that. not a lot. i spent a lot of time beating up my brother when he was little. how are you? >> i'm good. >> it's a pleasure to meet you. now, with my brother, i figured it out, the a certain point when we were growing into our teenage years, that he stayed little only so long. he was going to be bigger than me at some point. that is when i went to him, i said, we have to stop fighting. [laughter]. we're too big to fight anymore. we have to argue. we have to show how our minds can beat each other. to this day he still regrets. he was waiting to beat me up some day and i stopped the game. [laughter]. it is hard, isn't it? because there are some cultural

influences, even when kids are small, about what toys they should like, the boy toys, versus the girl toys, all of those things, i think feminism rightly defined is respect for women. and -- [applause] that requires your insistence. it requires making sure that when women talk, or men talk, your child learns how not to interrupt. it means teaching him that listening to people's ideas requiring letting them talk those ideas out. it requires teaching him by example and otherwise that women do powerful things.

and you can show him a supreme court with three women. [applause] and i can say something i will be chided for. probably have my hand slapped, and i'm going to do it anyway. there is a movie called rbg. [cheers and applause] it is about my friend, and i'm privileged to call her my friend, but she was an advocate for women's rights and i don't know that any other movie i have ever seen might teach your son why equality of women is so important. [applause]

don't give up on him. they all grow up. >> i teach government in high cool in maryland, with 70% of hispanic population. so great to have your picture up on my wall, this is what you can do too. [applause] okay. all right, you guys. >> i think he has -- >> one of you has to get the picture of him, okay? that is your job. thank you. >> thank you so much. >> thank you. [applause] >> wow. and he has baltimore orioles cap.

oops. justice, now this question is from a forth -- fourth grade teacher. it is something all of us would like to hear you talk about. when you have felt discouraged, with has helped power through that feeling? and this is a teacher, dorothy copeland, who is asking for a fourth grade student. teachers are so important in terms of being able to help outside of the home. >> who is that teacher? >> this is the teacher. dorothy, why don't you go and -- >> come on down with me, so i can keep walking in the back. thank you. >> that you would -- [inaudible]. >> you know, i think wrongly,

now, but when i was thinking about what i would be when i grew up i didn't think i had the patience to be a teacher. i still don't know if i could have that patience. >> thanks a lot. >> but i know one thing, which is, the strength of our country is in our teachers. [applause] and i for one really thank you from the bottom of my heart, to every teacher whose patience seems endless, who sacrifice on all of our behalf is great. you are never paid enough. and you're never admired enough. so thank you.

[applause] it took pea very, very long time to figure out that the best way for me to become less discouraged was to talk to people about how i felt. you know for a lot of my life i would have self-doubt. i would be afraid. i would be sort of anxiety-ridden about something, and i would try to power through it and almost ignore it. and it really eats you up. it is like your stomach is constantly turning. and in the end, when you're discouraged, you can't find the good in things because you're discouraged. and so it took me a long time to

realize, i have to share what i'm feeling with other people. now, that's not so easy. because sometimes you look at your parents and they may be unhappy about something and you don't want to make them more unhappy, right? so maybe they're not the best person to share it with at that moment. although i learned, and it took me a long, long, long, long time in my life when i shared things with my mom she made such a big difference in helping me deal with what i was dealing with. but, if that doesn't, or can't work for you, there is always a teacher. sometimes the parent of one of your neighbors or best friend. sometimes it is someone in your

sunday or saturday school religious experience. and sometimes it is just another friend and if you're a good friend, and somebody comes to you who is friend and says, i'm in trouble, you have to help them find an adult to help you. that is what being a good friend is, when you're little. but, in the end, i think it is important for every child to know that they're not alone. that what they feel are things that other children have felt. even children like me. when i was little, and so, to me, that's the first lesson. learn how to share what's bothering you. good luck to you. >> thank you. [applause] >> thank you.

>> i think this is another question. well, this is a three-part. first do you anticipate writing another book in the future? you rock. >> [laughter]. what a great question. my gosh. how are you? good to see you. >> thank you. >> long time. >> it has been too long. >> i have another children's book coming out next september. >> oh, great. [applause] good. >> who asked that question? over there? come on back here with me. >> come on back, it is also what book or books have been important to you personally? >> what was the second part of that question? >> what book or books have been important to you? >> you will have to read the children's book because every

vignette tells you about a book that was important to me at a different stage of my life. and, even now, i read, always, every book brings you a different insight. they bring you a different way of looking at things. i find virtually, can't say all, but, a lot of books do that for me. that's why i read. i learned a lot about the canadian legal system from that thriller. you know. [laughter] more than i knew, because i knew a lot about their appellate practice because that's what i do now, but i didn't know that much about their trial practice and how sim is lar it was -- similar it was to ours. but the next children's book is about kids with life challenges, and it starts with me as a little girl being diagnosed with diabetes and the fact that a lot

of people see me giving myself an injection, and they never asked me why i'm doing that. so this book was born from an stint that happened to me when i was younger. i was in a restaurant. i gave my shot a shot before i began to eat. at the end of the meal i was walking out and i overheard some woman saying, turned out to be her companion, she is a drug addict. and i walked back and i looked at her, and i said, i'm a diabetic. that is why i took that shot. you shouldn't assume bad things about people. [applause] and the working title, it may have another title before we

finish, is just that, i want people to know that kids who are look different, may be doing things in a different way, that they're not strange. they're just like you and me. and they have a condition that they have to take medicine for, or a accommodate for, but they're just as important as anybody else. and that the difference enriches our lives. so i have kids who are blind, and i have kids in wheelchairs, i have kids with attention deficit, and tourette's syndrome anddown syndrome. each of them has a vignette, they describe their condition. they describe how that condition has made them stronger. and it is set in a garden and in

that garden scene i point out to kids some trees need shade, some need light. some plants need water and some plants need very little. and yet together all of those plants and trees create a beautiful garden. and together, all of us who are different create a better world. [applause] thank you for asking me. thank you. >> and justice the third part. >> thank you. >> this was a three-part question. >> oh, my gosh, with you rock after each one.

>> okay. >> how do you maintain your hopeful outlook in these challenging times? [applause] you rock. [laughter] >> all right, this three-part question. who asked that? >> who asked that. wrote, you rock. no they're still there. this is three parts. >> oh, okay. we don't have a choice, do we? we don't. we have to make the world better. i started by saying to you, we're not bystanders in life. we can't be. we can't let things happen to us. our responsibility is to make a better world. and when the time gets tough,

that's when the tough have to stand up. that is when we have to get up and do something. and that is the whole mission of my being a supreme court justice, and why i go speaking to audiences all the time. i believe in civic participation. [applause] and i believe that that is a job not just for people interested in politics. it is a job for every person that wants to live in the kind of world they think is a fair and just world. and so, for me, when it gets hard, i know i have a job to do. it is your job and my job. i can do mine this way, because i am a justice, i can't get

involved in politics, but you can. so get out there and make a better world, please. [applause] carla, i have to come up whenever, like ten minutes before. so you have to tell me. >> well, kelly wants to know, and our last question, more questions are about advice. but here is the last one, kelly tanzy. what is your biggest piece of advice for our next generation of girls, with a smiley face? next generation of girls. kelly? where's kelly? oh, there's kelly. justice, could you go, kelly, could you go to the justice?

