“People do read from their own experience,” she said. “We tend to think of reading as kind of a passive activity — you sit there, you’re reading the words that are going in and that’s it — but I think of it as this incredibly active and creative thing that you’re doing. As the words come off the page, they’re being filtered through your whole life experience. It’s a very active activity. So, for a whole community to do that and then come together, I think it’s going to be really interesting and I’m just really looking forward to that part of it."
One City One Book alternates between fiction and non-fiction. Last year, Hamilton read “A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II,” by Sonia Purnell. In 2023, the community read “Lessons in Chemistry” by Bonnie Garmus.
Lane Libraries is the presenting sponsor of Tuesday’s conversation with See at Parrish Auditorium at Miami University Hamilton.
See, 70, said she will be more at home with the conversational format because “it’s very spontaneous.”
“I don’t know what the presenter’s going to be asking me, and sometimes they’re questions I’ve heard a million times or sometimes they’re questions I’ve never had before or haven’t thought about something in that particular way,” she said. “There are always new revelations, I think, when it’s more of a conversation.”
Lane Library spokesperson Carrie Mancuso agreed.
“We know the community will enjoy the conversation facilitated by (Miami University Associate Professor) Kelli Johnson, diving into the themes of the book and Ms. See’s inspiration for her writing,” she said.
The idea for the book came by chance.
“This book kind of literally fell into my lap, in a way,” See said.
See has leaned into her Chinese heritage, which comes from her father’s side, and has written about and led cultural events emphasizing the importance of Los Angeles and Chinatown.
During the height of the COVID pandemic, she thought she’d be writing something else. But everything she needed — libraries, research libraries, and China — were closed. After “months of moping” around her house, in October 2020, she was in her office when the spine of a gray jacketed book “kind of chunked out at me.” That book was “Reproducing Women: Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Ming Dynasty.”
“I thought to myself, well, you know, here we are in the middle of a pandemic ... and we didn’t know how this was going to turn out,” she said. “So, I was like, ‘Well, I haven’t (got anything) better to do.’”
See sat down and read a book that had been on her bookshelf for the better part of a decade and she had never opened before.
In those pages, she read the story that inspired “Lady Tan’s Circle of Women.” 500 years ago, in 1511, a doctor in China decided to publish a book about her medical cases when she turned 50. See found out this sixteenth-century book was still in print and ordered a copy. Then, Yunxian, the main character of “Lady Tan’s Circle of Women,” started to come to life.
Whether it was luck, fate, fortune or destiny, See said she was obviously meant to write this story.
HOW TO GO
An Evening with Author Lisa See
When: 7 to 9 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025
Where: Parrish Auditorium, Miami University Hamilton, 1601 University Boulevard, Hamilton.
More information: Miami University associate professor Kelli Johnson speaks with New York Times bestselling author Lisa See about her bestselling historical novel “Lady Tan’s Circle of Women from 7 to 8 p.m. Book sales and signings will go from 8 to 9 p.m.
About the Author
