Trang Thanh Tran
Trang Thanh Tran is a Vietnamese American writer telling all stories scary, otherworldly, and emotional. Trang grew up in a big family in Philadelphia but now calls the South home. When not writing, they’re busy trying new food and watching too many zombie movies. Their debut SHE IS A HAUNTING was an instant New York Times and Indie bestseller.
Q: How did the idea for SHE IS A HAUNTING come about?
A: So it happened Halloween 2020. Like just right before October, and I was working on this fantasy book. And it really wasn't working. And I was like, “I need to work on something else.” And I actually had never written horror before, but I love horror so much. I watched Nightmare on Elm Street way too young and other horror movies and was obsessed with that. And I was like, Why don't I just try it?
And that's kind of how I stumbled on the idea of writing all these tropes that I've always been really interested in, in particularly Gothic Horror, because I was just fascinated by like, how lush the setting is often in Gothic horror, and like the image of a young woman running away from a creepy house. And so I was like, I need my own version of this. And so I combined all those elements of core or gothic horror that I really love with like a family story that I felt ready to tell.
Q: Could you talk about the experience of writing the relationship between Bà and Jade and why that dynamic was so important for you to represent?
A: I can't speak for all families, but in a lot of families, there often is sort of a difficult relationship between the child and then a parent — especially someone who has experienced a lot of trauma. Both my parents are refugees, they have so many things about their life that I don't really know about, and my dad died when I was 17. So there's a lot of things I don't know about him that I have to ask my mom about. And so I kind of channeled that into Jade's relationship with her dad.
It's difficult, but then there are also layers to her father that she learns, but it doesn't make him less of an asshole. But it kind of explains who he is as a person. And I felt that it was interesting, at least for the character, Jade, and that they sort of want the same things. At the end, at the very core, they want a place to belong and they want a place to call home, but they go about it different ways. They're trying to fulfill it in different ways, and yet, they're sort of doing the same bad thing sometimes to do it — like the secretive things, kind of working against their other family members.
I felt like that dynamic was really important to the book about different generations of Vietnamese people and how they deal with this question of home and belonging somewhere.
These Sapphic Stories Book Club author profiles are compiled by founder Aliya Bree Hall. Aliya is a freelance journalist and author who founded the book club in 2021 to uplift sapphic stories and celebrate LGBTQ+ authors. This excerpt has been lifted from an interview Aliya conducted with our June 2023 author. You can read the full Q&A by joining the book club.
