>> Dianne Choie: This is so exciting!
Hi everyone! I don't know about
you.
We are in the presence of two
legends right now, am I right?
I mean, this is--
This is amazing. I'm so
excited.
--I also have to tell you,
for those of you who have not
picked up this book yet, you're
going to want to start it early
in the day because you won't
put it down.
And as soon as you finish it,
maybe in tears like I was,
you're going to want to go back
and look again at all the
beautiful art which we're going
to talk about today and just
revisit all these wonderful
characters that you're not going
to say goodbye to. So don't
start this too late in the day.
You're not going to want to
stay up too late spending all
the time. So I wanted to start
out, I know Gene, there is a
wonderful story about the
origin of the "Lunar New Year"
love story plot.
Can you tell us about that?
>> Gene Luen Yang: Yeah, sure I um.
I've been wanting to do a rom
com for a very long time, and
I've also wanted to work with
LeUyen Pham for a very long time
because we've been friends.
We've been friends since we were
both at the beginning of our
careers. The rom com part, I
think it's because I'm like,
really good at romance. [Laughing]
I'm just kidding. I'm not--
I'm not good at romance. You
don't need to shake your head,
though. >> LeUyen Pham: Sorry,
>> Gene Leun Yang: this is kind of rude.
--this book actually began
with a college girlfriend.
I dated this young woman for a
few years while I was in
college. I thought she was
super cute.
And one of the things I really
liked about her is she had lots
of opinions, you know,
especially about Valentine's
Day. She thought that
Valentine's Day was a scam
that corporations had made up
so that they could sell us candy
and cards and that sort of
thing.
So she wanted nothing to do
with it.
But I liked her a lot.
So I really wanted to celebrate
Valentine's Day with her.
And my my workaround was Lunar
New Year, you know, Lunar New
Year and Valentine's Day.
There are these two different
holidays on two different
calendars. One's on an eastern
calendar, the other one's on a
Western calendar, but they are
almost always right next to each
other. Like this year, there
are only four days apart.
Every time February rolled
around, I would ask my
girlfriend out to Lunar New
Year dinner.
I would buy her lunar presents.
I would draw her these Lunar
New Year cards with like dragons
and phoenixes in the shapes of
hearts.
And it totally worked.
She would always agree to go
with me.
So ever since then, Lunar New
Year and Valentine's Day have
had this connection for me in
my head.
Now. Now that that girlfriend
eventually dumped me for a bunch
of different reasons. You know,
I was very immature at the time
for sure. But she also told me
that she wanted to be a nun.[Laughing]
So--so--so we stayed broken up
for a year and--and after, like
during that year--my--my life
really changed.
Like I started teaching high
school, I started publishing
comics. And then by the end of
that year, she called me up and
she told me that she had
decided she wasn't going to be a
nun. And then a year after that
we got married [Applause] and--and now we
have now--we have four kids.
--Now we have four kids.
So on my side, at least, that
was the beginning of this book.
>> Dianne Choie: That's amazing.
That is the best story.
It's so sweet.
I have to say though, our main
character in the book,
Valentina, she does not feel so
warm and fuzzy about Valentine's
Day. And it's not just the
commercialism. There's actually
a little more to it.
There's sort of a curse that
she thinks is going on.
Could you both tell us a little
bit about that?
>> Gene Luen Yang: Well, Valentina is 
in some ways a cartoon version of Pam.
>> LeUyen Pham: No, no, no. What happened 
was when Gene and I started, first
started to work on this, gene
had like, this great idea to do
this romance and the story.
When he introduced it to me, he
was introducing to me this girl.
And he was--we were--we started
off with all these conversations
about our own dating histories
and who was we dated.
So I just started filling in
Gene with all of my like, love
atrocities that I've gone
through since high school, and I
have a lot of them. I have a
lot of just terrible, terrible
stories. And just like Theresa
Gene's wife, like, I never cared
for Valentine's Day, but it was
because a lot of it came from
the way the story was sort of
structured, too.
I used to make Valentines when
I was a kid, like my--my--my
parents never bought those
store, bought Valentines for us,
you know, like we were
immigrants.
They didn't understand what it
was about.
They just weren't going to
shell out five bucks for a bunch
of cards. So I was always the
kid where in--you know--when I
was a kid--you would
--They would pass out those
Valentine's cards and I would be
the only one that never had a
Valentine's card to give.
