Dec 2, 2020
AAWW, Kundiman, & Kaya Press combine to bring acclaimed novelistEd Lin together with pioneering YA author of FINDING MY VOICE andco-founder of AAWW Marie Myung-Ok Lee, in conversation to celebratethe release of Ed Lin’s YA debut, DAVID TUNG CAN’T HAVE AGIRLFRIEND UNTIL HE GETS INTO AN IVY LEAGUE COLLEGE (Kaya Press,October 2020).
Moderated by Ruth Minah Buchwald, Ed Lin and Marie Lee’sdialogue will orbit themes, such as: Asian American study culture;the pitfalls of the “model minority” myth and how to challenge it;multiple standards and (mis)representations of Asian Americans inliterature and the media; and coming-of-age in the Asian Americandiaspora while navigating relationships through race, class, younglove, not to mention the confusing expectations of immigrantparental pressure.
Support the writers! Buy their books via their publishers'websites:
https://kaya.com/books/david-tung-cant-have-a-girlfriend-until-he-gets-into-an-ivy-league-college/
https://sohopress.com/books/finding-my-voice/
LiveTranscript:
Neela Banerjee: Hi everyone! My name is Neelanjana Banerjee. I'mso excited to invite you all to our event tonight! This is also thelaunch event for Ed's YA novel, David Tung Can't Have a GirlfriendUntil He Gets Into an Ivy League College published by Kaya Press.I'm the managing editor for Kaya Press and we're so excited topublish this next month.
I'm also excited to be collaborating with two otherorganizations on this presentation. Kundiman is dedicated tonurturing Asian-American writers and readers of all ages. Theirprograms include a mentorship lab, food writing workshops, andmore.
I've been noticing all of these organizations have pivotedgracefully during the pandemic. We're excited people have been ableto tune in from across the country today.
This is also part of the Brooklyn Book Festival's Bookendsevent.
I wanted to call out the copy of David Tung Can't Have aGirlfriend Until He Gets Into an Ivy League College, which has ashiny cover. I'm really excited, please check out this book if youcan on the Kaya Press website. There's links to buy this book andother books in the chat.
We'll hear excerpts from Marie Myung-ok Lee and Ed Lin tonight.Then we'll have a conversation with Ruth Minah Buchwald and theauthors. David Tung Can't Have a Girlfriend Until He Gets Into anIvy League College comes out October 28th and you can preorder ittoday as well as get some swag. You can also order Marie's bookthat will be rereleased this year as well.
Let me introduce our speakers tonight. Marie Myung-ok Lee wasborn in South Korea and was raised in South New Jersey. She livesin Brookline. She is the author of Finding My Voice, NecessaryRoughness, and Saying Goodbye. Her books have won a number ofawards. She has been a judge for the National Book Awards and shewas one of the first American journalists welcomed into NorthKorea.
Ed Lin is an all around stand up kind of guy. His publishedbooks include a mystery series set in Taipei and various others.I'll be back after the readings with a few more announcements,enjoy!
Marie Myung-ok Lee: Hi everyone. Thanks Neela, for that greatintroduction.
I'm so happy to be here with some of my favorite people andorganizations. Thank you to all of you as well as Ruth formoderating and congratulations to Ed on his book.
What's fun for me is my novel, which I'm going to be readingfrom -- Finding My Voice -- is actually almost as old as the AsianAmerican Writers' Workshop. It's gone out of print, but I'll bereading a bit from my new old book. It's pretty much beingrepublished the same way it was more than 20 years ago. It'sconsidered to be the first contemporary Asian-set YA novel.
I'm going to read a little bit from the beginning from Chapter 1and a little bit from Chapter 2.
[Reading excerpt.]
““Moooo!” It is still dark when I reach to shut off theHolstein-shaped alarm clock that my best friend, Jessie, gave mefor my sixteenth birthday.
To shut it off, you have to pull down on the cow’s enormousplastic udder. Mom wanted to
throw it out. I told her it was just humor, Jessie-style.
I step into the steamy shower and let the warmth coax me awake.I shampoo, shave my legs, and let the conditioner sit in my hairfor exactly five minutes, just as it says on the bottle.
After toweling off, I put on deodorant, foot powder, perfume,and then begin applying wine-colored eyeliner under my lashes.
Do boys have to go through all this trouble day in and day out??How about Tomper Sandel, the football player who appears to benaturally cute with his shaggy blond hair and cleft chin—does heworry about how he smells?
I put on extra eye shadow in a semicircle around my top eyelid.According to Glamour magazine, this will give Oriental eyes a lookof depth. I’ve always known that I don’t have
the neat crease at the top of my lid—like my friends do— that tellsyou exactly where the eye shadow should stop. So every day I haveto paint in that crease, but I don’t think I’m fooling anybody.
“Hurry up, Ellen,” Mom calls from downstairs. I throw on my newOcean Pacific T-shirt and jeans and run down. Mom is standing inthe kitchen, quietly spreading peanut butter on whole wheat bread.She turns to look at me, and her eyebrows dip into a slightfrown.
“Is that what you’re wearing to school?”
