Five years into the project, in 2017, Yu had an epiphany. He was walking his dog near his family’s Irvine home when he suddenly heard the novel’s opening lines in his head: “Ever since you were a boy, you’ve dreamt of being Kung Fu Guy. You are not Kung Fu Guy.”
He recalls thinking, “Now I can hear the voice of the character.”
One of the few meals I can make with confidence is congee, a kind of porridge commonly eaten as a breakfast food in many Asian countries. Congee is made of just rice and water and by itself is formidably bland. Bowls can act like sinkholes of flavor into which sauces and seasonings are absorbed and vanish. I have a childhood memory of myself, age 8, using up half a bottle of soy sauce to flavor a stubborn congee; I woke up the next morning, throat throbbing from the sodium. I now top my congee with side dishes. More traditional eaters usually reach for pickled vegetables and preserved eggs. My accessories are less orthodox, because I often buy them pre-prepared: I like kimchi, puffed tofu sopped in sesame oil and salty dashes of dried anchovies.
But how often, in our stories, are oddballs allowed to remain exactly who they are? How often do they take center stage as main characters and reorient our view of what is "normal"? How often are such characters given rich, complex, and interior lives, complete with sorrows, talents, opinions, and flaws? Claire Fuller's new novel, Unsettled Ground, does just that.