Writing that Heals and Connects: Spotlight on Reclaim's Editorial Director

Reclaim editorial director Dorcas Cheng-Tozun shares about her own journey as a writer, her hopes for the magazine, and her new book.

By Morgan Lee

Dorcas Cheng-Tozun had always loved storytelling, but it wasn’t until she burned out really badly in 2009 that she realized the power of writing to heal and connect people.

 In mid-2008, her husband’s work moved them to Shenzhen, China. Cheng-Tozun left her nonprofit job in California and became the director of communications for her husband’s start-up. After about a year on the job, she became so burned out from the stress of living and working in a foreign country that writing was one of the only things she had the capacity to do. “Out of that, I began to see the power of writing as way to heal us, as a way to clarify our thoughts, as a way to connect us with one another,” said Cheng-Tozun. “That’s when I began to turn to writing as something I wanted to pursue as my primary vocation.”

Cheng-Tozun was recently named Reclaim’s inaugural editorial director. She spoke with colleague Morgan Lee about her Asian American identity, her hopes for Reclaim, and her latest book, Let There d.light: How One Social Enterprise Brought Solar Products to 100 Million People.

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What is the primary type of writing that you do?

I write a lot of memoir and personal essay as well as articles about social issues, parenting, family, and business. I was a columnist for Inc.com for three years, where I wrote about the intersection of start-up life and marriage and family.

As a Silicon Valley native, I’ve interacted a lot with entrepreneurs, start-up culture, and the latest trends in technology, so I’ve written about those topics and how they connect with faith and society. Christianity Today, for example, has published articles I’ve written about artificial intelligence and the technological singularity. I wrote a piece for Inc. about a multinational company that was intentionally forming teams of Bosnian and Serbian engineers to heal ethnic tensions.

Having spent time living in China, Hong Kong, and Kenya in the past decade, I’ve also had the privilege of broadening my perspective on how our cultures and countries of origin affect how we think and act. I’ve developed a deep appreciation for how much we can learn from people who are different from us. So, I’m always looking for opportunities to write about new topics that I don’t necessarily know much about.

How have you developed your craft?

When I was living in Hong Kong in 2010, I started taking writing classes. From there, I joined my first writing critique group. That was transformative for me. The women in the group were extraordinarily kind and encouraging and offered great feedback. They came to the table with a clear sense of “I am here to build you up. I am here to make you better.” That made it so much easier to accept their feedback.

Since then it’s been a lot of writing and working with really excellent editors. Kate Shellnutt at Christianity Today is one of my favorite editors. I’ve learned so much from working with her.

I’ve also learned a lot from being an editor. Everything I’ve learned about what makes for strong writing I apply to my role as editor but also as a writer .
 
Who are some writers you are always eager to read?

That is always a tough question for me because I have really eclectic taste. I tend to be drawn to particular books more than particular authors.

Nonfiction is my bread and butter, so I read a lot of books that are instructional, historical, or journalistic. I was a sociology major, so I love any book that gives me further insight into the complex beings that we humans are. And I love an inspiring, compelling story—especially if it’s a true story. Seabiscuit and Unbroken by Lauren Hillenbrand are two of my favorites, as is Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder.

Anne Lamott was one of the first Christian writers that I embraced. She’s very imperfect, and yet there is something so true about the things she writes. That opened up for me a new possibility of writing as a way of being vulnerable and true to yourself. It’s not about putting your best foot forward or creating an image that you want others to see, but it’s sharing genuinely who you are and giving others the chance to do the same.

Gene Luen Yang, especially his graphic novels American Born Chinese and Boxers & Saints, has opened up my eyes to what it could look like to fully embrace my ethnic identity and all its complexities in my writing and storytelling.

Also, I should say that I’m not above reading some light-hearted fiction or even young adult fiction. I love Sophie Kinsella’s and Nick Hornby’s work. I had a lot of fun with Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before trilogy. These days, I’m reading the graphic novel series Amulet, by Kazu Kibuishi, alongside my eight-year-old son.
 
For many writers of color, writing about race and ethnicity becomes a significant theme in their work. Sometimes they have actively pursued and incorporated this in their work, and sometimes this is how editors have pitched them. How has that shown up in your writing, and how inclined have you been to want to pursue that?

