The the year is 2013. We are in providence, rhode island. It the middle of winter, snow and ice fall as far as the human can see and like that snow my life fell in pieces around me. I was a junior in college and six months earlier i was assaulted by. An alumni at the school in my dorm. I was alone. I was out of all my classes. And so the obvious thing to do was to hide in the library. And there among stacks, for the first time in my life, i saw the name a vietnamese author. The name was back when and the book was stealing the dinner. I cannot tell you exactly how it felt to no longer feel alone in the world as turned the page by page. But i can tell you that i had the same feeling now, a decade later, reading best latest owner of a lonely heart, published this fall by scribner, and that her ability to make a reader feel seen is exceeded only by her real life integrity, grace and elegance. Beth, who has also written under the name bittman, will, is the author of three previous books, the stealing the buddhas dinner, the novels short girls and girl. Her awards honors include an american book, a patriot fund award from the pen america center. But the work has also appeared numerous anthologies and publications including the new yorker, the paris review, the new york times, and the best american essays. My name is paul chan. I have the incredible honor of both teaching with beth at the University Wisconsin madison, and of introducing and being in conversation with her today. And of course, to welcome you to the wisconsin book festival to remind you that now is a good to silence your phones and to tell you that we will have after our a q a with you and beth and i was told in Teaching School that we should say everything three times in order for people to feel safe. But most importantly we prepared. And so after the q a, were going to have a conversation with you and beth and after the q a, were going to have a conversation with you and and so please put your hands together and welcome back. When. Oh, paul, thank you so much. Thank you, paul was so beautiful. Paul is a poet of extraordinary measure. So you have to check out pauls work after this if you havent already. But you already have. And its also so wonderful. Be able to be your colleague. So glad youre here. I thank you all so much for being here. Thank you. The wisconsin book festival, it is so its very moving to be part of this kind of community and to get participate in this way. So thank you all for being here. So we are going to have just read just a little bit and then were going to have a conversation. And the question you write about the repeating figures. I in the audience. When im in the audience, i immediately forget. So so im here to talk the lonely heart, which my most recent book and, yes, this is a title from a song by a called yes. I dont know why they call themselves yes, but a lonely heart is a song from the 1980s. And even though this book isnt really about music it is a part of it takes place in the it is and it engages with the idea of loneliness. Im just going to read just for a few minutes from parts of the beginning that will give you an indication of what the book is about. So the beginning is. Called 24 hours. Over the course of my i have no less than 24 hours with my mother. Here is how those hours came to be and what happened in i grew up in michigan in a mostly white town in the 1980s, pretending to be a refugee back. Then the idea was to forget the past, move along, stay out of trouble, dont talk about the war, dont react to racist taunts, behave well enough not to get noticed. And thats what i did. I my homework and watched television and climbed the neighbors plum tree. But every spring i would think about how my family had left saigon the day, the fall of the city and the end of the war. What is known in vietnam as the american war. I was a baby carried by my and uncles and grandmother brought by motorcycle boat and airplane to refugee camps and eventually to a home in, the United States. I would try to this literally fleeing a country not knowing what would happen next. When we left, my mother stayed saigon or was left behind in saigon for many years, wouldnt know which phrasing was more true, but i knew not to ask about it because no one in my family wanted to talk about my mother and no one wanted to talk about the war. I grew up knowing that were silences that needed to kept. And it wasnt even hard because i had no actual memories of war or living. I had the privilege instead of getting to imagine silence it can look like submission. But for many of it can be a form of selfpity. Narration i was ten years old when i learned that my had come to the United States as a refugee to. I was 19 when i finally met her. The known hours i spent with my mother have been bounded years and miles of absence. They have taken place over six visits and 26 years, always in boston the city where she eventually landed, toward the end of a visit, she will look me sitting next to her on the sofa or at a table in her apartment, and she will give a small, tired smile, as if to convey what else is there what else is there to say. I have never called her mom. Our hours together have been by what we do not say by silence is a language we have with each other and the one we know best. Oh, my. Okay. Im sorry. I just. I was reading this from different event. I lost my pages. Okay . I met my mother the summer after my second year of college. I a chance the year before with my sister, brother, dad and stepmother who had all driven east together to see cape cod and boston. But i had declined to join them using my receptionist job as excuse. In