Denise Chong

Denise Chong, OC (; born 9 June 1953) is a Canadian economist and writer.

Early life and schooling

A third-generation Chinese Canadian, Chong was born in Vancouver, British Columbia on 9 June 1953, and was raised in Prince George. She studied economics at the University of British Columbia (UBC) earning her bachelor's degree in 1975. She received an MA from the University of Toronto in 1978.

With the end of Trudeau's term in 1984, Denise Chong left her role as a public servant in order to pursue a career as a professional writer. entitled "Being Canadian" has been widely anthologized, including in the books Who Speaks for Canada: Words that Shape a Country by D. Morton and M. Weinfeld (1998), and Great Canadian Speeches by D. Gruending (2004).

Chong's emphasis on the voices of women, as well as her particular brand of nationalism (which is more than a little critical), are both reflected in her edited compilation The Penguin Anthology of Stories by Canadian Women. That many of the authors published in this anthology are also women of transnational identities is a reflection of Denise Chong's concern for the multicultural quality of being Canadian. In Chong's own words, "Canadian citizenship recognizes differences. It praises diversity. It is what we as Canadians choose to have in common with each other […] How we tell our stories is the work of citizenship". In her introduction to the anthology, Chong highlights what attracted her to the stories, seeming to also articulate one of the strong characteristics of her own writing: "The plot that interested me was life lived in the chaos and uncertainty of everyday happenings and relationships." All of Chong's books evoke such "everyday happenings and relationships" amidst the extraordinary circumstances of war, communism, immigration, and racism.

Denise Chong's second book, The Girl in the Picture, about iconic Vietnamese napalm victim Kim Phuc, portrayed everyday life in war-torn Vietnam. Her book Egg on Mao: The Story of an Ordinary Man Who Defaced an Icon and Unmasked a Dictatorship, released on 29 September 2009 by Random House Canada, was Chong's first book in a decade.

Her 2013 non-fiction book, Lives of the Family: Stories of Fate and Circumstance, relates stories about the experiences of Chinese-Canadian families who settled in Canada's National Capital Region. This work earned her praise in Toronto Star and Vancouver Sun book reviews.

Publications

The Concubine's Children was published in 1994 by Penguin Books in Toronto. "Being Canadian" is a speech given by Denise Chong during the 1995 Citizenship Week. This speech has been widely anthologized, including in the books Who Speaks for Canada: Words that Shape a Country by Desmond Morton and Morton Weinfeld (1998), and Great Canadian Speeches by D. Gruending. The Penguin Anthology of Stories by Canadian Women was published in 1997 by Penguin Books in Toronto. The Girl in the Picture: The Kim Phuc Story was published in 1999 by Viking Press in Toronto. Egg on Mao: The Story of an Ordinary Man Who Defaced an Icon and Unmasked a Dictatorship was published in 2009 by Random House Canada. Lives of the Family: Stories of Fate and Circumstance was published in 2013 by Random House Canada.

Other public service and personal life

In addition to continuing her career as a writer, Chong serves on the boards, task forces, and committees of several organizations including the Task Force on the Participation of Visible Minorities in the Federal Public Service, the National Advisory Board on Culture Online, and the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. Bishop's University, and the University of Northern British Columbia.