Han Ong returns: the queer Filipino literary phenomenon is back with a provocative new novel.

New York playwright and novelist Han Ong put himself on the map in 2001 with the celebrated Fixer Chao, the delicious tale of a street hustler hired by a journalist to pose as a feng shui master, the better to exploit clueless New York high society. Now comes Ong's poignant and funny second novel, The Disinherited. Set in the author's native Philippines, Ong's story follows Roger Caracera, the estranged heir to a sugar fortune, as he looks for a worthy recipient of his unexpected inheritance.

"I went to a gathering at the MacArthur Foundation, and someone at the podium said, 'People don't know how difficult it is to give away money well,'" says Ong. "So that was the seed. When I began writing the novel, though, it wasn't immediate to me that the protagonist would inherit money and want to give it away. He was going to be a Barbara Pym character: a sleepy character who is awakened by life."

The person Caracera ends up hoping to benefit is the street boy his deceased uncle had loved. "I've written enough now," says Ong, "to figure out I have a recurring tendency, which is that a lot of my characters are outsiders. It comes from being an outsider twice over--my queerness and my ethnicity. I think it's a gift, though. In life it may not be a gift, but in art it is."

He feels lucky too that his work "has been so well received and is starting to appear in college classrooms. "I'm a high school dropout," he explains, "so my relationship to books is one of great pleasure and joy because I'm not reading In an atmosphere of obligation."

Despite--and in part because of--his success, Ong hasn't returned to the Philippines since he came to the United States. "I was 16 when I came here. Now I'm 36," he says. "Four years ago, I thought of going back. It would have been [a return after] 16 years, so that I was half formed here and half formed them." But 2000 turned out to be a busy year. "Now I'm waiting for some other seemingly serendipitous event," he says. "I'm not particularly fond of looking back, though. It's like running a race looking over your shoulder."

Asked what his family thinks about his novels and plays, Ong laughs. "I haven't spoken to them about it," he says. "Like all good Asian families, it's a paradox. They're probably pleased about any success I have, but what I actually write would be a huge source of contention. I honestly hope they don't read the books. I'm writing with a great freedom, and the only way I can do that is by not thinking about my family reading it."