Exclusive Interview: Pop Culturalist Chats with Chloe Gong

These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong is a Romeo and Juliet retelling like you’ve never seen before. The story begins in 1926 Shanghai and there is a blood feud between The Scarlet Gang and The Russian White Flowers. This debut novel also includes gore and loss of a loved one, which makes it perfect for Game of Thrones or fans of Reign.

This retelling is an own voice book with Asian representation in it. The details of Shangai are so vivid that the reader feels like they are there. In addition to that, Juliette Cai is ambitious and cunning. Meanwhile, Roma Montagov is tender and sweet making the two complete opposites. It made their chemistry and tension even more fun to read. As a reader, you will instantly be drawn into this story.

PC: What is your writing process like?
Chloe: Extremely chaotic! I don’t usually have a process because my days are all over the place depending on the school semester. Usually, I just sit down to write whenever I can squeeze in some time, and then I figure out what exactly I’m going to write when I’m doing something else. My brain is constantly on multi-tasking mode by brainstorming while I’m cooking or doing laundry, and then I spit the words out as soon as I can get to my document!

PC: What is your favorite Romeo and Juliet quote and why?
Chloe: “Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.” There are so many quotes in Romeo and Juliet that carry so much depth and meaning, and this one does too, but it’s my favorite out of all of them because it just sounds so lovely and immediately creates an image of its meaning.

PC: Did you intend to use a line from Taylor Swift’s song “Reputation” when a character states: “My reputation precedes me.”?
Chloe: [laughs] I actually have quite a lot of intentional Taylor Swift references throughout the book (the balcony scene referencing “Love Story” being one) but this line from “Reputation” was actually an accident. I was making an allusion to Shakespeare’s concern with themes of reputation from other plays like Othello.

PC: What is the hardest part about writing a retelling?
Chloe: Knowing what to bring in and what to leave out. Many earlier versions of These Violent Delights stuck far closer to the original plot of Romeo and Juliet, but it became evident that it was dragging down the new story that I was trying to tell. My task was to figure out what parts of the original I was actually trying to refigure in a new way, and which parts could be snipped away without losing the heart of what I was trying to adapt.

PC: What is one thing that you hope readers will take away from your book?
Chloe: A world that they want to be immersed in! I think there are a lot of themes in this book that people will end up interpreting differently and that I’d like to leave everyone to interpret in their own way, but beyond it all, I want to tell a story that keeps going on in a reader’s head even when the last page has been turned.

PC: How did you balance writing a book in the middle of your senior year and classes? As a writer, I know it can be hard to balance the two sometimes.
Chloe: With a lot of timetabling and intense scheduling of time! In truth, sometimes it’s less balancing and more just handling the most pressing thing on my plate before its deadline. If it’s a writing deadline I have coming up, I focus most of my energy on writing, and if it’s a big essay I have due soon, then I put everything aside and get the essay done. So long as I don’t miss any due date, I count myself successful!

PC: Is there anything you can tell us about the sequel?
Chloe: There will be more drama, more action, more blood… but more romance.

PC: What made you decide to pick the 1920s Shanghai time period specifically?
Chloe: I’ve always loved the 1920s as a time period, so I set out to write something in this decade with both the gorgeous aesthetic and the political commentary. As I started brainstorming what exactly the story would be about, I gravitated toward Shanghai because that’s where my family is from and I had some familiarity with its history. The more I researched, the more it seemed to work for my blood feud idea, and so the pieces clicked together!

PC: Is there anything else that you would like to share?
Chloe: That I’m super excited for people to read this book and enter this world!

Chloe Gong is a twenty-one year old senior at Penn University. Gong is majoring in English and International Relations. You can find her on Twitter. You can purchase These Violent Delights here.

About the Pop Culturalist Contributor, Amani
Amani Salahudeen is an avid reader and book blogger. She has a B.A. in Journalism and Professional Writing from The College of New Jersey. She is also the host of her own podcast called Raise Your Words that is co-hosted with her friend, Andrea Shaw. Follow her on social media!