Poured Over: Grace D. Li on Portrait of a Thief

“I really wrote it for me, I didn’t think anything would come about—I wanted something that could bring me a bit of joy, where Asian American characters could live their lives and do something as fun and ridiculous as robbing art museums across the world.” Grace D. Li loves a caper flick, and now she’s written Portrait of a Thief, a caper novel with a very fun Chinese American cast. Grace joins us on the show to talk about the true story that inspired her debut, the Chinese diaspora, calling Texas home, the movies that inspired her fiction, the books she’s reading a recommending now, being a medical student who writes fiction on the side, and much more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer. And we end the episode with a TBR Topoff segment featuring Margie and Marc.

Featured Books:

Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li

Chemistry by Weike Wang

Joan is OK by Weike Wang

The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka

Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok

Fault Lines by Emily Itami

Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional bonus episodes on Saturdays) here, and on your favorite podcast app.

Full transcript for this episode of Poured Over:

Barnes & Noble: I’m Miwa Messer, I’m the host and producer of Poured Over. I’m so excited. We have a debut author with us today Grace D. Li, her new novel, and I should say her first novel Portrait of a Thief, and it’s just out from Tiny Reparations press which is Phoebe Robinson’s imprint with Penguin Dutton books. And Grace, I’m so excited to meet you. But who are you? Because I think there’s some folks who don’t know who you are yet.

Grace D. Li: Oh, hi, everyone. Hi, Miwa. It’s so great to be here. I am Grace Li. I am the author of Portrait of a Thief, a heist novel about college students stealing back looted art from Western museums and inspired by a true story. I am a current medical student at Stanford University. I am super excited to have my book come out very soon. I am also a little bit nervous, but glad to be here.

B&N: Okay, the nervous part, you don’t need to worry about that. We’re just going to have a lot of fun. And folks, just be prepared. There’s gonna be some Fast and the Furious conversation. I’m just warning you now. So Portrait of a Thief, we’ve got five characters, we’ve got Will Chen, his sister, Irene, their friend, Daniel, who’s not quite a childhood friend but they’ve known him for about a decade. Yeah. And then we’ve got Alex who has a connection to Will. Get there later on. And then there’s Lily, who is Irene’s roommate at Duke. And Will kicks everything off when he steals something. And he’s called out and suddenly they have a mysterious benefactor. And suddenly these five kids are set up to pull off this crazy heist, which in fact, is based on a true story, would you let readers know how that story started?

GDL: It started several years ago. Chinese are began mysteriously disappearing from Western museums. So there was a string of robberies across the western world, no one knew who is behind it, even now, no one knows who’s behind it. And the really interesting thing here is that all the pieces that were getting stolen had previously been looted from China before. And so there are a lot of theories being floated around about who’s behind it, if maybe China finally wants its looted art back. And when I heard about all these thefts, as someone who has always loved heist movies, and also at that time was a recent college graduate, I wanted to write a story about what it would look like if it were Chinese American college students who decided to steal back this art and how they would pull something like this off.

B&N: And the art in question in your novel comes from the Summer Palace, which was destroyed by French and British troops in the late 1800s. If I have my historical facts, right, and a great many objects ended up in Paris, and also throughout Scandinavia, which is a little different. I didn’t realize that piece of it. And you have a great set piece that happens in Stockholm. But I had no idea that there’s a museum in Bergen, Norway. I knew there was plenty of Art in London, and I knew about the Paris collection. And certainly we have quite a lot in New York and Boston and other places in the States. But it’s wild to me, that the Scandinavia. So we’ve got these five kids, all of whom want to do well in school. In fact, Daniel’s about to enter med school.

GDL: He’s applying into med school right now. So a lot of that process was fun and stressful to relive.

B&N: Will is a senior graduating senior at Harvard who’s not entirely sure what he’s going to do next, his little sister, Irene, though she has her entire life planned out. She knows what her next internship is going to be. She knows where, she’s a rising senior at Duke as is Lily. And Lily is a mechanical engineer student who also is a street racer.

GDL: You know, mechanical engineering, you can put things apart, put it back together.