“Yes, Mom,” I say. We go through this scene every year.
“What about all those good clothes we bought inMinneapolis?”
“Those dresses are great,” I say. “But no one wears a dress onthe first day of school.”
“Oh,” Mom says, as if she’s not convinced. She turns to finishpacking my lunch. As usual, Father has already left for thehospital so he can get an early start on patients withmorning-empty, surgery-ready stomachs.
“Goodbye, Myong-Ok. It’s your last year here,” she says. I lookup at her upon hearing my Korean name. To me, it doesn’t sound likemy name, but to Mom, I think it means something special.
Sometimes I think she has so much more to say to me, but it getslost, partly because of the gap separating Korean and English, andpartly because of some other kind of gap that has always existedbetween me and my parents.”
Here's just a little bit from chapter 2.
“It is dinnertime at the Sung household, and although she’sabsent, the presence of my sister still dominates.
“She was very disciplined,” Father says as he begins slurpinghis Korean soup. “Even when she was getting all As she stillstudied hard because she knew that being at the top of her class ina public school like Arkin wouldn’t guarantee her getting intoHarvard.”
I tense my back against my chair. What good will it do foreveryone to keep parading all of Michelle’s accomplishments infront of me?
Today in calculus class, Mr. Carlson, the teacher, delightedlyshambled over when he saw me. “How’s Michelle doing?” was the firstthing that popped out of his mouth. “Boy, she was a whiz at math,”was the second. I sat there wondering if he knew what my namewas.
I look down at my lasagna. Its tomatoey, garlicky smell mingleswith the smell of seaweed from Father’s soup. Since Mom has alwayscooked something Korean for Father and something American” for her,Michelle, and me, the smells are always clashing, usually ending upin weird, cloying odors.
“How was school today?” Mom asks.
“Okay. Not much new,” I say, although there’s so much I want tosay, that I wish I could say, that I can’t. I mentally close myeyes and envision a different conversation.
“A boy called me a ‘chink’ on the bus today,” I would say.
Mom’s mouth would open. Father’s chopsticks would drop, sinkingunnoticed into the murky depths of his soup.
“You poor thing,” Mom would say. “What did you do?”
“I totally ignored him,” I would answer confidently.
“How terrible to have to go through that,” Father would say, andhe’d take off his thick spectacles so that for once I could see thetenderness in his eyes.
“With all this stress I think Ellen should worry less aboutgrades and more about having a fun senior year and making friends,”Mom would add.
“I agree,” Father would say, and he’d resume slurping his soup.Slurp, slurp.”
Thank you for listening.
Ed Lin: Thank you so much, Marie, for reading that. You know,I'm an east coast kind of guy. I've always lived in New York/NewJersey/the Tri-state area. The midwest has always been kind of anexotic place to me. When I went there, I felt like I had to eatlike a cheese contest at every meal to fit in.
I'm going to read a little bit from David Tung Can't Have aGirlfriend Until He Gets Into an Ivy League College. I don't havethe really pretty, shiny copy that Neela has, I only have thisugly, uncorrected proof.
One thing you should know is that there's mention of HarmonyHealth, which is a hospital internship that David Tung has appliedto. Even though he's been told he can't have a girlfriend or date,he is forced to have to ask his mother for help in renting a tux.He's planning on going to this dance. Okay, here we go.
[Reading from book.]
My heart was pounding in fear when my mother picked
me up as usual at the bus stop. I was full-on terrified to
lay out all my plans in full, which I needed to do to even
have a shot at her giving me the tux money.
“How was school?” she asked.
“Fine,” I said. I saw her mouth twitch. She was
suspicious when she didn’t hear grades.
“No tests or quizzes?”
“No, nothing today.”
“What about Harmony Health?”
“Still nothing.” Whenever I didn’t have a clear
marker of success to report to her, she liked to go
fishing for a deficiency.
“When are you going to hear?”
“Soon, I think.”
We rode in silence a little bit. I couldn’t tell if she
was in a good or a bad mood, but figured I could go
fishing, too.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Do you think every Saturday night is going to be
busy at Tung’s Garden?” She actually laughed.
“Hope so! Don’t you hope so, too, David?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
I couldn’t muster the courage to bring up the dance.
Once we got to the restaurant, I went into work mode.
Every time I thought I was going to get a break for a few
minutes, another task presented itself.
Soon the night was almost over. We were cleaning
up. It was now or never. I’d already decided there was
no way I was going to tell my mother about the dance
once we got home. She’d said numerous times that
when she gets home, she just wants to sleep. Plus, here
at the restaurant, there was always the chance I could
rally up some backup support from Auntie Zhang or my
dad. At the very least, my mother would think twice
before really lashing into me, if it came to that.
My newly found level of social acceptance—and
the potential for a real-life girlfriend—was riding on
being able to go to the dance. I could be as cool at
Shark Beach High as I was at the Chinese school in
Chinatown! But in order for that to happen, I needed to
go to Nordstrom. This week. There was no way to put it
off any longer.
“Mom!” I said hoarsely. She was stapling receipts
near the cash register.
“Yes?”
