>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. >> Robert Casper: Tonight, we are happy again to feature the literary organization Kundiman. The organization founded in 2004 is dedicated to the creation, cultivation, and promotion of Asian American literature. For more on the organization you can visit www.kundiman.org. And, now, I'm going to get off the stage and welcome Kundiman fellow Gowri K. to tell us more about the featured readers and the setup of this program. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Gowri K.: Good evening, everyone. >> Good evening. >> Gowri K.: Thank you, Rob, and to the Library of Congress, to the Smithsonian APA Center, and Lawrence Minbui Davis [assumed spelling], and, of course, to Kundiman for inviting me to participate in this program tonight. I feel honored and privileged to introduce tonight's featured writers, and also converse with them afterwards about their craft. And after we have a short discussion, we'll open it up to the audience for audience Q and A. So, feel free to come up with some questions as the night goes on to pose to our writers. We'll start off hearing the work of R. O. Kwon, and later we will have a reading by Hieu Minh Nguyen. R. O. Kwon was born in South Korea and has lived most of her life in the United States. She is a national endowment for the arts literature fellow, and her writing has appeared in the Guardian, Time, Vice, Buzzfeed, Noon, Electric Literature, Asian American Literary Review, and elsewhere. She has received numerous awards, including those from Yaddo, MacDowell, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Steinbeck Center, and the Norman Mailer Writers' Colony. Kwon's first novel, The Incendiaries, was published in July of this year by Riverhead. The New York Times Book Review said of her novel, The Incendiaries is about extremism, yes, but it's for anyone who's ever been captivated by another, for anyone who has been on either side of a relationship that clearly has a subject and object of obsession, for anyone who's had a brush with faith or who's been fully bathed in its teachings, for anyone afraid of his or her own power. Please welcome R. O. Kwon. [ Applause ] >> R. O. Kwon: Hi, hello. Hi. I'm so glad and excited to be here. Thank you for coming, and thank you to Library of Congress, and thank you to Kundiman and thank you to Lawrence. I just -- this is so exciting. Thank you. I am going to read from The Incendiaries. It's my first novel and it's about a Korean-American woman, Phoebe Lin, who is pulled into a radical group that turned out to be a cult with enigmatic ties to North Korea. The cult eventually bombs five U.S. abortion clinics, healthcare clinics, in the name of faith. And when several bystanders die, she disappears. So, I worked on this novel for 10 years, which means I've had -- I've had a lot of time to attend a lot of parties, and dinner parties, and thanksgivings, and family gatherings at which people ask what I'm doing, what do I do? And I say I write. I'm working on a novel, and they'd ask what it's about. So, I would tell them pretty much just what I told you right now, and by far the most common follow-up question, including from family members, has been, is your novel autobiographical [laughter], which I found to be incredibly confusing and funny and hard to answer. Because I think they're all asking if I'm a domestic terrorist or if I've been involved in a violent cult, or if I've blown up buildings. A friend was just like, you should just start saying I'm no longer at liberty to talk about this, but [laughter], I haven't tried that yet. I haven't tried that yet. We'll see. So, short answer, no, I have it blown up any buildings, not just yet. But, there is a longer possible answer about what obsessions and losses led to this book. So, I thought I'd touch briefly on those before reading a little from it. The novel does draw on my own background, as a formerly zealous evangelical Christian, until I was 17 and stopped believing. My entire life plan was to become a preacher or a missionary or maybe a religious recluse in a cave. I don't know, I hadn't really thought out the details, but I was excited about it. I've long since left the faith behind, but I do often still find the loss of it to be fresh, as though it happened maybe a few days ago. And, perhaps as a result of how different I am from the God crazed girl I once was, I'm fascinated by the variety in people's definitions of good and of right. In The Incendiaries, I was drawn to bridging imaginative chasms between rational and fanatic worldviews. And, in addition, I have distant family members I've never met, who live or lived, for all I know, in North Korea, and who I'll probably never meet. For a while, to try to fill that hole in knowledge, that longing, I kept reading accounts of North Korea. And, of course, what little information that makes it out is so incomplete, and eventually I became interested in exploring this gap itself. But, in writing about North Korea, I very much -- I didn't want to make any claims about a place I've never been able to visit, and that so few people ever see. Instead, even as I gave a North Korean pass to the novel's cult leader, John Leal, I hoped to explore some of the vast gaps in knowledge and to dwell imaginatively in that place of unknowing. The book alternates between three points of view, that of Phoebe Lin, the woman who falls into the cult, John Leal, the cult leader, and Will Kendall, who loves Phoebe and opposes the cult to much of what it represents. I'll read a section from each of their points of view from the start of the book. One, Will. They'd have gathered on a rooftop in Noxhurst to watch the explosion. Platt Hall, I think, 11 floors up. I know his ego, and he'd have picked the tallest point he could. So often, I've imagined how they felt, waiting. With six minutes left, the slant light of dusk reddened the high old spires of the college, the level gables of its surrounding town. They poured festive wine into big-bellied glasses. Hands shaking, they laughed. She would sit apart from this reveling group, cross-legged on the roof's west ledge. Three minutes to go, two, one. The Phipps building fell. Smoke plumed the breath of God. Silence followed, then the group's shouts of triumph. Wine glasses clashed together, flashing martial light. He sang the first bars of a Jejah psalm, others soon joined in. Carillon bells chimed, distant birds blowing white, strewn, like dandelion tufts, an outsize wish. It must have been then that John Leal came to her side. In his bare feet, he closed his arm around her shoulders. She flinched, looking up at him. I can imagine how he'd have tightened his hold, telling her she'd done well, though before long, it would be time to act again, to do a little more. But, this is where I start having trouble, Phoebe. Buildings fell. People died. You once told me I hadn't even tried to understand. So, here I am, trying. Two, John Leal. Once John Leal left Noxhurst, halfway through his last term of college, he drifted until he ended up in Yanji, China. In this city, adjacent to North Korea, he began working with an activist group that smuggled Korean refugees toward asylum in Seoul. He'd found his life's work, he thought. Instead, he was kidnapped by North Korean agents, spirited across the border, and thrown into a prison camp outside of Pyongyang. In the stories he later told the group, he said the gulag brutalities were bad enough, but at least they'd been expected. What astonished him was the allegiance his fellow inmates showed toward