Lillian Li’s new novel, Bad Asians, tracks a group of close friends during their formative years and through their choices as they navigate early adulthood—and the large and small consequences of those choices. Grace, who is on the fringes of the group, may see the core four friends for who they are, but does she really know them? Do they really know each other?

Li, who is originally from the D.C. metro area and lives in Ann Arbor, will celebrate the release of Bad Asians in the Michigan Union’s Rogel Ballroom on Tuesday, February 17, at 7 pm, presented by Literati.

The friends—Errol, Vivian, Diana, and Justin, plus Grace—meet as kids in the '90s and all live in the same vicinity, as illustrated by a map of their homes with a character list at the start of the book. Grace always seems to be one-upping them, which creates distance and jealousy owing, in part, to the high expectations of their Chinese American parents. External forces, like the lack of employment prospects from the financial crisis in the late aughts and the internet’s growing reign, affect their lives more than they could have anticipated.

After moving back in with their parents following college, what is there to do but make a video?

When Grace, passionate about film, talks them into starring in her documentary, the four friends agree and participate in interviews, but they reveal more than they had intended. As the eponymous documentary, Bad Asians, starts to haunt them, each character must decide how to respond.

The friends are hyper-aware of how they are perceived in the documentary. As Errol says in the film, “Maybe I’m a bad Asian, but I think there’s more to life than giving your parents something to brag about.” What constitutes “more to life” is something all of them have to seek for themselves. Amidst drugs, heartbreak, career challenges, and more, the characters must find a way forward, and whether that will mean staying connected with each other is a question only they can answer.

Li and I caught up about her new book, Bad Asians. We had a Q&A interview about her writing process, the internet, the characters, the features of the novel, and what Li is reading and writing next.

Q: We last spoke in 2018 when your first novel, Number One Chinese Restaurant, was published. What has been going on for you in the intervening years?
A: I’ve been working on this novel! It’s mindboggling that it took eight years to write and publish Bad Asians, but I like to say that I had to grow up with my characters since the book follows them for eight or so years, too.

Q: Your new novel, Bad Asians, follows a group of friends and frenemies. In our last interview, you wrote, “Essentially a story is asking, ‘Who are these people and why do they matter?’ and combining that answer with, ‘And why were they in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time?’” Does this stand true for Bad Asians? Why or why not?
A: I got nervous when I first read that quote again because I’m often in danger of overgeneralizing, but actually that rule of thumb holds up pretty well. It even follows my writing process for this book. I had to figure out the people—Diana, Justin, Errol, Vivian, and Grace—and why they matter. Once I realized I was writing their stories to understand why some friendships last and others end, I then needed to figure out why they’re in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time—the plot of the book, in other words. And it was in realizing that my characters were coming of age at the same time that all Americans were coming of age—losing faith in certain institutions and going into the rise of social media with blissful ignorance—that made the book click into place.

Q: The timeline moves forward and backward in the lives of the characters and their families. The intersections of their lives even surprise the characters sometimes, such as when “[Diana] reached out for Justin’s hand, ready to convince him their story hadn’t ended.” In some ways, their stories have to keep intertwining for there to be a novel, yet the characters could instead let their lives diverge. What do you think keeps these characters coming back together—their families, shared history, fallout from their choices, curiosity, something else?  
A: I think the viral video is a huge reason these characters keep coming back into each other’s lives. I’ve observed that it often takes some big external event to make these friend reconciliations happen: a wedding, a funeral, a college reunion. At one point, Vivian observes the viral video as “some blast sites were large enough to allow a memorial. What a strange concept—turning destruction into a place worth revisiting.” We almost need an excuse sometimes to come back to something or someone we’ve left behind because it can feel like too much pressure, or too much vulnerability, to reach out simply because you miss them, or you want to try again.

Q: On the topic of the viral video, the internet greatly benefits and hurts these characters. Their documentary, Bad Asians, goes viral and draws the attention of influencers and filmmakers, which leads to more complications. What drew you to probe the culture and pitfalls of the internet through your novel? Do you see the novel as criticizing or finding redemption in the internet?
A: I like to describe the viral video as, imagine the venting sessions you have about your friends being recorded and shared with millions of strangers. I was really drawn to the internet as exaggerating and dramatizing experiences we’re already having privately. It’s why the internet has the ability to connect people and to divide us, because having those private moments made public can feel like intimacy in one moment, and surveillance the next. I think Bad Asians is less about criticizing or redeeming the internet, and more about putting us back in touch with what the internet represented when it was first becoming mainstream, how it really felt like you were in a private room with your friends, instead of the huge public forum it obviously is now. And I think in getting back to the initial promise and delight of the internet, we may be able to reshape what it’s morphed into.

