Interview with Lisa See, author of Shanghai Girls

You read it in almost every interview with successful writers. "Write about what you know." For Los Angeles writer Lisa See, this is not some empty mantra. It's clearly the secret to her success.

For years now, See has been writing about what she knows: sisterhood, her Chinese-American culture, and kick-ass women who, despite all odds, are determined to control their destiny.

And boy does she know her stuff:

In On Gold Mountain, she wrote about her great-grandfather, Fong See, and the development of LA Chinatown; In Half and Half, her grandmother's funeral became the setting for her essay on growing up a Chinese-American with red hair and freckles; In Dragon Bones, she discussed the Yangtze River gorges near the edge of the Tibetan plateau, "the roof of the world": the Qutang, Wuxia, and Xiling Gorges, known collectively as the Three Gorges: a wonder of nature with walls and cliffs as steep as 3,000 feet. In Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, she wrote about nu schu, a phonetic, gender-based language used by women in Hunan Province in China; In Peony in Love, she wrote about foot binding and The Three Wives Commentary, the first book ever written and published by women anywhere; Through triumphs and tragedies she’s shared ghost stories, spells, remedies, anecdotes, fiction and nonfiction in amazing detail that all ring true in all of her writing.