the lunatic despot whose policies had installed them in their cells. They'd been jailed because, oh, they'd splashed a drop of tea on his newsprint portrait. A neighbor claimed to have overheard them whistling a South Korean pop song. Punished for absurdities, they still maintained that the beloved sovereign, a divine being, couldn't be to blame. At first, he assumed this was lip service, the prisoners afraid to say otherwise. But then, he thought of the refugees he'd met in Yanji, how they talked of loving the god they'd fled. They attributed the regime's troubles to anyone but the sole person in charge. A month into John Leal's time in the gulag, prison guards held an optional foot race, the prize a framed icon of the despot. In the confusion, those who fell were trampled. One child died of a broken spine. Through howls of pain, he shouted hosannahs for his lord. They weren't lying, the poor fools. They believed in the man as one might believe in Jesus Christ. Some people needed leading. In or out of the gulag, they craved faith. But think if the tyrant had been as upright as his disciples trusted him to be. The heights he'd have achieved, if he loved them, if, John Leal thought, until his idea began. Three, Phoebe. I hoped I'd be a piano genius, Phoebe told the group, in the first Jejah confession she tried giving. But I didn't just wait, she said. I expected, no, I wanted to work for it. I spilled time into the piano as I'd have put cash in a bank. I saw full concert halls in the future, solo recitals, front-page plaudits. I practiced Liszt while imagined spotlights gilded the living room. Recollection is half invention, but it feels as though I spent my entire childhood training to prove I was the significant pianist I believed I'd be. So, I piled up trophies. It wasn't enough. The teacher flicked my hands with a rod each time I didn't hit the right note, but I didn't mind. My ambition outstripped his. Let my hands swell. I could use the extra span. Bright-knuckled, I tried again. The months ticked past, then years. I kept lists of rivals. I indexed others' exploits by age. Kiehl, at five, had given his first recital to the Danish king. Ohri, 11, debuted at Carnegie Hall; Liu, 15. One night, my teacher called Libich's Etude Number Five the most challenging piece a soloist might attempt. It's eluded the finest pianists, he said. I rushed to find the Etude score. I learned it alone, in secret. I memorized Libich's high trills. I flailed through wild ostinatos. Once, at the table, my mother asked what I was smiling about. Haejin, she said. I blinked, Libich vibrating in my head. I don't. She laughed. It's all right, she said. I ate while she peeled a white peach. The skin dropped in a single coil. She picked it up, holding it to the light. Such a rich hue, she said. It flushed pink, backlit; I nodded, then she put it down. I could tell she wished to talk, but I was lost in trills. I pushed a last peach slice in my mouth, and I went back to the piano. Until then, nothing I played had evoked the orphic singing I knew to be possible. It was an ideal I lacked the skill to bring to life. Each first-place prize marked a point when I had let the music down. With Libich, I failed less. His Etude asked so much of me that, at times, I'd forget I had an I. I should have learned, from this, that playing had to be birthed in a place without ego, in which I didn't exist except as the living conduit, Libich's medium. But then, when I showed the teacher what I could do, he was astonished. I'd achieved more than he'd hoped, he said. He switched the piece in for the next competition, a city-level open. I was driven to the recital hall. The sun fell on my hands as I practiced Libich again, fingers dancing across my legs. Spotlit, I listened to the traffic sing my name. The lax blue of L.A., heat-rippled, veiled the horizon. Like curtains, I thought, poised to rise. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Gowri K.: Thank you [inaudible]. Next, we'll hear from Hieu Minh Nguyen, a queer Vietnamese-American poet and performer based out of Minneapolis. He was the recipient of a 2017 NEA Fellowship for poetry, a Kundiman fellow, a poetry editor for Muzzle Magazine, and an MFA candidate at Warren Wilson College. His work has appeared in PBS News Hour, Poetry Magazine, Gulf Coast, Buzzfeed, Poetry London, Indiana Review, and more. His debut collection of poetry, This Way to the Sugar, published by Write Bloody Publishing in 2014, was named a finalist for both the Lambda Literary Award and the Minnesota Book Award. And his second collection of poetry, Not Here, was published by Coffeehouse Press in April of this year. This year, he was also named one of five recipients of the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sergeant Roseburg Poetry Fellowship Award. About Hieu's work, Ocean Vuong has said, his work is so tight, searing, and unabashedly sharp and full at once. His poems turn me into a horizontal entity. Reading them, I have to lie down [laughter]. They remind me of gravity, how it pins me to the world without ever touching me. Hieu's work is like that, a kind of force, or better yet, a force of kindness. Please welcome Hieu Minh Nguyen. [ Applause ] >> Hieu Minh Nguyen: Thank you all so much for having me. Thank you to Lawrence Min and thank you [inaudible] for your beautiful reading. I am really bad at like banter, so I'm not going to do it much. So, I'm not going to talk to you all, because I hate you. See, that's what happens, right? I just insult the audience. So, I prepared a little introduction, if I can find it. Okay, there it is. First, before I talk about anything else, let me talk about the joys of online dating. I am an expert at the brief, efficient, economical conversation. Usually people think I'm joking when I asked them about their retirement plan, about their credit score, about their potential IRS audit risk, but I'm not. Lately, when a new suitor asks me how I'm doing, I respond with good, despite the world being on fire. Here, I use the trick of melodrama in order to gauge the reaction of my potential husbands. Their responses usually fluctuate between what are you talking about and, yeah, I know what you mean. It's is a small trick I use to inform myself to whether or not the person I am talking to has been paying attention to the atrocities happening in the world around us. I use fire to find a companion in misery, though it's difficult to be sure if the boy and I are staring at the same fire. And, if we are, who do we blame for the flames? And, was there ever a time where the world wasn't on fire? As soon as I became proficient in English, my mother started asking me to translate the morning -- the morning news to her. She wanted to participate with the world. Some things were easy. I could explain house fires. I could explain high-speed chases. I could even stumble my way through political scandals. But, remember, as a kindergartner, I had to learn how to study the atrocities of the world and interpret them, not only into language, but logic. Nine 11 happened when I was 10. Columbine happened when I was eight. Matthew Shepard was murdered when I was seven. Even now, I can hear my mom saying, [speaking foreign language], who, who would do that? Who could do that? Why? Why would they do that? Why would they do that to that boy? Gay? Gay? What does that mean? Oh, okay. It's important to mention the only time my mother speaks in English is when I make her speak in a poem. So she says, get out, says, leave but it's me, my voice, that slams the door. The only way out is