truth, i was just afraid of the awkwardness of the audience. Id had years to prepare, but i wasnt ready. After all the silence i didnt know how to manage the sadness of my dad and stepmom, saying they were just going to visit my like it was no big deal. The only reason i ended up seeing her at all because was because i had to go to boston for a wedding. So heres where i confess that i have forgotten what happened when i met my mother in mind, i stepped free of the revolving of the suburban hotel where i was staying. And i know that the woman standing some away can only be my mother know because we are the same size, same height, and she stands there looking small and determined in way. That makes me wonder if this is how people me. She walks toward me. The first thing she says is you are so late. The late summer sunlight is and the doors of the hotel keep turning. I see all this i have written this with a clarity of certainty that that is how it happened. In reality, my half sister and her husband and their two young kids were waiting for in a maroon colored plymouth sundance, which looked just like the cars i had driven during High School Drivers ed classes. I got in and we went to their apartment complex where my mother opened the door and finally saw me look at you, she said. Youre late. Almost years. I wait and youre late. We piled back into the car and went in search of dim sum in chinatown. For a while we could busy ourselves directions and parking and the carts laden with dumplings, looking out for our favorites, especially the rice noodles. The rice in a rolls filled with shrimp. We talked about school and work, what we like to eat and all the construction going on. Boston. It turned out that my mother been working of all places at an omelet factory. It also turned out that my dad and step mom had been in communication her over the years sending money, packages and sometimes pictures my mother said my step mom a good lady and im very thankful is what she said after word. My mother and i walked chinatown while the others went on ahead. We browsed the shops and i pretended to admire all the jade and gold jewelry. She insisted i buy me a buddha mooncake. It was a food i tried to like but never could. I would end up bringing the mooncake all the way back to college with me before throwing it away. I tried to ask a of questions about vietnam, my birth, my sisters birth, but my mother didnt say anything that. Counted as an answer. That was so long ago. Whats her stance . And is still how was she supposed to remember things. Now, nearly 30 years after that first meeting, i see her point. I know what happened that day. I wrote it down, but my mind has insisted on another version and edited efficiency for those Revolving Hotel doors. It feels like the actual which scares me. Like my mother, i am less and less of what is real, what is remembered what is necessary to believe. Thank you. So have. And we start there with that last line. What is it like to feel less sure of what to believe and what is real . Okay. Okay. Well, the tricky thing about writing particular nonfiction and just about existing in the world is that we keep changing as people and, therefore, the past changing and we i think one realizes in the in the writing process that i mean in living process also that the past is not static and that it changes because our perspectives change. And so what actually happened how i how i want to remember it theres a theres a goal in between and i golf is filled with perspective and how i have changed over the years but its actually important to keep a journal. By the way, those of you who are writers so you can measure those changes and i its a way of thinking about craft and the process of writing, which what do i actually remember, what i want to remember and the stanza that we have now is the only stance that we actually in know, because we are always for the perspective of now and we had to remember who we were ten years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, and so on, and really inhabit multiple selves at the same and directly reckon with what our minds to remember and what we want to forget. And i mean always i always think of like theres no way to get to the actual truth of sorry, theres no actual way to get to the capital truth. But you have to reckon with the version of the truth that you have, right . And so in your mind, when you change it to that light, those revolving doors, what do you think is the reason behind it . And it might not be so much as you know, forgiving her or having. Easier version to tell. What do you think is behind that . So i dont think there is a capital t truth because we keep changing and we do this. We do this with books, we do i mean, we look back, we like, oh, now that we have more information. And thats the only way we can forgive our parents. Actually, its only way we can forgive anybody is we gain some knowledge, some wisdom, some perspective. Then then were like, oh, thats thats why. And its just like reading a book from childhood. I used be obsessed with those Ramona Quimby books by beverly cleary, because i identify with ramona. And then came the day when i realized i was identifying with her mom, you know, like what happened. And so what happened was i became a mom. I got older. Im actually not i want to be ramona, but im not anymore. And that was really actually. But i think that part probably its my craft. My dad, if it were a story, if it were a fiction i would make it simpler. I would just have a meeting. You. I dont want to have the messiness of, oh, you know, my niece and nephew were there when we got to the car. We had these