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 buddha's 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, we're going to have a conversation with you and beth and after the q&a, we're 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 paul's work after this if you haven't

already. but you already have. and it's also so wonderful. be able to be your colleague. so glad you're here. i thank you all so much for being here. thank you. the wisconsin book festival, it is so it's 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 we're going to have a conversation. and the question you write about the repeating figures. i in the audience. when i'm in the audience, i immediately forget. so so i'm 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 don't know why they call themselves yes, but a lonely heart is a song from the 1980s. and even though this book isn't really about music it is a part

of it takes place in the it is and it engages with the idea of loneliness. i'm 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, don't talk about the war, don't react to racist taunts, behave well enough not to get noticed. and that's what i did. i my homework and watched television and climbed the neighbor's 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, wouldn't 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 wasn't 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 self-pity.

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. i'm 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. i'd had years to prepare, but i wasn't ready. after all the silence i didn't 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 here's 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 driver's 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. you're late. almost years. i wait and you're 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 i'm 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 sister's birth, but my mother didn't say anything that. counted as an answer. that was so long ago. what's 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 there's a there's a goal in between and i golf is filled with perspective and how i have changed over the years but it's actually important to keep a journal. by the way, those of you who are writers so you can measure those

changes and i it's 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 there's no way to get to the actual truth of sorry, there's 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 don't 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 that's the only way we can forgive our parents. actually, it's only way we can forgive anybody is we gain some knowledge, some wisdom, some perspective. then then we're like, oh, that's that's why. and it's 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. i'm actually not i want to be ramona, but i'm not anymore. and that was really actually. but i think that part probably

it's 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 don't 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 that's important that is explored before stealing the buddha's 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 buddha's 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 wasn't 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 wasn't ready to write about i didn't 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 it's there, but you have to determine the scope of the narrative and how you're going to what you're going to address. and then be clear with your readers about what you're going to drive and what you're 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. mike's pastas up. which is the actual pizza shop in boston. i went there once, it's 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 i'm 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 we're 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, you're right. we cannot expect to change. but as as anyone who works at anything creative, you're 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 don't and you wait another year, you're 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, i'm like my mother hasn't really changed in many ways and that was something i had to think about, which was i'm not i can't 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 don't know anything about when i was born, don't know when i was born. i don't have a birth certificate. so it ask her these questions and. she would never give me an answer. so she didn't 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 what's wrong with me? and to me, that's 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 wouldn't be writing. nobody who writes, you know, is healthy. we'd like to be, you know, but we're not. and that's 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 i'm grateful for that. i'm grateful to look back and think my early work feels like different person, like what's written by somebody else or it feels dated or feels completely you strange because i think that's a good marker of progress. my mom does a very similar thing with what i call it withholding

information. it comes very clear when. i'm 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 didn't do anything, but i saw you open, the cabinet, and take something. and in my mind i'm 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 there's also power between you. that's 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 that's a little bit more vengeful. let's start easy. let's see. i never thought about that. no. isn't my feelings about. my mother are so. they're 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 she's like, she never calls, you know, she doesn't like, want to stay in touch with us. so why am i always chasing her? and i'm like, well, she's mother. and and she says yeah, that's right. she's our mother. so the complication of that me is like, i've never thought i

feel i've never thought of it in terms of revenge. but now i'm thinking that maybe it's in terms her revenge, you know, although like, we have such a strange language between us that i try to in this book, it's very compressed. and that's why the book itself is very compressed. it's short book. it's like 56,000 words and the meetings we are very you know, they're 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 didn't 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 don't 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 it's not the right word, but i'm. back as informative instead of revenge. informative. am in there's this section in the book where you where you write. i wonder if that future is awaiting me. and so how i don't 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 it's 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 didn't even pay attention to my grades, you know, for instance. so i because i could do whatever i wanted in high school and i didn't even have a curfew or, anything. i did nothing. i didn't i was i didn't 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 asian-american. at the time, i didn't know any

asian-american writers. i didn't even know there was such a thing as asian-american 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, i'm going to actually do this and and my work and think i like who mine to think that i could do this. yeah, that's it. it's 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 vietnamese-american 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, she's always trying be recovered, always trying to be brought. it's i know it's 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 didn't 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, asian-american

literature is used to be, you know, when you have when you have a cover if you have a cover discussion, for example, that's a good time to think asian-american stereotypes. and it's 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 don't want, you know, red lanterns or tigers or any of the chopsticks, things like that. because if you don't 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 there's 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 can't. until we can't pursue it anymore. because the question that we are trying to answer, we've reached the limit by which we can answer. how did you know in pursuing memoir that you've 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 wasn't 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 they're linked essays so you got to find way to link them. i was like okay looking for a way i couldn't 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 that's your narrative arc, right and that's why you sent me the email. and i was like, yeah, --, that is it. that's 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 it's it's one thing to know that. but then another to try to find it doesn't 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, i'm 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 i'm 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 don't 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 it's 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 neighbor's 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 i'm going to be in trouble if i don't it in which is true. actually. yes, those are strong motivators and would definitely get me to the desk but if you don't have those external you know and, i don't give myself deadlines because i know, i will break them. who's 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. i'm like, no, are you going to ask him anyway? and you should. you, i, me. that's just it. the ice cream. there's 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, that's long game. but really it whatever works. do you have another question from the. yeah, i bet and i. paul were colleagues at uw. i've shared a cab with you at eight philadelphia that's 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 i'm 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 don't seem necessarily logical to the writer about what makes a good or selling book cover to me i just didn't want it to be you know tigers and my interns and jonathan bush came up with this. i'd like to immediately i'd like the there's 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 doesn't meet any of those. it's there's there are no weird stereotypes and i was so relieved because it means the people you're 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 we'll 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 didn't 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, we're that if we think no, that opportunities can be taken away. and so i don't know. it breaks my heart thinking about all the things that we say yes to believing that that's 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 don't want to stand in camera way so my name's kaitlyn and i really appreciated how you mentioned that this was of, in your mind, an essay collection that then moved to memoir. and i'm 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 you've 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 it's 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 it's 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 didn't even realize this and my contract because. i didn't read it carefully. and when i was, you know, doing audio, which was really hard, i hated i couldn't 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. it's really like, who's going to know? so i guess, who's going to know? yeah. so the audio version is completely different.

