Surviving the US corporate road

Helen Wan's The Partner Track is a fictional account of how a female Chinese-American lawyer tries to navigate in the corporate world. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Helen Wan set out to write about her real-life experiences in the workforce, but found fictionalizing her story ultimately had a stronger impact. She chats to Amy He in New York.

When Helen Wan started writing a book more than a decade ago, she thought it would be a collection of short personal essays about her experiences in the work force as a woman and an Asian-American.

"I specifically remember trying to go into bookstores to find a book about how either a woman or a minority - or even better, a woman of color, an Asian-American woman - can navigate corporate culture authentically and successfully, but I could not find one," Wan says.

So she decided to write one.

Wan juggled writing as she worked in the corporate department of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, her first job after graduating from the University of Virginia Law School. After putting together a 100-page manuscript, she submitted it to a handful of literary agents.

"Soundly rejected," she says. "It did not get anywhere."

The agents liked the style and the voice of Wan's writing, but they said it would be hard to sell a book written by an unknown 25-year-old about toiling away at a law firm, especially if the stories were personal essays.

If the book were redone as a fiction piece, she was told, the reaction might be very different.