Author ‘connected deeply with aspiring writers’
VANCOUVER Literary friends and fans are reacting with sorrow to the death of Canadian author and teacher Wayson Choy.
Choy, the celebrated author of The Jade Peony and a powerful voice for the Chinese-Canadian community, died on Saturday. His agent Denise Bukowski announced his death on Twitter Sunday. Choy was 80.
News of Choy’s death prompted a wave of condolences from authors on social media, with novelist Jen Sookfong Lee writing that everyone should aspire to be the kind of author and mentor Choy was.
She wrote that he attended her “first big reading ” in 2007 and whispered to her, “You did a good job. I’m proud of you.”
“In the years following, he was unfailingly kind, always telling me he had read my latest book, always asking how publishing was treating me,” Sookfong Lee wrote. “I don’t say this much but my heart is broken. He was every possible good thing I could have ever imagined. I have always loved you, Wayson.”
CBC literary host Shelagh Rogers tweeted: “Such a mentor, such a mensch, such a writer. I grieve the passing of this lovely man with my whole heart.”
The Humber College School for Writers tweeted that Choy “connected deeply with aspiring writers. He was as generous and nurturing a mentor as he was a beautiful, thoughtful storyteller. The School for Writers is better for having his influence. He is sorely missed.” Choy was born in Vancouver on April 20, 1939 and was the first Chinese-Canadian to enrol in creative writing at the University of B.C. In his early 20s, Choy moved to Toronto, where he taught writing and continued to write. In 2015, Choy received the George Woodcock Award that recognized his outstanding career. He was also a member of the Order of Canada.
He is best known for his debut novel The Jade Peony, set in Vancouver’s Chinatown during the 1930s and 1940s and telling the stories of three children in an immigrant family. The novel won critical acclaim, sharing the 1995 Trillium Book Award with a novel by Margaret Atwood. It also won the 1996 City of Vancouver Book Award and was named an American Library Association Notable Book of the Year in 1998. Choy’s followup novel All That Matters took home another Trillium and was shortlisted for the 2004 Giller Prize. Choy is also the author of two acclaimed memoirs, Paper Shadows, and Not Yet: A Memoir of Living and Almost Dying. Paper Shadows details his childhood in Vancouver during and after the Second World War, while Not Yet chronicles his experience suffering a combined asthma-heart attack. For decades, Choy taught English and creative writing at Toronto’s Humber College and continued doing so even after his literary success. He insisted teaching was his great love.