So I would draw Valentine's
cards for people and like, and
hand them out. And that's a
little bit of where sort of the
story came from. But
Valentine's Day always just
seemed like the cheesiest, most
corporate kind of creepy.
I'm so with Theresa on that
one.
I'm sorry--and--and also
because I've had such so many
crazy sort of dating
atrocities.
--it is true.[Laughs]
Like, I think I came in with a
little bit more of a little more
pessimistic about what love is
supposed to be.
But Vietnamese culture in
general, the character we--we
agreed early on that she was
going to be Vietnamese.
And so a lot of my own history
got woven into that, because
we're just sort of writing
about the fabric of our own
lives. And so the Vietnamese,
if there are any Vietnamese
people out there, we love
tragedy, right?
We are all about sadness.
Like every soap opera, die ends
with someone dying.
Every fairy tale, like the
beautiful princess, always
throws herself off a cliff or
has to prove herself.
And so, like, we're just all
about tragedy.
So a lot of that dovetailed
very nicely with how this
character was going to approach
cynically the idea of love and
curses, and there's a
generational idea, and then
there's and--then there's like
the historical idea of what goes
behind it.
>> Dianne Choie: Oh, I love that.
And you really do get that
sense of Val when you're reading
the story, that she has this
romantic heart that really wants
that beautiful love story and
also lives for maybe some of the
--the drama of heartbreak.
But her bestie, her best friend
Bernice, she has a very
different. Take on love.
There's actually a quote that I
loved where she's like,  it's all
a game , which--Like, oh, that
it were that easy, right?
Can you tell us a little bit
about Bernice and their
relationship? I loved their
friendship in the story.
>> Gene Luen Yang: I do have to say, 
you know, I've gotten the pleasure of working
with a bunch of different
artists on different projects,
but--But this is the one where
the artist actually bled into
the writing the most.
And I think some of that is
because the main character is a
young woman, and I just needed
like a woman's perspective.
Right? The book really needed a
woman's perspective.
So that--that relationship,
specifically the relationship
between Val and her best friend
Bernice, LeUyen really fleshed
that out.
>> LeUyen Pham: Well, Bernice is 
like--like everyone knows Bernice, right?
If you've read the book,
everybody knows who Bernice is.
And also, Bernice was like the
girl that hung out with your
group all the time, right?
>> Gene Luen Yang: Yeah. 
>> LeUyen Pham: Your group of guys
there was the one Bernie's character.
>> Gene Luen Yang: That's right, that's 
right. Yeah. Like very early on, I was
told that the only kind of girl
I know how to write in my
stories is the one girl in an all  
guy friend group, because
that was the girl that I hung
out with most when I was young.
Right? Yeah.
So Bernie's is a little bit
like that.
>> LeUyen Pham: It's a little bit 
like that in my head.
Bernie's was my character as an
adult, and then Val was my
character as a kid.
Like, I think that's what it
was, sort of like--the voice, the
--the no, sorry.
Not me as an adult. Me in my
20s.
So I'm--I'm cynical.
I'm hard,realistic.
I haven't yet met Mike.
Mike, my partner in life yet.
And so I'm going to be--I'm
going to just be enjoying life.
That's Bernie's. And then Val
is the kid in you that never
sort of gave up on the whole
idea of everything.
>> Dianne Choie: Yes, definitely. 
I mean, our attitudes change, right?
As we have experiences, as we
hopefully get more mature.
And actually, that brings us to
so the story, if you're kind of
starting to piece it together,
if you haven't read it, it's
about this teenager, Valentina,
her best friend, her kind of
adventures in love.
But her family also plays a
really important role.
And so there's not just
romantic love in the story, but
also this wonderful familial
love.
So Val is just with her dad.
It's just the two of them.
And I noticed that the way he
shows love is through
protection. He wants to keep
her safe.
He wants her to, you know, not
feel sadness or pain, which I
know is common for parents
universally.
But can you talk to us more
about that, and maybe your own
experiences being parents and
having been parented?
Tell us about that
relationship.
>> LeUyen Pham: Gene always likes 
to laugh because his daughters have to
read this book and he's like, I
don't want to have her, you
know, watching the kissing
parts, the kissing parts,
whatever. Gene.
Go ahead.
>> Gene Luen Yang: I think--you know, 
so, like I said, my wife and I have four
kids, and I'm a--I'm kind of an
anxious person.
Luckily, my wife is not.
My wife is, is much more
securely attached to her own
family and to the world.
I'm a very anxious person, and
that anxiety kind of informs the
way I--I parent, you know, and
early on when my kids were young
especially, I felt like my
desire to protect them often got
in the way of them just living
and experiencing life.
