Melody Chu weaves together tragedy, imposter syndrome and friendship in her debut novel “Mathey Girls."
The Shaker Heights attorney grew up in Northeast Ohio before heading to Princeton University. It was there, as a freshman in the Mathey College dorms, that she forged lifelong relationships that were the seeds for her new book, published by a division of New York-based SureShot Books. Yet she’s quick to point out that she’s very different from protagonist Esther Hsu.
“She kind of is wrecked by a lifelong impostor syndrome that was based on something that happened to her in childhood,” she said. “I am not that. I did have some personal tragedies … the main one was that when I had my third child, Ben, I did have a traumatic birth experience, and I did almost die.”
One of the Mathey girls, however, does not survive childbirth. From there, the story follows the characters processing grief and rebounding without the epicenter of their friend group.
“After that experience, I was actually chatting with one of my Princeton friends on WhatsApp and she was saying, ‘I don't know what our group would do if we lost you,’” she said. “’You are kind of the center of the group.’ It struck me very, very deeply, and I definitely don't agree that I'm the center of the group.”
Chu put her legal career on hold during the pandemic to write as well as to concentrate on her three school-age kids, her love of books and her friends.
"Especially for women, I think there's a wide range of people who never get married, never have children, people who get divorced, people who have older children, younger children," she said. "Despite the fact that your lives spread out in this way, because of technology and the physical act of trying to get together, you can maintain this very, very tight link that you started when you're younger."
One similarity between art and life is ethnicity. For Chu, growing up on Cleveland’s West Side, she had limited exposure to the culture from which her parents emigrated in the 1960s.
“They didn't quite understand how easy it is for kids to lose their native language and culture,” she said. “They actually made … my siblings speak English at home because they were afraid that when they went to school, if they didn't speak English, they would get picked on. I do think that this particular perspective is not very well represented in literature because … the majority of people who are Chinese American in the United States probably grew up in a place where there are more Chinese Americans.”
Another plot point, carried over from real life, was her mother-in-law’s suggestion that the kids be raised in her husband’s native country, Taiwan.
“She kept telling me, 'You're busy, don't worry, I'll take the baby to Taiwan,'" she said. "As an American, I had never heard of that. I actually told my husband, 'Your mom has to stop saying that, or I'm gonna go crazy.' She meant well. She's not the scary mother-in-law from the book. She's really sweet.”
For her next novel, Chu plans to include a protagonist more in line with her husband’s “happy-go-lucky” nature – a stark contrast to the widower in “Mathey Girls.”
Chu will be part of the Cleveland Public Library’s One World Day celebrations on Aug. 24, signing copies of her book.
