About Evelina Chao, Author

Evelina Chao was born in Chicago, Illinois and raised in Arlington, Virginia during a time when Asian families were still few in the community. Following World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam War, white Americans viewed Asians less as distinct races and cultures with separate roles in history but as a conglomerate foreign minority to be viewed with suspicion and fear. Evelina’s Chinese-born parents experienced prejudice and racial discrimination on a near daily basis and it was within this emotional and pyschological framework that her sensibilities as a writer were formed.
Though Chao eventually chose music and playing the violin and viola as her profession, attending Oberlin College and the Juilliard School before joining the Amici Quartet, Indianapolis Symphony and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra where she is currently Assistant Principal Viola, she continually grappled with the issue of identity. Who was she? Chinese? American? Both? Neither? How was she to come to terms with the differences in perspective that unified and divided her from her immigrant parents and future generations?
Chao’s first novel, Gates of Grace, published by Warner Books in 1987, tells the story of a young Chinese family’s assimilation into American society following their escape from Mao’s Communist China in 1949. Pinned on a fast-moving narrative that moves from Ellis Island to New York’s Chinatown, Chao’s focus is on discrimination and the ramifications of a clash between traditional Chinese mores and beliefs and modern American culture. Part character study, part mystery, Gates of Grace earned critical acclaim nationwide.
Chao’s second book, a memoir, Yeh Yeh’s House, published by St. Martin’s Press in 2004, is a personal look at the issue of identity. Focused on the relationship between Chao and her paternal grandfather, Tzu chen Chao (or Yeh Yeh) the author writes of her attempt to pay homage to the memory of her ancestors by traveling to China with her mother, Vera Lin Chao. The struggle to reach Beijing and the family home from Shanghai, their port of entry, reveals the secret of her ties to China as well as raises new questions about the nature of family and inter-generational relationships. Yeh Yeh’s House
drew universally warm reviews and was a finalist for the Minnesota Book of the Year in the category of memoir.
In 2006 Chao is working on her third book, a novel about musicians and artists. Set in New York City and Strasburg, France, it centers on the life of a brilliant violinist near the end of his career who is faced with a cataclysmic event which forces him to re-think the choices he has made in his life. Central themes include the nature of art and personal sacrifice, egoism, the declining health of classical music in contemporary society, the artist in society, and the dynamic of human creativity.
Evelina Chao has had no formal training in writing and is largely self-taught, though she attended workshops at Bennington College, the Yellow Bay Writers Conference, Prague University, Lake Pepin Writers conference and The Loft, in Minneapolis. The writers she admires and considers influential are Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Austen, Chabon, Philip Roth, Ha Jin, among others.
In 2006 she is teaching a course in creative non-fiction at the Loft.

Evelina Chao has appeared as guest speaker at forums whose focus is diversity, immigration, the Chinese American experience, crossing cultures, and balancing different artistic endeavors with personal life.  Her talks are an inspiring, illuminating and entertaining blend of shared personal experience, reading excerpts from her books, and question and answer periods in which audiences explore their own experience.  She has appeared in literacy programs at libraries throughout the Twin City Area, private book clubs, bookstores, corporate diversity programs such as that at Wells Fargo Bank, and at Asian Professional forums.

Evelina Chao’s memoir, Yeh Yeh’s House, published by St. Martin’s Press in 2004, and novel, Gates of Grace, published by Warner Books in 1987, have earned accolades from readers, critics, trade journals and academicians everywhere.

PROFESSIONAL AND COMMUNITY SERVICE

Served as mentor for the Inroads Program for emerging Asian-Pacific writers, Board Member of Loft, Graywolf Press, Organization of Chinese Americans, Friends of the St. Paul Public Library.  Mentor for Asian American and Somali youth.  In 2005 Served as Mentor for the Creative Non-Fiction Program at the Loft.

AWARDS Commendation from Governor Arne Carlson for service to the Asian Community of Minnesota, 1994.