“Can you help me rent a tuxedo?”
“Tuxedo? What for?”
“I want to go to a school dance.”
She put down the stapler and curled her hands into
fists. “You want to go to a dance?”
My shoulders involuntarily shrugged out of fear.
“A girl asked me to go, and I said yes.”
“A girl!” said my mother, like a TV detective
announcing she’d found the murder weapon. I heard my
father moving somewhere behind me, possibly taking
shelter. “Who’s this girl?”
“Christina Tau.” My mother flared her nostrils.
“Is she your secret girlfriend, David?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t have a girlfriend much less a
secret girlfriend.”
“‘Tau,’ she said venomously, “It sounds like a
Cantonese name.” My mother sometimes expressed
distaste for Cantonese people for no explicable reason.
“How many times have I told you? You’re not allowed to
have a girlfriend until college! And you’d better get into
an Ivy League school!” It was the end of yet another
long day of work, but my mother didn’t seem tired at
all. She was as mad as I’ve ever seen her.
“You’ve said that enough times,” I said. I looked
around for some silent show of support. Auntie Zhang’s
English wasn’t great, but she could probably understand
what was happening. Yet she was diligently wiping down
a tabletop, her head bent. My father suddenly found
that something in the kitchen required him.
After a brief pause, my mother was on me again.
“You’re not even number one, are you?” She pointed
at my nose. “All the way down at number eight! You
spend too much time thinking about girls!”
That was a complete lie. It angered me into a fatal
mistake: talking back to my mother while she was still
fired up.
“I spend too much time working at this restaurant!”
I protested.
“You know how long I work here? How long your
father works here? You want to run around with girls
while we’re spending day and night here making money
so we can live?”
Oh no! Don’t let her start talking about money when
she’s this angry.
“Okay, look,” I said, attempting to calm her down.
“It’s just one dance. It’s not a big deal. Christina’s
parents are Chinese, too, and they think it’s OK.”
But there was no calm eye to this storm.
“They’re not your parents! And that’s not my child!”
“Why can’t you understand?”
“No! You don’t understand!”
Actually, I truly didn’t.
“A lot of kids are going.”
“Not you, David!” my mother thundered. “You tell
this girl you don’t want a girlfriend! And you don’t want
to talk to her anymore!”
“I already told her I would go,” I said.
“Tell her you can’t! You’re in school, and school
is for learning, not for girls!” She closed her lips and
wiped her front teeth with her tongue, considering
something.
“Give me your phone, David!”
“What!”
“Give me your phone! I don’t want you talking and
sexting with this girl!”
“I’m not sexting with her, Mom!”
“Who knows what you’re doing!” I handed over my
phone and half a second later it was zipped up in her
purse. Nothing ever escaped from there. Not even light.
Thank you so much.
Ruth Minah Buchwald: Thank you both so much. Thank you forspeaking with me. I love your contributions to the canon so much.AAWW is the first place I ever interned at a few years ago. Itfeels extra special to represent and work with people who have beencontinuously kind and generous to me. Thank you to Lily, Rob, andNeela for arranging this.
I'm excited to be part of the commencement event for Ed's booktour. Ed, since this is your YA debut, I wanted you to talk aboutthe transition from writing for adults to young people, if thateven was a conscious choice.
Ed Lin: I never really have an audience in mind when I'mwriting. I just write to me. In the course of writing aboutChinatown mysteries, and then moving on to Taiwan, I was in theresearch of looking at the history of Chinatown, and I started toquestion my own family's personal history. That led to Taiwan, ofcourse. My father is from a long line of Taiwanese settlers. Therehave been waves of people who have emigrated from China to Taiwanover millennia. His family came over when the Ming Dynastycollapsed.
In the course of all that research and making things morepersonal, I thought about the YA books that were out there. I feellike none of them really spoke to the terror that I had, being inhigh school and being really, really scared that my grades weren'tgood enough, my SAT score wasn't high enough, etc. to achieve. Alot of second-generation Asian Americans are proxies for theirparents, battling with other relatives and friends. They only gotso far, but my kid is going to beat your kid, and he's a pianoplayer going to Harvard, going to play for the Knicks undrafted,etc.
All these books are really for me. I guess when I'm thinkingabout writing for a younger me, I had fewer reservations andreally, really wanted to push things, because I was being squeezedso hard in this box. It wasn't like, how was your day? It was like,show me your grade, and then I'll tell you how your day was. It'sabout the push for a certain demographic for Asian Americans witheverything reduced to a grade. It's kind of anti-learning. Youthink about how to get the best GPA, instead of taking something inand learning it. You're unable to think about what you enjoylearning about, and your favorite subjects.
It's been said when Asian Americans hit college, they're usuallya double major, or major and minor. One is for their parents, andone is for them. I was engineering and literature/writing. I wasone class short of the literature/writing degree and didn'tfinish.
Ruth Minah Buchwald: Talking about being squeezed out of a box,both of your books, David Tung Can't Have a Girlfriend Until HeGets Into an Ivy League College and Finding My Voice, theliterature landscape was different. I want to know both yourthoughts on the current mainstream of novels that highlight theAsian American youth stories. What are your thoughts?
