Wayne was delighted to chat with Open Book about JOHNNY DELIVERS for their Long Story Novelist Interview series.
Read the full interview at:
Open Book: A City Teenager Sells Weed with a Side of Egg Rolls to Keep His Family Afloat in Johnny Delivers
Here’s a sneak peek at a few of the questions:
Open Book:
Did you do any specific research for this novel? Tell us a bit about that process.
Wayne Ng:
A lot! I delved deep into Bruce Lee’s life and work (even visiting his gravesite in Seattle). I immersed myself in Chinese Canadian history, particularly the Wong Association in Vancouver, the discriminatory Head Tax and Exclusion Act, and the stories of paper families and the Triads.
I learned how to play mah jong, revisited ’70s nostalgia (music, culture, fashion—so cringe-worthy now!), and pored over pictures of Yonge Street in the 1970s, which was a notorious sex and sin strip then. I even interviewed one of the DJs from the Zanzibar strip club.
I also researched the tragic slaying of Emanuel Jaques, a story that still haunts those who lived through it. What made writing this novel especially challenging was that it felt like an unintentional memoir, where I unearthed parts of my own family history and revisited my teen years, which were far from joyful.
Open Book:
Who did you dedicate your novel to, and why?
Wayne Ng:
Johnny Delivers is dedicated to all the paper families and their untold stories. There are likely thousands of descendants of these families in Canada. While the country welcomed waves of immigrants from Europe and the U.S., it specifically excluded the Chinese through discriminatory laws. As a result, the only way for many Chinese immigrants to come to Canada was by using assumed identities, often purchasing false documents. The identities were sometimes real, but birth certificates and official records weren’t available. Many immigrants lived in quiet fear, raising families under the constant threat of being discovered and deported. Even after an amnesty in 1960, many of their stories remained unspoken.
Many paper children, including my mother and uncle, kept these secrets, leaving their descendants with little connection to their family’s history.
💫JOHNNY DELIVERS is available wherever books are bought or borrowed. Get your copy now!
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