That choice was key but also spoke to what resonated with Lee about Treasure Island. I also wanted to center a queer experience in this historical time period.” I also wanted to engage with the idea of piracy itself, to question and have readers question the motives of the characters beyond a moral binary of who was good or bad, but to look more closely at the society that produced thieves and beggars and piracy and question that. “Her leadership united thousands of pirates and brought multiple governments to their knees, and I wanted to share this aspect of history that people may not be familiar with. Lee explained why Zheng Yi Sao inspired her. Lee first learned about her as a young adult but as she discovered more she had a burning question: “Why were there not more stories about her?” She told us Zheng Yi Sao is regarded as the most successful pirate in history. “It was this questioning, this line of thought that I wanted to bring to Treasure Island, to engage with the idea of piracy itself in a way that explored the nuance of why,” she said.įor her queer pirate adventure, the real life pirate Zheng Yi Sao heavily inspired Lee. Those intriguing questions Lee had as a child drove her as an author. Weren’t they the bad guys? Why did some of the men choose to go with them if they were? If the pirates had food to spare, why did they not feed all the refugees?” The pirates who boarded my mother’s refugee ship were confusing to me as a child. There were also ships who towed those to safety, ships with people who had nothing and spared what they could to help others. There were other pirates, stories of refugee ships that never made it to shore, pirates who seized vessels and destroyed lives. My mother would say it was both clever and cruel to trick the men into not fighting. From the refugees on the ship, from the pirates themselves. Lee recalled, “I grew up with this story, remembering not just the fear but also the desperation. The men had been provided food-a warm meal-during the siege. After an hour, the men returned, and the pirate ship sailed off, leaving the refugees to their escape.
The pirates led all the men off the boat and then proceeded to search for valuables, taking what cash and jewelry they could find. She continued, “Her encounters with pirates led me to question the conflicting nature of piracy in general and the choices one might make to engage in those acts.
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