Freeman Ng talking about the book:
Interview on Minnesota Public Radio
“The primary theme of the book ended up being the need for solidarity across these divisions. The Chinese in my novel are being mistreated, but then they turn around and mistreat other groups that they feel are below them. And it’s really only my protagonist at the end who reached out across these lines to the other groups that he finds himself in the same situation with.”
Interview on Fresno Public Radio
“My teen protagonist initially does not even want to come to America. It’s his father’s dream to come to America, to come to Gold Mountain, as they called it, and to try to make a better economic life for himself, but the kid doesn’t really want this, and because of this, he has to, in the course of the novel, find his own mission, his own reason for being here.”
Interview on Utah Public Radio
“That’s sort of a corollary to the old saying that I’ve been using a lot these days: that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. But those who are intentionally suppressing teaching about the wrongs of our past are trying to repeat them.”
Essay in the Omnium Gatherum Quarterly
“These kinds of walk-backs (or perhaps more accurately, walkabouts) are the journey of fiction, of poetry, of all creative endeavor. We set off down paths that call to us, not knowing where they lead, and ‘learn by going where we have to go.’”