B&N: Exactly. And then there’s Alex who W ill has met on a dating app. She’s at MIT, but she withdraws because she’s going to go take a job early at Google because frankly, her parents need financial help. And they have a restaurant in Chinatown in New York. And they are not living a comfortable middle class existence. And Alex really wants to make sure that her grandmother and her parents and her siblings are taken care of and she’s their ticket. And not that that’s ever been specifically said to her, but she definitely feels a responsibility towards her family. And to a certain extent all of these kids feel a responsibility to their family. But let’s start with Alex. And then I want to go to Lily because Lily also has a really great background.

GDL: Yeah, so I really love Alex because she is young, like talented Asian American software engineer, and she went to MIT and it was basically all her dreams. All her ambitions concentrated in this one place, but when she gets an offer to go to Silicon Valley for all this money, it seems like really the only path that she can take. And so she’s there she is working as a software engineer, she’s in Silicon Valley making a bunch of money, and yet somehow still not quite satisfied with her life. And so, when Will call her up with this offer that is irresponsible and reckless and unlike any of the decisions she’s made before, but also represents this opportunity to earn this money, start the life that she finally wants to live, she can’t really say no.

B&N: She’s also a point of view that we do see, and we don’t see. I mean, she’s a restaurant kid. And it’s not the first time we’ve seen a restaurant kid show up in American literature by any stretch of the imagination, but you also gave her a way out. I mean, the restaurant was not going to be the only thing that she ever did. Silicon Valley may or may not be the only thing that Alex ends up doing. But how did Alex’s a character start for you?

GDL: In writing this book, I started with the heist archetypes that I needed. Every heist story, you need a leader, you need a getaway driver, you need a thief, a con artist and a hacker. So when I got to the hacker role, I thought, you know, what is our modern day equivalent of a hacker it’s got to be a software engineer, there always stories about these big tech companies recruiting people who are fresh out of college or haven’t even left college yet. And so I knew I kind of wanted that for Alex. And I knew I needed to give her a compelling reason to leave MIT for Silicon Valley. In terms of her background, I lived in New York City for a couple of years. I love going to Chinatown, on my mom’s side, in China, we have family that owns a restaurant there. That’s how I got the restaurant name. So it is no mileage to my family in China. It was really fun to write Alex and to make her this sort of complicated character who has this heavy weight of family and what she feels she owes them even when all they really want is for her to succeed and to be happy. And also just to give her her own dreams and ambitions and navigate balancing that with all that she wants to do for her family.

B&N: And Alex’s family is two generations and she’s the third generation of her family to be in America. So her connections to China are not as tight as say, Daniel, who we’re going to get to in a minute, but there’s also Lily, the getaway driver who grew up in Galveston, and I love this character too, because kind of like yeah, you know, I can take anything apart and I can rebuild it. She has a great scene in Paris where she gets can go bad rental car, a terrible, terrible rental car, which felt like an homage to Fast and Furious three. But but let’s talk about Lily for a second. Her parents escaped China after the Cultural Revolution, which was a very scary moment in Chinese history for a lot of folks, and they have not maintained connections. They do not have family, their family and Galveston, Texas and you’ve lived in Houston as a kid, right?

GDL: We are currently recording from my childhood home in Pearland, Texas an hour away from Galveston, where I would always go for our family beach vacations. I spent the majority of my childhood in Texas and a lot of Lily and her experiences in Texas. Come from my own experiences growing up here.

B&N: What’s your favorite part of being a Texan?

GDL: I love Texas for all its flaws. I learned a lot about it. We had a year of Texas history, which apparently other states don’t do so in my time away from Texas, I’m gradually learning about all the things that are special to this place that I used to take for granted.

B&N: And Lily doesn’t take Texas for granted though. Galveston is home, Galveston is the place that she dreams of Galveston is the place where she became Lily, the car fanatic, the mechanic and a pinch kind of men she’s a really terrific gal. But if it wasn’t for her roommate, Irene Chen, the most perfect person on the planet, although she is a little snippy, which is kind of fun. Lily probably wouldn’t have become part of this crew, but she trusts her roommate. She trusts Irene because Irene can do wrong. I keep poking at Irene because we know she’s not perfect, but God she’s a fun character. Irene and her brother, Will, have a really great sibling relationship and there were times too, Will is the oldest but there were times to where I felt like Irene read like she was the older sibling. And Will was the baby brother but let’s talk about Irene and Will for a second and their relationship to each other because that really informs how Daniel comes into play.