logistical issues to get to the apartment that is not efficient. You know, if we have a fiction, it would be just a much more streamlined story. I think that was my craft mine trying to it an easier story for me to understand. Since this is sort of the second time we go back to. I know thats important that is explored before stealing the buddhas dinner. What brought you back the second time to write this memoir. Sorry. What . Yeah. I was thinking that this is the second time that beth has revisited this important absence in her life. The first being in the first memoir. And so what compelled the second revisitation is that because of motherhood is it because of new knowledge . And if so, what was . That new knowledge. So in first book, stealing buddhas dinner, a lot of it is about growing up in michigan and being a very culturally confused child and not knowing anything that because that was before google and just trying to understand the world there that much about my mother in the book. It was mostly about her. She was absent, but it wasnt really about. And i think that book was 15 years ago. And i think at the time i mean, i know at the time i wasnt ready to write about i didnt even know how to write, but i simply knew that it was it was part of the narrative. And, you know, when you write nonfiction narrative is its there, but you have to determine the scope of the narrative and how youre going to what youre going to address. And then be clear with your readers about what youre going to drive and what youre not going to address. And so 15 years later, it was mainly lockdown under the pandemic, where i felt really ready to write the story and i was partly because i had children, yes, but it was also because i was thinking a lot mortality. I was thinking about the passage of time and how seldom my and i have actually talked to each other. And so i picked up the phone, you know, during the pandemic and called the number i had for her and someone answered and said. Mikes pastas up. Which is the actual pizza shop in boston. I went there once, its not that great. Huge line. Disappointing, though. Anyway, i was like, whoa, what happened . Because i had talked her in a few years. I had to call my dad and ask, does there like another number for her. And there was. And so he gave me the number. Then i called her and she answered it just started something in my mind and i was ready. The silence of i think it was the silence lockdown that i felt ready to approach some those other silences in life. I im thinking about how sometimes we wait for the people we love to change into people that we can love more or love better. But all that were really left with is our changed self. And so what changed in you from when you started this project to when you finished it . Oh yeah. Okay, youre right. We cannot expect to change. But as as anyone who works at anything creative, youre changing constantly and that is actually one of the very frustrating things about writing is when you change, you actually have to rethink your whole work. So one of my pieces of advice for writers is finish your project, because if you dont and you wait another year, youre going to be kind of a different person. Just always do a whole big revision all over. So decide your parameters finish it, you know, find your start and your end point. So yes, im like my mother hasnt really changed in many ways and that was something i had to think about, which was im not i cant her to give me the satisfaction of answering the questions i want to have answered so. I would ask her the same questions, you know, what can you tell me about what i was born for. So i was really i dont know anything about when i was born, dont know when i was born. I dont have a birth certificate. So it ask her these questions and. She would never give me an answer. So she didnt remember, you know, and why would i that she would suddenly one day remember when had never remembered before and. Then i had to think about, okay, what does it whats wrong with me . And to me, thats a lot of nonfiction, which is what is wrong with me is the essential question. Maybe that fuels a lot of writing. And, you know, something really is. Otherwise i wouldnt be writing. Nobody who writes, you know, is healthy. Wed like to be, you know, but were not. And thats maybe writing to her that a little. And so i had think a lot about how my perspective has changed my perspective toward childhood, my perspective toward my dad my stepmom, everyone in my family. And im grateful for that. Im grateful to look back and think my early work feels like different person, like whats written by somebody else or it feels dated or feels completely you strange because i think thats a good marker of progress. My mom does a very similar thing with what i call it withholding information. It comes very clear when. Im asking her to teach me how to cook anything. You know, she definitely skips several steps. She definitely puts some kind of powder into the. The wall. And i ask her what it was that they put in there. She had nothing. I didnt do anything, but i saw you open, the cabinet, and take something. And in my mind im like, do they hold pretend not to know so that we will always come asking and always need them . For some. And so they they hold on to that ability to have as neat them and you said in the part you just read that there is silence between you, but theres also power between you. Thats the language of know her holding, but also you feeling that silence with your own language. And so you ever do you ever feel in addition to silence, revenge is a kind of language you and your mother did you say revenge . I