Choy, Wayson
Wayson Choy is a Chinese Canadian writer and author of the Jade Peony (1995), which won the Trillium Award and the City of Vancouver Book Award. Its companion All That Matters (2004) was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Both novels follow the lives of three Chinese Canadian siblings living in Vancouver, British Columbia’s Chinatown during the Second World War. His book Paper Shadows (1999) paints a portrait of the author’s own childhood in Vancouver’s Chinatown in the 1940s. His most recent book Not Yet: A Memoir of Living and Almost Dying, intimately reflects on love and life after the author’s two near-death experiences. Since 2003, Wayson Choy has been professor emeritus at Humber College, Toronto, Ontario. In 2002, he was designated a Companion of Frontier College, and in 2010 he received a Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, from Sir Wilfred Laurier University. Since 2005, he has been a Member of the Order of Canada. He continues to reside in Toronto, Ontario and is currently working on his fifth book.
In this interview, Wayson Choy describes his childhood recollections of Cantonese opera culture in Vancouver, British Columbia. He notes how, at the age of 56, he discovered that he was adopted and that his biological father was an opera performer. This discovery led Wayson to reflect on the importance of the Cantonese opera to the Chinese community in his book Paper Shadows (1999). Drawing from his research for Paper Shadows and his recollections, Wayson discusses how Cantonese opera gave strength to the Chinese community and appealed to Chinese Canadian women like his adoptive mother, who would take him backstage after performances.
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