through the opening of her mouth. The only way towards salvation is forgiveness, the aunts would say, licking their thumbs across my forehead. Sure, the only mask I own is humming on my face. I want to study the mechanics of leaving. Go. Go. Go, so I can see. Slow so I can watch everything fade to water. I think it was Sappho who said, I long and seek after but, of course, that's not what she said, not exactly. If things happen the way they are supposed to my mother will die before me. My mother, who, by then, will love me will die. My mother, who, by then, will hopefully be happy, will walk without pain from this life into the next, and I, her only son, her writer son will stay to translate her life into English. Any adjective can be true if you cry hard enough. I can lie and say I haven't written the poem, haven't buried her over and over at my desk, haven't described the ash of her body. I throw a fistful of sand in the air and pretend to weep. I write the poem. I fill my lungs with English. I number her skin with English. I English the light she walks into. I kill her just to raise her from the dead. I anticipate this grief by exhausting it with music. I pry open the casket. I make her twirl in the center. Question. Who here hates the word moist [laughter]? Can I see a show of hands? Who like -- who here just like absolutely hates that word? All right, okay. So, I wrote a poem. It's called In Defense of Moist [laughter]. Most moan, voice their disdain for the motion their mouth makes. The sound whining in their ears, chalking up their hate to just pure phonics. Moist. Moist. I just hate -- it just sounds gross. It makes everything sound sexual, even things that aren't supposed to be sexual. Moist towelette. Moist sponge. Moist eviction notice. Moist hoisting oysters to your lips, giving you no choice but to swallow. Some have even petitioned to have the word removed from the dictionary completely, but imagine a world where you eat damp cake or someone says -- or someone says, mmm [phonetic], these cookies are wet. What would you do then [laughter]? Maybe you can't handle it. Maybe it's too precise a word. Your body swelling with salt and it's mentioned. Maybe you sweat too much and you're embarrassed at how the word makes even your mouth perspire. Maybe you hate how the word clings, like spinach to your teeth, and I can't blame you. I understand what it's like to hate something for no good reason, other than for the way it sounds. I know what it's like to want to replace the words that embarrass you, an entire language really. In Vietnamese there's only one word I know for mother. Only one word I know for son, [speaking foreign language]. Not like swindle, but the sound a gong makes when muffled by water. Vietnamese demands precision. If said in the wrong tone, son could mean stay, could mean remain. My tongue, a pend -- my tongue a pendulum swinging between what is here and what isn't. When what's left of this language gets stuck in my teeth, the only synonyms I can find are in English. English, a river my mother cannot swim across, rising from each attempt soaked in embarrassment. My tongue, a stone I tried to skip across. My accent, a crumbling monument. [Speaking foreign language]. What will happen when there's nothing left to replace? What will happen when she can no longer understand me? Is there a word for that? Is it in English? So, there is -- so, I go to Warren Wilson College for my MFA. And, in the summertime, during the residency, there is -- there is this softball game that takes place between fiction writers and poets, right [laughter]. And, I want to say like in the history, in like the 100-year history of the program, it hasn't been around that long, but the poets have won may be like two times [laughter]. Like, this past summer we lost 70 to 10. But, like, I also want to confront the idea that like poets are like passive and weak. And, so, I wrote this poem. Don't be mistaken. It wasn't too long ago when my friends and I walked with master locks around our knuckles, eager to dare each oncoming car to flinch. Listen, if I've learned anything, it's that every play fight will turn into a real fight if you touch the face. And we were ready, honey-eyed bastards waiting for any graze or slight breeze to give us permission. Pacing the same mile radius, our fists seething with mud. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I'm a good fighter. I'm just saying I was never afraid to get my ass beat in the name of not running. We fought everywhere, in the park, in basements, silently in school bathrooms so no one would break it up. For a long time there was one rule I live by. If they jump in, I'm jumping in, too. The last flight I got into it was because Jordan [assumed spelling] called me a faggot, his mouth. Afterwards, we laid in the grass panting, my ears bleeding, his mouth swollen and beautiful. And sure, I left that place and don't plan on going back. And sure, these days the friends I have eat brunch, fly to places like Vermont to write poems near streams while contemplating the lifecycles of bees. Or, cry when they think about the majesty of elephants. But, don't be confused. They may be washed and usually in bed before 10, but my friends now are just like my friends then, always ready, a legion of faggots flushed out and shining prepared for anything. And sure, this can be an analogy for the radius of our lives, how we will all return to where we started. Or, maybe, this is an analogy for those headlines, poets fight oppression with words, going on about the strength it takes to make art in the face of those who'd want to harm us, like Artemis, and a crew who'd hunt the men she'd turned into deer. Or, maybe, I'm just saying it's hunted that know best how to hunt. Or, maybe, there's an idea here that has nothing to do with blood, but everything to do with the animal inside us, a singular creature, looking for a shape, a herd, a pack, a pride, to beckon our teeth from the gums. Or, maybe, I'm just saying that my friends will kick your ass. No, not metaphorically, not with our words, though probably, but with our rings on, like the bees who only swarm when provoked, or the elephants who will rush to the aid of their own. My friends will stomp you. And sure, that was a simile. Sure, that was a threat. That was me saying if they jump in, I'm jumping in, too. [ Applause ] Standing in front of a mirror, my mother tells me she is ugly, says the medication is making her fat. I laugh and walk her back to the bed. My mother tells me she is ugly in the voice she says -- okay, sorry. Standing in front of a mirror, my mother tells me she is ugly, says the medication is making her fat. I laugh and walk her back to bed. My mother tells me she is ugly in the same voice she used to say, no woman could love you and I watch her pull at her body and it is mine. My heavy breasts. My disappointing shape. She asks for a bowl of plain broth and it becomes the cup of vinegar she would pour down my throat. Every day after school, I would kneel before her. I would remove my clothes and ask her to mark the progress. It's important that I mention, I truly wanted to be beautiful for her. In my dreams I am thin, and if not thin, something better. I tell my mother she is still beautiful and she laughs. The room fills with flies. They gather in the shape of a small boy. They lead her back to the mirror, but my reflection is still there. Ode to the pubic hair stuck in my throat. O diligent survivor clinging to the edge of a chasm. Little tickle. Little wire picking open the doors, illuminating the corners