did think of that. Oh, wow. Okay. The second follow up question thats a little bit more vengeful. Lets start easy. Lets see. I never thought about that. No. Isnt my feelings about. My mother are so. Theyre so complicated that i i feel that this is where my my sister is in the book. My sister and i, we share the same mother. We have different opinions about. I feel a sense of guilt about the whole situation. I feel that we left her and that owe her that we should be doing more. Her and my sister sort of the opposite shes like, she never calls, you know, she doesnt like, want to stay in touch with us. So why am i always chasing her . And im like, well, shes mother. And and she says yeah, thats right. Shes our mother. So the complication of that me is like, ive never thought i feel ive never thought of it in terms of revenge. But now im thinking that maybe its in terms her revenge, you know, although like, we have such a strange language between us that i try to in this book, its very compressed. And thats why the book itself is very compressed. Its short book. Its like 56,000 words and the meetings we are very you know, theyre like an hour long. And so my my experience of my relationship, my mother is one of economy Precision Compression and just very limited amount of time and a lot of guessing and the sort of like a background and curiosity and sadness but vivid now i think about that those are going to be book three i guess i frame in that way and it didnt occur to me as a child growing up that my own desire to be who i was and to one day have a family. I would, i dont know, treat differently. How my parents treated me was an act of revenge, of showing them what i could do with my own family or with own life or with my own life. If i believe, you know, in my own kids, if i let them be who they were, if i supported them and so i guess maybe its not the right word, but im. Back as informative instead of revenge. Informative. Am in theres this section in the book where you where you write. I wonder if that future is awaiting me. And so how i dont know how that economy absence shaped other part of your that are not as economical or as not as compressed. What what in your life is allowed access . What is allowed . Language yeah, i mean i do think writing in general as a huge of rebellion and its not because grew up in a, you know, stereotypical asian family wanted me to be a doctor or engineer, or a lawyer. My family was really chaotic. They didnt even Pay Attention to my grades, you know, for instance. So i because i could do whatever i wanted in high school and i didnt even have a curfew or, anything. I did nothing. I didnt i was i didnt do it. My sisters or while i did nothing wild, i would to my friends houses and play trivial. And scrabble and boggle like that. Those were the things that was my Wild High School life and. Becoming a writer was a sense of rebellion, not against my family. I think against this sense of what was possible for asianamerican. At the time, i didnt know any asianamerican writers. I didnt even know there was such a thing as asianamerican and writers like actually writing books until i got to college and read my first year of college. The lawyer. But maxine hong kingston. And it changed my life. It did it changed my life because it made think of this world of possibility. And so i think that sort of like revenge rebellion is very much connected to. The act of writing and this idea that, oh, im going to actually do this and and my work and think i like who mine to think that i could do this. Yeah, thats it. Its a lot of that sense of a feeling. And rebellion also occurs in your work against that tradition because. The absent mother is a huge part of vietnameseAmerican Literature. It goes back to miss saigon where the mother has to commit suicide and let her child go to the United States to in order to be free. But in your work even though the mother is absent, shes always trying be recovered, always trying to be brought. Its i know its incredible in that way. And. By the way, miss saigon. When i was in high school, i had a boyfriend and his family took us to see miss saigon in chicago. And it was probably one of the worst experiences of my life to write about in this book, because i had to pretend whole time that it was great because i didnt want to offend them. But yeah, that was scarring. Scar. I mean, what other elements, vietnamese American Literature do you feel like you write against . Oh yeah. So you know, asianAmerican Literature is used to be, you know, when you have when you have a cover if you have a cover discussion, for example, thats a good time to think asianamerican stereotypes. And its like, well, i was thinking about covers. What would like on the cover, which i would not like of a cover. You kind of have to say, i dont want, you know, red lanterns or tigers or any of the chopsticks, things like that. Because if you dont say that, that will actually happen and not because people are super racist, but because those are just like the immediate images that come to mind. And so there is there a sort of a constant low key kind of, you know, pushing back against what is expected and think that even writing nonfiction is a little bit in that vein of pushing against not saying this is fiction. I mean, i love writing fiction, too, but i think theres something very scary in asian communities or certainly vietnamese communities about saying something directly and it, you know, nonfiction rather than going around and in a polite, oblique way. In my creative writing class, as i tell the students that we pursue a poem until we cant. Until we cant pursue it anymore. Because