An Interview with Calvin McMillin

March 28, 2006

1. What inspired you to write Over the Shoulder? In particular, what prompted you to write a mystery featuring an Asian American protagonist? In one of the interviews I read, you talked about wanting to write a book that you'd want to read – I was wondering if you had anything to add to that.

That criterion – writing a novel I want to read – is just one of many. For Over the Shoulder I was also revisiting many Noir novels around that time, and I was thinking that I wanted to try something new and different, something that I hadn’t seen before, or at least, done well before. Most importantly, though, the Allen Choice novels fit within a larger, long-term goal of mine for my fiction, that being to normalize the Asian American experience by having Asian American characters in novels in which race isn’t the only facet of their existence, which segues into your next question…

2. One of the things that interested me most about Allen Choice as a character is that—while he may have to deal with issues of race and racism — unlike a lot of characters in Asian American literature, that's not really his primary focus in life. Race is an issue, but it's not the only issue. I don't know if it was intentional, but the chapter heading "Either/Or" in one of your books turned out to be a surprise for me. Here I was wondering if there'd be a discussion of that older paradigm of Asian American identity – the "Either/Or" choice between the culture of the so-called "home" country and that of America – and instead, it's a reference to Kierkegaard. How did the detective story as a genre allow you to broach issues of race and culture in ways that would be interesting to you?

The detective novel served as a kind of distraction to the reader – a strong mystery to compel the reader forward – while at the same time introducing, in a subtle way, elements of character without banging the reader over the head with it, i.e., issues of race, family, history and identity. The detective novel is a structured genre not too unlike a sonnet or a haiku, with some formal requirements, but then as the writer you have tremendous flexibility as to how to work within the requirements. There’s a crime and it must be solved. That’s pretty much it. With that going on, you can do quite a bit with character and identity, and race can play a role without it being so contrived.

3. From page one, Allen Choice is very much a "regular guy." Were you conscious of presenting him in that fashion when you were creating his character? And was making Allen a bad test taker and a college dropout another way normalize him? It certainly runs counter to the model minority myth, which, if I'm not mistaken, you never explicitly reference.

True, I don’t reference it, because it is a myth, and why acknowledge a myth, even one as ostensibly innocuous? That model minority myth has plagued me throughout my childhood, and it annoys me on many levels. When I was writing about Allen Choice, however, I didn’t set out to destroy or subvert any myths, I was intent on creating a real, vivid, living character. He doesn’t like the pressure of tests, and he disliked college. That’s part of who he is, and the fact that he isn’t a “model minority” is less a conscious design than a true exploration of a real character. Real characters, I think, don’t fall into any categories, as much as many people would like them to.

4. By making Allen the lead character in a detective novel, you seem to break ground not only by presenting him as "the common man," but also in terms of making him – in a general sense, anyway – the hero of the work. In American literature and film, Asian/Asian American males are rarely allowed to be regular guys or full-fledged heroes, unless it's a martial arts film in the case of the latter. Was this something you were seeking to address in the Allen Choice series?

Most definitely! The Asian American man has long been emasculated and typecast in American popular culture, and I wanted to write about a full-bodied, sexualized and complex character who happened to be an Asian American man.

5. You've talked a bit about publishers wanting to put an Asian motif on the covers. Could you elaborate on those sorts of "helpful" suggestions? In what ways did publishers ask you to play up the "ethnic angle"? In some of the texts I've researched for my project, I've found this play out in the ways characters talk about culture, customs, and cuisine. In these moments, the characters end up seeming more like cultural tour guides or walking, talking ads for Chinese restaurants than living, breathing human beings. Were you worried that this sort of exoticization would be forced on you?

I’ve been writing and publishing since the late 1980’s, and a lot has changed since then, but early on you would not believe the pure ignorance of some white editors and agents who wanted exoticized portrayals of Asian American characters. I wasn’t worried about it being forced on me because I took a very hard stance; it was either my way or no way. I’ve lost a few opportunities because of this, but life is too short to sell out. My first two novels were published by a small literary press for this reason. As an example of the silliness I had to deal with, here’s an excerpt from a rejection letter for a novel that I eventually withdrew because the response frustrated me too much. This was a while ago, however, so some day I might revisit the novel:

I’m sorry to say that the promise of the early pages were not fulfilled by the balance of [the rest]. The characters, especially the main character, just do not seem Asian enough. They act like everyone else. They don’t eat Korean food, they don’t speak Korean, and you have to think about ways to make these characters more “ethnic,” more different. We get too much of the minutiae of [the characters’] lives and none of the details that separate Koreans and Korean-Americans from the rest of us. [The main character] acts like every American mom and even her affair with [the secondary character] is overly familiar. For example, in the scene when she looks into the mirror, you don’t show how she sees her slanted eyes, or how she thinks of her Asianness...