>> where's kelly? >> kelly is coming. >> kelly is coming? okay. how are you? >> what advice would you give to young women that aspire to be supreme court justices? >> don't anyone tell you can't do it. >> kelly wanted, biggest piece of advice. >> we can become anything we want to, through hard work, getting yourself educated, and as i said before, practice. but there is a lot of naysayers who will pop up in your world. people who will tell you, you're a woman. you can't do that. or you can't do that because, are you latina? no. you look very mediterranean, you do. >> thank you. >> but they will tell you can't do it because you're black. people told me i couldn't do it because i'm latina. you know there were on writers who said when i was nominated

for the supreme court, you're not smart enough. those things hurt. when people show a lack of confidence in you, it sometimes scares you away from trying, but you can't. because you know you. and you know how strong you can be. you know how hard you can work. and you just have to look at people who say that to you and say, that's what you think. it is not what i think. good luck. [applause] [inaudible] >> i'm a teacher. i'm going to tell all my girls. >> thank you. [applause] one of them better get you the picture. >> justice? >> yes. >> i know that we have run out of time. >> uh-oh. i have to go up there.

hold on. i will walk around. >> i know you want to talk and shake hands and come back this way. would you mind if i read a little bit for the last part of your book as you come up? >> i will come up. i problem is you. i will get around. >> you come up. [laughter]. how are you guys up there? you're too far up. i'm sorry. hi. hello. hello. thank you. thank you. >> i'm going to read the book. [laughter]. because this is the very last part. >> all right. why don't you read while i walk up? >> i'm reading. lulu, your beautiful illustration at the last is a puzzle piece. >> oh. >> and it's gorgeous and the

words are electricity, magic potions, friends, boats, snorkel, time machine, launchpad , lens, teacher, life preserver, mirror, map, key. the written word has been all of these things to me and more for as long as i can remember. like flag stones on a path every book i ever read took me, the next step, i needed to go in school and in life, even if i don't know exactly where the trail would lead. piece by piece the puzzle came together. where will your journey lead you? there is a timeline of your life. and people can follow your life

reading through books, as they look at the wonderful, wonderful illustrations. now i have to say one of my favorite pages was describing the fact that i was lucky to have a library that was in my neighborhood. [applause] walking distance from the home. from my home. for hours i would sail away to the wonderous lands and stories i would choose from the stacks. the library was my harbor, and books were little boats that helped me escape the sadness at home. you can see -- >> carla, could you hold up that page with the little boat? >> the one about the library? >> the one about the library. >> yes. >> a library card stuck in the boat. lulu did research and found an example of the library card i

had as a child. >> she has a library card. it is interesting because in this illustration -- >> i assume every child in this room has a library card? >> in this illustration the dark colors represent a time in your life, when you were nine years old. >> [speaking spanish ] >> you felt sad and confused. you needed a place where you could find comfort. that was the library. that was the harbor. >> and that's still a place, not just with quiet but with a sense of peace. because there you have the key i found to life, the key of books. [applause]

>> and for book lovers everywhere, she said, books were my loyal friends. they made it so i never felt lonely. and justice, thank you for -- >> thank you. [applause] for everything. and sharing your dreams with us. [cheering] [inaudible] [applause]

[inaudible] >> thank you so much. >> well, i think that we have had truly an honor and a living testament to the power of words and books and reading. thank all of you for waiting and for being here. [applause] >> thank you, everybody. thank you. [cheering]

[inaudible] [inaudible conversations]. >> host: you've been watching justice sotomayor in library of congress. carla hayden having quite a conversation with a very large audience at the national book festival. this is the 18th annual national book festival.

by the way, 20 years of booktv this month we're celebrating. for 20 years we've been covering the woman on your screen right now. that is doris kerns goodwin. her most recent book, "leadership in turbulent times." doris, you've been very gracious to our audience this year. you've been gracious to take calls. right away this is your chance to talk to pulitzer prize-winning, author, doris kerns goodwin. 202-748-8201 for those in the mountain and pacific time zones. you read her work, you know what you want to ask here is your chance. miss goodwin, your most recent book focuses on president lincoln, teddy roosevelt, fdr, and lyndon johnson.

why did you pick those four? >> those were four i felt closest too. i spent the most time studying and interestingly each one of those four lived in a very turbulent time, in a time of crisis, which often makes leadership more necessary, more possible. when i chose the title, leadership in turbulent times, i didn't expect it to be as it was today. in a certain sense i hope it can give us reassurance. times we think we're living in the worst of times. yet if you look back at what faced lincoln when he first came into office. a civil war with 600,000 people who were going to die just on the horizon, if he had ever known out difficult it would be to get through those first months, he would thought he could not have lived through it. theodore roosevelt comes in the industrial revolution, there was fear of revolution, between labor and management would break out. fdr at the height of the depression. lbj with the assassination of

jfk. they were fitted for their times. especially lbj for civil rights, if not for the war in vietnam. i wanted people to remember that, so they could feel we've done this before. we can do it again. >> host: they both suffered personal around political defeats prior to their coming of age. >> guest: literature argues that -- is one. most important qualities of a leader. each one of my guys, i do call them my guys sometimes. i know that may sound disrespectful. i'm so familiar with them, having lived with them so long. they each suffered bad reversals grown through them. lincoln had near suicidal depression, when he felt his he had not kept his word and broken his enmainment to mary. theodore roosevelt, lost his wife and mother the same day, retreated to the badlands. that may him grow being out in the country. fdr had years of polio, took

years of him driving for to be able to walk or in his wheelchair. lbj in different way suffered a senate loss should not compared to the terrible reversals, like a repudiation of himself. he finally got back to having a later heart attack. that brought him back to the person he had been before. he had looked for wealth and power. >> host: that was in 1955 he had his heart attack? >> guest: correct. he lost the first race in '41. trying to win the second race he became more conservative, eschewed wealth and power. when he had the heart attack in' 55. what is power for, what will i be remembered for? it repurposed his life why he got into government in the first place. that led to the great achievements in civil rights. >> host: doris kearns goodwin, would you consider all four presidents to be political animals? >> guest: without question. politics became every fiber of

their being. being out of politics would be heart for any one of them. there comes a time in everyone's life when you find that voice within that says this is the real me. they all found out when they were on the campaign trail for the first time. they knew. this is what i want to do. . . >> guest: be able to look at them in a new way. >> host: living today, how would you compare today to some of the times that we've experienced in the past? >> guest: well, i do think in that they were harder times for the majority of the people in terms of their everyday life. when you think of soldiers in the civil war or people in the depressioning not knowing how they were going to eat or sleep. but i think we feel a sort of lack of moorings right now

because we don't feel that sense of the citizens and the leaders working together to solve our broken political system which has been broken for a while. so it increases that sense of sang psity we feel -- anxiety we feel x. that's what's so interesting about these times. not every leader is fitted for the moment, but each one of these was fitted for that moment. >> host: you knew lbj personally. what was your connection? >> guest: i was chosen as the white house fellow when i was 24 years old. we had a big dance the night i was selected. he did dance with me, he said he wanted me to work for him directly in the white house, but i had written an article against him because i was in the anti-war movement, and it came out in the new republic with the title how to remove lyndon johnson for power. so i thought he would kick me off the program. surprisingly, he said, oh, if i can't win her over, no one can. so i ended up working for him in

the white house and accompanying him to help him on his memoirs the last years of his life. it's why i became a presidential historian. he's the most interesting, complicated character i ever met. >> host: what did he think of your harvard pedigree? >> guest: well, in some sense he respected it, in another sense it was the last thing he wanted. because he felt -- his father once told him if you brush up against the grindstone of life, you'll have more polish than anyone who goes to harvard and yale. and he said i wanted to believe him, but i never did. he was as smart as anybody you could possibly know, but he was restless in college, restless in high school, so he didn't read the same way that maybe lincoln did or theodore roosevelt did. and he always felt those people with academic pedigrees looked down upon him. i remember when he left the white house and he wanted me to move to the ranch full time, but i wanted to go back to harvard and start teaching, and he said that he would come and work with me, i'd come on vacations and in the summers, but he said don't

let those harvard people change your feeling about me. i know how they feel about me. they were the kennedy people that he never felt he quite lived up to, although in domestic politics he did more than any of them to get the country moving in the rights direction. >> host: doris kerns goodwin is our guest. stephen is in decatur, illinois, you're on the air. >> caller: oh, good day to you, and thank you for taking my call. i recall i think it was madison said that, you know, we will have, we have good people, we will have at times in our republic good people, and we won't always have good people. and i think that comes back to the structure of the government, the checks and balances. and really the people and how we come together. we have a system where we're not being brought together by our politics, we're being separated even more.