the question that we are trying to answer, weve reached the limit by which we can answer. How did you know in pursuing memoir that youve come to the end of that exploration that this with enough right telling the audience to finish the book how do you feel that sense of completion in yourself. Okay, so this book did take a lot of years to write. So who am i to talk about . Finish it. But the reason why was because i was working on this book as. Separate essays. So this is how it started. I was writing separate essays. This was not a memoir was, you know, an essay. And so i just wasnt sure what i was doing, how they were connected and i was having a conversation. My literary agent and i said, this is an essay collection. And she said, well, it is but do you think it might also be a memoir was like an essay collection and said but theyre linked essays so you got to find way to link them. I was like okay looking for a way i couldnt figure out. And then one day i emailed her. I was emailing about something else. And in the email i said to her, i just realized that over the course of my life i have spent less than 24 hours with my mother and she emailed me back right away and she said, you know that thats your narrative arc, right and thats why you sent me the email. And i was like, yeah, that is it. Thats it but it also very clear if i am because i realized that was it. It took me years, but that was it. The narrative arc had revealed itself, which is i had these six visits with my mother and all i had to do was narrate them and that was the structure of the book. And so there was an at beginning and the end point. And the end point is the last meeting, you know, the last meeting with my mother. And what happens right after. And so finding i think that the narrative structure is always there somehow. But its its one thing to know that. But then another to try to find it doesnt always present itself it did take me several for it to be revealed and it was not that it was easy write after but it was right after figured that out but it was so much because otherwise i was just, you know, typing the thoughts into the ether and i knew as i was typing them that they not necessarily adding up to something bigger that i was looking for that bigger thing and that bigger for me is structure and i think a lot about like in college you know, i learned as many of you probably did that idea flaubert how form is content and content is form and that very much the case for for this book and i really kept that in mind in terms that sense of you know, trying be as clear as possible about what what things felt like and how i remembered them and the difference between them. And now we turn to our audience for the q a portion of which you are prepared. And please ask any question of and yes, 11 people, a microphone over here are going to a very voice. Oh, oh, okay. So over here. Oh, im sorry. I got to can i just. You okay that. Sorry. In reading your book, i felt as if we were just at lunch and you were telling me this intimate story about your life and it really felt really close. I got to know you that way. And im wondering. You know, you said eight years and essays. Just wondering, in general, what is your process for . This book is memoir. And also for the ones in the past. Do you you know, how do you start and, you know, move up, move forward and whether it takes you eight years or not, is my writing process. Maybe this will give some of you hope is chaotic. I am not person who gets up at 5 a. M. And writes i am not a person writes every day and i dont even think that that is necessary. I write when i a feeling and sometimes the best writing i have done is on an airplane for four or 5 hours. You where i can choose not have internet access, you know and then its great that some of those united flights from from San Francisco to here that was really great writing time and even before i children i children. Yes. Once you have children, you write a time is totally screwed. But even that i was not a organized writer. I would just spend a lot of time staring into space. And after a while i would have to think, okay, maybe that staring into space about Walking Around the block was of the writing. Time was part of the thinking time. And so with this book, one thing i start to do and this was so to me i would write in the same place in my house and from the window i was sitting, i would have a view into my neighbors yard and this neighbor, this pretty shed in their in their backyard, and they painted the shed door yellow. It was very lovely. Yellow. I would just look at that yellow and for some reason going back to that moment, that space and there at that desk looking at that yellow door just put me the mode of writing. So there was a lot of that. There was. A oh yeah, panic and deadlines. Shame is a very strong motivator for me. I felt i said my health is and i hope it. But yes panic, shame, probably the best motivators some feeling like im going to be in trouble if i dont it in which is true. Actually. Yes, those are strong motivators and would definitely get me to the desk but if you dont have those external you know and, i dont give myself deadlines because i know, i will break them. Whos going to punish me. No you know i know i know that people say things like, oh, if i finish this, you know this chapter, i will give myself some ice cream. Im like, no, are you going to ask him anyway . And you should. You, i, me. Thats just it. The ice cream. Theres another reason. And have a writer friend who gave me a she. She gave me her reason i thought was really brilliant. Her reason for writing was because she wanted to get