Crazy Rich Asians Study Guide

Born in Singapore in 1973 to a well-to-do family, Kwan had no idea it wasn’t normal to have ponds filled with baby sharks or private planes parked in one’s backyard until he and his parents immigrated to Texas when he was 11 years old. He attended the University of Houston-Clear Lake and Parsons School of Design, earning degrees in media and photography, before then working for various New York-based magazines and design firms. Following this, he founded his own creative studio. Kwan was inspired to write Crazy Rich Asians in 2009, when he took time off of work to help care for his father, who was receiving cancer treatments. During the time they spent in the car, Kwan and his father would reminisce about life in Singapore. Published in 2013, Crazy Rich Asians received overwhelmingly positive reviews. Kwan ended up selling the film rights for $1 in exchange for the option to stay creatively involved in filming.

Singapore, where the majority of Crazy Rich Asians takes place, is a city-state in Southeast Asia known for being one of the wealthiest countries in the world. In 1819, the British landed in Singapore and, after negotiating a treaty with local rulers, developed a major port city there. Their goal was to protect their own trading interests in Asia, particularly from the Dutch. The British took full control of Singapore and brought it under colonial rule in 1867. During this time, migrants from all over Asia immigrated to Singapore, resulting in the old-money elite class that Kwan portrays in Crazy Rich Asians. The country continued to grow, develop, and attract migrants through its independence from Britain in 1963 and beyond, and as in the novel, wealthy people and families from China continue to move to Singapore due to it being a tax haven, offering many social programs, and having a stable and well-regulated government and banking industry. Characters also note Singapore’s role in World War II. The country was home to the main British military base in Asia, but the Japanese invasion of Malaya led to disastrous losses for Allied forces. The Japanese occupied Singapore from early 1942 until September 1945, and they massacred thousands of people, mainly Singaporean Chinese, who were deemed “anti-Japanese.”

Crazy Rich Asians is the first in a trilogy that follows Rachel, Nick, and the Young family in China Rich Girlfriend and then Rich People Problems. Since finishing the series, Kwan has written another novel, Sex and Vanity. Reviews often compare Crazy Rich Asians to Jane Austen’s classic novel Pride and Prejudice. Both novels focus on family dynamics and marriage as a means of consolidating wealth and moving up in the world socially. And as a work of social satire, Crazy Rich Asians shares similarities with a variety of works, from satirical pamphlets like Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal to classics in the Western canon like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. One reason Kwan cites for writing Crazy Rich Asians is that he wanted to write a story about Asia and Asian characters that wasn’t historical fiction, like, for instance, Lisa See’s Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. Crazy Rich Asians is much more in line with books like Amy Tan’s celebrated The Joy Luck Club and even the young adult series To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han, in that it presents contemporary Asian characters grappling with cultural and identity issues in addition to normal life stressors.