and i hope that mr. madison and mr. jefferson and all the people who constructed our government, that their imperfect invention will somehow kick in, and the people will realize that my worse enemy isn't my neighbor, isn't the lefties or the righty, it's the people that want to destroy our republic and our union. so -- >> guest: i think you're really, i understand what you're saying. no, i think you're right, steve the. i mean, one of the things that teddy roosevelt said was the way democracy would founder would be if people in different sections and different parts of the country and different classes couldn't understand the other people's point of view. and that's what you need leadership and people to do, to go across party lines, to bring us together, to unify us. and we've had so many divisions in these last years. i mean, in congress it's not just the republicans and democrats, it's tribalism as if

the other side has nothing that you want to listen to. and the citizens have a responsibility right now. i mean, when you think of the big changes that have taken place in our country, they're always from the bottom-up. the anti-slavery movement, the progressive movement, the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the gay rights movement. now is the time when we have to band together and figure out who do we want as our leaders, how are we going to fix our broken political system, what are we going to do about congressional districts lines, about campaign financing. as fdr said, any problem that was created by man can be solved by man. we can do this, we just have to have the confidence to believe we can. i'm glad you brought it up. >> host: identity politics and tribalism, have we ever had a period where we're not in identity politics and tribalism? >> guest: well, i think we have when we've come together for crises -- >> host: world war ii. >> guest: or even you could say teddy roosevelt was able to bring the country, the west and the east together because he had

rational reform under the square deal for the capitalists and the wage worker, the poor and the rich. obviously, by the second inaugural of abraham lincoln, the whole theme of that was that the sin of slavery was shared by both sides. both sides prayed to the same bible, neither's prayers were fully answered, but now with malice toward none and charity for all, let us bind up the nation's wounds. we've had divisions always in the country, but we seem to have brought them together. the civil rights struggle, the desegregated south, we get voting rights, we get fair housing, we do come together. we will again, we just have to fix it somehow. >> host: why do you think that the lbj civil rights leadership perhaps didn't carry over to other areas? >> guest: in his administration? well, it certainly carried over to the great society. it certainly carried over to domestic politics. but foreign policy was foreign to him. i know that's the a crazy thing

to the say. he thought if he could get ohio chi min in the room, he thought he would be able to persuade him it was better to have dams and public works projects in vietnam than a war. and somehow because he didn't really want the war in the beginning, he kept putting off decisions, and then he would make the decisions without fully telling the public what he was doing. and when you lose trust of the public by not telling them the truth about what's going on, then your presidency is over. and that was when the credibility gap started. whereas on domestic affairs he told everybody everything, he loved it. i think that's the difference, he had joy in it. the other thing was a duty, and that makes a difference. >> host: do you see some similarities between lyndon johnson and president trump in personal style? >> guest: well, i think they're both larger than life characters, you know? they both, their emotions are very close to the surface. but i think with lbj when he came into office, even the night that jfk divided, he already knew the purpose to which he wanted his presidency to be devoted. he said that night i want to get

voting rights, i want to get medicare, i want to get aid to education, i want to get truman's health care through and the civil rights through. all five things he gets new in 18 months. he just rolled that congress. it's not president trump's fault, but the congress and the presidency have nowhere near the relationship that they had in lbj's time. he had every congressman over to the white house in the first six months in groups of 30. he would call them at 7 in the morning 10 in the morning, even 2 in the morning. he once called a senator and said i hope i didn't wake you up. [laughter] >> host: you refer in a sense back to your book "team of more libel." you said one of the signs of lincoln's leadership was his temper. >> guest: without question. he didn't have experience, so the very night he won the presidency, he made the decision that i'm going to put each of my chief rivals into the top position in my cabinet.

so his secretary of state had been his main rival. he thought he should have been president. the governor of ohio thought he should have been president. bates from missouri thought he should have been president. they all thought they were better than lincoln, better educated, more celebrated and within months they understood that lincoln was the greatest leader of them all. having those factions there meant that he could govern the country, because if he could convince them of what needed to be done, he could convince the country. >> host: brian's calling in from stanford, connecticut. you're on with historian doris kerns goodwin. go ahead. >> caller: yeah, thank you for taking my question. it's pretty simple. how important is creativity to the leaders you studied and their success? and specifically, do you have any techniques or tricks they used to generate innovative ideas? thank you. >> guest: very interesting question. i would say that creativity is essential.

it's not something you can detect easily, but i think the most important thing they were able to do is to get out of washington and find time to think. i'll give you an example of that. when fdr was in washington in 1940 and there was no way we could give aid to england because we had these neutrality acts, and he knew that he had to do something to help churchill who was being bombed by germany and about ready to be invaded perhaps by germany, he took a 10-day fishing trip to get away from the bureaucratic struggles in washington. on that trip he creatively himself came up with the whole lend-lease idea, that we would lend our weapons to britain, and they'd give them back at the end of the war. which made no sense, of course, but it worked . your neighbor's house is on fire, you'll lend them your hose and get it back when the fire is over. he said later he couldn't have thought of that the if he hadn't been away from washington. similarly, abraham lincoln went to the soldiers' home 3 miles away from the white house during

the summer, and it was there that he thought through the process of why he could use military necessity to issue the emancipation proclamation. i think in our 24/7 world that's the problem for all of us, not having time to think. creativity often depends upon that solitude and that ability, i think, to come up with different problem-solving solutions for the problems you face. >> host: 202 is the area code, 748-8200 if you live in the east and central time zones. 202-748-8201 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. historian doris kerns goodwin is our guest. that caller mentioned creativity. what about intuition? >> guest: oh, intuition is huge. i mean, i think, or you know, one of the things that all of these people had was when they were talking with somebody, they could feel something about what that other person was feeling, what would move them, what would change them. and, you know, and intuition in

a certain sense means an interpersonal sense of what a group of people are feeling. and i think the more people they listened to, the more experiences they had. i mean, teddy roosevelt once said he started off this politics not really thinking he was going to change and make people's lives better, but once he started as a politician going into tenement houses, going into police commissioner works, he could feel what other people were feeling and developed an intuition about what might help those people. so i think the more people you listen to, the more you get out of washington, but sometimes it's an internal quality that i think people with just intuit what another person is feeling. johnson could walk into a room with a senator, and he would know exactly what that senator wanted. not just something tangible, but maybe he would know i have an intuition they're going to want to trade stuff to get the civil rights bill. he wants to be remembered over time just like i do. he said to him, dirksen, you come to me on this civil rights

act, you bring some republicans to break the filibuster, 200 years from now school children will know only two names, abraham lincoln and everett dirksen. how could he resist? >> host: no ordinary time: franklin and eleanor roosevelt, was a pulitzer prize winner in 1995. team of rivals, 2005, won the lincoln prize. several other books in between all of these. you kind of disappear when you're writing a book, don't you? >> guest: it takes me so long. i mean, it took me longer to write the "no ordinary time" about world world war ii than ik the war to be fight. it took me ten years to write lyndon, seven years to write teddy and taft. but i love it. it's not like i'm just writing every day. i'm reading, i'm researching, i'm going to places where i'm reading their letters and diaries. i love the process. >> host: do you like the book tour? it's been a rough year for you. >> guest: it has been a rough year. my husband died a few months ago, and if he still were alive,

i probably wouldn't be able to go on this tour. but in a certain sense now, it gives me something to do, something to think about, and i do love meeting with people. i even like doing the talks and doing the television. and once you've written these things, and in a certain sense never have i believed history's more important than now. i really do feel that unless we can imagine another political system than the one we have right now, unless we can imagine the relationships between our citizens differently, history allows us to know we've had these different times before. we've gotten through it again. once you imagine something, you can make it happen. i remember when fdr said at the beginning of world war ii that we were going to build 50,000 fighter planes a year, we were building 4,000 at that time, and somebody said, why are you doing that? we'll never be able to do the it. he said people have to imagine a target. and that's what i'm hoping this book could do. i really care about it emotionally, because if it can help us, history, to know we've been through these ups and downs before, america's not as fragile as we think it is.