of my body I did not know could swell with touch. Bless touch, I guess, its round noise. O little brown figure coiling in the middle of that soft pink alley. How lonely it must be to come from desire but end where light ends. Son of the floorless prayer, son of the O horizon, remind me what it's like to speak without a white man flickering in my throat. O small equator, making every story a ruined portrait. Bless the fault line beyond my reach. Little fracture in my speech. Little secret I keep trying to cough up but instead cause my mother to raise her small hands to my forehead. [Speaking foreign language]. Bless also my mother, her perfect temperature, her concern the only language we have to say sorry. Bless language, its impossible walls, its flexible agony a thin line I keep tripping over. O little thread, undoing the hem of my body, but wait, bless also my body, how it rejects the unfamiliar, convulsing, conversing with itself, excising, evicting, cutting down the rope bridge, rolling the debris into a question mark on my tongue. I have a few more poems to share, and then I will run out of here. I'm going to read a little sonnet. Maybe a bit dramatic, but I like candles with my breakfasts, wear a white gown around the house like a virgin. Right or wrong, forgive me. No one in this town knows forgiveness. Miles from the limits, if I squint there's Orion. If heaven exists, I will be there in a minute to hop the pearly gates, a ghost felon to find him. Of blood, of mud, of wisemen, who am I now after all these years without him. Boy, widow, barbarian, tapping hornets in my big grin. He'll fear who I've been since. I wake up each morning from all these strange dreams where I'm drowning. As boys, your father fed us fresh meat from the lake, taught us to spit bones into the fire, handed us each a knife, told us to enter the woods and return with something dead. And when we returned with nothing but our bodies, he assumed he failed. But, what did he know about death that we couldn't learn, will learn from our hands. And because you aren't here, won't ever, again, be here to cover my mouth, I'll confess, out loud, my love, so maybe perhaps, you will hear me and join me, here where the sun is sweet against the water. And because I love you, I will gut this distance with nostalgia, because grief can taste of sugar if you run your tongue along the right edge, so let me call your name, or rather mouth it, like when we watched your father strike a cleaver into the neck of a hawk and fell silent, not because of the blood but rather for the way the hawk's severed body took flight, leaving behind its head, a scarlet burden in the soil. And I wish so badly, I was brave enough then, to keep it, to tuck it beneath my tongue for these twenty years. And because darling, before I came alive, I watched the world without knowing what to look for, but I swear, it was there, again, above the tall grass, the headless hawk still alive, still somehow flying. So, the last poem I'm going to read. It's -- so, I've done like -- I've had a lot of weird jobs. I was like a pizza delivery boy, and then also I was also, with a bunch of my friends, we used to dance on the corner with like pizza signs, and we had choreography and everything. And I have my friend, Jeremy [assumed spelling], who was my best friend in high school. And, yeah, so, the next book I'm working on is a lot about the east side of St. Paul, which is where I grew up, and how it is, though it is technically part of a city, it feels very isolated from the rest of the city, and oftentimes functions as its own small town. And, so, I'm writing a lot about the people I grew up with. Of all the things I've tried to do, I was probably worst at selling weed. Robbed weekly. Used too much of my own product [laughter]. Cut each bag with a dash of oregano. Sorry. But then I have to consider that summer Maddie [assumed spelling] asked me to help him boost cars. His dad called me a liability, too paranoid to be lookout, too shaky to use a Slim Jim, didn't even know how to drive stick. Oh yeah, let's not forget that time Moe [assumed spelling] almost lost an arm after I convinced him to pay me 20 bucks to stitch his wound with fishing line instead of going to the hospital. Or, that time I almost convinced -- I convinced Aaliyah [assumed spelling] to let me tattoo across on her ankle with a safety pin and a ballpoint. And then there's that -- and then there's that time I swiped [inaudible] from Carl Maggie's [assumed spelling] locker and tried to set myself straight by becoming of violinist. But, of course, the noise complaints. The neighbors banging the portraits off the walls. The boys talking shit, calling me prodigy, fancy chink. And I wonder if you're still having a good laugh. Like when they found out I wanted to be a poet, so they glued roses and violets to the hood of my Kia. And so maybe I wanted, for the first time, to prove them wrong, prove I didn't belong there. And so maybe I made new friends, friends who wrote poems, who sat around talking about poems, who went to school to study poems, and lived in off-campus apartments where I crashed on nights I got too fucked up on white boy drugs to drive back to the east side, where even without me the [inaudible] glow of junkers trace the block where Mandy [assumed spelling], three years sober, tucks the kids into the bed, where Lee [assumed spelling], first in his class, spray paints the fleet of stolen bikes gold, where Andrew [assumed spelling] stands in the kitchen reading the Bible in the dim light from the microwave, where Nikki [assumed spelling], years later, coming home after a double at Champs, calls to wish me a happy birthday. And I am, of course, too busy to answer, somewhere in a different time zone, at a swanky party celebrating a man I do not know, who just won an award for a book I have not read. And the woman who smells of citrus, who's been raving to me all night about how much she admires my work, excuses herself to use the bathroom, leaving in the seat beside me her open purse [laughter]. Thank you so much. [ Applause ] >> Gowri K.: Thank you, Hieu. Reese, can I invite you back up to the stage as well. If you'd like to give a round of applause for both of our authors. [ Applause ] So, we'll start off with a bit of discussion up here. And then, as I mentioned earlier, we'll open it up for audience Q and A. so, please think about any questions you might have for our two writers this evening. It's lovely to meet both of you today. >> R. O. Kwon: Same as you. >> Gowri K.: Thank you for coming to D.C. I'm really happy to get to have this conversation with you both as well. The first question I have for you is actually a question that I also posed to a couple of writers back in May. It was another event co-sponsored by Kundiman. It was at the Folger Shakespeare Library around the corner. And that night the featured writers were Kava Akubar [assumed spelling] and Kazam Ali [assumed spelling]. And I asked them this question. I would be very interested to hear your responses as well. I initially just referred to Bhanu Kapil's book, The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers. Which, if you're familiar with it, every poem takes its title from a question, and many of the questions repeat themselves throughout the book. And one of many questions she poses and returns to in that book is the following. What are the consequences of silence? Now, both of you simultaneously and intersectionally embody various identities. And, for myself, when I talk about identities, I also like to substitute terms