Marie Myung-ok Lee: I've always had librarians that say, “allthe boys love your book, but they don't want a girl on the cover.”This is so welcome. As I mentioned, my book went in and out ofprint so many times. I grew up in a really small town in Minnesota.My town was so small, it didn't have a Nordstrom. I just grew up ina very small mining town. I never had any Asian American books. Iread a lot of Judy Blume, adult books like Thomas Hardy, etc. S.E.Hinton was a favorite. But I didn't have anything to aspire to,which is what made it so difficult.
I dropped out of pre-med, my parents were Korean War refugees.They couldn't conceive of wanting to be a writer. I majored inecon, and was going to work in finance. I was planning to take somewriting, really cool religious studies classes, and other things Iliked. When I was working at Goldman and trying to make money, Istill didn't know how you get published, or how anything works.When I wrote Finding My Voice, I didn't even know it was a YA book.I would get the weirdest replies from people.
My big break, the reason I majored in econ, I had a plan that Iwas going to live in New York. I had to have a job that paid a lotof money. Then my boyfriend, who's now my husband, worked at apublishing company. We got to go to all these publishing things forfree. Judy Blume was at a gala. I showed her my book. To my uttersurprise, she said yes! The world's craziest story, I sent her someof it. She really liked it. Her agent didn't like it as much, butthey sent it to another agent. Even after that, it got rejected by22 publishers. The last publisher was Houghton Mifflin. My agentsaid, if it's not this one, we're done. They'd already held onto itfor months. My money had run out and I was freelancing fordifferent investment things.
Then I got this call. They wanted the book! That was kind of thesuper improbable way my career started. It was so close to havingnever started, that I can't forget my gratitude for everybody whohelped. I had someone who sent it to all these people andacademics. I'm ecstatic the book is coming out again. I'm writingYA again, which I haven't done since 1996. I'm excited.
Ruth Minah Buchwald: What about you, Ed? These Asian-Americanyoung people stories?
Ed Lin: It certainly seems to be a lot of it. I grew up as apunk rock kid. I'm really into subversive kinds of things. As thereare more Asian Pacific-American things, it's kind of becomingmainstream, like when Hüsker Dü signed with Warner Brothers.
I'm showing my age but it was a really big deal. The punk rockethos is something you hold onto. Not making it a career and moneykind of thing. The drummer actually wrote a letter to the sceneabout how they didn't sell out and they wanted better distributionso the fans could get it.
One of the things Malcom X pointed to was the American'sperceptions of its Black population being rooted in it's perceptionof Africa as well. You needed to unite the diaspora with themotherland in a sort of way.
I have to say, when Parasite won the academy award for bestfilm, it was like, "yes!" for us. Seeing Asians flood the stage toaccept the award was awesome. I hope I answered your question.
Ruth Minah Buchwald: Yeah, for sure. I have a question aboutchannelling that time in your life, which I think every immigrantchild can relate to, of basically balancing and living two lives.Growing up in a household that abides by the culture they're fromand the norm in their schools.
Also, in David Tung's case, another life of running away to NewYork and his punk rock moment. I'm just kind of wondering aboutbalancing those things.
Marie Myung-ok Lee: I think one of the things that was greatabout being in the Writers' Workshop, I was a co-founder but Ijoined really early on too, it was not only us all being ex-pre Medor ex-engineer. Actually, I think Ed was the only ex-engineer.There was a talk about what was worse, coming out or coming out asa writer.
I think within the solidarity, our own appreciation of our crazyparents and the stuff they did so we could get to this point andhave these different jobs or being writers -- I was the only personwho had a book contract when we started the Writers' Workshop. Itwas all of us finding our voice. It was us trying to find our wayas writers.
I'll back up a little bit. Amy Tan was kind of the omnipresentwriter that every White person responded to at that time. She hadthat dominance -- and I'm not saying she is or her writing is bad-- but we all sort of felt repressed by it. Almost all of us atsome point had someone say something like "why don't you write morelike Amy Tan?"
We wanted to write whatever we wanted to write. Maybe even stuffwithout Asians in it. Frankly, it was a lot of work to get theworkshop going. We're all finally published, but we probably alllost at least a book with all the work we put into the workshop.We're all still really good friends.
I feel like the metaphor of trying to love your parents andhonor them but also do your own thing is kind of the metaphor wehad at the workshop. We fought a lot, but we laughed a lot.
To a degree, like Ed was saying the pride of seeing Parasite,it's kind of the same like seeing all the YA. It doesn't have to beone person anymore, we want all of these voices. That's making meso happy.
Ed Lin: Yeah, the early days of the Writers' Workshop wereincredible. It was legitimately a workshop. But Curtis got thatjournal published, getting anything published anywhere was a legup, considering the outlets available back then.
You think there aren't a lot of BIPOC editors now? Think aboutback then!
Marie Myung-ok Lee: There was an anthology that came out andnone of us were in it! [Laughter.] There is a kind of weird punkaesthetic even though we were all nerdy. There was noAsian-American bookstore, we had what we called the largestAsian-American bookstore in the nation. We were the only one, so wewere definitely the largest.
