Chang, who is the first female and first Asian American director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, has said that her first three books “fit the acceptable stereotype of the quietly suffering Chinese American family,” even though she “actually grew up in a noisy Chinese American family.” The Family Chao, she has said, is her first time writing in a "candid" way. The Chao family at the center of the book is not based on hers but is in some ways closer to hers than those in the previous books.