GDL: I’m the oldest of three siblings and so I love writing siblings for these characters, Will, he is the one who kicks everything off. He is the heist later art history major and to Irene he seems at times both perfect, you know the Harvard son but also irresponsible and that he goes to Harvard this place where Every immigrant parents dreams of sending their child and he ends up choosing art history, which like, I read looks at that. And she’s like, where’s the job market? Will, like what are you doing with all these opportunities that you’ve been given? And for Irene, she’s our con artist. And so she is able to talk her way out of anything. She is at Duke setting public policy to the outside world, she’s used to getting exactly what she wants all the time, and Will looks at his younger sister and thinks, you know, she is everything I am, but better. And so for both of them, they see the other person as who they ought to live up to, and never really talked about that. Because you know, even though they have conflict throughout the book, they are close siblings, when Will asks Irene on this heist, she thinks is a terrible idea. But he’s her brother. And so of course, he’s going to say yes, and I think some of that came from my own relationship with my siblings, where I love them all. We’re all very close. And at the same time, I look at them. And I think these are really great people. These are really great kids. You know, we’re constantly whether deliberately or not measuring ourselves using the metrics of each other.

B&N: And this brings us to Daniel, our thief with the very talented hands. I don’t know if that means Daniel is going to be a surgeon because he’s also applying to medical school. But Daniel has a different background. From the other four. He is a kid who has come to the States with his family, his mother was very sick, they came to the States for treatment, his dad fell in love with America almost before Daniel did, even though Daniel’s younger and that doesn’t always happen. And Daniel’s Dad, we’re not going to tell people what Daniel’s dad does for a living his story, but I think readers should come to that information on their own. It’s a moment where you think, uh huh, okay, I don’t know how these kids are gonna get out of this. But okay, and Daniel’s relationship with his dad. It’s very sweet. And it’s very different from what you typically see as either an Asian parent child or an Asian American parent child is this sort of cold ferocity that seems to come along for some between that and and yet, here we are with these two men who are trying to figure out where they fit with each other, as Mom’s gone. Each has a different view of where they are in America and where they are in their lives. And yet, they do love each other. It’s really sweet. So can we talk about that relationship for a second, because it feels like that was a really important point for you to make as the writer.

GDL: Absolutely. So I loved writing Daniel and his dad, the big thing that I wanted to write about here is the way that Chinese parents express love, and how much that varies with Daniel and his dad, there is so much love between them, that is hard for either of them to see. And so Daniel constantly feels like he’s not good enough for his father, like he is expected to be someone else. But we as the reader, from an objective point of view, can see all the small things that Daniel can’t about the ways that his father loves him. And I really wanted to talk about also the difference between being in the US as a Chinese American and immigrating here in your early years versus immigrating here later, where Daniel’s dad comes here, and he is so determined to be an American to fit in to do exactly what he’s supposed to do versus Daniel, he left his whole life behind. And he was still growing, still trying to figure out who he is. He comes to this new country, it just him is that his mom is gone. And he feels out of place. No, and even among other Chinese Americans who feel so comfortable in America, it doesn’t really feel like this is the place for him, but also in China, where he thinks about as home. He has all his family there, but his mother is no longer around. And so he was a really interesting and difficult character to write because he is dealing with so much in terms of figuring out who he is and navigating his relationship with his dad.

B&N: So we’ve got Will, got Irene. We’ve got Lily, and Alex and Daniel. So we’ve got the crew of five who showed up first? Was it Will?

GDL: It was Will.

B&N: Okay, so how did you get into his head? How did you know this was the kid?

