Privilege and Perspective: A Q&A with Weike Wang
Acclaimed author Weike Wang’s brand-new novel Rental House follows Keru and Nate, a couple grappling with mid-life, marriage and complicated family ties. Readers follow along with Keru and Nate on two vacations at different points in their marriage — if you think your family is complicated, read this book. Weike joined blog writer Isabelle McConville to chat about privilege, perspective, torturing your characters, Kafka and more, down below.
Hardcover $28.00
Rental House: A Novel
Rental House: A Novel
By Weike Wang
In Stock Online
Hardcover $28.00
National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 author Weike Wang asks questions of home, family and identity in one big-hearted story.
National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 author Weike Wang asks questions of home, family and identity in one big-hearted story.
IM: My name is Isabelle McConville and I am the blog writer here at Barnes & Noble. I am so excited to be here with Weike Wang, a 5 under 35 National Book Foundation author, a PEN/Hemingway Award and Whiting Award author of Chemistry, Joan is Okay and her brand-new novel, Rental House. Weike, thank you so much for being here today.
WW: Thank you for inviting me.
IM: Can you please set up the story of your new novel for us?
WW: It’s a story set over two vacations, looking at a marriage over time. The couple — Keru and Nate —are in their thirties. I’m in my thirties and I’m discovering that it’s a very interesting decade. I teach a lot of students in their twenties, and they’re always asking, ‘what’s going to happen?’ Your thirties are a fascinating time; oftentimes you’re married, and you’re making these really big decisions: do I want kids? Where are we going to live? How’s our jobs? Are we stable? It’s also the time when parents need you. Sometimes they’re aging and they need help, and a lot of that tension starts to boil over. I wanted to look at this universal experience of going through marriage, especially after five years, and again after 10 years. What is it like navigating tension with family members and your in-laws after some time? Are we still getting along? Are we not getting along? How do you deal with these universal issues that separate families, like the black sheep of the family, changing friends, changing friend groups, and finding out that maybe it’s just Keru and Nate supporting each other by the end. It’s figuring out how to navigate that landscape and how to survive.
IM: It’s such a tumultuous time for them too; they’re both navigating their thirties and Keru is staring down her 40th birthday that she may or may not have a party for, but they’re just coming out of the pandemic, too. You did this in Joan is Okay as well, but I thought your inclusion of the COVID pandemic was really interesting, because not only are Keru and Nate grappling with being with each other all the time in marriage, but they’re also just coming out of being forced to be with each other all the time with the pandemic. I’m really curious about when authors decide to include or exclude the pandemic, and I know lots of people have very strong opinions on this.
WW: As you said, it’s the tail end of it, so the pandemic doesn’t feature prominently. I was thinking about this book during the pandemic when there was this desire to travel, but you couldn’t go anywhere. I was imagining all these different vacations I could go on, and they weren’t even extravagant vacations. I wasn’t even thinking of going to Italy — I just wanted to go to the Catskills. I wanted to hike a mountain or something, and you couldn’t even do that. I had this appreciation of vacations that are closer, but then you think about it and you’re like, ‘if I go on vacation, I’m just seeing these same people again!’ What would be the point of that? That made me think about the bubble; people bubbled up during the pandemic, and in this case, a vacation is like a bubble. I’m generally okay with writing about the pandemic. It was tumultuous, but it was the fabric of that time period. I think it really changed some people; people who were naturally a bit of a hermit became even more hermitic, and people who really wanted to travel had extravagant travel years and overdid it. It changed people’s perception of time and place immediately after.
IM: I really love what you said about planning these vacations, going on them and realizing you bring yourself anywhere you go. It’s something that can be really scary, but also might be comforting at times. I wonder if that manifested in Keru and Nate at all?
WW: A little bit, but it’s almost like you bring a stranger version of yourself, right? You want to bring your best self on vacation because you’re trying to get that quality time in. If you’re a socially anxious person, sometimes you overcompensate. You plan too much, and Keru is much more of a planner. Nate is in a mid-life lull, so without the structure of their day, without work, without having their routine, a lot of things can collapse. They’re realizing there’s a void, and don’t know how to fill it. They’re wondering if they’re enough to fill that void, or do they need other people, other relationships or other friendships?
IM: What made you first want to write this novel and where did it really start for you? Was there a certain scene you wrote first?
“The hallmark of fiction is you have to torture your characters . . . if you’re afraid to put them through obstacles and make them uncomfortable, you’re not doing your job as a writer.”
WW: It started with my dream of going to Cape Cod that has never manifested. I lived in Boston for 10 years, I drove to Cape Cod once and drove back, but I’ve never stayed in a cabin there. I wrote the first half in two months. I’m currently working on a project that’s in a similar lane, which is also coming together quickly. The first half came together right away, and then I was just very interested in these characters. I thought, why not torture them and see what happens in five years? The hallmark of fiction is you have to torture your characters. I was telling my students this: if you’re afraid to put them through obstacles and make them uncomfortable, you’re not doing your job as a writer. I was thinking, can they recover from this vacation? Can they learn from it? Do they learn nothing from it? I wanted them to have this enthusiasm of trying it again and seeing if they get same results.
