Clint Burnham Interviews Kevin Chong

Abstract

In this interview, Kevin Chong discusses his 2018 novel The Plague. He discusses its relation to the Camus novel from 1947, what he thought he “got right” about the novel once the 2020 pandemic started, and what it means to write from the privileged perspective of a settler immigrant. Chong also discusses Camus’ humour, the importance of writers of colour expanding the canon from Tolstoy and Camus to Toni Morrison and Kamel Daoud, and why hate crimes still take place in an Asian city like Vancouver. Chong also opens up about his own complicated history of arrival in Vancouver, being both fourth-generation and first-generation Chinese-Canadian.

Read the full interview on our Canadian Literature site at https://canlit.ca/article/clint-burnham-interviews-kevin-chong/.