Dmae Roberts talks with acclaimed author Lisa See. Her latest novel, Dreams of Joy debuted  at No. 1 on the NY Times best seller list. See tells us about her extensive research on Mao’s Great Leap Forward that caused the death of up 45 million people in China from 1958-1961. We also hear about the movie version of See’s book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, to be released in July 2011.

Dreams of Joy is a sequel to See’s earlier novel, Shanghai Girls. The book follows the title character, 19-year-old Joy, and her mother Pearl in Communist China during a horrific time: the euphemistically-named Great Leap Forward.

As in all of her novels, See brings the stories to life with details gleaned from her intensive eresearch. But Dreams of Joy also deals with the universal theme of the relationship between mother and daughter. As one Chinese aphorism goes, “Mothers suffer. Childen do what they want.”

Lisa See grew up in Los Angeles, the great-granddaughter of a patriarch of Los Angeles Chinatown, Fong See. Although she lived with her mother, who is not Chinese, she also spent a lot of time with her father’s Chinese American family. These experiences of being in between two cultures laid the groundwork for her writing later on.

Dmae Roberts talks with acclaimed author Lisa See. Her latest novel, Dreams of Joy debuted  at No. 1 on the NY Times best seller list. See tells us about her extensive research on Mao’s Great Leap Forward that caused the death of up 45 million people in China from 1958-1961. We also hear about the movie version of See’s book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, to be released in July 2011.

Dreams of Joy is a sequel to See’s earlier novel, Shanghai Girls. The book follows the title character, 19-year-old Joy, and her mother Pearl in Communist China during a horrific time: the euphemistically-named Great Leap Forward.

As in all of her novels, See brings the stories to life with details gleaned from her intensive eresearch. But Dreams of Joy also deals with the universal theme of the relationship between mother and daughter. As one Chinese aphorism goes, “Mothers suffer. Childen do what they want.”

Lisa See grew up in Los Angeles, the great-granddaughter of a patriarch of Los Angeles Chinatown, Fong See. Although she lived with her mother, who is not Chinese, she also spent a lot of time with her father’s Chinese American family. These experiences of being in between two cultures laid the groundwork for her writing later on.