And it took me a long time to
figure out that--love
and safety aren't always the
same thing.
Keeping somebody safe doesn't
always--.
Isn't always the best
expression of--of love for them.
>> LeUyen Pham: Yeah, there is.
There is in this story.
Um, it's funny, this is the
first young adult story I've
ever done because I'm mostly a
picture book person.
So to approach the story,
usually I approach it with my
own background, my own history.
But I realized as I was reading
the script for this one, that
the character I identified with
the most was the father.
Because the father is my age.
And when you realize that
suddenly that character who on
the page doesn't have that many
lines.
He's got a lot of meaning in
his actions and his intent, and
a lot of unspoken emotions that
have to come out in the few
panels that he occupies the
page so that you understand that
relationship. And in fact,
that's always the limitation
with graphic novels, is that
you only get a certain number of
panels to communicate an
emotion, to communicate the way
a person actually feels.
So you just have such little
real estate to establish who
this character is.
And in fact, all the characters
are like that.
The grandparents, all--all the
different generations that are
represented for like immigrant
Asians in particular, we have
this connection with our past
that we can't let go because
we're constantly reminded by
your parents, like, this is what
we did for you, this is how you
got here.
This is what we sacrificed.
And so it weighs in on almost
all of your decisions in life.
And there's something lovely in
Val's character because she's
--she's one step apart from that.
She wasn't exposed to her
family.
She gets exposed to them very
quickly later, and to an extent,
it's a little bit, I think what
I felt growing up because my my
family came over from Vietnam
and we didn't know any of my--
my--my extended family beyond
that.
So what little Vietnamese
culture I had was only from my
parents, and they were so busy
working that they couldn't pass
some of that stuff on. So it
was a it was a nice opportunity
to have the character Val be
introduced to the Vietnamese
culture, as I'm kind of
grasping it and speaking to my
mother and speaking of mothers
like the grandmother in there,
the grandmother is my mother,
and my mother is never going to
read this book, but she she
carries it around in her purse [Laughs]
like the grandmother in the
book is.
My I just drew my mother in the
book, and she carries around in
her purse, and she keeps
telling all of her friends,
she'll go to church and she'll
pull out and she's like, look
what my daughter wrote about
me.
It's not. But that's what she
says.
None of her friends are going
to read it, so they just believe
her, too. And Gene is nobody
in her life.
I'm so sorry, Gene. You don't
even exist in the book.
>> Dianne Choie: That is a perfect segue.
I wanted to touch on one other
showing of love, and that is the
grandmother. And it's through
food.
So she, the grandmother, is
Vietnamese.
She's bringing all this
beautiful looking Vietnamese
food bags of it to the house.
Have you eaten yet ? I think a
lot of us can identify with
that, right? Those relatives
that show you how much they care
about you by just feeding you
and sometimes feeding you and
feeding you and feeding you.
I did notice throughout the
book you so beautifully
illustrated all the different
kinds of food that they're
eating Vietnamese, Chinese.
They're also eating like
Italian food, you know, like all
the different things. I was
wondering if food was something
you talked about as an
important element of the story.
>> LeUyen Pham: Did we?
>> Gene Luen Yang: Well, I think we 
talked a lot about Lunar New Year and Lunar
New Year. Food is like such a
huge part of how Asians and
Asian Americans celebrate Lunar
New Year that it just food was
naturally a part of that, you
know?
And--I think--this might be true
for, for most immigrant parents,
but especially Asian immigrant
parents.
They don't express that they
love you through words.
Right. And if they ever try,
everybody just feels really
awkward about it. So the way,
the way they do it is through
food.
>> LeUyen Pham: Yeah, that's absolutely true.
And there's a lot of like, food
symbolism, you know, in the idea
of Lunar New Year. Anyway,
there's like the moon cakes that
represent the sun and the earth
and, and there's just so much in
food that really is part of the
Asian culture.
You're absolutely right. It's
how you express love.
It's how you express
connections with everyone else.
That whole image, there's an
image where the grandmother is
carrying in like a laundry
basket.
That's my mom. That's what she
does every Thanksgiving.
Like, we will invite her to
Thanksgiving, we will have a
turkey. We will have all the
American foods.
Regardless, she will bring  75
of food and just shove the
turkey aside.
Dried turkey is the worst to
eat, but you can eat Vietnamese
food for days and days. It
keeps really, really well.