like truths and lived experienced, so we don't get confused by what we mean when we say identities. So, based on all of that, I would ask how you might answer Bhanu Kapil's question for your work, for what you may be using your own writing for, your own lives, for the people you may be reaching out to with your words, what are the consequences of silence? >> Hieu Minh Nguyen: That's a good question. [ Laughter ] [ Inaudible ] I am going to try to even -- I'm going to attempt to answer it. But, it is like a really -- it's -- I'm living a lot of, there's not just one consequence. I think there's a lot of consequences. But, if you're talking about like the self, right, like if you don't -- it just means like what happens when you don't speak up for yourself, right? How do you -- just all the ways that you can't advocate for yourself and what do you allow when you -- When you don't speak up. And I think it's also like a -- I'm going to -- I'm going to argue with myself for a second. I think it's also like what -- when I say like what are you allowing? It sounds like I'm placing blame on the person that isn't speaking up. But, like we have to consider all the -- all the things that like that's keeping that person from not speaking up, and it's keeping that person silent. So, I think -- I don't blame people for not speaking up sometimes, because it's like hard. And it also can be -- I think I turned it off. >> There it goes. You got it. >> Hieu Minh Nguyen: All right, hey [laughter]. I'm not going to repeat myself [laughter]. But, yeah, I think that's one [inaudible]. >> Gowri K.: That's a great answer. >> R. O. Kwon: Yeah, that's a -- that's a gigantic question. Good question. Let's see. Maybe I -- maybe I'll answer that just in terms of, because people so often ask -- a question that I get asked a lot, I'm sure you get asked a lot, I'm sure you get asked a lot, is who are you writing for? And my truthful stock answer is that I'm writing for myself, because when I write I find it so absorbing that I can't, I really can't think about any sort of external audience. And, so, I go into some sort of place where there's just me and the language and syllables. I'm just trying to get things down to be as good and true as I can, and there's no one else there. When I step back from that, and when I think about what that means, I feel as though in a lot of ways that in and of itself is a political act, because that means that I'm centering myself as a reader, and that means that I'm centering people like me. And the more people are like me the more they're going to understand some of the references, some of the -- some of the illusions. And, so, for instance, an example I often give is that there's a -- Phoebe Lin, one of the [inaudible] Korean-American, and her mother only ever called [inaudible] and she never calls her Phoebe. And some people, multiple people asked, do you want to explain that in the text? Do you want to say, [inaudible] is a Korean name? And I was just like, absolutely fucking not, man [laughter]. Because any Asian-American reader I can think of would understand that's her Korean name and that's what her family calls her, and I shouldn't have to explain that for anybody any more than -- any more than people who have ever explained to me what on earth all those [inaudible] terms are. And, so, I think -- I think in terms of who is being centered as the reader, and so I've been asked by -- people have asked along the way like, do you think about white men when you write? It's a question I've gotten. And, honestly, I don't very much [laughter]. Yeah. >> Gowri K.: Thank you both for your very thoughtful answers. And, also, the ways in which you both bring up the politics of [inaudible] responses to that question and the politics of being able to speak out and feeling even limited amount of safety or lack of real material, physical violence or consequences, and how so many people are stepping passed that and facing that when they do speak up. My second question I'm going to follow is from the first, but comes at it from the sort of opposite angle. And rather than asking about the consequences of silence here, I want to know what you find to be the consequences of actually speaking your truth or truths, particularly as your work gains more and more exposure nationally, internationally? I think frequently, particularly in different communities, whether they be identity-based communities or social justice-oriented communities, we tend to commend artists and celebrate artists for doing the hard work of liberating their traumas into an artform. I always personally wonder about the other side of that equation. And namely, what are the consequences for that artist, whether in ways that they may now have to relate to family, friends, community, or other spaces or groups of people? So there, again, what I would ask is, what are the consequences then when you do speak, and certainly with a lot of the topics and experiences that the two of you have addressed in your books? >> Hieu Minh Nguyen: We were talking about this earlier in a small group discussion, I think one of the consequences is that people then take your narrative and your story as like the bee story, right? Like, you're supposed to represent everybody, and that you're supposed to -- and it's -- there's like this responsibility to get it right, right? Because, you know, Asian-American literature has only existed for like so long, right? And, so, it's not that there is -- I'm trying [inaudible] but, like because there aren't that many models out there, right, like we are expected to be the model, or we are expected to speak for multiple people, and we're just like speaking about ourselves and our own experiences, right? Sometimes not even, right, fiction, you know. Yeah. >> R. O. Kwon: I think maybe one way to answer that is, so pretty much since December my writing [inaudible] in a lot of ways and I've been very involved in sort of preparing for my book to come out, it just came out last month, and what's happened with that is for the last eight months I wake in the morning, I realize, and every morning I'm worried about who I might have pissed off or disappointed. And it's just like I don't even know who, like I don't know who, like maybe someone on Twitter, or somebody who I work with, or just somebody out there might be mad at me. And I've been thinking about that. And I was talking to a friend, who has published many books, and he's also a writer, he's a writer of color, and he was just like, I'm afraid about that all the time, too, and, you know, I've been doing this for years. And he was like, you're actually right to be afraid because you are currently a representative of your people. Like people look at you and [inaudible] about Korean-Americans. And you are walking around and they'll be like, oh okay, I know about Korean-Americans because of something you said. And, so, I've been thinking about that and what that means. But, on the other hand, I think when I'm writing, and [inaudible] in the small group discussion, when I'm writing and when I'm engaging with the fiction, there's, again, no space for any of this and I just have to -- I'm only writing well if I'm digging for my truths. Again, I also [inaudible] with my truths and with what I'm trying to get on the page, and when I'm doing that there's no space to worry about what anyone else is going to think and I just have to -- and I feel as though maybe that burrowing and that specificity is in itself being responsible, or as responsible as I can be. >> Gowri K.: Yeah, and I thank