IM: I think that’s reflective of real life, whether it’s with a vacation, a friendship, a job or a romantic relationship. We tend to repeat patterns, but we think we’re doing it differently. I really liked seeing that in Keru and Nate. Did any of these characters come first for you?
WW: It came from Keru. I was in Condé Nast, and I was getting so lost in the elevators. I couldn’t figure them out, and then I saw this girl who was going in and out of them so easily and figuring out how to get on any of the floors. She was so efficient. I was thinking about someone who is very put together, someone who would be very hard to rattle. That was my mindset. I wanted a very corporate person, almost like a girl I wish I had become. I wanted that kind of strong female character. I thought Nate would be a good foil for her. They have a racial divide, but not a huge class divide, and they both experience a little bit of loneliness in their family, so that’s what molds them together. From there, I built out the family.
IM: One of my favorite parts of this book was when Keru tells Ethan to use a coaster. I found myself relating to her in that moment, and I think it tells us a lot about who she is. She’s so put together, almost to a fault. And then, seeing someone like Ethan who has seemingly no care for anything, just gruff and rough, slamming his coffee down on the table, it made me angry! Her snapping at him was very cathartic.
WW: There are all of these micro things that start to bother her. This book is all about family and how those small things start to expand into big things. With family, you can start with something small, and it can escalate into something devastating. Those are the details I like. I had a lot of fun writing that scene.
IM: I think with that one action, someone on the outside might think he’s just putting down his coffee, but to Keru, it means everything he’s ever done, and everything hasn’t. I also think it’s a bit reflective of the deep-seated rage that Keru has — which you have written in your characters before — that seems to manifest in her throwing things. What made you want to write her that way?
I like to give a little bit of rage to my female characters . . . it goes against this expectation of the woman always having to be this maternal place of refuge. I liked putting a bit of chaos into her.”
WW: I was reading A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf, and there’s this line about how the female writer is always expected to write calmly, and not vengefully, ragefully or full of emotion. She has to write wisely, calmly and carefully, otherwise, it’s for her and not for the characters. I thought about how controlled Woolf is in her language, but also how hard it must have been for her to have been a writer during that time. I like to give a little bit of rage to my female characters. It’s fun to write and it goes against this expectation of the woman always having to be this maternal place of refuge. I liked putting a bit of chaos into her. It adds to the comedy, and it speaks to what draws me to people. I like the unpredictable.
IM: I don’t think any of my favorite characters have ever been perfect, or calm and collected. That’s what makes a really interesting character. What draws you toward writing these types of complex family stories and what made you want to write about these dysfunctional relationship dynamics?
WW: A huge book that stayed with me was The Corrections; the experience of reading that book with this totally dysfunctional family felt like staring at an intense light bulb for hundreds of pages. That’s what family is. You’re on these vacations together and there’s no mood lighting. There’s no ambient lighting. You’re just staring at a 100-watt light bulb, especially if there’s a lot of strife going on. If there are disagreements, ongoing tensions, if people are not healthy, if there are money disputes; those things get really magnified, and I wanted to recreate that in something shorter. I like to write smaller books. I was also reading Desperate Characters by Paula Fox while I was writing this book. There’s this childless couple who are fighting through mid-life and figuring out how to survive. Not only are those family tensions relatable and universal, but they’re true. Every family is unhappy in their own way. That way might be funny for someone else — obviously, not for you if you’re going through it — but there’s that comedic relief of seeing that kind of train wreck, understanding it, empathizing with it, and feeling glad that it’s not you in that situation. There’s kind of a communal misery. Misery can be funny, despair can be funny. I like exploring that in families because nothing is off limits for most families. It’s like, ‘okay, fine, you went there, but I still have to love you. I still have to spend time with you.’
IM: I think because they’re oftentimes the people who know us the best, so they tend to know exactly how to get under your skin. Whenever I read about a dysfunctional family, it always ends up being one of my favorite kinds of books. Can you walk us through writing the opening of this book where Keru and Nate have a disagreement on what to name their dog? That scene hooked me right away.
WW: I essentially took my dog and just blew it up — I wanted a huge sheep dog. I just thought it’d be ridiculous to have a sheep dog in a city, and the dog is Nate’s idea. There’s this ongoing joke about naming dogs after starch objects. I was thinking about how to work that into something about language, and Keru speaks Chinese. She wants to call the dog Huajuan, which is like a swirl bun, and Nate just can’t pronounce it. They settle on the name Mantou, which is a little bit more pronounceable for him, but it just means steam bun. This disagreement about being able to pronounce the dog’s name evolves a little bit, because their parents don’t really know how to interact with the dog, and sometimes don’t call the dog by that name. I wanted the dog to be a character as well, even though the dog can’t speak and the dog obviously doesn’t know its own name.