I have had mixed feelings about my ethnic identity for a long time. I grew up in an almost all-white town in the San Francisco Bay Area. I thought moving to mainland China would help me discover and know myself. Unfortunately, it only caused more confusion because I realized I was nothing like the people in China and there truly was a liminal space I was in where I wasn’t American, I wasn’t Chinese, and there were no clear-cut answers in my search for my own ethnic identity. 

Because that’s something I’ve lived ambiguously with, I haven’t always known how to write about it. When I started writing, then, I wrote more as someone who had been through some tough experiences and was trying to figure out how faith and God fit into all of that. And since I was part of my husband’s startup and we had moved and sacrificed a lot for his company, that was a dominant experience in my life that I pitched to editors.

Thankfully, I’m not aware of my ethnicity ever being a barrier or it being perceived as odd that I was writing about Africa or business. That being said, I have felt self-conscious about it. I have a couple of books out now that are both business-related, and there are so few Asian American writers in business—and even fewer Asian American women. I wonder sometimes if people see me as a legitimate source of information, as someone who they can trust with expertise, who has something important to say, even though I look different from those who typically write about these topics.

What would your advice be for someone who is trying to branch out from writing primarily about Asian American identity?

Make the case for why you are the right person to write about this topic. Seek out the experiences, knowledge, and connections that could help you make that case. If you wanted to write about business, who do you know? What classes have you taken? What companies have you worked for? All those things work toward building up your credibility. if you know that this something you want to write about, you can pursue it and say with confidence to editors, “I know about this because I have done A, B, and C, and this is what I have to say about it.” If you have that knowledge, work on your writing skill, and regularly pitch to editors, you’ll be in good shape.

What are you trying to accomplish at Reclaim?

We want to publish excellent work by Asian American Christians that speaks first to other Asian American Christians, but hopefully also has a broad appeal. We want to showcase their voices and creativity, and help share their stories. We also want to provide information and teaching and guidance to help Asian Americans of faith navigate through challenging times like now, when we’re in the midst of a national reckoning on race and AAPI communities are facing racism because of the coronavirus.

Though we’ve only been publishing for a few months, we’ve already had the privilege of sharing some really powerful articles, poetry, and artwork. AACC team member Jane Kim wrote an extraordinarily practical and helpful “Asian American Guide to Dismantling Anti-Blackness.” We published poet Michael Stalcup’s poem, “The Rule,” in response to the racist dog-leash incident in Central Park, and writing professor Dr. Jean Neely’s lovely series of haikus on the pandemic and resulting shutdown. We’ve also published some really unique stories about being biracial and being in an interracial marriage.

That said, we also welcome submissions from friends and allies who are not ethnically Asian, and we’ve already published a number of these. In this moment in history, it’s so important for us to hear from one another and learn from those who are different from us, and we want to reflect that in what we do at Reclaim.

Even more important than the nuts and bolts of what we publish, I value cultivating storytellers, teachers, leaders, and artists within the Asian American community. I tell my team of editors that we want excellent work and we want to encourage our contributors to give us the best of what they have.

At the same time, we want to call out their gifts and encourage them in their walk. If we have to turn somebody down or their submission isn’t ready for Reclaim, we want to offer helpful feedback or advice or encouragement. There aren’t enough Asian American voices represented in the US. So, anything we can do to support the confidence and skill level and to build up opportunities for creative folks, leaders, and storytellers in the community is worthwhile work. 

What is your new book about?

Let There d.light is about the journey of my husband’s company over the last fourteen years. They started as a small school project at Stanford University’s design school. For years they struggled as a start-up, but in early 2020 they reached the milestone of providing solar-powered solutions to 100 million people around the world who previously didn’t have access to electricity. The road to get there was long and hard, with many twists and turns and even a few miracles along the way.

d.light is a social enterprise, a for-profit company with a social mission. Many social enterprises are trying to reach the underserved in emerging markets and developing countries, and not many have reached this type of scale.  

For the founders, it was very important to share the story with their 1,500 employees, especially those who had joined after the company reached a certain size. They wanted them to know where the company came from, how hard it has been, and how many people have sacrificed and given of themselves to get the company to this place.

I also hope this book can be a helpful primer for anyone else who wants to go into social enterprise. It’s an extraordinarily difficult task to take on one of these global challenges. In this case, the problem was that 1.3 billion people didn’t have any electricity, and another 1 billion had unreliable energy. To take on this global challenge, there are a lot of obstacles that get in the way, so we hope to share our learnings and experiences with other entrepreneurs. 

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Morgan Lee is an editor for Reclaim.