Kathy Wang on Imposter Syndrome

 

The concept for Impostor Syndrome is simple. It asks: what if one of the world's most powerful female technology executives was in fact a foreign spy?

The spy in my novel is a woman named Julia Lerner. Julia’s the COO of Tangerine, a social media and internet giant. When she was placed in the US, Julia’s handlers thought she’d just have a sort of middle class life in the Bay Area. So her ascension to her current level is really a result of her own work and skill.

What the book explores then, is what happens when Julia’s asked to put her job and position in danger, in order to fulfil the requests from the motherland. As by this time, Julia has made for herself an incredible life in the United States: lots of money, an important job where she’s fawned over, a very handsome new husband. Does she put that all at risk and obey orders? Or try and wrest back some control from her handlers?

At the same time, there is a lower level employee at Tangerine, Alice Lu, who one day comes across some unusual activity with the servers. Alice starts to try and figure out who might be stealing data from the company, and that starts a cat and mouse chase between the two women.

This book explores ideas around motherhood, career, money, internet privacy, and espionage - all topics I am interested in. However it is also a love letter to democracy. My parents were immigrants from Taiwan, and they always reminded me that regardless of the many flaws of the US, it was one of the greatest countries on earth. And I wanted to explore that in the novel, the idea that yes, we have these agencies like the CIA and the FBI but that in fact one of our most powerful tools for our national security is that we have democratic processes, we have freedom of speech, we have people from all over the world who come and live here. Alice is herself an immigrant from China, a country that in real life is having escalating tensions with the United States - but in this case, she is the one actually chasing Julia, who is the Russian agent. And Julia herself is conflicted, because deep down she really likes her life in California. She likes her beautiful house. She likes her husband. She likes living as an American as it were, with all its freedoms.

Kathy Wang is the author of Impostor Syndrome (VERVE Books) Out Now

Julia Lerner is one of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley and an icon to professional women across the country. She is the COO of Tangerine, one of America's biggest technology companies. She is also a Russian spy. Julia has been carefully groomed to reach the upper echelons of the company and use Tangerine's software to covertly funnel information back to Russia's largest intelligence agency. Alice Lu works as a low-level analyst within Tangerine, having never quite managed to climb the corporate ladder. One afternoon, when performing a server check, Alice discovers some unusual activity and is burdened with two powerful but distressing suspicions: Tangerine's privacy settings aren't as rigorous as the company claims they are and the person abusing this loophole might be Julia Lerner herself. Now, she must decide what to do with this information - before Julia finds out she has it.

More information about Kathy Wang and her work can be found on her website. You can also follow her on Twitter @bykathywang.