Susan Choi is one of the most accomplished novelists in America. Her debut work, The Foreign Student (1998), concerns the transition of Chang (Chuck) Ahn (a character based loosely on Susan’s father) from war-torn Korea to a small college in rural Tennessee in the mid-1950s, where he meets headstrong Katherine Monroe, herself in transition in a complex relationship with an older man, Charles Addison. American Woman (2003) focuses also on a transition, ultimately one of self-awareness and self-acceptance, by Jenny Shimada, member of a radical underground group who is entrusted with sheltering a young woman, Pauline, a character inspired by the notorious Patty Hearst kidnapping in the 1970s. This novel was short-listed for a Pulitzer Prize in fiction. Joan Didion, commenting on American Woman, captures Choi’s strengths as a novelist: “Susan Choi in this second novel proves herself a natural—a writer whose intelligence and historical awareness effortlessly serve a breathtaking narrative ability.” On a warm day in May 2004 Susan, seven months pregnant, traveled from her home in Brooklyn to Avery Fisher Hall in Manhattan for this conversation with translator Bruce Fulton.
