In her luminous debut novel My Other Heart, Emma Nanami Strenner weaves
a poignant story about identity, family, and the longing for belonging across
continents. Spanning Philadelphia, Tokyo, and Saigon, the novel follows three
women – Mimi, Kit, and Sabrina – whose intertwined paths explore adoption,
cultural heritage, and the enduring power of maternal love. In this Q&A,
Strenner reflects on how her personal experiences shaped the novel’s setting,
the universal search for home, and the literary influences behind her writing.
With warmth and honesty, she discusses the emotional journeys of her
characters and the deeper questions that drive My Other Heart.
Of all the places you’ve travelled and lived in the world, why was it important to you to set the book between the US and Asia, both Southeast and Easterly parts?
Tokyo is where I grew up as a teenager and where I felt most at home when I was growing up. I am “ha-fu” myself, and I remember this world so clearly – I was a part of it.
When I lived in Saigon, at first it was a city that was so alien and different to me, but eventually it felt like a home I had never known and leaving that city became so incredibly hard. There is something utterly intoxicating, inviting and hospitable about Vietnam. Anything is possible there and the bonds you create with the people are extraordinary and frankly unbreakable after a time. It’s a country so rich in culture and kindness.
There is also something about Vietnam and Tokyo that is an absolute assault to the senses, in the best possible way. For example, when Kit arrives in Tokyo, her eyes are opened, almost for the first time, to an entirely different world from that of her safe bubble in Chestnut Hill, lovely as it is. She is struck by the vastness of a sprawling metropolis like Tokyo, the underlying difference in culture, the silence among the throngs of people, a world completely alien to her own. And yet, somehow, she finds a home.
The same goes for Vietnam. Mimi, who experiences the unthinkable in the opening pages, is pining for home in the moments running up to her devastating loss. She is longing for the intoxicating sweetness of a café sua da that disguises its rocket fuel strength, and the silky clear liquid of a pho soup and its slippery clear rice noodles. There is a constant longing that stretches through this novel, a longing for home in whatever shape that may take. These places – Saigon, Tokyo, and Chestnut Hill – all represent home to Mimi, Kit and Sabrina in their different ways.
Finally, Philadelphia. I felt so struck by this city I briefly lived in. People I met there had been there all their lives. In fact, I remember a woman telling me about how four generations of women in her family had gone to the same high school. She described Chestnut Hill as “as close to Eden as you can get”. It was, and is, a place that people don’t leave and where they set down their roots. It felt, therefore, like the perfect paradox for Sabrina and Kit to be growing up in this town while trying to find their place in the world far beyond. I hope that, in a way, I have written a love letter to these amazing places.
“It can so often be the people and the love that we find along the way
that really establishes our sense of belonging.”
Sabrina, Kit, and other characters in the novel are all looking for a sense of belonging in their identity. What does this search for belonging mean to you?
This yearning and searching, for all the characters in the novel, all leads back to a sense of trying to find a place in a world that they are struggling to fit into.
Sabrina, for example, attends a school with wealthy classmates and peers. She is best friends with Kit, who is also Asian, but not in the same way, and whose family comes from different means. Sabrina is stuck in the confines of what others think of her at school. The summer, once she graduates from high school, is therefore a true rite of passage for her, freeing her from barriers she has faced up to this point, all with the help of unexpected friendships and mentors.
Kit, meanwhile, is constantly shadowed by the ambiguity of her own heritage. She even goes behind her parents’ back and sifts through their drawers, trying to find some clues as to who she is. But, at the same time, her yearning to belong is shaped considerably by the fear of leaving the confines of the beautiful life she has been adopted into – the only life she knows.
For Mimi, too – the Vietnamese mother who loses her baby in the opening chapters – her entire journey in My Other Heart is about returning to her daughter, returning to her role as a mother, and returning to where she belongs with her child.
Lee Lee, Sabrina’s mother, lives her life as an outsider, a foreigner, an immigrant, working in menial jobs unlike the parents of her daughters’ friends. But she too is trying to find her place in America, a place where she is constantly reminded that she is a visitor. It is through her daughter and her hard work that she is seeking that place to belong.
I think it’s a universal theme really and one that I personally relate to on different levels. Whether I’m moving to a new country, a new city or a new community, I am trying to find my place and trying to support my daughter while she does the same. Even entering a new phase of motherhood (the same journey that Sally is on in trying to find my place when the power dynamics change).
Ultimately, while places can represent that destination, it can so often be the people and the love that we find along the way that really establishes our sense of belonging.
When it came to writing your debut novel, which books influenced you in your writing?
So many books influenced me while I was writing this novel. Coming of age novels have always featured in my reading pile, Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, Zadie Smith’s Swing Time, Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere and Everything I Never Told You.
When it came to slowing down and looking at the smaller things that happen which speak volumes, I turned to Olive Kitteridge and Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout. She is masterful at expressing so much about her characters with the simple details of a moment that might at first seem ordinary.
I also love Britt Bennett’s writing and her novel The Vanishing Half in particular where her plot moves so beautifully with the surprising and nuanced layers of racial tensions throughout.
I still turn to Jane Austen and Edith Wharton, too, for what they both say about class clashes and the undertones in both what is said and what is left unsaid.
Finally, when I felt really lost and needed a positive steer to keep writing and move the story on, I turned to Anne Lamott’s exquisite Bird by Bird. Sometimes, I needed just that … to take it bird by bird.
Emma Nanami Strenner’s novel, My Other Heart, is out now.
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