that's what my husband was saying. he was working on a book before he die about his love affair with america and all the speeches and the letters and his experiences with jfk and lbj and bobby kennedy. but he was watching what was happening right now, and he really believed that he had seen these ups and downs. and as he said, the end of america has loomed many times before. it's not as fragile as we think, and i agree with him. >> host: you said he was working on that. is it finished? or are you going to finish it? >> guest: the best man at our wedding and i are going to finish it. that's our next project to work on. >> host: stephen's in forest hill, new york. >> caller: hi. i have a question. i would like to ask her about the impeachment of andrew johnson. i was a history major in college, but i didn't read much about his impeachment. i was just curious if she could enlighten me regarding that

situation. >> guest: well, i think what the context for the impeachment was is that there was a big split in the cabinet and the country between the radicals and the more conservatives into how to handle the south. lincoln had hoped before he died that there'd be a sort of gentleness toward the south, that we should allow people to come in and come back into the union so long as the rights of the freed blacks were respected. and his war secretary, edwin stanton, was on radical side. he loved lincoln, but he was probably willing to push the south more to give more possibilities to the blacks and make sure that the southerners didn't override them. so he was actually fired from the cabinet. and there was a tenure of office act that supposedly didn't allow you to do that. it was a big fight between congress and the presidency over the firing of this guy. but much more importantly, it really had to do with different

ways of handling reconstruction. if only lincoln could have lived, he said that reconstruction would have been the most difficult task a president had ever faced, but he had won the war, he had the patience, he had the humility, he had the persistence, and i believe he could have handled it better and maybe we'd be better off now than we were. andrew johnson just wasn't wered for that. but he probably did not deserve the impeachment. and in the end, it did not stand up in the senate. so he did win that part of the battle by a very small margin, by one vote, i believe. >> host: april 1865, lincoln is killed. assassinated. when does andrew johnson get impeached? when does he start to get his feet wet as president? >> guest: you know, the problem began really right away. on the day of lincoln's inauguration, which was march 4 of 1865, andrew johnson was making a speech inside before lincoln was going to give the famous second inaugural.

and the speech was really a terrible speech. i mean, he started in saying how he came from the people, and he looked out and thought i'll win against them. he seemed like he had too much to drink, and it turned out he had some illness, and there was some medicine. but i remember hearing that lincoln had just worried from that moment on. and the trouble sort of began pretty soon that it was clear that even though he'd been the governor of tennessee and had been a unionist, that he wasn't up to the job. >> host: well, that's lincoln's second inaugural, but in leadership and turbulent times, doris kerns goodwin talks about the four months between lincoln's first election and his first inaugural in march and what happened in the country. so that's all in "leadership in turbulent times." joe in idaho, we have 30 seconds left. >> caller: i just was calling to see if mrs. goodwin would be

interested in george washington because of the great leadership he showed in founding this country through the war of independence and the period before the constitutional convention and during the constitutional convention. i think that would be one of the best examples of leadership. >> guest: i couldn't agree with you more. as i say, i wish i knew more about george washington. you know, the most important thing is not only how he led us during the revolution, became the first president setting precedents all along the way, but this amazing letter that he writes when he's on his way to his inauguration. he worries about whether or not he has the strength to take our country through this, but he said i have integrity and firmness, and i have character, and that's what i can depend upon. and we were very, very lucky to have him as our first president. so he's a guy i'd love to know more abouti have more time. if i can live for a long period of time, i will study george. >> host: he might be -- i was going to ask you, who's the next

president you really want to take on, it's george washington? >> guest: oh, i don't know -- >> host: is there anybody else out there? >> guest: it's going to the take me a long time the. i'm going to work on movies for a little while because i've got a possible movie going on. a great journalist who was with finish. [inaudible] and i got involved with the lincoln movie. i loved working with steven the spielberg, and i was a consultant about lbj. so a friend of mine that's worked with me for the last 18 years lives in hollywood, we're forming a little movie company. so i think we'll make some documentaries and and movies. they don't take ten years, hopefully. [laughter] >> host: here's the most recent book by historian doris kerns goodwin, "leadership in turbulent times." she's been our guest here at the national book festival. >> guest: thank you so much, as always. >> host: well, booktv is celebrating 20 the years on the air this month, and the book festival here in washington is in its 18th year. we have covered it all 18 years,

and our coverage goes all day today from the washington convention center. coming up next, author amy tan with an autobiography that she's written. she'll be speaking to the audience in just a few minutes. you can find our full schedule for the day at booktv.org. [inaudible conversations]

[applause] >> madeleine are albright looks very different. >> hello. good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. wonderful to see you all here. my name is marie, and i am the literary director of this festival. very happy to welcome you here. [applause] thank you so much for coming out. now, sitting next to me, i want to announce is not secretary madeleine albright. [laughter] >> i will be talking about fascism, however. [laughter] >> and before we start, i just want to take a moment to the say a very big thank you to our sponsors and donors. this festival would not happen without the funding from people like you, sponsors, donors.

go down to the expo floor, please tell them thank you very much for putting this festival on. no amount is too small, so if you're willing to contribute, we ask that you do. it is, it takes a lot of money to put this on to give it to you for free. so thank you very much. yes. [applause] we want to keep doing that. we want to keep giving it to you for free. now, this is -- i'm sitting next to amy tan who is the only author, at this point we have about 115 authors here today -- who was chosen by pbs' the great american read -- [cheers and applause] chosen by the american public, and there's going to be voting on all of the 100 books that were chosen.

chosen for being, having written a book. it was the joy luck club. changed their lives. and, yeah -- [applause] >> wow. thank you, whoever voted. [applause] >> joy luck club was followed, of course, by a kitchen god's wife and a hundred secret senses and the bone setter's daughter, all of her fiction which has been extraordinary, and nonfiction as well. saving fish from drowning, and now the wonderful memoir that she's written, that she's given to us. and we're going to be talking about it today. but i have to say, amy, and i'll start with this, i am hispanic. when i read your book, joy luck club, i felt a real connection because you -- it is families

who are, come to this country with bringing their own culture, bringing their own tradition, coming here with a completely different universe and suddenly you are american. the generations change, distances grow. tell us about you, how you feel about -- >> i, yeah, i thought it was so ironic because when i was writing that book, i thought no one is going to get this book. [laughter] this is going to be so weird. people are going to say nobody had a family like that. and a lot of the stories were based at least emotionally and situationally on my family. so i was so surprised when chinese-american women or men said this book was, they identified with it. but then, as you said, i had people from all sorts of backgrounds tell me that. >> well, the interesting thing to me is that reading it and reading books like yours, maxine kingston's warrior woman, these books, you realize that there's

another way to think as a citizen of this country, as a part of this fantastic american experience we all come with different heads and different histories. >> i think that we also come with a similar heart, and that's where it comes from, this connection. if you can get people to feel what you're feeling in the story, you have more of a chance to have them, this book to be universal. i never intended it to be universal. i never intended for my emotions that were very private to, you know, link with that of other people. and it surprised me. it was wonderful that they found that resonance. >> well, i'm sure we have a lot of people in the audience who have been inspired, as i was, by your fiction and by what it says to us as a country. but now you've written this wonderful memoir. you don't call it a memoir, right? is. >> no.

it was a book about writing, that's originally what i thought it was. people tell you what you've actually written after you've written it -- [laughter] including my editor who said it's a memoir. and i said, no, it's a book about writing. but because it has so many examples of my writing from my real life, they ended up calling it a memoir. >> your life has actually, and your family and your background and your roots, have really informed every single thing that you've written. >> i try to get away from that. [laughter] >> but when you're writing about, you know, the way -- what has shaped your writing, it's not simply the stories, the context of the stories. it has to do with the way you think. your whole cosmology of the world and how things happen. it's what is important to you in morality and family and

consciousness and also what you think about between the moment you are born and the moment you die, but including the moment you die. so these go into the writing. and so i had to talk about what feeds the writing. >> yeah, absolutely. but you said something once or wrote something once that is coming to mind right now which is you said i didn't write this or write what i've written to be remembered in the minds of other people. some writers do, you know? i wanted to come -- >> i don't write for posterity, yeah, yeah. >> you said that's not why i'm writing. >> yeah. >> why are you writing? >> i want to write in the moment. my whole purpose of writing is almost to capture, it's like a diary of myself and what i was thinking about at the time. and if i have in my mind that i'm writing for posterity or, you know, to be in the library and somebody might look it up a

hundred years from now, then i would get stuck. i would write for a different reason. so in my mind, i always have to tell myself this is for the moment. and if it is ephemeral, if it's gone next year or ten years from now, that's fine. and my motives and my intentions for writing are very clear to me. >> in the -- this book, and it really is, to me, it seemed a primer for writers because it really goes into the way you think. not only the way you think, it goes into your brain. you're talking about the brain process. you're talking about the mig da la which is where your memory is supposedly held. and you're talking about your own sort of trepidations about the ways that your brain works -- >> yeah. >> -- and, you know, where is it coming from and do i have it. it's a very candid -- >> you know, when people say it's candid, i think what did i say that's so candid?

