Canadian author Wayson Choy, whose 1995 novel The Jade Peony "was not only an exceptional piece of writing, but one that depicted a family that many readers recognized: new Canadians, non-white, living in the inner city, dealing with racism and struggling to balance tradition with hopes for a more modern life in the New World," died April 27, the Globe and Mail reported. He was 80. The Jade Peony won a Trillium Award (co-winner with Margaret Atwood) and the City of Vancouver Book Award.
"Something that seemed very familiar opened up a world of possibility for me," said novelist Jen Sookfong Lee, who read the book in her teens. "Without him, there's no me. There's no [author] Lindsay Wong. There's none of us."
Martha Kanya-Forstner, editor-in-chief, Doubleday Canada and McClelland & Stewart, observed: "That book broke such ground and made a community seen and heard and understood.... I never knew him not to offer a blurb or not to go to someone's reading or to champion someone's work. Now there are generations of writers that will be able to trace something back to an act of kindness on Wayson's part."
Choy's second novel, All That Matters, also won a Trillium Prize and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize. His other books include Not Yet: A Memoir of Living and Almost Dying and Paper Shadows: A Chinatown Childhood. In 2005, he was named to the Order of Canada, and in 2015 he received the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award for an outstanding literary career in B.C.
Sean Cranbury, executive director of BC Book Prizes, told the Star that Choy wrote about Chinatown in ways that hadn’t been done before: "He encouraged people to bring their voices forward and not be afraid to write their own stories. The fact this news shakes the community so deeply is a testament to how important his work was and what it meant to people."