Ed Lin: Do you remember the summer of '92, we went to AtlanticCity?
Marie Myung-ok Lee: I wasn't on that trip. The caravan?
Ed Lin: Oh! We went into a casino, how do you not? On the thirdquarter Curtis put into the slot machine, it just paid off. Liketwo buckets of quarters came out! It was like wow! It filled up andhe had to throw another bucket under there. It just represented thebounty coming in for paying our dues early on. [Laughter.]
Curtis, by the way, is a filmmaker now. He's done incredibledocumentaries. The first was called Vincent Who, which is about thememory of Vincent Chin and how everything has been forgotten, evenafter a documentary was made.
The second is called Tested. It's the one determination that youtake in order to get into the special schools in the New York Citysystem. Fantastic films.
Marie Myung-ok Lee: They are. You'll laugh, actually, I'm in anew writers' group with him. It's all Asian-Americans. We do it onZoom, we just can't help ourselves! He does have a wonderful memoirwe just read and it's going to be wonderful when it comes out.
Ed Lin: Awesome. He's like David Tung, his family had arestaurant.
Marie Myung-ok Lee: Exactly. The book reminded me a lot of yourbook. I read a little of your book so I wouldn't get the two mixedup. We just read the manuscript.
Ed Lin: Growing up, we didn't have a restaurant, we had a hotel.That was a 24 hour business. Someone always had to be watching theoffice. At a pretty early age, I must have been around 12, I wouldwatch the office on the weekends from around 9 to about 2-3 in themorning. I got to see all of the early Saturday Night Lives and theTwilight Zone. I remember the early skits were insane andwonderful.
Marie Myung-ok Lee: Were you just by yourself? No child laborlaws?
Ed Lin: If there were child labor laws enforced, so manyAsian-American businesses would be shut down! You walk into anyAsian-American mom-and-pop shop and there's always a kid therestanding there with a 50 yard stare.
Ruth Minah Buchwald: I love hearing all of these stories. Whenwe were doing a tech rehearsal, I loved hearing Marie'sstories.
Shifting from living two lives, a big part of both of your booksis about Asian-American study culture. I'm wondering now as parentsand also writers reflecting on those times, college admissioncompetition, all of the things of immigrant parent expectations,I'm wondering how that's evolved? Going back to that time andwriting about the pressures of that.
Marie Myung-ok Lee: I think what was different for me than Ed iswe lived in an all White area. We didn't have the competition.That's what I really liked about your book, the side-eyeingcompetition. Then also sort of in a lot of YA books, the richhandsome person is generally the good person. But you have thisuniverse of Asian-Americans and the cut throatness of thatculture.
We lived in a town where 60% of people didn't go to college.Those that did went to state schools. My dad went to the Harvard ofKorea. You could bribe your way in or do differentextracurriculars. Did you take the test and pass? It was ameritocracy my dad had.
All of my friends would be taking typing and my dad insisted onGerman. That was the only language we had. My friends got to go seeJaws and I had to write a book report. You see all of that crazydialogue, when you're younger you think your parents are crazy. Ijust wanted to go out and go to a party like a normal kid.
As a parent, exactly. I kind of see "wow" and I feel lucky. Iteach at Columbia and I see how professional all of these kids areand all the things they did to get in. I probably wouldn't get intoday.
My father's passed away now, but I appreciate what he did. Thiswas going to be the way his kids were going to succeed. I know thatbecause when my parents first came here, they were in Jim CrowAlabama. I know that affected them very deeply. They didn't let usdo anything Asian, we couldn't speak or eat Korean.
I know that came from a place of love and them wanting us tosucceed. I have more of a loving look at it and recalling it towrite about it in these novels is about how horrible it is. You'rea kid and you're already different and not allowed to be like theother kids. I think that's a lot of what's at the core ofAsian-American YA. It's hard. Even if it comes from a place oflove, it's difficult.
Ed Lin: I was born in New York City but we moved to New Jerseywhen I was like 3. I grew up in this friendlyish racism.
A few towns we lived in had maybe 10% Asian, and there wereenough people of Chinese descent to actually have a Chinese school.But the places I've lived in the longest didn't really. I went fromthis environment of sort of friendly-ish racism, to a really smalltown in Pennsylvania. That was straight-up racism. I remember Itook a wrong turn once on this mountain road. I was in front ofthis house that had a lynched gorilla costume in the front yard. Iwas like, man, I've got to get out of this town.
From freshman year to senior year, there was a 40-45% dropoutrate. Very few people went on to 4-year colleges after that. Iremember, my first days at the school in Pennsylvania, there wereof course the racist kids, but there was also a local Klan chapter.So-and-so's dad is the editor of the newsletter!
I went from this environment and I was like, OK. When I get tocollege, I'm totally going to be in this Asian American group andwe'll be fighting racism. I got into Columbia. During orientation,I was like this hick coming in talking about fighting racism. Allthese other kids who came from very prosperous backgrounds, theyhad fake IDs to get into clubs and everything. I actually took abit from that experience, and high school, for David Tung.