So yeah, it's absolutely true.
Food becomes very, very
important in this story.
>> Dianne Choie: I love that, and that 
actually brings us to how Asian American
this story is. So Val, who
we've been talking about, she is
Vietnamese American.
There are also characters who
are Chinese American, Korean
American. And actually we did
not do this on purpose.
But Gene is Chinese-American,
Wen is Vietnamese American, and
I'm Korean American. [Crosstalk]
We're kind of like a little
mini version.
We all three are cultures that
celebrate Lunar New Year.
And I thought you just so
beautifully showed some of the
similarities, like those
celebrations, but also the
differences. I have to admit, I
am Korean American.
I was learning about the lion
dance, the Korean version from
your book. I was not really
that familiar, actually.
Could you talk a little bit
about the Lion dance in
particular? That's a very
important theme, not just for
Lunar New Year in general, but
in the story.
>> Gene Luen Yang: Yeah, yeah. I mean, 
in the early outlines of the story, Lion
dance was not part of it. I
just knew that it was going to
be about Valentine's Day and
Lunar New Year, and I don't know
why it took so long for us to
land on lion dance, because when
we did it, just everything fit
together, you know?
Because because lion dancing is
essentially two young people
sweating under a sheet, right?[Laughing]
So it's like, so perfect for a
rom com.
It's like metaphorically
perfect for a rom com.
And we had a lot of help.
We had a lot of help. We had
Lion Dance consultants.
We had an official consultant
that was hired to help us out.
Her name is Shifu Mimi chan.
She runs a studio out of
Florida.
And if you've ever been to
Epcot Center and you've seen
lion dancing at the Chinese
Pavilion, that's her team that
does that.
>> LeUyen Pham: She's also the model 
for "Mulan."
>> Gene Luen Yang: That's right. 
>> LeUyen Pham: She modeled for  Mulan .The character.
The Disney character? Yeah, way
back in the day.
But when--when I wasn't able to
go to Florida, but because as
the artist, I had to really
understand how the line dancing
stuff worked. I had to go and
research someone on this coast.
Sorry. We're on the wrong
coast. On the West coast.
And--And Mimi referred me to
another--another instructor,
Sifu Richard O.
Yao, out in San Francisco.
And that was like, I went to
this thing with him.
He had his whole troupe perform
for me.
He was like a Zen master.
He was incredible and he didn't
understand what the heck I was
doing there. I think he was
just it was like a favor to--to
Mimi. He didn't know what I
was--what I was trying to do.
So I was asking a ton of
questions about, you know, what
is the costume? How does it
work?
He talked about how a fish, the
real way you're supposed to do
it is you've got--you have to
have a priest that comes and
blesses the outfit.
So they run sort of an oil from
the tip of the horn all the way
down to the tail, that it has
to go through the sort of very
conventional way to be
considered traditional lion
dance. And then the way he
described it was so beautiful,
he was saying, if any of you
guys have ever seen a lion
dance. So, you know, the most
powerful thing that you feel
from it is the drums, right?
The drums are incredibly loud.
And in fact, if they're hitting
it just right, not only is it
establishing the tempo for the
lion dancers, but you feel it in
your chest. You know, when you
start to feel that collapse in
your chest because it's so
hard. It's so heavy.
So he was talking about the
importance of the drums, because
what the drum does is it
establishes the heartbeat of the
lion. And if you feel the
heartbeat of the lion, the
dancers follow in sync with the
heartbeat of the lion.
And therefore those two people
essentially become one creature
with a single heart.
That was the perfect metaphor
for a love story.
And I thought, Gene is a
genius.
He's so smart.
And then he tells me the whole
sweating under a sheet thing,
and I'm like, what? [Laughing]
>> LeUyen Pham: What the what?
>> Gene Luen Yang: It's the same idea. 
Same idea.
No no no no. [Laughing]
I have to say, like, you know,
I do also draw.
I didn't draw this comic, but I
do also draw.
So I know something about what
it takes to--to draw in.
And the way LeUyen was able to
capture movement in the lion
dance scenes in the--in the book
is just like, it's--she's
uniquely talented, you know,
like--like the fact that the lion
looks like a single entity, but
you can still see the bodies
underneath. I can tell you as
an artist, that is very--very
difficult. And she pulled it
off all the way through.
>> Dianne Choie: [Laughs] Agreed. I'm 
actually shocked to hear, Gene, that the lion dance
element was not there from the
beginning, because it is such a
perfect metaphor, not just for
a partnership, but also when Val
is learning the dance and she's
a little off.