you, too, for bringing up the issue, both of you, of representation and how when there's already [inaudible] representation, then how much higher the pedestal is, so to speak, that you are then placed on as the representative of all Asian-Americans. And I think, also, when we look at that, and I guess some of what I have seen in my own community, is how there can be a lot of [inaudible] community criticism. You know, you represent us and, even though you don't represent all of us, you mentioned these things in your book, and they are real things. And, so, there can be that sort of intercommunity kind of debate and critique that happens as well. We've started getting into just the concept of Asian-American literature and Asian-American writers, and certainly tonight's event is part of the Asian-American Literature Today series. So, I would like to hear both of your thoughts on some topics that I would say fall under the topic of Asian-American literature today. So, sort of multiple-choice items. You may choose from them. You may choose all of the following if you so delight in them. Asian-American writers you're excited about, whether they are people who've been publishing or performing for years, or maybe more emerging voices. Asian-American writers who have mentored and supported your development that you would like to shout out and [inaudible] boost for all of the lovely people here. And, also, just any thoughts you would want to share on the contemporary U.S. Asian-American literary community, or communities. [ Laughter ] >> R. O. Kwon: Well, I can start on this. So, my book came out in July. And this summer there have been so many debuts by Asian-American women, and it's been so exciting. There are so many that, for a while, I was just actually keep a stack of them by my -- by my own desk, because they made me happy to look at them. And, so, some of the books that have come out are by -- there's a book by Lucy Tan [assumed spelling], there's [inaudible]. There's Crystal Hana Kim [assumed spelling]. There's, let's see, [inaudible]. I mean, I'm not listing everybody, Lilian Le [assumed spelling]. It's just -- it's been a -- it's like -- it's just been like a, I mean relatively speaking, right, compared to what we've had before, it feels like an explosion. And, so, that's been really exciting. And in terms of mentors, I don't know, so many. But, I feel as though like a few -- like, let's see, [inaudible] champions of other writers and Asian-American writers. And I also, you know -- I'm also very excited about and feel indebted to the work that the ALR have been doing with Lawrence and me and with [inaudible]. [ Applause ] At like multiple readings people have asked, do all of you Asian writers know one another? [Inaudible], I think in, as offensive a way as that sounds, but because people are so supportive of one another on social media and because people are always shouting one another out, and I feel as though there is something to -- I don't know, I just feel the community is very supportive in a way that I -- [ Inaudible ] >> Hieu Minh Nguyen: So, [inaudible] collection, If They Come for Us, just came out in early August. And that book is one of the books that I carry with me a lot. And she is also doing a lot of really incredible work, not just only in poetry, but like she is -- she is writing a series for HBO, and she is -- she's just like a [inaudible]. And I also read Lucy Tan's book this summer, too, and I really loved it. And mentors. One of my mentors, [inaudible]. Just, he is a poet and also writes fiction as well. And I think a shout out to also Joseph Gatsby [assumed spelling], who is one of the cofounders of Kundiman. And, yeah. >> Gowri K.: Thank you [laughter]. I'm going to ask one more question and then we'll open it up to the audience for questions as well. And I think someone will bring a microphone around to the audience folks who have something to ask. So, now you both, you each published one or more books. A lot of people in the room today are writers at various stages of their careers. And, so, I wanted to ask, how are each of you approaching the writing process differently the second or third time around now? And, are there things you learned through writing and publishing your previous books that you think informs your approach to writing the current material you're working on, future publications? And I think there, too, I personally would be interested in hearing, not just about, you know, the writing process and the craft, but things that you may say you've learned that inform you in terms just the publishing process, or book touring, or, you know, what sort of happens as your career stands spans more and more publications in the years? >> Hieu Minh Nguyen: One of the things that I have been learning, a lesson that I keep with me, is that I don't have to explain myself. I think like, you know, coming from all these intersectional marginalized identities, like one of the things that I felt the need to do is like defend myself. And, oftentimes, that looks like explaining who I am and explaining, and it comes with this idea that like if people know I am human then they will accept me. But, then that's like also you are pandering to these people who haven't treated you well in the first place, right? Like, you're pandering to like people in position of power and not just doing the work, right? I think, -- so, yeah, so like I am learning to like not feel the need explain who I am and -- I think we were talking about it earlier, like asking for empathy, because that's not what we're doing, right? That's not what we're -- I'm not asking for pity. I'm not asking to be considered. I'm just trying to make my own space, if that makes sense. >> Gowri K.: Absolutely. >> R. O. Kwon: So, with my first book, I spent the first two years rewriting the first 20 pages over and over and over again every day, the [inaudible]. And then I threw it all away and then I started all over again. So, I learned from that to not do that [inaudible], never, ever do that. I just -- I had this idea that I needed the sentences to be perfect, to be exactly right. And I had this metaphor in mind, and the metaphor was, you need a solid foundation to build a house. And then, at the end of those two years, belatedly, I realized it was the worst metaphor, because you can't put -- you can't put in a foundation if you don't know what the house looks like. And, so -- and, so, with this new book I've been trying -- my new novel I've been trying, I've been working on it for maybe two years, and I've been trying to speed through as many drafts as I can to try to subvert my own obsession with syllables, with language, with punctuation, frankly. And I've been handwriting, I've been doing all kinds of things to try to get through it quickly. But, I don't -- I mean, the book is such a -- it's such a like -- it's just sort of a [inaudible] I have no idea what it is and I feel as though I've forgotten how to write. So, I'm not sure that this method is any better. We'll see [laughter]. [Inaudible] a while from now, we'll see, like eight years. I don't know. I'm just hoping like six years, I'm hoping this book will take six years. It sounds like a really nice, short winter [laughter] compared to 10. In terms of what I -- one thing I think I've learned, [inaudible] the other day, I am not -- I don't regret a single thing I insisted for. I mean, I insisted on for my book. I don't regret a single thing I insisted on in terms of, I don't even know, in terms of -- in terms of like a single mark or punctuation, in terms of