There are now towns that are majority Asian. There's a townthat's 60% Korean.
Ruth Minah Buchwald: I'm from there.
Marie Myung-ok Lee: Nice!
Ed Lin: You can get the food so easily! But also, it's likeeverybody knows each other's business. The neighbor down the blockprobably knows what you got on your biology quiz.
Ruth Minah Buchwald: Yeah, it was very much like that.
For my last question, what I love about both of these novels,they're driven by the first person perspective, and written by verypowerful, smart, quippy young voices. What is it like for you toreflect, coming from strong voices for your stories, back when youhad something you just wrote, the Workshop, etc.?
Marie Myung-ok Lee: That was a good time, writing for no reason.The best thing about the workshop, we did it for no reason. To yourquestion, I'm so happy you asked this. I love telling the story,when I did have the agent and she was striking out everywhere, thisvery famous editor said, OK. I'm kind of interested in this book.But the first person present tense is very amateurish. You need towrite it in third person past tense. I was like, oh my gosh, he'sso famous. I tried to rewrite it in third person past tense. Imajored in econ, so I didn't really understand about voice. But Idid understand, I wanted this book to help the reader understandwhat it's like to be called chink. There was no way to do that inthird person past tense.
I'm not saying there's a magic formula, but at the same time,I'm saying that the book is the book I wanted to write, the way Iwanted to write it, despite the very strong feeling that this whiteeditor had for how it should be. Like Ed was saying earlier, you'vegot to do what you're going to do. Now 20 years later, I'm so happyfor this book. If I would have done that even, I don't know if Iwould still love it as much. But that's how I came to that voice.When I looked at it more critically, that's the voice I wanted.Thank you so much for asking that.
Ruth Minah Buchwald: Of course!
Ed Lin: I'm like you, Marie. I don't have an MFA. I only tooksome writing classes as an undergrad. I consider the Writer'sWorkshop to be an MFA-ish experience in a way. I remember early‘90s, reading these books about how to write, and I was just like,wow. This is really not working! It's like picking a tabs book andtrying to play the "Stairway to Heaven" solo. Writing is a uniqueinstrument. You've got to learn to play it well. If it doesn't goto people who are higher up, that's fine. Most people don't readbooks. You might as well appear to them.
Ruth Minah Buchwald: Thank you so much. Now we have somequestions from the audience. The first one, what prompted you towrite for and about Asian American youth? Thank you so much fordoing so. This is so exciting, I didn't have anything like thisgrowing up. It's amazing to hear these readings.
Marie Myung-ok Lee: Go!
Ed Lin: OK. Viet Nguyen has said that every war is fought twice.I'm still fighting my Asian American childhood, in a fictional kindof sense. Part of me is still stuck there, honestly. It's OK. Wehave different strata to our experiences.
Marie Myung-ok Lee: Your book is super funny, by the way. Ithink humor is very underrated as a literary quality.
My answer is very simple. I wanted to have an Asian Americanbook so bad growing up, so I just had to write it.
Ruth Minah Buchwald: Question 2, both of you wrote books aboutthe Asian American experience in the U.S. I'm interested in how youcame up with the titles for your novels.
Marie Myung-ok Lee: David Tung is the best title! Who came upwith that?
Ed Lin: I came up with it. I was like, it's about this and thisand this. It can't be The Long Run or something like that. Therearen't a lot of Asian American titles that are like, bleh! Everyoneis concerned about how they'll come off, and their appearance. Lookat me. I'm a guy who's like, throw the pizza against the wall.That's it.
Marie Myung-ok Lee: The title tells you what you need to know,basically. I agree. There's always that super literary book with areally long title. We should have one like that.
I came up with Finding My Voice, it was originally going to becalled after a postcard. But I think I wanted it to be moreemotional to the heart of what the book was about.
Ed Lin: Doesn't Parkin Min [sp?] sound Korean?
Marie Myung-ok Lee: No.
My friend Cheryl Strayed is from a town nearby. I'll just changeone letter. I think I put Akin and put an R in it.
Ed Lin: This is wild. I've known Hayley since the 90s as well.Shout out to Hayley!
Ruth Minah Buchwald: Our next question is for Ed. We'vediscussed the ways that Asian Americans tend to be put in certainsocial boxes. In a similar way, genre fiction operates throughfixed conventions. But your books work through and against suchconventions. How can we "punk" genre? Thanks so much everyone foryour time. I also love this question!
Ed Lin: Because of the pandemic, we can no longer haveconventions. I encourage everyone to ditch them. The publishingindustry naturally is not going to publish a book they think willlose money. They want to reduce the odds as much as possible. Byhaving comparable books that you can sort of glom onto, it makes abook more publishable as opposed to something being moreoriginal.
But I urge everyone to not only write more original, but supportwork out there that's more original as well. Drive that wedge andwiden it a little bit.
What else can I say? Listen to more punk rock! Check out SoulGlo out of Philadelphia. They're one of the best new bands outthere. They're on Bandcamp. Today's Friday, and Bandcamp hassuspended taking royalties. Everything goes to the band today.
