Choy, Wayson 1939-

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Choy, Wayson 1939-

PERSONAL:

Born April 20, 1939, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; adopted son of Toy (a ship's cook and restaurateur) and Lilly (a sausage factory worker). Education: University of British Columbia, B.A.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

CAREER:

Writer and educator. Worked in advertising and theatre and taught high school; Humber College, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, teacher of English literature and communications, beginning 1967; Cahoots Theatre Company, Toronto, president, 1999-2002. Hosted film Searching for Confucius, 2005. Also volunteer for various community literacy projects and AIDS groups.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Trillium Book Award (shared with Margaret Atwood), 1995, for The Jade Peony; City of Vancouver Book Award, 1996, for The Jade Peony; Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction, University of Waterloo, 2000, for Paper Shadows: A Chinatown Childhood; Giller Prize nomination, 2004, for All That Matters.

WRITINGS:

The Jade Peony: A Novel, Douglas & McIntyre (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 1995, Picador (New York, NY), 1997.

Paper Shadows: A Chinatown Childhood, Viking (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1999, published as Paper Shadows: Memoir of a Past Lost and Found, Picador (New York, NY), 2000.

All That Matters: A Novel, Doubleday Canada (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2004, Other Press (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

A longtime English professor, Wayson Choy published The Jade Peony: A Novel when he was fifty-eight years old. Despite his late entry into the field of novel writing, Choy met with great success upon his publishing debut, which received rave reviews and garnered him Canada's Trillium Book Award, which he shared with Margaret Atwood. The coming-of-age novel focuses on siblings Liang, Jung, and Sekky. Living in Vancouver's Chinatown in the 1940s, the three characters narrate their own tales as children of Chinese immigrants who attempt to hold on to Chinese traditions while at the same time living in a modern Western society. Shirley N. Quan, writing in the Library Journal, noted that each narrator gives "a moving account of love and loss." A Publishers Weekly contributor wrote that the "three children, and the details of their lives in the New World, stand for the universal immigrant experience and aren't easily forgotten."

When, at the age of fifty-seven, Choy received a phone call from a woman telling him she had seen his "real" mother, the author began reviewing his life upon the discovery that he may have been adopted. The result is Paper Shadows: Memoir of a Past Lost and Found, previously published in Canada as Paper Shadows: A Chinatown Childhood. The memoir, called "reflective and cathartic" by Shirley N. Quan in the Library Journal, recounts Choy's life growing up in Vancouver's Chinatown during World War II and describes his link with "old world" China via encounters with house ghosts called kwei, the game of majong, and his interest in Cantonese opera. "The author's narrative gifts make this book an extraordinary and intimate account of life in the Chinese Diaspora," wrote Mark Knoblaunch in Booklist. Referring to the memoir as "accessible and engaging," School Library Journal contributor Francisca Goldsmith went on to note that the author's "experiences with reading are poignant, humorous, and admirable."

Choy's second novel, All That Matters: A Novel, revisits the family he wrote about in the The Jade Peony. Narrated by Kiam, the family's eldest son, the novel recounts the family's experiences from the late 1920s through the 1940s in Vancouver. "The story is richly told and liberally sprinkled with defined Cantonese phrases in the Sze Yup dialect," wrote Shirley N. Quan in the Library Journal. A Publishers Weekly contributor commented: "Choy's novel captures the spirit in which exile turns into assimilation."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Choy, Wayson, Paper Shadows: Memoir of a Past Lost and Found, Picador (New York, NY), 2000.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 15, 1998, review of The Jade Peony: A Novel, p. 1209; October 15, 2000, Mark Knoblaunch, review of Paper Shadows, p. 409; January 1, 2001, review of Paper Shadows, p. 859.

Books in Canada, February, 1996, review of The Jade Peony, p. 36; December, 2004, Nancy Wigston, "Food, Family, and Friends," p. 5.

Canadian Book Review Annual, annual, 1995, review of The Jade Peony, p. 164; annual, 1999, review of Paper Shadows, p. 47; annual, 2004, Steve Pitt, review of All That Matters: A Novel, p. 164.

Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal, summer, 2000, Nicholas Birns, review of Paper Shadows; summer, 2005, David Callahan, review of All That Matters.

Canadian Forum, May, 1996, Julie Mason, review of The Jade Peony, p. 37; March, 2000, Kristjana Gunnars, review of Paper Shadows, p. 41.

Canadian Literature, September 22, 1997, Guy Beauregard, review of The Jade Peony, p. 162; January 1, 1999, Eva-Marie Kroller, review of Paper Shadows, p. 179; winter, 1999, Glenn Deer, "An Interview with Wayson Choy," p. 34, and review of The Jade Peony; winter, 2000, review of Paper Shadows.

Capilano Review, spring, 2001, Anne Ying Der, "Being Wayson Choy."

Choice, March, 2001, S. Raeschild, review of Paper Shadows, p. 1267.

Christian Science Monitor, May 6, 1997, Merle Rubin, review of The Jade Peony, p. 13; May 15, 1997, review of The Jade Peony, p. 13.

Essays on Canadian Writing, fall, 1998, Maria N. Ng, "Chop Suey Writing: Sui Sin Far, Wayson Choy, and Judy Fong Bates"; winter 2003, review of The Jade Peony.

Financial Post, December 2, 1995, Allan Hepburn, "The Red Peony," p. 25.

Journal of Business Administration and Policy Analysis, annual, 1996, "The Importance of Story: The Hunger for Personal Narrative," p. 92.

Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 2006, review of All That Matters, p. 1186.

Library Journal, April 1, 1997, Shirley N. Quan, review of The Jade Peony, p. 122; September 15, 2000, Shirley N. Quan, review of Paper Shadows, p. 86; September 15, 2000, Nancy Pearl, review of The Jade Peony, p. 144; December 1, 2006, Shirley N. Quan, review of All That Matters, p. 106.

Maclean's, April 1, 1996, John Bemrose, "Breaking the Silence of Chinatown; An Author Conjures up a World of Secrets," and review of The Jade Peony, p. 64; November 8, 1999, review of Paper Shadows, p. 90; November 8, 1999, Brian Bethune and John Nicol, "My Clan, Myself: Two Memoirists Revisit Their Immigrant Upbringings," p. 90.

Publishers Weekly, March 24, 1997, review of The Jade Peony, p. 59; July 17, 2000, review of Paper Shadows, p. 181; November 6, 2006, review of All That Matters, p. 33.

Quill & Quire, January, 1996, review of The Jade Peony, p. 32; June, 1999, Sandra Martin, "When a Stranger Calls: At Age 56, Wayson Choy Got the Surprise of His Life," p. 1; September, 1999, review of Paper Shadows, p. 61.

Reference & User Services Quarterly, spring, 1998, review of The Jade Peony.

School Library Journal, June, 2001, Francisca Goldsmith, review of Paper Shadows, p. 186.

Toronto Life, October, 2004, Alec Scott, "The Tao of Choy," p. 10.

Tribune Books, May 6, 2001, review of Paper Shadows, p. 4.

University of Toronto Quarterly, winter, 1997, Manina Jones, "Fiction."