The year is 1926, and the scene is set in the roaring streets of Shanghai. The city holds its breath as tension breaks out between two gangs, the Russian White Flowers and the local Scarlets. The bloodshed and rivalry brews an arousing retelling of Romeo and Juliet. The streets resume their chaotic rhythms, somehow incognizant of a monster that dwells in the depths of the Huangpu River – one that indefinitely awaits the golden moment to unveil its true powers.
The story unfolds with suspense among the pages of These Violent Delights, one of the New York Times’ best-selling novels in 2020. The creative mind behind the newborn novel, Chloe Gong, is only 21.
“If I had run out of books, I started thinking like maybe I’ll just amuse myself by writing my own stories.”
Born in Shanghai but raised in New Zealand, Gong has always been an aficionado of thrilling fiction, and her first attempt at novel-writing was particularly inspired by Canadian author Kelly Armstrong’s Darkest Powers series. Cultivated among the bookshelves, Gong’s writing journey commenced at age 13 under casual circumstances. In retrospect, she tells us that it all started with a desire for escapism as a teen, and more so, a desire for self-amusement.
‘If I had run out of books, I started thinking like maybe I’ll just amuse myself by writing my own stories’, Gong reflects. ‘In that sense, there was no pressure at all’.
It was indeed this natural flow of writing that birthed the masterpiece These Violent Delights, as Gong recalls how it all came together:
‘I wanted to write a blood-fused story, and then I wanted to write something set in 1920’s Shanghai... I kept merging that together, and I was thinking you know, rival gangsters… I kind of wanted to do a Romeo and Juliet retelling… Sometimes it’s the small things that pop in and out, and then I just end up weaving them together.’
Gong had left Shanghai when she was only two. However, raised by first-generation immigrant parents, her cultural connection to the cosmopolitan city was always tied within her family – a lived experience that, coupled with visits to the library, eventually morphed into critical reflections, thus informing the characterisation and setting of the novel:
’Even though I grew up in New Zealand, at home, we were speaking Shanghainese, cooking Chinese food, celebrating Chinese holidays... So it was like talking to Juliette’s narrative- which world do I belong to?... I took a lot of that diaspora aspect in. And the historical Shanghai aspect- it was my attempt to learn whatever I was exposed to because I didn’t grow up there... since I can only read in English, the resources available to me were from the British and French…, so the research I was doing was from that foreign angle. Then I was combatting, you know, what do I know myself? My culture, and the stories I’ve heard about?’
While Gong endorses the ‘death of the author’ philosophy and encourages free interpretation of her literary work, to some readers, These Violent Delights may go beyond pure literary entertainment. The novel’s characterisation alludes to modern history and international politics - which could reflect Gong’s identity as an English and International Relations major.
’The monster threat of the story is this tangible representation of colonialism, because you can’t see the damage of colonialism or imperialism that the story is trying to talk about, but you can see the damage of the monster.’
It is clear to any reader that this constant interaction with canonical literature and cultures across the world has influenced and enriched These Violent Delights, a text seeping with allusions to other works and conflicting worldviews. In Gong’s mind, however, this influence happened somewhat in reverse, for she recalls:
‘I wrote the first draft on a summer break, and then when I came back I was taking these classes that were subconsciously influenced by the book, like Monsters in Film and Literature, and Intro to Russian Literature, and as I was going through class, having them side by side, things did start migrating into the book even if you’re not thinking about it.’
This of course raises the more complicated question of how Gong’s commitments as a student interact with her professional life on a practical level. She expresses her frustration at the common misconception that it’s easier for those at university to find time to write, astutely noting:
“Student life and writing life side-by-side is so intangible and limitless, there’s no boundaries between student-you and writing-you, it is almost harder to juggle than a well-trained 9 to 5 job and then writing after.”
‘Because our responsibilities are less solid we put more pressure on ourselves because we don’t have a 9 to 5 or whatever but I think it is just as hard, if not harder, because being a student never really ends... Student life and writing life side-by-side is so intangible and limitless, there’s no boundaries between student-you and writing-you, it is almost harder to juggle than a well-trained 9 to 5 job and then writing after.’
Given that her whole career as a writer has coincided with her student years, Gong is a little apprehensive as to what will happen when her ‘student’ label falls away, and ‘writer’ takes full force:
‘I think that it’s going to be a strange transition,’ she tells us. ‘It’s always been very strange because growing up writing has always been that thing on the side that I’m just doing to entertain myself, most people in high school didn’t know that I wrote, it wasn’t something that I talked about. For a lot of people it was almost like a surprise and I suddenly had to add that author label to my identity…’
Of course, Gong is hyper-aware of the uniqueness of her position, especially given many of her peers (that is, fellow debut authors) are several decades older than her. Chloe was only 19 when she wrote the first draft of what would become These Violent Delights, and as such:
“...it’s almost like an internal pressure because of the way youth is treated in society, and it’s been ingrained in us to bring in [that humility], which is something young writers should keep in mind.”
’It’s hard to think of yourselves as colleagues or as equals. I’m still in the habit of not being able to call my professors by their first names, so if I’m interacting with an established author, I’m like ‘Can I call you by your first name? I don’t know’. It’s almost not like an industry pressure, it’s almost like an internal pressure because of the way youth is treated in society, and it’s been ingrained in us to bring in [that humility], which is something young writers should keep in mind. Is that something they can handle, or would they rather wait until mentally they feel like they can come up against these elements?’
For Gong, however, the gamble has clearly paid off. This comes as no surprise, with her nine years of writing experience putting her ahead of the game not just amongst fellow Gen-Zers, but those entering the industry afresh in their 30s and 40s.
And it’s only up from here. As she says herself, blasé as ever, ‘I’m definitely always going to be writing, it’s just too much living in my head and I wanna amuse myself’.