GDL: When I first learned about these heists? I thought, This is so fun. And I love heist movies, my siblings and I growing up, we’d always talk, we’ve got to plan out who we’d be in a heist. And so that was the background I was coming in. And I thought it’s important to return booted or if someone had asked me to do this, oh, maybe I would have said yes. And then I thought about it for a couple seconds more. And I was like, Oh, absolutely not. I need to go to medical school. My parents would kill me. Everything could go wrong. And so I started thinking what kind of person would say yes, someone who is you know, a little bit like me, but also feels really strongly about the He’s issues and maybe you know, doesn’t quite know what his future looks like. And so I wanted to create Will, who is this perfect Chinese American son, he’s at Harvard, he’s achieved this dream. He’s like this very ambitious young Chinese American. And yet he’s not fully satisfied with his life. And even after achieving what many of you as the end goal of being at this great school, he doesn’t know what happens next. But then the heist presents itself to him. And he thinks this is my chance to do something to make a difference in the world in a way that is pretty risky, but also really exciting. And this huge opportunity when he had previously expected to end up going into art history, finding a job where he never fully feels fulfilled, but is still trying to do the best that you can to do what he loves, but also to as his parents hope for him and be his parent’s American dream.

B&N: Will also has a great line when he’s describing what art history, he’s actually challenging someone who’s an employee at the mat in New York, and he says, Well, honestly, I think art history, you think it’s about static collections and things that don’t change. But he said, No, art history really is about the things that change, it’s about change itself, which I think is a really great POV to have, especially if you’re going to go return objects. Let’s talk about the history for a second because the Summer Palace is destroyed by British and French soldiers at the tail end of the 1800s. And the Chinese have left the ruins of this palace as a part. And so you can today you can wander around and be on these grounds that were destroyed. The grounds are so large, it took 4500 Soldiers three days to burn the compound. And it probably took them less time to take what they took and send it to Paris and London, and all of the places where it ended up some in the hands of private collectors, some in museum collections. And you know, there was this idea, and this is the same period, basically when Shanghai is divided up into the French concession and the British concession and the American concession. So there are people in China from the west who are thinking, well, this is mine. They don’t learn to speak Chinese necessarily. They’re eating Western food. They’re dressing western style they’re living. If you’ve ever been to Shanghai and seen the Bund, it looks like Europe. But this is a really interesting way for you to write about colonialism. And a really interesting way for you to talk about the Chinese diaspora.

GDL: Yes, I think that though, this is a heist book, I really think of it as an identity book disguised as a heist book, because all of my feelings about being Chinese American being part of the Chinese diaspora are in some way here. And I grew up I was born and raised here in the US. And yet, like many Asian Americans here, I never felt like I fully fit in, I was often asked where I was really from, I was complimented on my English. And also when I went back to see my family in China, because all my extended family is there, I would get questions that were well meaning about whether I could speak Chinese whether I could use chopsticks. And now that I’m older, I can recognize that all of that came from a place of love and pride for you know, their American relatives, and wanting to make me feel comfortable. But as a young adult, as a teenager, as a kid, I felt where can I go, where I can fully belong. This book has a lot of my thoughts about AR and colonialism and returning looted art. I wanted to address all that in the context of what it means to be Chinese American, and the feeling of displacement that can be applied to both art and all of us that are part of the diaspora.

B&N: And it’s really fun watching these five kids evolve. Everyone has their own version of what’s going on and how they respond to each other and how they respond to the situation. And it’s all very fun as it unfolds. But there’s one point in the book, it’s early on, and they are figuring out how they’re going to make all of this happen. And they give themselves homework you. I suspect this might be based on your own homework as well. But they have the books that they’ve read, and the movies that they’ve watched. Now granted, there’s other stuff that they’re figuring out like how to break into security systems and how not to get caught. But there’s a little bit of fun homework. What did you read? And what did you watch? And I know you said earlier that you and your siblings are big fans of heist movies, and I suspect there’s a lot of good stuff in there specifically for Portrait of a Thief What were you looking at? What were you reading?

GDL: I love this question. And I love doing research for Portrait of the Thief because I got to watch all my favorite things and call it work. And so the scene that I think you’re referencing where all the characters sit around taking notes while they watch Ocean’s 11 I did exactly that. I pulled it up on my laptop, I press play. And then I had my notepad out, I was writing down every plot point that happened because I knew to write a heist, I had to have everything planned out. So I rewatched all the oceans movies, I went through the Fast and Furious movies, there’s a really fun Jackie Chan movie called CZ 12 that I discovered, and it’s about Jackie Chan, stealing back the Zodiac heads, the same Zodiac heads from my book. And he does it in a really fun way. I won’t spoil anything. But there is a scene with skydiving and also a giant volcano. So it is a little different from my book. But I had so much fun watching it. I ended up watching all these movies, I read a lot of nonfiction about art heists and Art Crime, because I wanted it to be realistic. And I am actually a tour guide at one of Stanford’s art museums. I also did some walking around there checking out security cameras, that sort of thing.