never, ever tell [inaudible] I mean Korean words or, you know, or French words or anything. And I think I learned from that, that people just aren't going to get as mad at me as I think they will. I feel as though like every time I insist on something I'm just worried people will get incredibly offended and they'll like cut off all -- like I keep getting worried that people will cancel all the contracts or like never want to talk to me again or all these things. And nobody will ever, people have said this and it's true, nobody cares about my book. Nobody ever cared about my book as much as I did, not even my mother. And, so, [inaudible] more of a consequence to me, which truly like there are points when I said -- when like -- when like I've said things like I cannot change this semi-colon to an em-dash, it would actually ruin the integrity of the entire book [laughter], [inaudible]. And I felt that way and I'm glad that I stuck by what I believed in, even if I was afraid that everyone would be mad at me. People just aren't going to get that mad at you, I think is what -- is what I took away, probably, I don't know, maybe, who know [laughter]. >> Gowri K.: I have you -- I know, so dramatic [laughter]. Stop the bus. I have another answer, because you were talking about obsessions, right? And one of the things that I learned when writing my second book, right, is that like I had -- I felt early on that I can't write about the same things. I can't write about the same subjects that I did in my -- in my first book, because like, you know, people want to hear something else. People want to see that I moved on, right? Like, so it's like learning that like your obsessions can be your obsessions, that you can write about the same thing forever. It's like okay, right? Like if you have -- like if you want to -- if you want to write -- if I want to write about this cup for the rest of my life, I'm going to write about this cup. It's just like about like how you approach it, right? And like -- yeah, but like seeing things differently, and like that is also, yeah, obsessed over this and it's okay. Yeah. >> Gowri K.: I feel like one of the themes in both of your responses to that question kind of goes around giving yourself permission to do certain things, to say certain things, to take up space, take up space of opinion and integrity of your own work. Thank you both so much for your answers to all my questions. [ Applause ] Anne [assumed spelling] is going to come around with a wireless mic. If you could just raise your hand if you have a question for either one of our authors, or you can pose it to both authors together. And after we do our Q and A we will conclude with a book signing. >> Hello. Okay. So, first of all, this is so cool [inaudible]. It's really interesting to hear [inaudible]. So, my question is for Hieu actually. So, for part of my senior project I publish month [inaudible] journal for women online [inaudible]. And I was wondering if you've ever experienced with [inaudible] and what was your experience? >> Hieu Minh Nguyen: Yeah, of course. I'm going to be honest. Okay, so [laughter], I always thought like haiku is like the easy form, right? Like if I had to -- if I had an assignment due and like I don't think I could even write one more poem, this is going to be the haiku. But, also, like seeing how much care that people who take haiku seriously, right? Like, and like what it can do in that -- in those restrictions, right? And like seeing how other people navigate that form is like really inspiring to me. I feel like haiku won't let me come back to it, because like I disrespected it [laughter]. So, I'm like still asking for forgiveness, you know. But, it is something that I -- You know, have learned to take very seriously and not like something that I am going to do because I think it's easy, right, because it's not. Yeah. [ Inaudible ] >> Thank you so much. Just because there's a lot of laughter in here, I'm just wondering if you could talk about the roles of laughter and or humor, both in your writing process, when you [inaudible] people, and your own experience of like reading and writing your various forms that you do. >> Hieu Minh Nguyen: I think of humor as a way to kind of ask people to trust me, right? And that -- If I can't get you to laugh with me, right, like then I probably can't get you to like care about anything else I'm saying. Yeah, and that's the way I take the role of humor is. >> R. O. Kwon: I also think -- I feel as though it would just feel so false to write a whole book that left off at either end of the spectrum. If you're a purely comic writer or purely tragic, that just feels so -- it doesn't feel like my -- at least my experience of the world. I also feel as though the two -- the two really adapt to one another and it's often in the most tragic moments that like [inaudible] like a dash of comedy can make things even more powerful. I don't know if you read Alice Elliott Dark's In the Gloaming. This is a lovely short story, but there's this joke at the end. And I remember I was reading that story, and I made the mistake of reading that story in a cafe, and like at the joke I just started like sobbing convulsively. So, that -- somebody came around and was like, are you all right? Like, what's going on? I was like I just -- it's a story, there was a joke [laughter]. And, so, I think -- I think the two can be played off against each other in very effective ways. >> Gowri K.: We had a question up here in this second row, Anne. >> Okay, this is a question -- well, a comment and a question for Reese. So, I was having lunch, and I'm so glad that you ended with that comment about obsession and your writing process and how you sort of wrote everything over and over again. And I, as a reader of your work anyway, really appreciate that. And I was at lunch today with a bunch of writers who actually do crime fiction, things like that, and I was talking about how I was coming to this event tonight and I was excited and how it's very short. But, I feel like you must have started like an 800-page novel and then like over eight years [inaudible] it taken you. And you had sort of compressed it down and sort of taken out every fluff word, answer taken, like every eight word sentence and made it into four words until it meant the same thing and carried all the same emotion, and just -- but, you made it into this compressed, dense thing of emotion and sort of beauty and rhythm and that it actually took me a while to read just because I was -- just I had to re-read some of these sentences because they were just so magnificent. So, as a reader, thank you for taking that time, and those extra years, I think, really shows up. So, anyway, so that's my comment. The question is, as far as the POV of your novel, you know, like the real chapters I feel like are, you know, in sort of straightforward first person, and then the Phoebe ones, even though you get to the place where she's telling the story in her own words through recollection or Will, but I feel like they're actually still Will's chapters and he's interpreting for us what she, you know, told him or a story about her that he recalls or whatever. Was that intentional and have you -- I'm just wondering if anybody tried to [inaudible] hey, maybe we should, you know, like take out that Will filter and just make it straight Phoebe or whatever? I'm just curious. >> R. O. Kwon: So, as I mentioned in my reading, the novel alternates between three points of view, cult leader, Phoebe, and Will. And, in a lot of ways, I don't think I'm giving too much