On Oct. 10, author R. F. Kuang joined the Tufts community for a discussion on writing, identity and the questions that shape her fiction. Hosted by the Asian American Center, the event drew a full audience to Distler Performance Hall, where students eagerly awaited with notebooks and copies of “Babel” and her other works in hand. Over the course of an hour, Kuang spoke warmly about her craft, academia and the delicate balance between critique and care.
She began by reflecting on her relationship with writing. Kuang started at just 19 years old, drawn by the thrill of the unknown. She still loves the feeling of being a beginner, which is why she refuses to stay in one place or genre for long. Her body of work reflects her restless curiosity: “Yellowface” takes the shape of literary satire, “Babel” explores historical fantasy and “Katabasis” draws from traditional mythology. Each new project becomes a way of starting over.
Much of the evening was spent discussing aspects of academia, a setting that threads through all her work. Having spent much of her time on campuses, Kuang spoke with passion about wanting to remain in the classroom for as long as she can. She called universities their own kind of fairyland — places shimmering with magic and ambition, yet shadowed by distortion and exclusivity. It’s easy to get lost in the bubble; the best stories, she suggested, are the ones that leave it and still find their way home.
Her fiction lingers in that tension between belonging and distance. In “Katabasis,” the university is both sanctuary and trap, a place where knowledge and cruelty intertwine. Yet, Kuang resists the idea that her work is meant to tear institutions down. For her, critique is an act of love: To analyze or challenge something is to want better for it. She imagines a world where universities and fairytales can coexist, and remains committed to staying in her classroom for as long as possible.
When asked about her place in the Asian American literary canon, Kuang hesitated. She avoids being defined by ethnicity, pointing to earlier authors like Amy Tan who bore the weight of stereotype and expectation. Writers of color, she said, are often read as cultural representatives rather than artists. For Kuang, identity is not a label to sell books but something inseparable from craft. She hopes that she and other Asian American writers can be read for their language, ideas and storytelling, not only for how well they speak for a community.
Her reflections on form extended to finding a balance between her roles as novelist and scholar. She spoke candidly about the difficulty of writing both fiction and criticism — of learning to find her nonfiction voice after years of creative work. Academic writing demands restraint; fiction asks for risk. Each requires a different kind of precision, and she is still learning where they intersect.
Kuang also spoke about learning how to listen to feedback. Editors, she said, are often right about what’s missing but wrong about how to fix it. When criticism stings, she steps away before deciding what to keep. The goal isn’t to defend the work but to understand it more deeply — to put something on the page that allows others to see what she sees.
When asked where her stories begin, she smiled. They often start, she said — with irritation — with something that unsettles her enough to demand a story. That instinct has guided her to very different worlds: the publishing industry’s hypocrisies in “Yellowface,” the legacies of imperialism in “Babel” and the burnout and disillusionment of academia in “Katabasis.”
Looking ahead, Kuang hinted at her fascination with the '30s and '40s, especially the political and moral ruptures surrounding World War II. She offered few details, only that she remains drawn to the moments when language, power and philosophy converge and begin to fracture.
After the conversation, Kuang stayed to sign books for a line that wound around the auditorium. Students clutched copies of “Babel,” “Yellowface,” “Katabasis” and “The Poppy War” trilogy, still murmuring about what they had just heard. The room softened into a quieter rhythm, with the shuffle of pages and the faint scratch of a pen on title pages. It was a fitting close to an evening devoted to the slow, deliberate work of thinking — and rethinking — the stories we tell about the worlds we inhabit.
