Novelist Susan Choi, who visits Rensselaer (RPI) on Thursday, talks to the TU's Susan Comninos about her attraction to episodes of social upheaval in recent American history:
"I've always been interested in social justice movements," she says in a telephone interview, "in good intentions taken to extremes." She fed her interest by earning an M.F.A. in fiction writing at Cornell University, where the counterculture still reigns: "I have at once a fondness and horror of that kind of college town. There's a kind of thought-police going on: a monoculture of liberal-progressive politics, recycling -- trying to resurrect the barter system," she says, referring to an alternative business practice launched there in the '90s.
"At the time, I thought," says Choi, whose humor belies her dark subject matter, "'Aww! That's so sweet. They're trying to do away with currency. Good luck with that.'"