IM: I think that scene reflects a lot of what we see Keru and Nate clash over later in the novel, too. There’s a moment where they have an argument over the words expat and immigrant, which I found really interesting. What role does language play in their cultural divide and what made you want to write about that?
WW: I’m bilingual, so I speak to my family in Chinese, and I speak to the world in English. English has always been my working language and my writing language. I always think language is fun to play with; as a writer, you’re just obsessed with words. That was a no brainer for me. The idea of if language affects cognition or does cognition affect language stuck out to me; I think in some cases, language affects cognition. When you decide to call someone an expat versus an immigrant, you’re already dividing them in your head. There are certain ways that language conditions you. What’s the difference between patriotism and nationalism, to be a nationalist versus a patriot? A patriot is better, and a nationalist is worse, even though you just love your country. I think Keru sees through the nuances of language and how it divides people because she’s had to think about language, and she’s had to think about translating. She’s had to think about what certain things mean, and Nate has never really had to think about that until he met Keru. They have this clash of always confronting each other’s worldview, and sometimes Nate sees that as threatening, and his family can see that as a little bit strange and threatening. There’s also the sense of making the familiar unfamiliar and thinking about the language again. Keru does that for Nate because she knows a different language and it helps her think about different connections.
IM: This is your first book written in the third person perspective. What was that process like and how did it differ from writing your other two books?
WW: I always love first person. First person always feels safe for me because the lens is smaller. With the third person past, you’re traditionally taught that it’s the God lens, it’s the universal lens. I wanted to practice, but in this book, since it goes back and forth from Nate’s perspective to Keru’s perspective, it felt like first person wouldn’t fit. I didn’t want two different voices. I wanted a consistent writer’s voice. Third person helps me fictionalize way more because you see this doll that you can move around and put in different scenes. It made me a bit bolder in decisions of what to do and get more extreme in decisions. There’s always the thought of, ‘would I really say this?’ but I don’t have that in third person. I’m currently in third person again, and there’s something so fun about moving people around and placing them where you want. I had a great time with it.
IM: Keru and Nate are both grappling with issues of generational trauma and questions of generational wealth, or lack of generational wealth. What interested you in writing about that kind of divide between them and their parents?
“How do you live a life of new privilege and new comfort? . . . if you have the privilege, don’t waste it. Don’t waste your time. Don’t waste your privilege. Don’t waste your opportunity.”
WW: I teach at Columbia, UPenn, and Barnard. I see a lot of these very privileged students every day, and I see them grappling with their privilege and what to do with having such a great brain to have gotten into these places. Keru and Nate come from, as I said earlier, similar class levels. Nate’s family is lower middle class, and Keru’s dad came from nothing, but built a career for himself. Both of them make the leap into this new generation of wealth where they both have good jobs, they both have good benefits, they don’t need to go into manual labor, and they don’t need to be very frugal, which Keru’s parents always were. They’re in uncharted territory, and they’re learning how to get used to it. They’re figuring out their lives without having examples. Keru doesn’t want to live like her parents and Nate doesn’t want to live like his. They have no role models or people to help them figure out how they’re going to execute this life. The interesting thing about this is thinking, does that trauma go forward? We’re always saying you have to stop the cycle; sometimes it’s hard to stop and sometimes it’s so conditioned in. How do you live a life of new privilege and new comfort? One of the things I’m always telling my students is, if you have the privilege, don’t waste it. Don’t waste your time. Don’t waste your privilege. Don’t waste your opportunity. I think Keru and Nate know they’re very lucky and they know they’ve worked hard, and they’re trying to make the most of it, but even then, they still have problems. They could have all the resources in the world, and they would still be trying to figure out what to do with this new life.
IM: I loved seeing that idea manifest in the couple they meet on their second vacation, who also have a bit of wealth but are leading totally different lives than Keru and Nate. It was so interesting to see them interact with each other.
WW: Yeah, they’re very confident. They’re very sure of themselves and I wanted that kind of couple in the novel. I think when you meet someone like that in your thirties, when you’re still figuring things out, you might start to think you’re behind and you’re doing something wrong.
IM: Lastly, who are you reading now?
WW: This is going to seem a little strange, but I’m reading The Diaries of Franz Kafka. His diaries have these interesting gems — sometimes he talks about the weather, sometimes he talks about not writing. If it’s January 21st, I’ll read that day and it’ll say something like, ‘Today I suffered in my thoughts.’ It’s kind of funny to read other writers’ despair — especially Kafka, who was such a brilliant writer. It gives me a push and reminds me that if someone like him can write this, I can do it, too.
IM: Thank you so much, for this conversation, Weike.
WW: Thank you for having me.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.