work into the world so that the people had crushes on would read it and find her and she could finally hook up with them. And i was like, thats long game. But really it whatever works. Do you have another question from the. Yeah, i bet and i. Paul were colleagues at uw. Ive shared a cab with you at eight philadelphia thats right yeah i have a million questions for you but right this is a very existential one for me, which is about book cover because im currently going back and forth and especially thinking about what you but stereotypes with imagery thinking about how we think muslims or south asia and that sort of question is really on my mind. And i was wondering what the process your book cover was like and how you went back and forth and how did you agree on this cover . Thank you. So book covers matter so much and lot of it is determined by amazon. And you know what looks and thumbnails. There are a lot of other there are a of reasons that dont seem necessarily logical to the writer about what makes a good or selling book cover to me i just didnt want it to be you know tigers and my interns and Jonathan Bush came up with this. Id like to immediately id like the theres a picture of like an absent space. And it made sense. However, just sent me the paperback cover idea. It is completely different. They wanted a paperback cover to totally different. It has different colors. Different in every way, but i liked it strangely, i was like, okay, it doesnt meet any of those. Its theres there are no weird stereotypes and i was so relieved because it means the people youre working with your publisher really understand you and are being you know you know good people and so that was really important. But i do think i say this i do think that if you are not happy about something, you should speak up about it and not just accept whatever they give you. I have i still regret to this day, i wonder if you do too. The times that i just said, oh yeah, you know better than i do. So well just go with. Your suggestion that was a yeah, those are mistakes. Do have it. Does that happen in poetry . And i mean, i feel really lucky that didnt happen. Me but i, you know, you look at books and you can see how the people who made the books thought about the person who wrote it and thought about their work and because, you know, we are obliged to feel grateful that anyone cares about our writing at all or giving us the chance to be heard, were that if we think no, that opportunities can be taken away. And so i dont know. It breaks my heart thinking about all the things that we say yes to believing that thats what we have to do when actually actually it might be harder and scarier, but better to to stand by what you believe. Absolutely. Is there another question. Hi. I dont want to stand in camera way so my names kaitlyn and i really appreciated how you mentioned that this was of, in your mind, an essay collection that then moved to memoir. And im curious because i first encountered you through the paris review essay, i think its parent and to see sort of in a different form the book. I just became very curious about the revision process. So now that youve said that you had this, you know, 24 hour narrative like epiphany. What was it like to then sort of take what you had and kind of bring into this narrative form . Oh, i love this question because its about revision and. I love revision because it feels like a chance to fix all the mistakes and every i have to read from this book, i make some changes and because i feel like its like, oh, i should have more chance at this. With many revisions. I also had to do the audio version of this. They made me. I didnt even realize this and my contract because. I didnt read it carefully. And when i was, you know, doing audio, which was really hard, i hated i couldnt change things. So finally, halfway through, i asked, sounded it was like i just would it be so bad if i changed a few words . And they said, yeah, go ahead. Its really like, whos going to know . So i guess, whos going to know . Yeah. So the audio version is completely different. But i this idea that when you think about different, its standalone essay, but when you widen the scope and you think of that its no longer standalone its no longer you know on its own it has to speak to other pieces, get a chance to reenvision where you were when you were writing it in the first place. And so i love feeling of going in and almost like changing the past a little is what it feels like, but its actually just i get to add things that i had to take out earlier. And theres another essay that was about my name and going by the name beth that originally in the new yorker and, it was much shorter than york. I was like maybe 2500 words. But originally essay was more like 6000 words. And so everything that i had taken out, i didnt exactly put it back in, but i got to make just the bigger, longer sort of chewier kind of piece that really wanted it to be just, yeah, im so im ready to do this dinner, but i havent seen. My questions that but yeah, so ive read stealing food is dinner which was awesome. I cant wait to read this new one in stealing food is dinner. You were so honest about family and friends, painfully honest, hilariously honest. How hard was it to be that honest that you did you have to pay a price with . How people reacted . Was that a bad honest. I mean, i dont think i was mean exactly. Like the people who had who i had some negative things, depictions, i changed their so and youre this is standard innovations you change peoples and in this book i dont use any names except for my sisters name and maybe cousins name but yeah so