Ruth Minah Buchwald: What advice would you give aspiring AsianAmerican writers trying to break into the industry?
Marie Myung-ok Lee: Write!
Ruth Minah Buchwald: Great, yeah!
This question, I'm curious if Ed and Marie can speak to craftchallenges they found when writing their books and characters.
Marie Myung-ok Lee: You should go, Ed. I already talked about myvoice problem.
Ed Lin: Let's see. It's true that there is a slant to YA beinggeared towards girls and young female protagonists and writers aswell. I remember reading the Sherman Alexie YA book, HalfIndian...
Ruth Minah Buchwald: That title is also great.
Ed Lin: For me, that was really striking, too. When you're a boygrowing into your young-manhood, there's always a physicality toit. Not fighting, but banging up against people and stuff. You takeyour bruises.
So what are you supposed to learn from David Tung? I don't knowif you can learn anything apart from you're not alone and a lot ofpeople are going through what you're going through no matter howalone and lost you feel. There's at least someone or more thansomeone going through exactly what you're going through.
I would also like to point out that I love this alternative hiphop artist called Ohyung. Give a listen and support onBandcamp.
Ruth Minah Buchwald: Then we have a question, how long did ittake each of you to get your first book published?
Marie Myung-ok Lee: Mine was ten years.
Ed Lin: I don't know, what's the starting point? The first dayyou started writing or the first day you started getting an agentor when they started sending it out?
Ruth Minah Buchwald: I don't know, I guess from writing orfinishing the final draft.
Ed Lin: It's often said it's not the writer's first book that'sthe published one. That's true for me. I have a horrible book on afloppy disc somewhere. I think I reached page 70. I was like ifit's this painful to write it, how hard is it going to be to readthis thing? I printed out the whole thing and put it in a drawersomewhere.
My cousin is somewhat like me, he grew up working in hisfamily's hotel, he killed himself. It spurred me to look at my ownearly childhood growing up at the hotel. I wrote this book calledWaylaid in about seven months. That book was my first publishedbook.
That was actually published by Kaya Press because I went to aworkshop called How To Get Your Book Published. I showed her mybook and printed it out, mailed it to her, then I get it back inthe mail. I'm going through the pages and it's like bleeding.There's comments, slashes throughout, I groaned. I was feeling allthe pain. I shoved it in a drawer.
She called me a few weeks later and was like, "what do youthink?" I was like what do I think, you hated it? She told me theyloved it and wanted to publish it.
Going back to the person asking about breaking into writing,have a thick skin. Don't take things personally. It might feel likesomeone's trying to attack you, but they're really trying to helpyou. Aside from that person who told you to write in the thirdperson. People are going to try to help you.
Marie Myung-ok Lee: That's a good point. I have at least twomanuscripts I know will never be published. But I did have tocomplete them. I knew I couldn't go to the next one. With FindingMy Voice I had to do anything for it, including telling an editorno.
But if it's awful to write, it's going to be awful to read. Ihave an 800 page manuscript about this awful publisher and Ithought it was so funny. I read it again and was like this is nevergoing to make it. But that's what it's all about, learning your owntaste, knowing when something's good and when something's bad.
Oh, I also wrote one about the Gold Rush that was so bad. Apublisher was interested in it but I couldn't bring myself tofinish it. It needed editing. I was starting to write more adultfiction and I was dropping out of the YA mindset.
To the person who asked about a craft thing, now that I writeadult, the interesting thing is I was not allowed -- in my bookabout guys -- to use swear words. I was like how can I not useswear words when I'm spending time in a locker room and it's allslurs and swear words?
The point was the library marketing person said if I did this,it wouldn't get into the kids hands. So I came up with a compromisewhich was making up my own swear words. It feels silly, but Ididn't have to worry about censors and things like that.
It's not really a craft thing, but there are certain genreconventions that come up against your artistic ideas. When you'regoing to get published, you have to decide what you'll becompromising on. I'd rather have the book in people's hands thanhave the swear words.
It's a weird time. It is a business. They have to sell the booksso they can stay in business. There has to be a semblance ofsellability. They're not gatekeepers, they want to keep selling ourstuff and you need them to do that. There's art and there'scommerce.
Ruth Minah Buchwald: The next question comes from Daisy, how doyou deal with writing about things that are close to home? Daisy iswriting a memoir currently.
Marie Myung-ok Lee: I thought my dad would hate my book, it waskind of autobiographical. Someone said first books are alwaysautobiographical because the writer has things they have to get offtheir chest. I thought my dad would hate it because it seemed likehe was the cold, callous dad.
He wrote me a note and was like when are you going to writeanother book? I've read this one three times. You might thinkthey'll hate it but they love it. I think you need to write it andthen figure out how to deal with your parents or whoever you'rewriting about.
Ed Lin: My mother said my third book was the first one thatdidn't shame the family.
Marie Myung-ok Lee: [Laughter.] Ouch! Okay. But they never saidlike stop writing or don't publish this?
Ed Lin: It was more like, "don't start writing." "When you're adoctor, you can write at night."
Marie Myung-ok Lee: That's what my parents said!