or you're very brave. and i think, oh, maybe i shouldn't have said that. [laughter] i wanted to know also because i was brain damaged for a while. i had lyme disease. it went into my brain, and it really made me foggy. it made it hard to remember anything. and then i became curious about how the -- i hope you can see i recovered. [laughter] [applause] .. this medication made me too happy. you think, what's wrong with that? if you're laughing at what people are saying and it is not supposed to be funny, it can be rather distressing. so i found also this, this had to do with neurologically something going on and i tied it

then to the idea that our brains have these emotions in them. they are really triggered also viscerally. and my stories have that too. so one of the things i did was to take a visual emotion i had about a vague memory and then follow it. as i moved forward with it, then i would feel this, i would feel nervous. i would be aware that i was shaking or that i would have something going on in my stomach, that felt that uncomfortable. i kept following this story to see where it went. and i feel that i uncovered this very traumatic memory. even if it did not happen exactly the way i wrote it down, it is, in essence, part of my life during that time. so that is part of my writing. and you know, i say this, not a primer for a lot of people. this doesn't happen to you, or you go into a ptsd moment.

that's okay. it is my, the thought process, the brain process, and emotional, the emotional memory process is that i go through in the writing. >> you say that you, you started this book by opening boxes and looking at letters and as you were looking out, the insides of these boxes, what they collected, the whole lifetime of, and other people's lifetimes, that it was like, and i loved the expression, you said it was like, the fourth of glaciers, and you have this image, oh, my gosh, a whole life force going on. >> things that have been frozen in time were suddenly revealed to me. these were books of memorabilia from my family. i actually had 80 boxes. i took it down to seven. and you have to realize i was

desperate to finish this book. i was writing a chapter a day which is absolutely insane. it usually takes me years to write a book. i was going to finish it in about four months. it was an experiment in part. i would take things out of this. there would be a letter from my mother, to me. it was a letter when she was really upset, and hinting she was going to kill herself. i took that and wrote something. it might have been about her language, and something about, with she was saying underlying these, these words. i picked something up. i suddenly realized, my parents were illegal immigrants. oh, my, you know. that set into some of the things they said to me that turned out to be lies. >> right. >> one of them was taking an old report card from an art teacher that said about my art, which i loved, i wanted to be an artist,

she has no imagination. which is essential for a seeker of creative level. so i gave that dream up. thank god he didn't say that about writing. >> i would point out, she has one of her sketches in the book, at least one -- >> of a bird. >> a bird with every littlefeather in it. it's a wonderful sketch. >> i draw he have day now. i'm into nature journaling but part of it was something revealed to me in this book, that so much of my life, my childhood was governor inned by expectations. the idea something would become public. i am still governed by that slightly. the idea if i write something, some people are going to read it. but with the drawing, i do this for myself. i don't have to show it to anybody. i show it, it could be really bad, and i don't care, because i did it pour pure pleasure.

no unis paying for it. i discovered that in the book. there was almost a devastating discovery during the writing of the book. it was about being told i was going to be a doctor, when i was six years old. somebody had tested me. they met with my parents. my parents said to me, she said you're going to be a doctor and, then they said, and so you can be a concert pianist and a doctor. they said you're not very good with words. your english is not so good. that is okay. you don't need a lot of words for being a doctor and playing the piano. this prediction, this mandate followed me to the rest of my life. even to the moment i was writing this book, i realized every time i felt adequate or dumb i didn't

live up to this expectation. >> i hope you don't feel you're a failure? >> it is not a failure in comparison what other people might perceive but within my mind there is always something there, and it has, there is no, the problem is there is know clear notion in my mind of what that is supposed to be, that i am supposed to reach, say, yes, i fulfilled this potential. because it is so vague, i'm also not there. and i did, i did sort of erase it partially, when i came across this lie that i never was supposed to be a doctor. it turned out to be a test. this is the great thing about the internet. you can find out this test i took in the first grade. a woman came every year for two years, twice a year for five years. then she stopped, which made me think i flunked and she wasn't going to come anymore. it was a different kind of test.

i found it on the internet googling, 1968 first grade, oakland, i.q. longitudinal. it was a land park -- landmark on kids who read early. guess what? out of 5003 kids, there were 49 that could read and i was one of them. you weren't supposed to teach kids to read. there was a prohibition. parents are not supposed to teach because you were going to teach the wrong methods. your child would be a problem child from then on, you know, a chronic bed-wetter, whatever. people followed this to the hilt. i mean 49 kids. today they read text messages. at age two they're reading. >> were your parents terrified they had a early reader on their

hands? >> no, they would not say to the woman, she kept asking them how did she learn to read? oh, her brothers, her brother is so smart. he didn't learn to read. he started first grade. he followed the rules. he was doing great. later, no, we -- and finally it came out that i had been copying his textbook, i would say to my brother, what would it mean? and my brother was teaching our cousins who didn't speak english. he had a little classroom. you have to imagine, here is a little 6-year-old boy, telling our older cousins, no, wrong. i was sitting there in the classroom. so i had learned to read probably from that. >> but it is an amazing story. and your parents were worried because they thought, because they were illegal immigrants, this is going to compromise them? >> that is when i realized, i always thought my father was so

honest, because he was a minister. he was an electrical engineer to make his money to support us but he was by devotion, a baptist minister. i thought, how could he have lied? they lied about a number of things. i realized when i found the documentation that they were illegal, there were letters with the word deportation, that they were among many people before and today who have lie in certain ways, not morality ways, in ways having to do with documents so they don't imperil themselves and their families. lying, saying we don't know how she learned to read. we followed the rules. we knew, they said that like three times. we knew what the rules were. we didn't break. it was her brother who taught her. send him back to china.

[laughter] >> by the way, speaking of going back to china i want to ask you this, i was born in peru and i came to this country when i was 10 years old. my mother was american. my father was peruvian and every time i went back to peru after at that, it was, you're not really peruvian. you're an american. you're not one of us anymore. >> yeah. >> do you have this experience? >> i grew up with that. i grew up with a sense of shame both ways. shame that i was chinese and in a school that was primarily white. and then shame when i went to, among family friends who were chinese in restaurant or any other situation around chinese people, that i couldn't speak chinese. i knew nothing about china. i had trepidations about writing "the joy luck club." people would say you know nothing? you got it all wrong.

even my mother said when we first went to china, this is how naive i was, they said, when we go, what if i think i'm one of them and they won't let me come back? they said, they look at you, the way you talk, the way you walk, they know you don't belong. later she claimed, a lot of people claimed i was really so chinese. my chinese did improve because i have half-sisters who speak nothing but chinese t came back. so i know that i spoke it when i was a child. it was, it was in there, those roots of that language. and now when i speak chinese, people say, oh so you're so good. my chinese is not that good. everybody think's i'm so talented at being chinese. [laughter]. >> coincidence there. this, this memoir, sorry, this

book about writing -- >> it is okay. it is shorter to say memoir. >> was actually an unintended memoir if i can say that because, tell us how it started. it started with a conversation through emails with your editor dan halprin. >> yeah. i was -- my editor and i are very good friends. he is a dream editor. he is one of those, not yet published you think you will have an editor like this person who loves everything that's going on in your life. loves your husband. wants to know what you had for dinner. and we would write these emails. and he, so much enjoyed the emails. he is often saying, how did you think of that? and he decided we should do a book about our emails. it will be easy. we will choose a bunch of them,

put them in a book and that's it. i thought, well, great. well i started looking through them, this will be a book about egoism. it will be so boring. i told him, we can't do it. and because i had already signed this contract and something had gone out in the world said this book is coming i had to put a book together, about, and i the emails were a lot about writing and our relationship as a writer, the kinds of things i would talk about my insecurities as a writer this will be a book about writing. in that book there are some very, very rough pages where i wrote them as i was there, they are part of the book. i just wrote them down and i put them in. but there are some emails. i told ben, i said, okay, you suggested this book. i will put them in.