instantly a buddhist dinner there. I did have some hilarious slash painful childhood experiences and in detailing some of them, which in hindsight are more hilarious than they are painful, i had to change some of the names and you know, the the fallout was this this friend from childhood whose name i changed im try to remember what name i use i use jennifer. Thats the name of the book jennifer thats not her name. Real life. Shes she sent an email after she read the book. And what was so interesting about the email was that she had misread a key part of the book and she was furious. She was furious. It was quite email. I saved it. Of course, and she said in the book, shes like you said, and this you that my that your dad and my dad got into a fight and that my dad punched, your dad. And thats a lie. And you know, didnt happen and youre a liar. And i was like, i did not write that. It was a really strange i actually had to back to my old book to get it right that i didnt know she had actually misread it. It my dad, who had tried to hit her dad. We were neighbors, you know frenemies. Clearly. And but she had misread the whole thing and it was fascinating to me. And so i wrote her back. I never heard from her again, but that was basically this is a question that people get when you know about memoir. The that you people worry about the most. How are people going to react . And the thing ill say about this is, one, dont not write something youre imagining the worst possible outcome. You know, dont stop because of a hypothetical that may or may not ever be. And usually it and to think about the other outcome, which is conversation after i wrote something but it didnt and some people in my family it we started talking about the past we started talking about how we all grew up our weird family and how dysfunctional. We were didnt know it because we didnt know those words back then. And im not we would have had those conversations and certainly not that soon if that hadnt been out there. The world. So i was very much a proponent of write it worry about later you know but also think about why youre writing something give to somebody your family my sister is my work before its published for example and you know by all means, do what you need to do, but dont sense yourself in the in the process because youre afraid, because that fear is never going to go away. We love to do that. You can hear me. Okay. So i have a comment, not a question, and i hope i can say it without crying. My name is Melinda Cooper and im from grand rapids michigan. And i went to the same Elementary School that you, your sister, and was my class. Absolutely. Sure. Yeah, sure would. So i read stealing buddhas dinner and i cried and laughed the whole book. And i grieved for the little girl you were. And for some of the experiences you had because some of them were mine being one of the few africanamerican families in that neighborhood. It just was such beautiful story. And our school was so special at the time. I didnt know of it. Sure. What was the center for vietnamese refugees . I thought all schools in grand rapids looked like ours. And the celebrations, ted, and all the things i learned about vietnamese culture were just so beautiful. So i read the book, i listened with an audible, and i messaged shelly austin. I dont know. I think you guys might have went to city together and went to school with her and. I said, her book is amazing and shes madison and i never emailed you. And i to. And then i said, shelly, shes going have a book talk and i have to go. Im and i was like, i dont know if ill get to talk to her, but here i am. Ask you a question, making a comment with my heart beat and really. Youre amazing. Thank you so always to i got to im going to give you i got to give you a hug. Oh, my gosh. Always just thought this. My dad. Oh, i love it. Oh, thank you so much for. It. I go to school with anybody else this is a dream come true. Can talk a little more about music and the i mean your title is yes. Song music. Yes. So more about how you dealt with music or how music affected you throughout all your experiences. Okay, so you all know the song unraveling the heart, right . I wont sing it because itll embarrassing, but it is a really annoying song. Oh no, its a maybe its not annoying to you. It is a really song. So people love as a people. Really. I dont really like that song, but it stays in ones mind when i was young. Yeah. Listen to the song on the radio, the lines were unraveled on the heart is much better than. Owner of a broken heart. And when i was young you know a child and quite literal. I took that as a i took that as a binary who would you rather be an owner of lonely heart, or would you rather be owner of a broken heart . And i was like, yeah, the choice simple. I would much rather have a lonely heart than a broken heart, right . And so that all stayed with me. And it would be many years until i realized that we dont actually get a choice, that we get both both. And thats sort of how that title came to be for this. And and music was a big part my life because it was part of my education and i felt like as an american and as somebody understanding language and words my my uncles with us, my grandmother lived with us when i was growing and my uncles were obsessed with music and they were always playing something. And so the first the first song ever learned was, 50 ways to leave your lover. But so did i go for it, which is a great song for kids, you know, its about back deck. Make a new dad, dont leave your car right song. And i would just say it all the time, not really understanding it till later. Then i fill in the gaps and think about the weight of that. You know 50 ways to leave your lover. 