Needless to say, I was quite disappointed by that reaction. You can also imagine how a barrage of these kinds of responses might influence a young, impressionable Asian American writer, which is why you will occasionally see works that succumb to this pressure.

6. Are there any particular mystery writers you'd count as influences? Chandler? Hammett? Echoes of The Maltese Falcon's plot can be seen in Over the Shoulder; was that a conscious move on your part? Simply by the nature of the genre, Allen comes across as a descendant of the hardboiled tradition, in stark contrast to the purely intellectual detectives of the classical detective tradition. By making Allen a tougher, more physical hero (not to mention giving him a sex life), you present a hero who is a far cry from the Charlie Chan-inspired, stereotyped image of the emasculated Asian male. Was the idea of undermining those stereotypes something that appealed to you?

Hammett was a pretty big influence, not just for the Allen Choice novels but for me in general. Hammett had Modernist aspirations and these revealed themselves in his prose; he embraced the vernacular and brought Literature into the gritty realm of crime and criminality, but with style and concision. Allen Choice is a descendant of Sam Spade in that sense, but yes, Allen was also my attempt to write a fully textured Asian American male character. Other crime writers who have influenced me were Ross Macdonald and Jim Thompson.

7. Although Allen and Linda Maldonado break up, you don't seem to suggest that it has anything to do with issues of race. Was this something you wanted to avoid? It seems like when earlier generations of Asian American writers presented interracial relationships, they were often doomed to fail. In just having Allen and Linda have their own relationship problems, separate from race, were you trying to get past these earlier kinds of narratives and perhaps move towards something more reflective of our times?

This wasn’t a conscious effort. It’s almost amusing to think that a relationship could break up because of race and race alone, that is, unless one of the partners was racist. For Allen and Linda, their problems were problems that many couples have, problems of dissonance and discord, of being in different places and different stages of their lives. All this ties into my goal of writing about Asian American characters who are real, not symbols or some kind of pandering to a homogenous audience.

8. In one of the novels, Linda's stepfather, Luke Sherwin insists on greeting Allen in Korean, even after being told that Allen doesn't speak the language. What ensues is a curious conversation in which Sherwin talks about his Polish background, his changed surname, and his inability to speak Polish – a background that, in some respects, is not so different from Allen's. What inspired this scene and what were some of the things you wanted to explore by having it in the novel?

The immigrant story is a common one, but it’s interesting how Asians often fall into a different category, because of racial differences. What inspired this scene? Well, an episode from my own life.

9. How's the screenplay for Over the Shoulder coming? Is Daniel Dae Kim looking to star in it himself? Considering his rising popularity (as evidenced by the cover story in USA Today not long ago), I would imagine Over the Shoulder would actually be the perfect starring vehicle for an Asian American male looking to break stereotypes. What's the status of the project?

The project is, as many movie projects are, in continuous limbo. I wrote three drafts of the screenplay, and then Daniel became immensely popular. I was particularly pleased to see him in People Magazine as one of the sexiest men on TV. An Asian American man posing with his shirt half-off in a very hunk-like manner made me smile. I think once the show LOST goes on a break, there will be more progress.

10. Do you plan on writing further entries in the Allen Choice series? And if so, would you be willing share a few details of the plot? (Be as vague as you wish)

I am taking an extended break from the Allen Choice novels, in part because I want to write other novels, and also because I want Allen’s life to continue without my oppressive interest in his stories. In the future I will of course be intensely curious as to what he has been up to, and then I’ll revisit him. Updike revisited his character Harry Angstrom every ten years over a fifty-year period. That, to me, sounds like a plan.

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Calvin McMillin is receiving his M.A. from the University of Hawaii, and is writing his thesis on Asian American Detective Fiction. He is also a film critic for LoveHKFilm.com, a Hong Kong cinema website.