i will include yours, you tell me which ones. then he freaked out. i said okay, i will choose the emails. in the book, there is number of testimony our early relationship about a writer, editor, talking about the book. i think it is good insight also into the kind of difficulties that a writer has, that its not perfect. if anything, people say, well, can you just write this for me? they don't realize it is far more difficult to write a little piece as a writer than it is for any other person because you sweat over every word. you think it is horrible, try doing it again and again. but the emails, they were off the top of my head, they were to dan. so i put them in there. you will get to see how insecure i am as a writer. it is a very revealing book. i think, in the process of you're talking about writing, you tell us about your life

because you really didn't become a writer until you were in your 30s. >> yeah. >> you've been a linguist. you've been an educator. you've been a bartender. >> pizza slinger. >> pizza slinger. car hop. all of you out there who have jobs like that, you can also become amy tan because these are the things that feed you in the process of being who you are. and, at a corporate, you were writing corporate materials and things like that, that sort of thing. so how -- tell us a little bit about your decision to actually sit down and write fiction? how that came to you and impetus for writing "the joy luck club" actually happened. >> there was no single moment that i said, i'm going to write

fiction. kind of hard to think if there was a one-day revelation but one of the times when i was motivated was after reading the louise's book, love medicine. it was about a community of people there with different voices. i realize i had these stories but all in different voices. they were primarily my voice, but i had different ways i wanted to see my life through the life of the mother, daughter, different situations. there was another moment when i started reading again. i was writing the corporate business articles. i was, i was good at it. i have to say i was good at writing the corporate things or employing poet vision materials. why you should work harder for the same amount of money. [laughter]. very, very good at that i had a lot of clients as a freelancer. but i was unhappy. i would go down to my office

every day and they said, will i be doing this in 10 years? i was making good money. it was hard to walk away. i said i hate it, i hate it. i hate it. then i would sit down and i would start working. i knew i liked to write and so i thought, well maybe, i will do this other kind of writing. and i started and i wrote things that were not very genuine. i made myself a german-american girl, rich parents and all that kind of stuff. it wasn't good. it was not very authentic. then i gave up on the idea this would ever be published. i would just do it for myself. i started things eventually would be part of "the joy luck club." i went to writers workshops. it wasn't a very good story. i had a lot of problems with it but the questions that were asked of me, that i had to ask of myself, what i discovered

about myself, made me realize that week, i was going to write fiction the rest of my life. i was not going to get publish published. i wasn't delusional. i will keep at this, really important, just the way i'm drawing every day. this is important for me. i don't have to have it out there in the world. but it is important. andi started to write with that notion. i would, and to give me, a goal, so that i wouldn't give up because i have this dilettante tendency to and then drop it. i will work to being published when i'm 70. i have a little bit to go before i reach that goal. when i'm 70, if i get a short story published in a good lit terri magazine, that is my goal.

>> you're a very adventurous soul. i know this because in this book you go about going cave diving, speluning, you had asks on the italian strada. you had hotel break-ins, you have been mugged. >> that is not adventurous. that is bad luck, or good because i'm alive. yeah it is life. >> a life subject to write about. but for all that bad luck and adventure that you had, the great adventure i think is your family. the, the story, the treasure trove. if you were writing about a german girl with rich parents. the real treasure trove was in your family. the stories in your family. the extraordinary, sort of

revelations that came to you, later in life, about your grandmother, who was a concubine and committed suicide because she hated that life. about your mother who was, it was an arranged marriage that she hated, and then left her children behind in china to come to the united states to be with your father. >> and kept this a secret. >> and kept it all a secret. >> yeah. >> all of this was emerging, i assume, as you were, in this process of doing your corporate newsletters and barhopping and pizza deliveries, all of this information was coming. extraordinary stuff to write about. >> well, i always thought, you know, that my life contained nothing that would ever go into a book. that it was boring because to me a writer, i had read through one

thing as an english major, books only by mail writers except for virginia woolf. that was the only one. i believe you would have to go through war like kurt vonnegut, or hunt animals like earnest hemingway. i didn't have any of that. who would want to read about a chinese girl and her crazy family and her mother, who has these horrible traumas in her life. she is trying to get you to understand. that is why it was so important for me to realize i have to write for my own reasons, not to impress anybody else. and once i got rid of that notion of ever getting it published, it enabled me to do it. but, you know, to this day i keep thinking, i'm going to run out of family material. i can move on to something is

else. then i get another revelation. it just, just never ends. you know one of the things that i thought that, that my grandmother was a very modest woman and that she was quiet and she was old-fashioned. that is what was told to me. she was raped, became a concubine by force. then i found these photos in a book that showed the exact costume she was wearing was the one worn by court at -- cortisa. one thing you can say about that, not necessarily a cortisan, she was not old-fashioned. this would be like your grandmother dressed up as britney spears. [laughter]. no, she was not old-fashioned. that was a thrill to me. because i suddenly said, of course she wasn't. look who came out?

my mother. my mother is vain. wears nice clothes. she is consumed having, being respected. that also came from her mother, who demanded to be respected and wasn't and killed herself. i became my mother's daughter, and i have attributes that come from her, a certain obsessiveness if i'm bothered by something i cannot stop talking about it, but i'm unlike her because i'm not suicidal. i have my choices. so it is, those revelations where you find out facts, you find out about yourself as well. i find, you know, i find myself in these revelations. now there is one big revelation to me. in doing research for this book i found evidence that my father and my mother knew each other in chun king in a certain year when

they were sent to be in this place when the japanese were bombing their cities. they had met years earlier. had fallen in love. my mother had a baby, and i was always told, she was born in shanghai. she was born in chun king. my mother and father were there. and my sister did not know who her father was. and it was a possibility that her father, my half-sister, that her father was my father. we were in the midst of trying to find out how to get tests done, and these dna tests, you cannot see the father's side, because as a female you are xx, not xy. trying to find a way to discover with this was, and piecing together facts, and then she died. so she wanted to know. he knew that was the possibility. and she died suddenly in march

on a trip to egypt. i still have her dna sample, if i could ever, ever find a way to get some inkling of the paternal side i will do that. >> more mysteries ahead in other words? >> more mysteries. >> yeah. you're mother loved being in your books i think or having been mirrored in your book, did she not? she loved that aspect? >> a lot of people say, wow, what did your mother think? thinking she would have been appalled, disinherited, not that she had any money or disowned me or something and in fact she loved it. at the very end of reading, my mother was not a big reader, she said, it was so easy to read. and i knew that what she meant later is, she saw that i understood things about her that she no longer had to explain,

what upset her, what irritated her, what made her furious and that was in the book, that i understood that about her. one of the funny things i discovered looking through the memorabilia, that my mother was getting a graduate degree in american literature. that was on her student visa. and the only american literature she ever read was my book. [laughter]. many years later. yeah. >> she was precious. she had some sort of -- >> she was going to make american literature. >> you were a teenager when you lost your older brother. brilliant, peter was his name. >> yeah. peter. >> who was a bit older than you, i think a few years older. >> a year-and-a-half. >> and then six months after that, your father died.

>> yeah. no both died of brain tumors. >> brain tumors. >> and two quick losses in succession, which must have been an extraordinarily force tragic force on your mother but on you as a teenage girl. how did that? >> the deaths of my father and my brother affected me the most because of the way my mother reacted to that. she went a little insane. she believed we all were going to die. she became even more suicidal. at one time there was a thought of all of us going to heaven together. but i was daddy's girl. i adored my big brother. i don't think i'm disremembering him in a way that comes from grief, transformed over time.

he and i did things. showed me things. he taught me how to read. he played with me. we read books together later in high school and talked about them. and so as profoundly as sad and isolating, but it was my mother's reaction. i'll tell you how insane she was during that time. understandably so. you lose your husband, your connection to the outer world because you don't speak english that well, and you lose your son who it turns out i discovered in reading the memorabilia, was her favorite. and also was my father's favorite. now this is devastating when i thought i was the favorite. this made her a little insane and she ended up taking us to

europe. on the basis of the fact that holland was clean, she found a can of dutch cleanser under the sink, she decided we would go to holland because maybe my father and mother died because of some germ. that's where we went. we ended up going to switzerland. when i tell people i graduated from switzerland and they think i was rich girl finishing school. that was not the case. >> that was a phenomenal turn of events. do you speak french? were you in a french school? >> the sad thing, most of the people there, the students, they could speak english fairly well. so my french is very bad. i speak better spanish than french by the way. the, but i'm learning.

