Susan Wan Dolling is a first-generation Chinese American writer who grew up in Hong Kong, lived in Japan, and now calls Austin, Texas, home. She earned an AB in English and Creative Writing and a PhD in Comparative Literature, both from Princeton University, and taught English and Chinese literature at Fordham and the University of Texas at Austin. Her publications include translations of Chinese classical poetry and modern short stories; some of these stories are found in THE COLUMBIA ANTHOLOGY OF MODERN CHINESE LITERATURE (Columbia UP), DEATH IN A CORNFIELD (Oxford UP), BAMBOO SHOOTS AFTER THE RAIN (The Feminist Press), GHOSTS (Two Lines Press), and three short stories in WORDS WITHOUT BORDERS. She has also translated a full-length novel by Wang Wenxing entitled FAMILY CATASTROPHE, which is included in the University of Hawaii Press’s Fiction from Modern China series. THE PRICE OF SUNSHINE is her first original novel.
The Price of Sunshine: “Mahmi and Me”
Mahmi has always felt to me part tame and part wild, part mother, part child. There is something vague about her I have yet to pin down. When people outside the family were about, she appeared like a grown woman, observing social etiquette, behaving as she was expected to behave, but she was somehow more fluid, more vulnerable, more changeable when we were by ourselves, just the two of us.
Novel Chapter
Issue 63, July 2022
The Price of Sunshine: “Returning”
In 1990, I was invited to participate in a delegation of “U.S. writers and publishers” to visit China. Ever since I left Hong Kong all those years ago, I have often felt half in and half out of every place I have lived, not entirely belonging anywhere. On this trip, my role was particularly tricky, as the Chinese treated me as one of the visiting Americans, while the Americans saw me as Chinese.
Novel Chapter
Issue 60, April 2022
Susan Wan Dolling
Susan Wan Dolling is a first-generation Chinese American writer who grew up in Hong Kong, lived in Japan, and now calls Austin, Texas, home. She earned an AB in English and Creative Writing and a PhD in Comparative Literature, both from Princeton University, and taught English and Chinese literature at Fordham and the University of Texas at Austin. Her publications include translations of Chinese classical poetry and modern short stories; some of these stories are found in THE COLUMBIA ANTHOLOGY OF MODERN CHINESE LITERATURE (Columbia UP), DEATH IN A CORNFIELD (Oxford UP), BAMBOO SHOOTS AFTER THE RAIN (The Feminist Press), GHOSTS (Two Lines Press), and three short stories in WORDS WITHOUT BORDERS. She has also translated a full-length novel by Wang Wenxing entitled FAMILY CATASTROPHE, which is included in the University of Hawaii Press’s Fiction from Modern China series. THE PRICE OF SUNSHINE is her first original novel.
The Price of Sunshine: “Mahmi and Me”
Mahmi has always felt to me part tame and part wild, part mother, part child. There is something vague about her I have yet to pin down. When people outside the family were about, she appeared like a grown woman, observing social etiquette, behaving as she was expected to behave, but she was somehow more fluid, more vulnerable, more changeable when we were by ourselves, just the two of us.
Novel Chapter
Issue 63, July 2022
The Price of Sunshine: “Returning”
In 1990, I was invited to participate in a delegation of “U.S. writers and publishers” to visit China. Ever since I left Hong Kong all those years ago, I have often felt half in and half out of every place I have lived, not entirely belonging anywhere. On this trip, my role was particularly tricky, as the Chinese treated me as one of the visiting Americans, while the Americans saw me as Chinese.
Novel Chapter
Issue 60, April 2022