B&N: Here we have this amazing cast of Asian American kids who, in some cases fly under the radar in the larger society, because they’re playing the roles that have sort of excellent student, excellent student, all this kind of thing. But you have sold the rights to Portrait of a Thief to Netflix. It’s in development now, which I’m very excited about. I’m also assuming that because we now live in this time that we live in, they’re not going to do what they’ve done previously, and change all of the Asian and Asian American characters to white people. There was that movie the kids from MIT, who won kajillions of dollars in Vegas, counting cards playing blackjack, the movie version took out all the Asian kids on it was like, Well, what?

GDL: I think I watched that movie. And I thought, How fun. And I also thought, another movie with no Asian characters.

B&N: Well, and your executive producing the Netflix piece. So we’re not entirely sure when you sleep because you are a medical student and have written this novel. Streaming series which feel free to not sleep. What’s that like switching between mediums writing a book, obviously, you’ve got these beats, right? Even bring the team together. They do this, they do this. And I’m trying obviously to stay away from spoiling. There’s a reversal. And then everyone gets back together. Like we know there is this classic structure to heist films, because that’s the fun of it. High stakes heist films, all of this fun. So you know how you’ve got to structure this thing. You know who your characters are? Now you’re working on a screenplay. But is there any time for you to be surprised by what happens?

GDL: Absolutely, yes. And I think that’s the reason why I write books is because I love the surprise, I write them because I want to read the book. But it doesn’t exist yet. And so I figure I have to write it. When I was writing Portrait of a Thief, I knew who the characters were. And I knew the loose plot outline in terms of these are the beats that we have to hit. And this is how everything comes together in the end. But I think writing the individual scenes where they get to know each other where they’re putting new, surprising situations, all of that felt like discovering them in a new way. Because I think it’s different to write it out to see them interact in ways that I wasn’t previously expecting from them. And so even in writing it where I had it plotted out, there were things that would happen, where new possibilities, would it branch out?

B&N: Do we have an example that we can give people without spoiling anything, we are talking about a caper novel. So it’s kind of hard to get into details, but is there a moment or character that surprised you more than the others?

GDL: In actuality, the big thing was when they first scattered Will and Irene didn’t get into a fight. There was interest, no fight there. All that happened was Daniel’s dad discovered what was going on. And they scattered. But then I got there. And I was like, something is missing. There’s an aspect of the personal nature where we have Daniel, but I want to bring in everyone else. And we have this rising tension. So I can talk about the tension between siblings in just a more general way.

B&N: Okay, so you raise the stakes, basically, you raise the stakes and gave them consequences because Irene and Will, it’s always very clear that they’re kind of a unit even though they’re not going to swim together even though they are pardon the pun thick as thieves. So terrible. But I just couldn’t resist. But again, this brings me back to something I said earlier, which is there’s a lot of heart and soul in this book, but it’s not just about diaspore That it’s not just a caper flick. You can read this on a couple of different levels and you are published by tiny repetitions, which is Phoebe Robinson’s imprint. It has a very specific mission, which I love. And I think you’re the third book they’ve published so far. They’re more to come. How does that feel? To have a publisher whose mission is one you share ?

GDL: It was really a dream come true for me on every level, it was so surprising because I finished writing this book during the pandemic. And I really wrote it for me, I didn’t think anything would come about, I wanted something that could bring me a bit of joy, where Asian American characters could live their lives and do something as fun and ridiculous as robbing art museums across the world. And so I was surprised and delighted when it got an offer of publication. And even more so because I think in an industry that is largely white, that my story about Asian Americans finding their place in the world, anti colonialism and diaspora could find a home with Tiny Reparations, where my editor is a black woman, the founder of Tiny Rep is a Black woman, almost everyone on my team is a person of color. It just is so unusual, I think in publishing, and just really wonderful to work with people who really, really get the themes of my book.

