In “Banyan Moon,” Minh, the matriarch of a Vietnamese family, dies and bequeaths her daughter (Huong) and granddaughter (Ann) her Gothic mansion in Florida, the Banyan House, leaving the two women to deal with their strained relationship. In July, I talked with author Thao Thai, a past Columbus Monthly contributor, about the debut novel and its launch—one that included an interview on Today and a New York Times review.
Could you describe the week of your book release? I got to have my launch event at Gramercy Books in Bexley. My thesis adviser from Ohio State was moderating the conversation, and it’s been almost 15 years now since I got my MFA degree. It was a real, full-circle moment. Then I flew to New York immediately the next morning and got to meet with my publishing team. I got to do a spot on the Today show with Jenna Bush Hager, which was incredibly special.
What was more challenging about your first novel: The actual writing and getting it done? Or the business side? No question, the business, marketing and publicity side of things. I’m someone who will just shut the door to my office and be alone and tinker with my characters for as long as you’ll let me. I am comfortable with that solitariness. … Being in public and talking with people about your books … you have to kind of be the opposite version. You have to be the polished, put-together version who knows what you want to say, who has your themes down pat.
You chose to have the three main characters narrate their own chapters. How come? When I first conceived of the book, I was thinking [it] would be narrated from the grandmother’s posthumous perspective. … But the more I wrote, the more I realized that the other women’s voices really wanted to be heard. They had such different interpretations of similar events. It is in that kind of difference that I found the most interesting part of the book, which is the slipperiness of memory and how we can all go through the same experience and have such different takeaways. On a craft level, I felt like I needed to have the interiority of all three characters.
Why focus on mother-daughter relationships? In our popular representations of media, we get ideas of mothers that are very one dimensional. So, you’re either getting these toxic mothers who abandoned their kids, or you’re getting very Pollyanna versions that are very steeped in sacrifice and tropes of martyrdom. For me, motherhood is somewhere in between all of that. It is a series of the greatest joys you’ll ever experience, and then some of the darkest moments as well. … That kind of complexity and richness is part of my experience of motherhood and daughterhood, and I really wanted to find a way to bring that to the page.
This story is from the September 2023 issue of Columbus Monthly.
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