Wayne was thrilled to talk about why he wrote his latest novel, JOHNNY DELIVERS, in The Miramichi Reader’s exclusive feature.
Wayne’s segment is reproduced below from The Miramichi Reader’s “Why I Wrote This Book” feature, but be sure to check out the other talented writers, Bill Arnott, Hollay Ghadery, and Lucy Black to see why they wrote their books.
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Why I Wrote This Book: Issue #35 — Friends of TMR Fall Releases!
September 8, 2024 by Emma Rhodes
Featuring Bill Arnott, Hollay Ghadery, Lucy Black, and Wayne Ng
Wayne Ng, author of Johnny Delivers (Guernica Editions, November 2024)
The easy answer to why I wrote Johnny Delivers is that I wanted to return to the world of the much-loved and critically acclaimed prequel, Letters From Johnny. But writers have been known to deceive not only readers but themselves.
While I had the plot, setting, characters and themes roughed out, the early drafts of the standalone sequel, Johnny Delivers, were a struggle. I desperately wanted to avoid Asian immigrant tropes of generational and cultural conflict, restaurants and gangs, duty and sacrifice, and emotionally distant parents. Taking it back to the seventies was re-opening wounds of an era when Asian representations generally included the stereotyped, humble, buck-toothed Asian caricature. Such depictions of Chinese made me cringe with shame at my roots and identity.
It wasn’t until I understood how emotionally difficult it was to create fiction from personal experiences that I realized how important the story was for me to move on from the shame. From a craft perspective, scraping the emotional crevasses and harnessing that would make for better writing. It would help create a new narrative while accepting some truths of the time.
For example, just about everyone I knew worked in the hospitality industry. Cultural and generational conflicts were and continue to be wedges in families. And yes, Hong Kong gangs parachuted into Canada in the seventies.
If I was going to write this, I had to expunge how Canada’s institutionalized racism negatively impacted my identity and the generations before me. But I had to do it safely through humour and satire.
The ’70s were my ennui high school years in Toronto. They were dominated by familiar immigrant family issues, a sense of rudderlessness, the indignity of poverty and racial marginalization.
However, something really big happened to Asians then: Bruce Lee burst onto the scene like a super nova and created a new Asian-male masculinity. In doing so, he singularly changed the worldview of Asians and created a new action-figure archetype in entertainment. Sorry, Jackie Chan, but Bruce is still the most recognized and revered East Asian in the world today. Sure, we still have a long way to go, but many recent gains are encouraging—hello, Michelle Yeoh, Simu Liu and Sandra Oh.
It was Bruce Lee who made it possible by resetting the narrative for Asian identities by refusing to play the stereotyped, kowtowing invisible, meek Asian caricature. Instead, he created and personified the heroic, kick-ass, going-to-do-it-my-way martial and philosophical artist.
It came at a cost to him (he died young and tragically). Others, like myself, revered him but could never measure up to that level of hypermasculinity. In some ways, Bruce dispelled one Asian myth and traded it up for another. It was ultimately a net gain, but it didn’t always fit seamlessly, and still doesn’t. Nevertheless, I wanted to pay homage to Bruce’s new Asian narrative but also humanize him.
Johnny Delivers provides laughs, some real tenderness and is a wonderful nostalgic romp. It embraces then pushes the conventions I dreaded, thus providing a more robust perspective of Chinese families. It skewers white saviourism as well as the Asian worshipping of westerners. Not only that, but it balances the fear and excitement of moving forward, and it reconciles the many mixed messages and confusion I struggled through as a teen and adult. This isn’t what I planned to write, but it’s what I had to write. It also gave me the opportunity to wade into the deeply buried and little-known chapters of Canadian-Chinese history, such as the paper families (to which the book is dedicated) and the importance of the Chinese community Associations. Ultimately, it was cathartic for me and, hopefully, a good story for the reader. I think I delivered.
Meet Wayne Ng on TMR’s Patreon.
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Wayne Ng was born in downtown Toronto to Chinese immigrants who fed him a steady diet of bitter melons and kung fu movies. Ng works as a school social worker in Ottawa but lives to write, travel, eat and play, preferably all at the same time. He is an award-winning author and traveler who continues to push his boundaries from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Author of The Family Code, Letters From Johnny, and Finding The Way: A Novel of Lao Tzu. Connect with him at waynengwrites.com