B&N: So let’s talk about some of the writers who have influenced you because you did also study creative writing when you were an undergrad. So you’ve had a double major biology and creative writing.

GDL: Yeah, a major in biology and a minor in creative, right.

B&N: Okay, so yeah, but that’s not a tiny workload. So how did you end up choosing creative writing for a minor, but really, who are the writers that come back to or who are the writers who have had the biggest influence on you?

GDL: I have always loved to read. When I was in elementary school, I believe my parents had a meeting with my school librarian, because they were concerned, I was reading too much. And my librarian said something like, you know, that’s not usually an issue, I think she’ll turn out okay. So it was very natural. I think that when I got the opportunity for the first time in college to study creative writing, I took it. It was also in college, where I had my first real exposure to Asian American literature. And so I still remember the very first book that I read, where I really felt represented in and that was chemistry by waco Huang that book absolutely changed my life because it made me realize that stories about people who looked like me who had similar thoughts and experiences had a place in literature, all the stories I had written beforehand had been about white people. And that’s part of the experience of growing up in America consuming media where no one ever looks like you are you think, oh, maybe this media is just not meant for people like me, and so I will fit myself into it. However, I can.

B&N: Have you had a chance to read Joan Is Okay yet? Yeah, it’s one of these new novel. It’s so good.

GDL: It’s so good. I run the Stanford med API book club and we are we’re reading it this weekend. We read Chemistry for the very first book club Iran, and now we’re reading Joan Is Okay, so I’m in the middle of my reread. It’s so good. I love all her work.

B&N: She’s so so funny. And Julie Otsuka, actually her new novel, The Swimmers. The first half about the actual swimmers in this pool is wildly funny, and I just I always appreciate a little bit of humor in my fiction, but who else?

GDL: Weike Wang. I recently read Fault Lines by Emily Itami. I adored it was also so funny. I loved Searching for Sylvie Lee, by Jean Kwok. I’ve read so many books in recent years written by Asian American woman, and it was something I never imagined. I never thought it was even possible. And now it’s a lot of what I read. So I feel immensely lucky to be alive and to be writing and to be reading in this time is such a privilege.

B&N: Okay, so we’ve talked books, we’ve talked movies, but like you, I am a huge fan. And I’m going to totally admit this on forever. But anyone who knows me in real life knows this is true. I really liked the Fast and the Furious movies. I have all the brain span in the world for beautiful books and all the patients in the world for beautiful books. But unfortunately, my taste in movies makes Netflix and other streamers think I’m 12, which is fine. But do you have a favorite Fast and the Furious movie?

GDL: Of course, Fast Five. It was the first Fast and Furious movie I saw in theaters. And it was just so much fun. I think I’m like you have in books. I want something beautiful something moving something sweeping in movies. I want cars, I want action, drama. I love the Fast and Furious movies all so much. And I think it’s so fun because while they have all the street racing the highest, each one becomes bigger and bigger. They also have this bit of a core about family. I love those moments, a few quiet moments that we get into where you know, you think all these people are coming together and they all really love each other.

B&N: Here you are taking big political ideas, like colonialism and reparations. Let’s face it, returning art is a form of reparation and diaspora and family because family can be complicated even when you love them. And you’re influenced by the pacing of movies, certainly, and the classic idea of a caper. And yet here we are with this really original fun novel from a med student. What’s next for you? I mean, are you going to practice medicine and write novels on the side? Like, what are we looking at here?

GDL: That is the goal. That’s the plan. I will say this whole experience has been really, really weird for me. Because, you know, for the past several years, I’ve known that I was going into medicine. And now I’m in medical school writing was this thing that I kind of did on the side I didn’t really talk about, no, my friends were publishing papers, and I was sitting away on my little computer capping on my stories. And now all of a sudden, I have a book coming out. And the med student aspect is the little bonus, which I’ve always thought of, as the other way around. I’m starting my clerkships in the hospital in June. And so I will be spending all of my waking hours likely, in the hospital learning, surgery and medicine and all the other things that go into becoming a doctor. And then afterwards, I will go into residency and practice medicine, hopefully, find a little time to also get some writing done.

