Malinda Lo has a few things in common with Lily, the 17-year-old Chinese American protagonist in her New York Times best-selling novel Last Night at the Telegraph Club.
“I came to this country when I was about three-and-a-half years old,” said Lo, who won several awards for Last Night at the Telegraph Club, including the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. “And I grew up very much aware of the sacrifices [my parents] made in China and in the U.S. to provide for me. And Lily knows this as well.”
Lo’s mother was a pianist and her father an electrical engineer. When she was six years old, she changed her Chinese first name — which Americans could not pronounce properly — to Malinda. (Her Chinese last name, on the other hand, was “extremely simple” for Americans.) Today, the critically acclaimed author of six books and a number of essays does not hesitate to feature Chinese characters and words in her writing.
“I always write for myself first, and then I want to reach readers who are like me, so I’m really interested in reaching readers who are queer women and girls, queer Asian women and girls,” she said. “And then it goes out from there.”
Lo also researches diversity in young adult literature and publishing. Her awards include the Stonewall Book Award and the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, as well as honors from the Michael L. Printz Awards and the Walter Dean Myers Awards.
https://www.malindalo.com/