but i this idea that when you think about different, it's standalone essay, but when you widen the scope and you think of that it's no longer standalone it's no longer you know on its own it has to speak to other pieces, get a chance to re-envision 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 it's actually just i get to add things that i had to take out earlier. and there's 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 didn't 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, i'm so i'm ready to do this dinner, but i haven't seen.

my questions that but yeah, so i've read stealing food is dinner which was awesome. i can't 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 don't think i was mean exactly. like the people who had who i had some negative things, depictions, i changed their so and you're this is standard innovations you change people's and in this book i don't use any names except for my sisters name and maybe cousin's 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 i'm try to remember what name i use i use jennifer. that's the name of the book jennifer that's not her name. real life. she's 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, she's 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 that's a lie. and you know, didn't happen and you're 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 didn't 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 i'll say about this is, one, don't not write something you're imagining the worst possible outcome. you know, don't 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 didn't 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 didn't know it because we didn't know those words back then. and i'm not we would have had those conversations and

certainly not that soon if that hadn't 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 you're writing something give to somebody your family my sister is my work before it's published for example and you know by all means, do what you need to do, but don't sense yourself in the in the process because you're 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 i'm 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 buddha's 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 african-american families in that neighborhood. it just was such beautiful story. and our school was so special at the time. i didn't 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 don't 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 she's madison and i never emailed you. and i to. and then i said, shelly, she's going have a book talk and i have to go. i'm and i was like, i don't know if i'll get to talk to her, but here i am. ask you a question, making a comment with my heart beat and really. you're amazing.

thank you so always to i got to i'm 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 won't sing it because it'll

embarrassing, but it is a really annoying song. oh no, it's a maybe it's not annoying to you. it is a really song. so people love as a people. really. i don't really like that song, but it stays in one's 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 don't actually get a choice, that we get both both. and that's 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, it's about back deck. make a new dad, don't 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 it's 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 buddha's dinner and became part of this title. thank you. so as long the mic is right here, i actually there's the hands behind. can i just ask this one quick? so stealing buddha's dinner was so insightful about food did you share any connection about food with your mom when you've 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 don't know. is it a printer's bad food? i don't 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 don't understand they could possibly be made. they're just delicate magic. but the food is that as much in this book, because it doesn't really define my relationship with my mother. in fact, we've 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 there's tea, but there's really there's really not that sharing. i think that part pretty significant that there's 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 don't say love you. you say, you know, have you eaten are you hungry that. doesn't that does it present exactly with my mother and we went she'll say, you know, i've thought about this because sometimes she'll say, you know, can i get you something to eat? i'll say, no, thank you. i realize that i'm so, like, rejecting her love in a way.

and then. then i feel guilty. and then you. we're at cross-purposes. 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 there's kind of a a double edged sword and when there's a point where you just kind of want to wallow versus when you're ready and how do you know the difference between like wallowing and kind of just sitting in that hurt and being like, oh, i'm 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 you're just feeling and you want to put on a song, you know is so painful. if i'm feeling bad, i might as well feel even. just the skipper going to, sleep well. yeah, that's a wonderful feeling. i enjoy that but it is not writing and in many ways maybe it's 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 you'll be like, oh yeah, this isn't, that great. it's 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 it's 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, i'm 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 it's, that's good because that means you're 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 isn't something that we all do in life. there's no getting around that. and that's in a way, why i think nonfiction nonfiction, sort of the dominant of our day. and that's also media is great nonfiction. it's all a curation of a self whether it's, you know, the degrees of believability, fall, the definition of creative nonfiction. and we're 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. i'm on a when i think about the wallowing, it's 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 what's true we wouldn't 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 can't learn anything new when. the feeling governs us. and i think sometimes the inkling that, oh, i need to make something this while we're wallowing is the part of us that knows like i'm, you know, sometimes when we wallow too intensely in it, it can be dangerous. and so we need to make something together way out. but but often we just, you know, all we can do is feel our way through it and know that at the end of it, you will have that new knowledge to make the thing you need to make.

but that can we please, please, please give beth another round of applause. you can call.

i've been waiting for this day for quite a while since. last june, when anne's wonderful book came out and, i we were in d.c. together. i knew that i could bring her out to. for this book, lure her out here and actually lure her back because she here once before.