B&N: So wait, is residency when you pick your specialty?

GDL: Yes, so you med school, you do everything you do a month of each thing you rotate out, and then you apply into a residency where you do something specific?

B&N: Do you have an idea of what you might want to do? Or are you still kind of like, I’ll get there when I get there. But I mean, you sort of need to have an idea, don’t you? It’s like starting a novel, you sort of need an idea of where you’re going, you may not know exactly how you’re gonna get who’s gonna show up on the way but you should have a basic blueprint.

GDL: I have a general idea. I think I have done a bit of process of elimination, I prefer medicine over surgery. And I prefer, I think, a specialties where I get longitudinal patient contact. And so as opposed to emergency medicine, where you see someone once and then never again, I think I’d like to get to know my patients over a longer course of time, I think I want to do something where I can work with communities of color and low income communities and do the sort of community work that I really like. But that leaves my options still pretty open. I have these big buckets, everyone says that once you start in the hospital on your rotations, things change. So don’t hold me to it. If in two years, I’m applying into surgery, but I think I have a vague idea.

B&N: What kind of medicine do you think Daniel ended up studying?

GDL: I think he’s going into surgery. I’m very slowly working on something new, it is tentatively set at Sanford med. And so Daniel may have a cameo or a few cameos, I’ve been thinking a lot about what kind of specialty is the best fit for him?

B&N: Do you have a favorite character of the five?

GDL: I don’t have a favorite, I will say that of all of them, Will probably has a little bit more of me, because I started off with him. And he has a lot of my ambition and my uncertainty. But all of them, I wouldn’t have been able to write them if they weren’t me in some way.

B&N: What do you want people to know? What do you want readers to know about Portrait of a Thief in your gang of five?

GDL: I think the big thing for me is that, though this is a heist novel, the characters are really the heart of it. And so I hope that there’s the fun and the action of the street races and the highest and all the adventure. But ultimately, the core of the book. And what was most rewarding and valuable for me in writing it was these characters as they figure out their identity and their relationships and who they want to be in their early 20s.

B&N: You know, Grace, before I let you go, there’s one thing that I really and I’ve hit on this a couple of times in the span of this conversation, because it’s a really important point, your characters all represent different pieces of an Asian American experience. And in some cases, and honestly, is this why I wanted to lead with Alex and Lily Absolutely, because everyone has a different story. And I really liked this woman. I like all of your characters, because I really liked those women. So can we talk about that for a second? I mean, that was intentional, right? You wanted to make sure that people understood that we’re not just cookie cutter?

GDL: Yes. So I think that obviously there are a lot of stereotypes about Asian Americans as the model minority as the perpetual foreigner. Something I wanted to address in this book is the fact that the Asian American experience and the Chinese American Experience vary so widely based on you know, location family, when you came to the United States. And so the idea that all Chinese Americans are one sort of way is never really true. And Alex is fully Americans. She is third generation American. And I think that people in their expectations of what it means to be Chinese American don’t think about the fact that many Chinese Americans have been here for a long time. And for Lily, she grew up in Texas, never had much connection to China is still figuring out what she wants out of that relationship. And then we have Daniel who came here when he was 10. And then we have, of course, will and Irene, who is parents immigrated, and they grew up getting what I think many assume is the typical, but also assume it often is the only Chinese American experience of growing up in the Bay Area. Being Chinese American and navigating their identity going back and forth between the US and China.

B&N: You cover a lot of ground with these five characters. I am also going to shut out the family child by Lan Samantha Chang to for listeners who may be looking for something to follow up Portrait of a Thief with a post immigrant novel about a Chinese American family with a restaurant in Wisconsin. And it’s loosely based on The Brothers Karamazov, but it’s pretty great. I think your books are in conversation. I think both of your novels are in conversation and I don’t think you’ve met Lan but if you have a chance I think you guys would get on really really well.

GDL: I’ve been excited for that book for a long time.

B&N: You know, I realize medical school and everything else and you’re running your medical schools book club on top of it, but try and steal some time because it’s totally worth it. Grace, it’s been so much fun hanging out with you but I was promised X amount of time and I don’t want to run over. Thank you so much, Portrait of a Thief is out now.

GDL: Yay!