INTERVIEW: Michelle Yang, Author of Phoenix Girl: How a Fat Asian with Bipolar Found Love

Interviewed by Lara Lillbridge

A staunch and highly vocal advocate for mental health awareness, Michelle Yang has made a name for herself in the national conversation about bipolar disorder. But her journey is also deeply influenced by her identity, and she creates conversation at the intersection of Asian American identity, feminism, and mental health like few others can. I was thrilled to talk to Michelle about her debut, Phoenix Girl: How a Fat Asian With Bipolar Found Love.

---

Lara Lillibridge: Let’s start with your title, Phoenix Girl, which is a great double entendre—you grew up in Phoenix, and you raised yourself from the ashes. How did you come up with it?

Michelle Yang: Phoenix Girl actually has three layers of meaning since the Phoenix is such an important symbol and mythical creature in Chinese culture–symbolizing female energy, hope, renewal, and transformation.

I primarily chose the title because I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, and the mythical bird is such an apt analogy for bipolar disorder. I’m not the first one to use the analogy, but I embody it completely. It was my experience. Two points in my life I believed I died and it was incredibly difficult to come back to life, but I did. The “burn too brightly then crash” metaphor rings true. So does the idea of renewal and life continuing. Living well with bipolar disorder for me means taking care of myself and staying well treated so that I don’t run to the point of burn out. I’m going for that steady happy burn and I haven’t had a major episode for over a decade.

LL: Let’s chat about your path to publication. When did you start writing this book?

MY: I quit my corporate job at the end of December 2018 and immediately began working on the book in early January 2019.

LL: How many drafts did you go through?

MY: Oof. I want to say maybe a dozen? There were 8 drafts that I worked on my own. I referenced books like Seven Drafts by Allison K Williams, and Before and After the Book Deal by Courney Maum. My mentor, Grace Talusan, also helped guide me when I attended the Community of Writers memoir workshop. I also took “Finding a Narrative Arc Out of a Messy Life” course from Lily Dancyger. Each time was essentially a rewrite.

And then when I signed with Fifth Avenue Press, I was able to work with the immensely talented and thoughtful developmental editor, Hannah Bereford. After her notes, I completed one final rewrite, changing it from past tense to mostly present tense.

LL: Who helped you along the way?

MY: So many people have helped me along the way! My acknowledgement list is LONG at the back of the book. My mentor, Grace Talusan, the community at Mochi Magazine, my writing partner Tria Wen, and my publisher Fifth Avenue Press, of course, to name a few.

Lauren Hough also taught me to fight back in publishing, which was tremendous encouragement during a time I almost gave up writing, right at the very beginning.

In addition to what I already mentioned above, I also took free workshops from Gotham and got help from Hugo House in Seattle. And learned so much from the writers community at large, in particular the Binders groups on Facebook.

LL: When did you know the manuscript was ready to query?

MY: It was my first time writing a book and I probably queried a bit too early initially. I started querying before the book was written, thinking I might be able to get started with a proposal and some sample chapters. I wanted to do this in order to get some guidance from publishing professionals, but quickly learned that this was not the way to get a memoir published. I learned that as a first time writer, I needed to get the full manuscript written first.

LL: How did that process go for you?

MY: I queried over 100 agents. It was thrilling when the first one said yes. She said yes very quickly—like the day after I sent her a query. And then after that another agent said yes. To be honest, I do have some regrets over how the agenting process went. I wish I had moved a bit slower and taken more things into consideration, asked more questions, and held firm when some aspects didn’t seem like a good fit. I’m working with the second agent now, who is a much better fit for me.

LL: Readers always want to know how writers navigate family members while writing a book. In Chapter 11, you mention asking your brother, Didi, about a particular memory:

In writing this book, I ask Didi what he remembers of this day. The warmth of his smile seeps through my end of the phone. ‘All I remember is Crystal took us to McDonald’s afterward. I was so happy.’

How much did you share with family, if anything, pre-publication?

MY: Zero. I shared nothing pre-publication. Haha.

My brother did give me blanket permission to write anything I wanted early on though and that’s all the greenlight I needed. He has now read the book and loved it and it has brought us closer together.

LL: I loved your reflection:

I desperately want to believe Mama and Baba—that having my own child will allow me to forgive and understand them. Instead, I became angrier and more inconsolable over the way Didi and I were

treated. Seeing my childhood through my soon-to-be mother’s eyes is too much to endure.

I had this exact experience with my firstborn. Seeing how much I loved my child made me incredibly angry with my own parents. I love that feeling—to truly feel like someone else has had the same experience—that I can only find in memoir.

I think so much of your book reaches out to readers of all different backgrounds, in spite of it being such a personal and unique story. When you were writing, did you have an ideal reader or target audience in mind?

MY: I was writing for my 20-year-old self who was newly diagnosed bipolar and scared that my life was over. Back then, I had gone to the library, which was always my safe place, to look for a book. Proof that someone I could relate to with my condition could live a full life. I couldn’t find much, let alone anything that was accessible and non-clinical, nothing by someone who is BIPOC or with immigrant experience that was full of hope.

In my late 30s, when I realized the look I had been looking for still didn’t exist, I decided to heed Toni Morrison’s advice, “If there’s a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”

LL: Writing memoir is a profound experience. How did the act of writing this book change you?

MY: I had been in therapy for nearly 20 years before starting my memoir. I didn’t want writing the memoir to be an act of catharsis or healing. I wanted to have done the processing and write from a place of mental health advocacy and storytelling. Still I didn’t expect how difficult writing some of the traumatic parts would affect me and what unknown insights I would unearth.

Writing this memoir has changed me in making me more confident and unashamed. It helped me reject the internalized stigma that I had been carrying in so many aspects of my life.

LL: I think writers are always interested in endings. We are writing about our lives, which are still unfolding, so the ending point isn’t really clear. How did you know the book had reached its ending?

MY: From the outset, I wanted to end in a place of progress and hope. Where I ended felt really right for me… so much so that I can’t even remember when I didn’t have that ending, through all my 12 drafts.

LL: I loved your line, Nevertheless, the library is my third parent—the American one, along with television.

You wrote about the books that impacted you growing up—Anne of Green Gables, Dragonwings, Amy Tan. Maxine Hong Kingston, to name a handful. What are you currently reading or what books are on your TBR list after your release day?

MY: I’m always reading! I know it’s perhaps not the hippest answer but I am currently on an Abbey Jimenez streak, along with the rest of America. Her books are a great escape and I’m marveling at how much mental health insight, the “medicine” if you will, she is wrapping in the “candy” of the romantic comedy. I hope that her books will do her readers a lot of good. The experiences of her characters resonate so much with my own life experiences.

---