away by noting that the novel does indicate in a lot of ways that Will's the one really telling the whole novel. And, so, the first two years the novel was told entirely from Phoebe's point of view. And then I realized that, well, so Phoebe goes through a lot. Like she -- again, I don't think I'm giving too much away by that she loses a lot and then she sort of gains a lot in some ways. And then she -- you know, like she joins a radical cult and she is probably involved in blowing up a building. Like there's just like -- there's a lot of lived life experience there. And it became claustrophobic for me to remain just in her head. And I was thinking a lot about The Great Gatsby and the Nick Carraway with the novel [inaudible] by having him narrate the novel versus pretty much anyone else in the book. He's one of the most least of all characters in a lot of ways in these characters' lives. And, so, I found that when I stepped aside and let sort of -- and let somebody who loved Phoebe, but wasn't involved very much in the act -- in the sort of main action of the book, tell the book, it opened up -- like it opened up. It brought air into the room. It opened up a lot of sort of space to play. So, there's that. The second question about splitting up the book. So, I -- this is a question, and with first person novels I know a lot of people don't have any problem with this, but I found that I wanted the novel to have a reason to exist, even inside of its own fictional world. And, so, in some ways the novel comes about because Will's trying to understand what happened, what happened to this woman he loved and what happened to him, what happened to their relationship. And, so, that -- and he's sort of trying to -- he trying to understand. He's trying to explain it. And, so, that whole explanation is -- that attempt is the book. And, so, the novel -- I never wanted the novel, I found I never wanted the novel to stray outside of what Will could either know or imagine about what happened. And, so, that provided sort of like a very useful circle around what was possible. So, all of this sounds very intentional. It wasn't intentional [laughter]. Like I feel as though like nothing I did was [inaudible] choose or decided [inaudible] useable word. It was more like had to happen after 50,000 revision attempts. It's like, oh okay, yeah, this is what was supposed to happen. >> Gowri K.: I think we have time for one more question. Are there? [Inaudible]? Now I'm just calling people by name. >> Thank you so much to both of you for being here. I had a question about writing [inaudible] and the actual discipline of sitting yourself down and just, you know, unloading whatever you have onto the page, the screen. And I've been trying to find the balance between writing discipline and practice and self-care, because I feel like as someone who grew up in an immigrant home, I have internalized this idea that work is a very zero-some game, or either you're working and you are strung out, or you are, if you're not doing that or some form of that, then you are lazy. And I think just trying to navigate, you know, those values about work and applying them to creative life I found to be kind of a messy process. So, I was wondering what each of you had to say about that. >> Hieu Minh Nguyen: I think it's important to consider it work. That it's just -- it's not just like something that we are doing for fun, but it takes work and it takes effort and time. But, also, I think there's a -- I think it also takes like being kind to yourself when it's not working out. I forgot -- oh God. Okay, this is going to be so embarrassing. So, what is -- what is the name of the woman who wrote Eat, Pray, Love? Elizabeth Gilbert. Well, I was watching one of her Ted Talks [laughter] and my friend directed me to her Ted Talk. And she talks about in like, I think it was like Ancient Greece they believed in the spirit of the genius, right? And that [inaudible] and artists weren't actually like geniuses or whatever, but they had the spirit of a genius living in the walls of their studio. And, so, when they're in their studio and they're ready to create, sometimes the genius would come and use their body as a vessel to make art. And then when they're in their studio and they're unable to create something, it's because the genius is off somewhere else, right? And, so, that like takes away the pressure of like I need to be like this working machine. I need to be -- or, something is wrong with me if I'm not doing it. Why can't -- why can't I do it? And I like that idea. Thank you, Elizabeth Gilbert [laughter]. I also like the idea of considering it work, too. So, the -- so, yeah, so like there's -- I find like when I can't create something that I can edit something, right, something that I created before. And I think that, yeah, that's part of it. Like figuring out where your energy goes if it can't go towards the thing you want it to go to. >> R. O. Kwon: So, until December I had a very consistent answer for this, because I did really write pretty much every day for those 10 years. But, since December I've been writing so little fiction, and if I'm not writing fiction I feel a little dead inside, so I've been a little dead inside for a little while. It's okay. It's okay. I soon will get it back. But, the -- so, until December I had all kinds of rules in place. Like I did not have internet during the day. I didn't have a flip phone. I've been borrowing a smartphone so I could get around as I travel. I would not talk to anyone in the morning before I got to work, because if I got to writing because I didn't -- I wanted to go as fast as I can from my dream state to my writing. I wouldn't even eat until I had gotten like a solid hour of work or so in, because like I find food to be extremely pleasurable, and that's very distracting [laughter] if I'm at home writing. I -- oh man, all kinds of shit. But, it's been less useful lately, again because I've been doing all this other kind of stuff, which I don't regret, but it's not fiction writing. And, so, lately I've been taking -- I'm on the extreme other end of trying to do things. Like at the very least on a given trying to write for like five minutes or 10 minutes. At the very least by trying to -- at the very least trying -- like if I notice a word I want to use, like writing down that word. And, so just trying to stay in touch in some way with a part of myself that loves fiction and thrives on fiction and needs fiction to live. And so, yeah, I feel like those are two ends of -- two like very different kinds of ends. First, there's the [inaudible]. I was -- I was a -- you know, I was like a hermit in a -- hermit in the room answer, and then there's the I barely have time to write. But, I'm trying. And I'm trying to stay in touch with it every day to the extent I can. >> Gowri K.: Thank you all for your question. Can we please do a round of applause for [inaudible]? [ Applause ] >> Robert Casper: And thanks also -- thanks also to our moderator, and thanks to all of you for coming out. [ Applause ] The books are for sale in the back. We hope you get some. We hope you ask for autographs. And we would love to see you down the street on Monday, October 1. The kickoff for the fall Life of a Poet series with Ron Charles from the Washington Post with Marilyn Chin [assumed spelling]. So, if you're around, it will be a conversation that will hopefully be almost as luminating as this one this evening. So, thanks so much for coming out. And do get a book and see you soon. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.