and auto ditch. dact i read lebon and i write letters to people in french who are french. >> which leads to me to ask you, who are your models? who are your, when you're thinking about actually sitting down and writing this even though it took you to age 70 to get it done, who were the people who most inspired you? who were those -- the words -- >> they were writers i was reading at the time. that is why i always tell people if you really want to be a writer, keep reading and reading, and reading. not to copy other people but to inspire they have these amazing, unique voices. louise eldrich, definitely, she is one of our greatest writers today. jamaica kincaid, who is a writer you don't hear a lot about today

but her book annie jong, i read that numerous times t seems so simple but has this seething power underneath it, every sentence. and, you know, isabelle ayende, has the stories and secrets, family from the past, ghost from the past. people call it magical realism. but you say, no, no, it is what really happened. and i love that part of it. it didn't have to be fantastical. there weren't many but mostly women but there were other writers that i -- maxine kingston was another one. richard ford, who i love. and some of the writers that i read in college but it had to do with writers i was reading at the time feeling more and more

this urge that i was now older and i had to make sense of the life i had lived thus far. all -- >> all of this is in this book which is really a wonderful book. i couldn't recommend it more but i want to take you back to a moment that you talk about in it book. it was 2001 in march. you published, it was inspired by your mother's gradual decline in alzheimer's as i recall. then complicated by your editor's bought with cancer. so there was this, you know, trying to write this book about your mirror on your mother's experience. your editor then falls into this

tragic state of affairs, and you race to finish the book for her sake, as i remember. you -- >> yeah. >> go to new york to finish it. >> yeah. >> and then, lyme disease comes into the picture somewhere in there, and you're in new york, strangely enough, as fate would happen, with the twin towers are struck. and you watch from the street? >> i watched the first one fall from the cnn building on 37th. i was the trivia answer to, which segment, who was the person being interviewed who was canceled as a result 9/11. they said one minute to live. 30 seconds to live. i was sitting on the stool. suddenly the room broke into chaos. people were cursing at each other. i thought, how strange, they would not temper themselves even

if they were irritated. then i saw on all the monitors, an image of a building on fire. having done many interviews over the years i knew whenever there was hard news, like o.j. simpson, a glove was found, i would be canceled. i just knew that a building on fire, i was canceled. it would take this off. then i see there is no, nothing behind the building. it is just sky. then i heard something say, commercial jet. we have a witness. i realized what it was. and, what was happening around me. we saw it together in that newsroom, with all those newscasters the second tower being hit. somebody saying it's war. and, i watched the second tower fall as i was walking back to our house. we had a lot of, my husband was there. and i just had to get home.

i was walking down the street, and i saw it come down, and i said, i'm dreaming this. this can't be real. and i don't even remember hearing it. it was so surreal. i just watched this come down. we lived 10 blocks from the world trade center. all these people were running up our street, covered with this cement dust. many of them looking shell-shocked. and there was such an amazing comradery, coming together of the whole city during that time. but of course this is one of those moments, you say, i'm going to die. with is my life about? what is important? >> amazing sort of confluence of events. i'm going to ask one more question, but i want you to think about questions that you will ask because i will open it up to all of you. there are microphones in the

aisles. and please ask a question of amy tan. my last question to you, in the interview is, what can we expect from you next? what are you working on? >> expectations. this is the questions my editor asks me. actually, he is fine. we're having dinner. he knows never to ask me that question. it's a novel. and the, title of it is, the memory of desire. >> the memory of desire? >> of desire. it will be, either one of two novels. it is one that i dreamt about three years ago. entirety of this book i dreamt on new year's day, like a gift. and i read over, i wrote down the notes about what i had dreamed a lot of time you dream these things, they turn out to be nonsense but it made complete

sense. it even had subplots, all the characters locations. the other was a book i started about 10 years ago. around i found this draft in that pile of memorabilia and i loved it. and i thought, why did i abandon this? and when i read that again i thought, maybe i'll do this. i had sent it to dan a while ago, he could not let go. i kept writing about a month back and forth about this, but not wanting me to write. wanting me to write about the novel we talked about. i don't know. it will be that or that. and i don't know if the title will be the memory of desire, but there you go. it will be a surprise. just like everything in my life is a surprise. >> i can't wait to read it. do we have any questions? people would like to come up and ask something of amy? come on up, don't be shy. this is a good chance to connect with an author.

i have to tell you, there is not very much in this world that lasts forever, but when you come up and ask a question it gets archived in the library of congress. [laughter]. so make it good. your audio file forever. you will see it in the library of congress. >> no pressure. >> thank you so much for all of your books and for being here today. sorry, i couldn't see you up there. i was struck by the beginning of your conversation that you said one of the things that surprised you most when you wrote the joy luck club, how universal it was, telling you how people reminded them of their own experience. i'm thinking of the moment we're in now. "crazy rich asians" broken all records in terms of box office receipts. is that also part of what is

important to you, to see a sort of broadening of the popular culture acceptance of all things asian? or is more humanistic approach more important for you? >> in terms of film i loved that film and i loved it for two reasons. i thought it was a fun film. but, the fact it wasis successful, breaking box office, number one at the box office, i felt it is going to give asian-americans a chance to act in movies. they don't have to be asian-american movies. they can be anything. the stories can be anything. i don't think that story is universal because it does not represent every chinese person who, we're not crazy rich, all of us. just as pretty woman does not represent all pretty women, but there is that expectation people

have had in the past. and i hope they will get away from that looking at this movie. it is just a fun, romantic comedy and a satire on rich people. thank you. >> next question? >> yeah, i heard you say, i can't see you, i heard you say, at one point that you're a linguist and, how do you approach dialect and creating voices in different, with accents? with have you thought about that, how you do it really well. i will learn from you. >> thank you. >> i do love language, that is why i became a linguist. way hear posely, that is more important to me, has to do with imagery and that does reflect in the way i look at the, my mother's speech, which includes a different way of expressing it in chinese. it's a context that has

historical, her history, personal history. and a lot of emotion over the years. i looked at the changes in my mother's language from the time she was a little girl, speaking chinese and mandarin and back to when see was speaking chinese when she was mandarin. i don't have to hear what the accents or dialect is. it is simply way heard and, and so i, i'm sorry, i can't help you and say this is, how you do it. but if you were to have a character who had a different way of speaking from the mainstream, i think it would be to go and have conversations with that person. not simply over hearing with they're saying, but really getting into an emotional conversation about some on going topic and how they express

themselves. not the features but how it comes out. >> thank you, next. >> my name is. thank you for your presentation. my name is -- [inaudible] thank you for your presentation. to have a good reader in china fees to write a good bock. i'm thinking a person who write father book, a different kind of book, talking about fake news and some people maybe would be denied, trying to choose some work, if somebody writing, writing this type of book would be restricted from publishing or get a copyright, do you have any suggestion, you can write another book or something, have

you thought? >> thank you. whether or not you write a book whether it isorg fall or whether it is fake or whether you have copyright, what you trite true to yourself, the way that you think, not just the story context yourself, that is always going to be original. if somebody, i have had people say, well, your characters are not depictions of real chinese people, they're fake. that is their perspective, their reality, that they wanted to see characters in a certain way. just as they said, "pretty woman" is not about every single pretty woman. we as writers, i assume you would reich to write a book or that you have written a book, that it is authentic to you and to your emotions. >> thank you. >> over here, please. >> hi, i'm excited to be here to say this.

i'm a high school teacher in public schools. i teach reading and english to students with disabilities and we're about to start your book, "the joy luck club." i never taught it before and i'm excited but i just thought, it is there anything i could take back to them that you might say to them? tease are 10th graders mostly. >> first of all, i don't think that everybody in the world is going to like a book equally. around i think testify to know that is fine, absolutely fine. there's a way you might look at a book differently, not for the story necessarily, not for the characters but for perhaps asking if there is one image in the book, one scene that really struck you as interesting and just to go into that scene is

about and why it appealed to you. the other is that we often read books because they do resonate with our lives and toe ask a person if they would like to share, these are very personal questions, if they would like to share something about their own family, that feels similar, and kind of pressures or expectations their parents have had seem similar like this? and did they feel like they were understood? when i was reading as a kid what i would love, those stories that made me feel i had a friend. someone finally understood me. >> yes, i understand that new. next question. >> thank you very much for being here. you mentioned after 9/11 you were going through the streets that it was the kind of experience that brings home to you what is meaningful in life and what is important.

what was that for you? what were those revelations to you on that day afterwards? >> it had to do with family. i was very glad that i had lived a life that was, that was focused in that direction. when i started writing i asked myself that question again, what is the most important thing i should keep in my mind? and that i reflected back on my life, i said the things i wanted to do, meaning how i thought about things. how i treated people. i was content with. that i hadn't done anything i should be feeling shameful of. so, what you should think about seems to come at that very moment, you think you're going to die. i was prepared. i said, it is okay. now i'm going home. i just want to reach lou and be together. if it happens together, that's fine.

