Book Interview: Winnie M Li had her own dark materials inform her books - including new novel Complicit

Author Winnie M Li prior to a signing for her new book, Complicit, which took place in Waterstones in Cork. Pic: Denis Minihane.

• Complicit
• Winnie M Li
• Orion, €11.99, Kindle, €4.46

CONTENT WARNING: This interview contains reference to sexual violence - if you are affected by the issues raised, help is available from the National Sexual Violence Helpline (for men and women) - 1800 778 888 or rapecrisishelp.ie.

In April 2008 Winnie M Li was in Belfast for the commemoration of the 10th Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. 

A Mitchell scholar, fulfilling her ambassadorial role, Winnie had spent her year studying in Cork, and was working as a producer for a film company in London.

“I went to various events and had the last day to myself,” she says, when we meet in Co Dublin, sitting outside to enjoy a rare sunny morning. 

“The next day was the red-carpet premiere for Flashbacks of a Fool, a film starring Daniel Craig that I’d been working on, and I decided to go to a park in Belfast to do this relaxing hike.” 

It wasn’t to be. Winnie was assaulted and raped by a teenager and spent the rest of the day at the hospital and police station.

“The next morning, I was still giving my police statement,” she says. “I missed my flight back to London. My friend booked me another plane ticket and I got back just in time to attend the red-carpet ceremony.” She laughs, sardonically.

“I bought this heavy-duty concealer makeup on the plane. I got home, put the concealer on my arms to cover the bruises, put on the gown I’d borrowed from a designer, and walked down the red-carpet.

“It was surreal,” she says. “That juxtaposition of the reality of the violence with the artifice of being at a film premiere and schmoozing with people that was really jarring.” It also marked the end of her film career.

“It was a small production company, and we ran out of funding to pay my income, but anyway, with the assault happening, I wouldn’t have been able to continue working in the same way,” she says.

“The post-traumatic stress and the depression made it impossible to have a dramatic job, so I lost my career and never got back to it.”

When Winnie was six years old, her mum, a teacher who was determined to give her daughters every educational advantage, encouraged her to keep a diary — and although initially reluctant, the young girl soon used writing as a power; a way to make sense of the world, and that has never changed.

“I can’t imagine living through a moment that life-changing and not trying to write about it,” she says. “As I was dealing with the attack and the aftermath I just kept on thinking, this would make really good material.”

And it did. Her first novel, Dark Chapters, based on the assault, and written both from the victim’s point of view, and the perpetrator’s, won the Guardian Not the Booker Prize, and was translated into 10 languages.

Winnie is currently writing the screenplay, along with her third novel.

Dark Chapters came out in June 2017, with the paperback appearing in October, the same time that the Weinstein allegations first appeared in the press.

“Two months later I was talking to my agent, and she asked about my next book. I said I wanted to write this historical thing set in Elizabethan London, and she was like, ‘Aren’t you better placed to write a novel about what’s in the news right now?’”

That was the very last thing Winnie felt like doing. “Writing about sexual violence is so heavy and carries a lot of responsibility.

“I decided I’d only write it if it was fun and interesting for me, so I structured it as a mystery, where a journalist is trying to seek out the story, and the film producer, Sarah, is revealing it, but we don’t know how much she is keeping from the journalist and the reader.

“I could then relive my time in the film industry and show how crazy and exciting it was but also unfair.”

Complicit, by Winnie M Li

In Complicit, Sarah Lai had a promising career in film. On the cusp of huge success, she lost out, and a decade on is teaching students of film at a second-rate college.

When Tom, a New York Times investigative journalist asks her to share her experiences, she’s initially in two minds. 

But as she gradually reveals the truth, it leads her to a greater understanding of her past career. But was she, in any way, complicit with the darker events that took place?

“The novel is not just about someone being a victim, but also being in a system where you feel you have to act in a certain way in order to preserve your career and professional ambition. And the ways in which the decisions we make morally keep getting pushed and influenced by the environments we work in, so, in that way, we are being complicit in the different abuses of power that happen.”

It’s a brilliant read; page-turning and clever, and it gives a fascinating, if startling, view of all that goes behind the scenes. Winnie was lucky. Her job was very like Sarah’s, but unlike her protagonist, she never came across a Weinstein–like producer.

“I imagined what it would have been like if this guy had suddenly turned up,” she says.

The book doesn’t just examine acts of violence.

“I was getting at the whole range of sexual harassment and cat-calling where you feel you are being reduced,” she says. “It’s an insult to be judged on how you look, or what you can offer sexually, as opposed to what you can offer intellectually or artistically.”

The daughter of immigrants from Taiwan, who grew up in a very white area of North Jersey, Winnie never felt that she fit in.

“I always wanted to escape,” she says, “and I’d lose myself in European fairytales. That got me into reading Irish folklore and Celtic mythology. I wanted to travel, and when I got to Harvard, I spent my summers writing for travel guidebooks. I learned German and they sent me there, and after I graduated, I went to Scotland.”

“At Harvard, I pretended I was half Scottish.” By then, she’d been accepted as a Mitchell Scholar, and had opted to study at University College Cork.

“I arrived in September, and in October, I volunteered for the Cork Film Festival. I made contacts there, and, after taking lots of €4 Ryanair flights to London, I wanted to live there. I was given a phone number for a film producer who needed an assistant, and that woman became my boss for six years. She sponsored my Visa and is still a good friend of mine.”

She is in Ireland with her family but the urge to travel remains strong.

During Covid, the family moved to a cottage near Bath where they still live. But Winnie’s urge to travel remains strong.

“I can’t travel in the same way,” she says, mentioning a limit on the number of festivals and book tours she can take on. “If I do, I’ll either be away from my kid, or dragging the family around.”

It’s no surprise that she’s based her third novel on a road trip across America.

“That idea gave me a reason to go,” she says. “We flew to Chicago in the Autumn of 2021, and spent three weeks following Route 66 to California. Travelling through Trump country as a Chinese American, I wanted to examine how you are viewed. Are you judged by the way you look? Are you seen as American?”

The two existing novels aren’t the only vehicle Winnie has used to explore the #MeToo movement.

In 2015 she started Clear Lines, an Arts initiative which began as a series of free festivals for survivors of rape. She still runs workshops.

She’s also completing a PhD at the London School of Economics, started before she got a book deal.

She’s examining how survivors are engaging with the media.

“It’s due at the end of February,” she says, admitting that her workload, with the screenplay and new novel is overwhelming. “It’s killing me,” she says with a laugh.