job to become a freelance writer and editor while working on my book and taking care of my child, and I was able to write full time. That is a privilege most people don’t have.
Niki
Your book discusses your Asian American identity. Being asked “What are you” or “Where are you from” is challenging enough but you had extra layers embedded into your cultural identity because your family is ethnically Chinese, but you were born and grew up in South Korea. Was it challenging to explain your identity to people?
Michelle
Yeah, it was difficult to be brief about discussing my background. “I'm Chinese but was born in Korea” is what I end up saying, but it's hard to open that can of worms and not have people ask more questions. Growing up in the suburbs of Phoenix, I was the only Asian kid in class. I got a lot of taunts and in my book, I write about some threatening prank calls that I would get from kids which was very painful. As I got older. I started saying “I'm from Phoenix” and by the time I was an adult, people knew to leave it there. I think I would try to gauge the person’s intention and if I trusted them or their intention then maybe I would give them a little more information. But I immigrated when I was nine and it’s impossible to share that answer without seeming like I'm telling them my life story.
Niki
What do you think about the beauty standards in the U.S. versus Korean or Asian beauty standards? You referred to whitening lotion in your book and I remember seeing those on the shelves in Korea.
Michelle
Korean beauty standards are tough, and I just spent a week in Korea, and it is a culture that strives for perfection and everybody being very much alike. I wrote about whitening lotion because my dad imposed the Korean beauty standard on me and forced me to put some whitening lotion on when I was a teen. My body size was not acceptable for Korea although Korea is open to more size diversity now. It had been six years since I had been back there and now, I don't get as many stares, which is good and occasionally, I would see someone who is my size, and I would feel comforted. I went to Taiwan after Korea, and though Taiwan has its beauty standards, it's not as strict and there is more of an expression of their freedom. U.S. beauty standards were rough in the 90s and 2000s, which is when a lot of my memoir takes place. It’s great that in the US, there is more understanding with the body positivity movement and intuitive eating. And there are more attempts in pop culture to represent diversity in size and race and that gives me hope.
Niki
What advice would you give someone who wants to start their own memoir or other type of debut book?
Michelle
I know a lot of people want to know if you are a “pantser” (writing by the seat of your pants) or a “plotter”. I was absolutely an “outliner”. I wrote a mission statement for my memoir before I started writing because I thought it was good to ask, “What are you trying to achieve with this book?” I recommend new writers to identify what the book is for. “Is it purely for entertainment? Are you writing to share your story for advocacy reasons?” I know a lot of authors give the advice to just start writing and I think that is a great place to start if you're stuck or you just want to get something down because it is easier to edit than to start something new. But if you are writing a memoir, I don’t believe it should be for catharsis. I want to respect the reader's time. I think that the processing of your trauma should be done with your therapist, and the book shouldn't just be a regurgitation and detail of everything that happened to you. My point of view is that trauma stories shouldn't be about what you went through, but about how you survived and so that's how I approached writing my story, and I always had the reader in my mind.
Niki
Do you feel optimistic about the future of diverse storytelling?
Michelle
I am optimistic. It is easier now to self-publish and self-promote more than ever. I had a non-traditional publishing journey. I was agented and my book went out on submission to all the big publishers for a year and I just kept hearing over and over from publishers that they are just printing something exactly like my book or that we already have books like yours but I'm like, how can that be since it's my life story? It was very hurtful and hard to accept because being on submission is the worst kind of torture anyway.
Niki
Do you feel like that was a thinly veiled way of publishers saying, “We reached our quota of AAPI authors.”?
Michelle
I don't know. There are more books now from Asian American writers about mental health and some wonderful ones like Stephanie Foo’s What My Bones Know, which is about complex PTSD and I highly recommend it. I think there is room for my book. After that one year on submission, we went wide in the publishing industry and once you've submitted a book, you can't resubmit it to the same publisher for a certain number of years, so I took my shot, and it didn't take. I am now under different representation with a Korean American agent, and I really wish I had signed with her to begin with. My first agent was amazing - She believed in me, but she was very old-school and I'm grateful to her for making my journey real because she was the first one to say yes but I think I would have done things a little bit differently if I had the opportunity to do it again. My current agent's recommendation was to shelve this memoir and work on another book, but I needed to get the story out. I didn’t write it to make sure it has a Big 5 Publisher, but I wanted to help people and get it on library shelves. Luckily enough, I happened to move to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where our library system has its own publisher, and they accepted my book. It has been an amazing journey. There are many ways to get your book out into the world. That is why I am optimistic about diverse storytelling. You will hear a lot of no's matter who you are but don't give up – there’s always a way!
Niki
Do you have other current or recent book recommendations, or are there authors that you're currently following?
Michelle
Absolutely, I am just in awe of E.J. Koh, whose memoir is The Magical Language of Others. She has a new novel out called The Liberators. She is amazing. Grace Talusan is a mentor of mine. She wrote The Body Papers that is superb. I recently read Daughters of Shandong by Eve J. Chung. I'm a daughter of Shandong as well, and I've never read a book that was specifically about my province like that.
I read a lot of memoirs and books by Asian American authors, but I'm always reading, and I always have an audiobook playing. I love One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston, which is a great escape book.
Niki
Thank you for sharing your story! I appreciate that your book treats mental health as a journey, and it is great to see that there is more open discussion about it.
Michelle
My dream is for my book to reach the people that need it. It’s great that Pima County Public Library is carrying it and if, by chance, other people who belong to other libraries are seeing this and would consider requesting it for their library, I would really appreciate it because I was the terrified kid going down the library aisle trying to find a single person who was okay after a bipolar diagnosis. I wanted to know that after being hospitalized at age 20 that you can still have hope and lead a normal life. There are such high suicide rates for people with severe mental health conditions because the stigma is the belief that there is no future and that's why they give up.
But that's why we must share more stories like this.