>> thank you for the question. another question please? we have time for two more. >> okay. you mentioned that you had, at times had trouble completing things that you started and that you had to let go, if i understand correctly of the fact that you wanted it published in order to complete that? is that what you were saying earlier? because i'm trying to figure out how you managed to go from starting to completion? because i started a million and never could complete them. >> what i meant, i would start different hobbies and let them go but that is true about books as well. i wanted to keep writing, not simply get disinterested and go on to yulery making, for example. i let go of books that ceased to inkrieg me or ceased to be something i would feel, and become more mechanical, and i'm only interested in how to get to the next chapter without feeling

how it, the story is going. what happens, you put it aside. often times you pick it up much later, you see the direction is clear now. or the characters are clear. you're going to change it, but it is going to make sense. so what i would say, put those things aside. don't spend months and months agonizing. positive -- move on. write as fast as you can. don't think of sentences. write stream of consciousness, see if something comes out after that. i say all that, i don't do it, and that is why it takes me, i know i should do that, and it is in the book and i did it in the book. it worked in the book. now i have to apply it now in this next novel. we'll see. you get yours done. i will get mine done. >> thank you. >> one last question please. >> for someone to say it is an honor. this really interesting and i

appreciate it. i appreciate the fact that you are an linguist. i'm an interpreter translator. awesome to see a colleague up there as you are a colleague. if you have a story to tell, integral to your story, that you speak about certain subjects that you can't leave out of your story but you want to protect with people, how would you deal with that or how have you dealt with it? the intention you don't want to hurt people. you make your peace. you feel good now, everything else buff you feel like, is part of that story and you want to tell it. >> there have been very few stories where i had that concern, and mostly, you know, it would have been about my mother but she gave me full permission. she wanted me to write more about her, as a matter of fact. she wanted me to devote a well book about her which is the kitchen god's wife. in the book i did have some moments about family. you know over time you have these moments where family have

betrayed you or disappointed you in a certain way. i learned something about betrayal, forgiveness, it is not what you think. what i decided is forgiveness has a lot to do whether you want to continue with the relationship. and so i had to decide because of the nature of the rest of the story i had to include that. i didn't exclude it but changed the name of the relationship to a different one. i put down the good things that person said as well. so it wasn't just this person was completely vial, vicious, and mean as she really was. [laughter]. you know, you find a way to do, never with hate or disgust. there was one story, one chapter

i did leave out, and, and i really struggled over it, and it was a story about being molested by a minister and it was, a life-changing experience and it was a letter that i would have written to him, and what it did to me, coming out of that room, how i was changed. i decided not to include it because it changed the nature of the book so much. it was just like, oh, my god, where is this going? there was also a church to consider that, it might damage and i didn't think that, this person who is long gone from the church, now should affect the church now. but i did write that letter to the church, to say, this, when you talk about your legacy and all the people you have helped and saved, you have to claim this as your legacy as well, and

you have to make amends for it. i say it now. i am glad i had the opportunity to say it, but i did not include it in the book. those are the reasons i considered, what damage would it do? >> thank you so much. >> wonderful advice. ladies and gentlemen, we've talked a lot about bad luck but we've been very lucky to have amy tan with us today. [applause] >> thank you. >> thank you very much. >> thanks to everybody. thank you very much. thank you. >> got a standing-o. >> oh, my gosh. >> wow. >> host: that of course was author amy tan you've been listening to live at the

national book festival. coming up in about ten minutes is biographer, ron chernow. author the book of alexander hamilton. his most recent book is on ulysses s. grant. that is what he will talk about live at the washington convention center. one of the things booktv is doing here is something new. you can have your picture taken on the booktv set. you can see here, two young men, ben o'brien, and anthony davis about to pose in front of a green screen. wait until you see what it turns out to be. it looks like the booktv set. >> one, two, seven. thank you. i got you, good jobs guys. >> host: there is a line of people all day long having their picture taken here. we'll show you what the final product looks like in a minute as doug printed out.

doug, has it been a lot of fun. >> a lot of fun, peter. a lot of interaction with our viewers. >> it has been pretty steady here. it has been great. >> it has been a lot of fun to be here. here is ben and anthony, see them behind the of the green screen. that is our actual set back at c-span. i don't think you need a set when you see this picture. it looks really terrific. >> [inaudible] >> oh did you really? took a picture of the set. to let you know, we have several hours of live coverage here at the national book convention at the washington convention center. will hear from doris kearns goodwin, brian meachum. all pulitzer prize winners. brian kilmeade will do a call-in. carol westwood, the book, the educated. been on the best-seller since it

came out in february. she did not have any formal education until she was seven teen years old. she got a phd from cambridge. we'll hear about her story. we talked a week or so ago with librarian of congress, carla hayden, about what it is like to get the book fair together. how much of your year is taken up with the festival. >> i start thinking of the festival as soon as this one is completed, at 7:30 at night. it is exciting to think about who the authors will be the next year and so it is always in the back of our minds about wow, the next year and when it is going to be. so it's a joy to think about books, readers. over 100,000 people are just emersed in reading. >> host: well, i know there is a large, young adult, and children's author area.

but new study out by psychology today saying that only one in three high school seniors read a book for pleasure last year, and that our electronic screens are taking away from reading time. >> guest: that is why the book festival is so important and we make it fun. and when you go to the young adult authors, we have graphic novels and all of these types of things that appeal to them, it is reading for pleasure. and that's the key. so if we make reading fun and something that is not judgmental when you're reading, not for required reading this is reading that you want to do. >> host: dr. hayden, what is a library today? >> guest: a library today is a opportunity center. i've been visiting library is are throughout the country this past year. i was in finley, ohio, and they have a section called, beyond

books, things you can check out. owing machines, musical instruments. traffic cones. you're teaching your young people to drive. so libraries are places people can go into their communities, rural areas, everywhere. every community has a library that is that place in the community that everyone's welcome. >> host: who can access the library of congress? can anybody? >> guest: anybody can access the library of congress. with technology, the library's website. loc .gov, you can access, download materials, download materials wherever you are. physically if you come into the buildings in washington, d.c. but we're very pleased that you can access us throughout the

internet. >> host: 100% of the material on the library available? >> guest: not yet. to the yet. what we're digitizing are the unique collections. in about a month the collections of president theodore roosevelt will be put up, including his diary, where he said on february 14th, the light has gone out of my life because his mother and his wife on february 14th, died on the same day, in the same house. so those are the things we're putting up. >> host: what role do members of congress have in the administration of the library, being the library of congress? >> guest: the library started to serve congress and they have quite a bit of a role in terms of making sure at that we not only serve members of congress and their staff members. there is the congressional research service. i call them the special forces. any policy area they give

objective information and research to undergird really the legislative process and congress makes sure, i mentioned my visits throughout the country, that people know about our veterans history project, for instance. oral histories in communities. that the surplus books program where we make sure that those books are available to libraries and schools. they are also very concerned that we make sure the library of congress serves them but also the communities. host host do you feel supported by the current congress and do they have an interest in the national book festival? >> guest: members congress, people will be very pleased to know are readers and they are very interested in making sure that their constituents are aware the library's services. so the u.s. congress and previous congresses have been very involved. and they're very interested, i think in touching history and

being a, knowing the place in history too. . . >> full schedule available at booktv.org. this is live coverage. [inaudible conversations] >>