Children’s book authors Susan Tan ’10 and Vicky Fang ’98 reflected on their career paths in a cozy virtual conversation hosted by the Williams Asian and Asian American Alumni Network (WAAAAN) on Tuesday night. Alum participants Zoomed in from around the country to listen.
Fang is the author and illustrator of the Ava Lin chapter book series, which chronicles the humorous day-to-day adventures of a Chinese American girl, and the Friendbots comic series, a graphic novel about the friendship of two robots. Fang, a math and theatre double major at the College, was a kids’ product designer at Google before she began writing and illustrating children’s books full time.
Tan has written more than a dozen books for young people, including the Cilla-Lee Jenkins series; Ghosts, Toast, and Other Hazards; and the Pets Rule! series. After majoring in English at the College, she received her doctorate in critical approaches to children’s literature from the University of Cambridge and began an assistant professorship of English at UMass Boston.
Despite their prolific careers in children’s literature, neither Fang nor Tan grew up thinking that they would become storytellers for young readers.
“No one tells you when you’re growing up that you can be a children’s book author,” Fang said in an interview with the Record. Drawn to both the problem-solving nature of math and the creativity of performance, she explored a wide range of career paths, from acting in Los Angele to earning a graduate degree in game design to designing products for children and families at Google.
Despite her background in English literature, Tan had never seen herself as part of the writers’ world. “I’ve never really excelled at creative writing,” she said at the talk. “I only took one creative writing class at Williams, and I got a B-plus.”
“I’m still mad about it a little,” she joked.
While pursuing her doctorate, Tan realized she didn’t just want to study children’s literature — she wanted to write it. “In my last year of grad school, I began writing on my iPad late at night,” she said during the talk. “I’d literally get into bed, turn off the lights, hold my iPad above my face, and type — sometimes just for 10 minutes, sometimes for half an hour. That’s how I started writing what became my first book.”
Aside from their love of children’s literature, Tan and Fang share a desire to create Asian American protagonists in hopes that young people will find better representation in media.
Tan reflected on how little representation she saw in children’s literature growing up. “We need stories where Asian American kids get to be superheroes and super silly,” Tan said during the conversation. “Asian American children need to see themselves centered in stories.”
Fang added that she wants to create joyful and light hearted literature. “I wanted to write a book with an Asian American protagonist that laughed out loud,” she said. “Because I felt like sometimes there was a sense of, like, ‘Oh, if it’s a person of color, it’s going to be a sad book.’”
The Q&A session, though held virtually, was filled with the audience’s enthusiasm to learn more about the stories behind the scenes. One participant asked what mattered most to Tan and Fang in creating children’s literature. Both authors shared a common philosophy of infusing humor and building genuine connections with children’s worlds through their writing. “Humor is a big part of it,” Fang said. “Making it fun and funny so that children want to keep going. And then also, like I mentioned, making it relatable.”
Tan explained that children’s literature is often crafted with short chapters that end on cliffhangers to keep young readers engaged — which she experienced firsthand in her youthful love of reading. Fang added that creating relatability for children through humor is part of her strategy.
As the conversation drew to a close, Fang reflected on how the rise of Asian American children’s literature helps to fill the gaps left in her generation’s childhood reading material. “I think our generation, having grown up without these kinds of books, are so happy to see these books on the shelves,” she said at the talk.
