New Yankee Workshop Plans

Oceans Apart

American writer Susan Conley revisits her two years in Beijing battling breast cancer in her memoir - and in a chat with Rebecca Lo.

It is a rainy night in Portland, and Susan Conley has just tucked into bed her two boys, Thorne, age 10 and Aidan, age 8. She has not quite recovered from the residual jet lag of two weeks in Asia on a book tour promoting her memoir, The Foremost Good Fortune. And I am making her think, forcing her to dig deep and dissect some of the book's themes that express the trials and tribulations of an expat mom living in China with cancer.

"Language and communication were the heart of the book for me," she admits. "I found Mandarin fascinating. But when I got breast cancer, I forgot all of it! It was an easy way out. Cancer was a language metaphor. I had to let go of Mandarin to get through the cancer world. Mandarin demanded all of my attention."

A creative writer of fiction and poetry, Conley was teaching in a writer's workshop, The Telling Room, when her family of four uprooted and moved to China. They lived in Beijing from summer of 2007 to December 2009 after her husband, Tony Kieffer, was transferred to the capital to teach credit rating systems to fellow bankers. He still travels to China every other month on business.

They moved from a house in Maine to a high-rise apartment on the Fourth Ring Road in time to see full Olympic mania in progress. The original plan was for two years; after nine months, Conley discovered lumps in her left breast.

Although she was planning on a book about motherhood in China, she decided to write it in real time after the first meeting with her oncologist. "It was an experience too rich and too bizarre not to write down," she recalls. "I was doing it begrudgingly. Looking back, though, I'm glad I didn't write it through rose-colored glasses. Nostalgia happens really quickly. I felt that as soon as we returned to the States."

The book is primarily the experience of a mother struggling to make a home for her family in a country where she does not speak the language. Throw into the mix the added burden of facing a deadly disease in a place where everything, from a doctor's visit to making new friends, is foreign territory ripe with challenges. To get through it all, she learned to let go and rely on the people around her. She worked hard at developing relationships with people such as her personal trainer, Marcus; her driver, Lao Wu; her English teacher, Rose; and her ayis (maids).

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Norm has been a real inspiration to me over the years. My nine year old son and I sit down and watch The New Yankee Workshop religiously. I just ordered the "Student's Desk" plans and am looking forward to building it for my 11 year old daughter.

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