50 ways to leave. And then i think about how we had left. And people are always leaving and its so hard and maybe the best way to leave is just to do that slip out the back, jack, you know, and make a new plan. Yeah. So music, thinking about the cadence of music and the the songs informed my cultural understanding were a big part of stealing buddhas dinner and became part of this title. Thank you. So as long the mic is right here, i actually theres the hands behind. Can i just ask this one quick . So stealing buddhas dinner was so insightful about food did you share any connection about food with your mom when youve met her . Okay, this is really interesting question because certainly what is in her have a lot has a lot of food and a lot of you know, kind of bad food. I dont know. Is it a printers bad food . I dont know. I think pringles are one of my first memory is eating in it for many years, i thought they were magic. They still are magic because i dont understand they could possibly be made. Theyre just delicate magic. But the food is that as much in this book, because it doesnt really define my relationship with my mother. In fact, weve except for that first time when we were in chinatown having dim sum, we never we never eat together. We just sort of sit in her apartment. And sometimes we have tea or theres tea, but theres really theres really not that sharing. I think that part pretty significant that theres not the food language that i grew up with, which is, you know, food is love and that the very, you know, very is very asian way of thinking, which is you dont say love you. You say, you know, have you eaten are you hungry that. Doesnt that does it present exactly with my mother and we went shell say, you know, ive thought about this because sometimes shell say, you know, can i get you something to eat . Ill say, no, thank you. I realize that im so, like, rejecting her love in a way. And then. Then i feel guilty. And then you. Were at crosspurposes. So and so the the language and language learn of the language of symbolism or metaphor that we learn. I think that always with us. So when writing about painful topics, i think theres kind of a a double edged sword and when theres a point where you just kind of want to wallow versus when youre ready and how do you know the difference between like wallowing and kind of just sitting in that hurt and being like, oh, im a writer and i must be in pain versus actually being able to do service to that pain and feeling ready . Okay, i like this, this idea of wallowing. I enjoy wallowing. Yeah, wallowing. It feels really good, especially when when one is listening to music that is to such wallowing. You know, when youre just feeling and you want to put on a song, you know is so painful. If im feeling bad, i might as well feel even. Just the skipper going to, sleep well. Yeah, thats a wonderful feeling. I enjoy that but it is not writing and in many ways maybe its the opposite of writing for me because i think the enjoyment of wallowing is not the, the craft of writing. And so sometimes times, you know, the you can lean into that and just write your way through it. But in revision youll be like, oh yeah, this isnt, that great. Its just wallowing. Wallowing the page because you memoir as potentially helpful. The memoir is it sort of very famously, very succinctly defined memoir as the intersection of narration and reflection. And its a reflection part that that is sometimes more key. We can wallow and worry and write our way, but we actually have to stop and reflect on it and think about who we were versus who we are. And that is, im always obsessed with perspective in the writing because who we are now is not the person we were, but we need to inhabit that prior self. If you can inhabit it without the wallowing its, thats good because that means youre using the perspective of now to of govern your understanding of what happened and, why we did what we did and we grew and changed so that long looking back isnt something that we all do in life. Theres no getting around that. And thats in a way, why i think nonfiction nonfiction, sort of the dominant of our day. And thats also media is great nonfiction. Its all a curation of a self whether its, you know, the degrees of believability, fall, the definition of creative nonfiction. And were all trying to understand, trying to create, trying to define and make who we are. Perception. Oh, patricia hempel said that memoir is the intersection of narration and reflection. Can i have to make that that. Im on a when i think about the wallowing, its when the feeling that we have is just so intense and all we can do is feel it right. And i think very close to that, like if it was easy know whats true we wouldnt need much. But because truth is something that evades us right . And it certainly evades us during the wallowing i think that is incredibly true and accurate in saying that like like sometimes we just have to feel our way through it. Listen to other, you know, sad songs all the ice cream cry out to all our good friends and afterwards when the wallowing is done with us and we have that space finally think and not just feel that the writing can begin. Because when you know, when you see perspective and it easily translates to new knowledge. But we cant learn anything new when. The feeling governs us. And i think sometimes the inkling that, oh, i need to make something this while were wallowing is the part of us that knows like im, you know, sometimes when we wallow too intensely in it, it can be dangerous. And so we need to make something to