It's sort of like when you're
starting a new relationship and
you're starting to get to know
each other, and maybe you don't
totally agree on things, or
maybe your communication styles
are a little different. It was
just like, so perfect.
I cannot believe that came in
later.
That is--that is shocking.
It worked out so well and
agreed that when just you--you
showed it so beautifully.
If you don't know, and I think
I didn't really know, there's a
person in front who controls
the head of the lion, and then
there's someone behind who has
to bend down, and you really
have to move in complete sync,
as you were saying, when and--and
the way you drew it, I was
like, I am learning right now
how this works. It's really
you.
You have to pick up the book
and see it.
It's--it's amazing.
Another thing I wanted to talk
about was, oh, this was a small
element, but I noticed that
when Val's grandmother is
speaking in Vietnamese to her
son Val's father, you did not
translate the Vietnamese.
And I thought that was a really
interesting for me.
Like, I didn't know what they
were saying and I could have,
like, gotten out of Google
Translate, but I chose to keep
it how it was. Can you talk a
little bit about that decision?
>> Gene Luen Yang: I mean, a big part 
of the book is this young woman, Val, who's
been disconnected with her
culture.
Right. She doesn't grow up
celebrating Lunar New Year.
She doesn't really even grow up
speaking a lot of Vietnamese.
So part of the purpose of the
book is as Val learns about
Lunar New Year, as Val learns
about her own culture, connects
with her own Asian American
identity.
The reader is along for the
ride, is along for the journey.
So--So for those pieces, we
wanted the reader to kind of
feel the way Val would.
>> LeUyen Pham: In fact, if.
You can't understand what's
happening your resort, you have
to resort to the body language,
to what it is that--they're
showing emotionally.
That's exactly what it's like
to be in a household where
Vietnamese is spoken. So rapid
fire that you don't understand
what's happening. So you. I
could only watch like my parents
postures to see at some point
what it was that they were
talking about. And that's---
that's great in that way, it
sort of puts you in the
uncomfortable position that Val
is in to struggle to understand
what's going on, but to have to
read body cues instead of
anything else.
>> Dianne Choie: Yeah, I love that you 
brought up body language, because another
element of the story that makes
it not just very Asian American,
but very now there is a huge
element of text, text, cell
phones, and that is also rapid
fire.
But you're not getting any of
those facial expressions tone
body positions. Tell us about
how you incorporated that.
I feel like that's still
something that storytellers are
struggling with. How do you
incorporate technology into
storytelling?
>> Gene Luen Yang: Yeah, yeah, I think 
that's totally true.
I think in a lot of ways,
technology has made it more
difficult to bring drama into
your stories.
You know what I mean? Like--like
--like because communication is so
easy sometimes it's difficult
to center stories where
miscommunication is a large
part of it.
But--but we I think we leaned
into exactly what you were
talking about, how sometimes
with text you don't get the
emotion behind the text.
So you need to you need to show
the emotion in other ways in
your story. I don't know.
>> LeUyen Pham: I'm finding texts to 
be really like my husband.
Um, one year for Christmas.
You know what he did? He took
all the texts that we've written
to each other from, like, the
first year.
I think 2008 was the earliest,
and he put it in a book like he
made it all into a little book.
You flip through those, there's
a history there.
There's like grocery lists of
things that you ate in 2012.
There's like the restaurants
that you went to, the friends
who were breaking up, that
you're texting each other about,
the pictures that you're
sending each other of, like,
different places from around
the world.
Like, there's a lot to be said
in that small collection of
memories that you spend not
even like a tiny bit of your
brain to invest into.
But it's like I think you were
talking earlier about.
You can see the insides of the
pockets of President Abraham
Lincoln when he was shot. Like
it's on display here.
That's what texts are.
There are these little remnants
of slices of your life that you
don't think about, but that
actually add up to a whole full
life. So there's something in
that in this.
Even though I know you talk a
lot about texts--about digital,
--about social media sort of
distancing you in a weird way,
it's also a catalog of of our
lives.
And for young people, it's
probably a very in-depth
catalog.
>> Dianne Choie: Absolutely. I'm just 
thinking if someone collected all of my
texts, I think I would be
mortified.
>> LeUyen Pham: What have you got there, 
Diane?
>> Dianne Choie: It would just be, like, so
dumb.
That's the real thing. Like, it
would be like the dumbest memes
anyway. But that's that's so
sweet that he did that, I love
that.