Ed Lin: Yeah, I'll want to do this after a whole day as adoctor.
Marie Myung-ok Lee: My dad gave me a list of doctors who werealso writers!
Ed Lin: Because he was a doctor he fell into that trap, what ahack!
Ruth Minah Buchwald: This next question is from Timothy, they'reasking if there are sequels being planned for your books.
Ed Lin: No, this is it.
Marie Myung-ok Lee: Are you going to write more YA though?
Ed Lin: Uh . . . maybe. Maybe not. It depends.
Marie Myung-ok Lee: But you're totally closing the door onthat?
Ed Lin: Well . . . I would never close the door on anything,except my foot.
Marie Myung-ok Lee: I will say, there is already a sequel --Saying Goodbye -- to Finding My Voice. So many people were asking,"what happened to Ellen, what happened to Ellen?!" I was likealright, alright. It's still in print.
Ruth Minah Buchwald: I'll make sure to buy everyone's bookstonight. Last question for the night, who are you reading right nowand what writers do you recommend?
Ed Lin: Let's see. I'm only going to talk about writers who aredead. I'm friends with so many writers, I can't name some and leavesome out.
I really enjoyed the books by James T. Farrell. I think I'veread like eight of his books already. I find them all fantastic. Hewas this Irish-American guy who grew up in Chicago. He deals withrace and different socioeconomic groups that is so real. Notsurprisingly, he was a long-time communist. But he's not runningfor president or anything. _
I've also really enjoyed this book called Book of Swindles,published by Columbia University Press. It's translations of MingDynasty tales of people being ripped off. In Ming Dynasty China, ifyou were robbed or fooled by somebody, your neighbors wouldn't becoming out to help or comfort you. They'd laugh at how stupid youwere.
Marie Myung-ok Lee: That's lovely. I read non-fiction andfiction at the same time. Fiction, I'm reading this really greatnovel by a Korean-American writer, I think her name is NancyJooyoun Kim. That book has some of the best descriptions of food.Koreans are super into eating, I'm immensely enjoying that.
My friend Justin Taylor is writing a memoir about his dad andAmerica. It's so beautifully done and brainy, I highly recommendit. It's called Riding with the Ghost.
Ed Lin: Speaking of ghosts, did you know I lived in a hauntedhouse in the middle of Pennsylvania? My parents bought this farmhouse as an investment. My parents bought it and made me live therethe summer before going to college. It was a huge property, it hadhalf a mountain.
It was built in the early 1800s. It had a dirt basement, thestairs were worn down and hand hewn, there was an outhouse, I hadto shove coal in the heater to have hot water.
Who's the guy from Flying Burrito Brothers? He had that songcalled We'll Sweep Out the Ashes in the Morning. I was totallydoing that, otherwise you couldn't burn more coal.
There was a ghost in this house. It was just me and the stuff inmy room. The snoring sound would come out from the bedroom acrossthe hallway 2-3 nights a week.
Marie Myung-ok Lee: Did you ever see anything? Was it an oldWhite farmer?
Ed Lin: I never saw them. I got the feeling it was an oldfarmhand or something. In the morning, I would hear a rooster crowin the distance and the snoring would stop.
It wasn't a mean presence or anything, it was something resting.If I had heard like, "get out!" I would have been out of there sofast. It was just snoring, catching up on sleep.
Ruth Minah Buchwald: I like how it turned Halloween themed forthe ending. Thank you so much! This was fun to moderate.
Marie Myung-ok Lee: Thanks, Ruth!
Ed Lin: Thank you, Ruth! Thank you, Neela!
Neela Banerjee: Thank you guys so much. A big round of applausefrom all our watchers out there. Thank you all for joining in.
We dropped the pre-order link in the chat a few times. DavidTung Can't Have a Girlfriend Until He Gets Into an Ivy LeagueCollege. We'll send you some shiny stickers as well from the Kayawebsite.
Can you show us your shirt, Ed? A lot of people saw it and likedit.
Ed Lin: It's a great shirt.
Neela Banerjee: Ed will have a lot more events to promote thenovel with all sorts of different writers around the country. Thenext one is coming October 30 with Word Out Bookstore. Follow KayaPress on social media, and pre-order Marie's book, which is comingout December, the reissue. Is there anything new in thereissue?
Marie Myung-ok Lee: I did write an afterword, because some ofthe language was a little antiquated. A lot of people wanted me tochange it, with social media, cell phones, etc. I was like, youknow what? This is a period piece. This is a historical piece of aparticular time when people still said Oriental. She doesn't needto have a cell phone.
Ed Lin: You can't get reception at the abandoned mineanyway!
Marie Myung-ok Lee: Yeah!
Neela Banerjee: Definitely check out both these books. Telleverybody to check these out. A big thank you, of course, to theAsian American Writer's Workshop. A big thank you to Kundiman. Theyjust announced a feminist writer's workshop you can sign upfor.
Thank you guys so much!
Marie Myung-ok Lee: Thank you for spending time with us!Bye!
Ed Lin: Thank you!
Oh, this is going to be on YouTube later!