Q: Interspersed among the chapters are a few fictitious news articles about what happens. It must have been really fun to write these articles about your characters. In fact, one of the articles shows headlines of related articles, too. Where did you get this idea? How did you go about writing these articles for your novel?
A: It was fun! Given that this book is so much about the public story versus the private story, I thought the articles were a good way of pushing that idea further, so that we see what’s actually happening through our characters’ perspectives, and then we see all of that drama summarized in a detached journalistic voice. The headlines of related articles were something Buzzfeed and other internet magazines and newspapers would include at the ends of their articles to keep people clicking, and it felt like a great narrative tool to share other parts of the plot without being too heavy-handed. And you might also notice that the same journalist shows up, so we also get to track her career growth as she moves from Buzzfeed to The New York Times!

Q: Another feature is a map that appears at the start of the novel, and it shows the five families and their members. Tell us about this map and how it works with the novel.
A: I tend to have a lot of characters in my books, and so I like to include a character list at the beginning to help people keep track of them all. My first book had a character list that looked like a Zodiac placemat because it’s set in a Chinese restaurant. So I wanted to do something equally creative and thematic with Bad Asians. This map is actually illustrated by the very talented Laura Hartman Maestro from a screenshot I took of my childhood neighborhood of North Potomac, Maryland. I love that it not only helps you learn all the character names but also shows just how close the friends lived together, and all their suburban haunts, which also show up in the viral video—hence why the map is credited to Me Me Productions, Grace’s social media handle.

Q: Let’s talk more about the friends, too. The novel’s third-person perspective switches between focusing on particular characters. How did you approach telling each character’s storyline while weaving together the friends’ intersecting lives?
A: When I was first starting out with the book, I wrote the chapters in alternating character POVs just to have some sense of structure. By chance, that order was Diana, Justin, Errol, Vivian. I wrote the entire book following that arbitrary order, but as with all arbitrary choices in writing, it became integral to the shape of the book. It dictated which character made which plot-defining choices. For example, the chapter where they go to New York to shoot another video with a different YouTube creator just happened to be, according to the order, Justin’s chapter. So I knew that he would end up responsible for the big conflict that happens in that chapter. It’s really useful for me as a writer to have these creative constraints to guide me.

I also don’t really plot out characters’ storylines—I like to spend so much time writing about them that they end up telling me what they’re going to do. So, not to spoil anything, Justin ends up in a unique relationship, and he was the one who let me know this was going to happen because when he’s in his married lover’s bed at the start of the novel, he tries to find the imprint of his lover’s wife in the mattress. That strange detail came seemingly out of nowhere, but I knew I had to follow it through to the end.

Q: As we end, I like to wrap up by asking the next two questions. What are you reading and recommending?
A: I am reading Nina McConigley’s How to Commit a Post-Colonial Murder, which is so sharp and funny. It’s about two Indian-American sisters who conspire to kill their uncle, who is visiting them in 1980s Wyoming. On top of being a story about a family on the verge, it’s also a hilarious meta-narrative on what types of stories Indian writers get to tell.

I also want to recommend a book coming out in June, Vincent Chu’s Nice Places, which is about an office drone, Georgie, who quits his job to travel the world for a year, only to get robbed of all his luggage before he can even get to the airport. Georgie ends up living in a hostel in his own town and posting pictures of his “travels,” creating a social media sensation and hoax that actually ends up connecting him to his fellow travelers and his own yearning self.

Q: With Bad Asians, your second multigenerational novel, now published, what is coming up next for you and your writing?
A: I’m working on a new novel, but it’s so new that it could turn out to be about anything! I feel like my early novel drafts are just a journal of my psyche. But right now, it’s about death, ambition, and the afterlife. 

Martha Stuit is a former reporter and current librarian. 

Lillian Li reads from "Bad Asians" at Michigan Union’s Rogel Ballroom, 530 South State Street, Ann Arbor, on Tuesday, February 17, at 7 pm. The event is presented by Literati; you can get tickets here. You can read an excerpt from "Bad Asians" here.