Chang-rae Lee, MY YEAR ABROAD
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[3:19]Today's episode has been sponsored by Chicken Soup for the Soul, making me time 101 stories
[3:25]about self care and balance edited by Amy Newmark. This is a fantastic collection of essays.
[3:32]And everyone will find something relatable and that they can use to make their lives better
[3:36]within these essays. Cheng Rei Li is the author of Native Speaker, winner of the Hemingway Foundation
[3:44]slash Penn Award for First Fiction, as well as the author of On Such a Fulsi, A Gesture Life,
[3:51]A Loft, and The Surrendered, which was the winner of the Dayton Peace Prize and a finalist
[3:55]for the Pulitzer Prize. He currently teaches writing at Stanford University. And today we're
[4:00]going to talk about his latest novel, which is called My Year Abroad.
[4:04]Welcome, Cheng Rei. Thank you so much for coming on momstone of time to read books.
[4:07]Oh, my pleasure. First of all, I feel like I am catching you at such a moment because
[4:12]just this weekend, you were like front page of The New York Times book review and another review
[4:18]elsewhere. And like you're just everywhere. What does that feel like to you to wake up and see
[4:23]your book and your life sort of clustered on all traditional media? What is that like?
[4:28]Well, you know what, today the truth, I try not to look at those things for a while.
[4:34]I do, however, and especially reviews, you know, sometimes a profile I'll read just
[4:40]just out of curiosity, but I try not to read reviews until after the book is out for a while.
[4:45]Just so, you know, my head's clear and, you know, I want to talk about the things I want to talk
[4:49]about, you know, even scores, but also because I respect, you know, that that's their job and
[4:58]that's their opinion. And it's all fine and dandy. But I did get, you know, my phone did blow up a
[5:04]little bit. I bet. Yeah. I thought of all the news and, you know, kudos and congrats,
[5:11]which is always so wonderful, you know, and, you know, I've been lucky in the past, you know,
[5:15]gotten some nice, you know, recognition and notices for my previous book. So, and I'm not just
[5:21]not to say that this is old hat for me, but it's gratifying. And, you know, one writes a book,
[5:26]and you never know what's going to happen. And you just, I suppose all you really want is the chance
[5:30]to get in front of people's, you know, get their attention just for a little bit and see if they might,
[5:35]you know, want to take a look. So that's, you know, a writer, the writer's art is a solitary one,
[5:44]but in the end, you know, we do want people to shoot. We do want to share our work. So that's great.
[5:49]Well, yes, I am familiar with your past accolades as well, but I don't know. I just thought I should
[5:53]bring up the current. Well, people have been commenting. Friends have been commenting. This is a
[5:59]lot of photographs, I guess, in one article. And I was in those photographs, I was wearing like board shorts
[6:05]and a Hawaiian shirt and people were commenting on how skinny my legs were. So I kept telling
[6:11]people, well, had I known they were going to take pictures like that? I would have been bulking
[6:14]up this whole pandemic. Yeah, exactly. That's the code of the, like, the ankle lift machine or
[6:19]something. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Well, tell me a little bit about how you even started writing,
[6:25]like, take me back to the beginning. And like, when did you know you were a writer? And like,
[6:29]when did you realize, like novels were your thing? And tell me the whole thing.
[6:33]Well, professionally, I didn't really know until quite late that, you know, probably
[6:40]in graduate school, working on my first novel that was published. I wrote a novel before that
[6:46]that was never published. And I think that was the first time I felt as if that I was taking it
[6:52]as seriously as, say, my teachers were taking me. You know, I think before that I hoped to be a
[7:00]writer. I had dreams of being a writer. I had fantasies of being famous and, you know, writing
[7:07]great books, rather than really being focused and committed to actually writing a good book.
[7:14]Those are two very different things. You know, and I think, you know, obviously, you know, everyone
[7:19]would love to be, you know, wonderful or something. But especially, I think with, you know,
[7:25]the idea of the great, the great writer, right? Someone who's inspired by the gods and somehow,
[7:31]you know, flowing through their veins onto the, onto the pages, you know, beauty and glory.
[7:36]But, but I think I was pretending more and hoping and maybe that at that point, you know,
[7:42]because I'd always loved reading. I'd always love enjoyed writing, you know, as a schoolboy and
[7:47]and as I grew older, but actually thinking, I have to do this work and I care about doing this
[7:53]work rather than I want to be a writer and I care about being, you know, the posture and position
[8:02]of a writer. And maybe I was too focused on that. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And when you say you grew
[8:08]up, like, loving to read and all that, like, what is your, what are some of your go-to books or the
[8:12]types of books that you like to read? And even now. Well, now I read all kinds of books. I read
[8:18]novels, of course. And, you know, I'm a pretty passionate newspaper reader, I guess, online now,
[8:24]newspaper reader. But when I was a kid, I had a slightly different reading, I would say,
[8:31]reading, you know, kind of beginnings. Most kids, you know, they had to read all the classic
[8:36]children's books and what they're introduced to those by their parents. And because my parents
[8:41]were immigrants and, you know, weren't really comfortable in English and had no idea about the books
[8:45]that they were supposed to show me, I didn't have anyone read to me. I, you know, depended on
[8:52]librarians and my teachers. And so I ended up just kind of on my own, you know, I remember joining
[9:00]book of the month. My parents signed me up for a book of the month club. And, but they had no
[9:04]idea what to choose. So, you know, in the funny way, I was left to my, my own devices. And I picked
[9:10]these really strange books that probably weren't suitable for young kids. The truth comes out.
[9:19]Right. How book of the month destroyed, angry, trajectory.
[9:23]Right. Yeah. So that's, you know, I was, I guess, just as well.
[9:29]You know, it's interesting to hear you describe yourself as a, as like an avid newspaper reader.
[9:34]I love reading newspapers and I read them in print. And I felt like I keep longing to talk to
[9:39]somebody who also reads them in print too, but it seems to just be me.
[9:42]Well, we used to until recently that my wife said, no, it just, we just too much paper around. It's
[9:47]yeah, I don't want to recycle it all. So yeah, my husband keeps taking all the papers and throwing
[9:52]them into the fire. And I feel like I can't even read them fast enough. You know, I'm like, wait,
[9:57]I haven't read that section. Give me five minutes. Anyway,
[10:00]Well, tell me about my year abroad and did you have to do research to do this?
[10:04]Like tell me about, you know, witness protection and sketchy people and escalates and,
[10:09]you know, writing skateboards around cold sex and like all of that.
[10:13]Like how do you, how did you come up with that type of stuff?
[10:17]How did you inhabit these different characters?
[10:20]Well, as you're suggesting, there's a wide range of characters, the locales, situations.
[10:26]You know, I did kind of want to cram the entire world into this book.
[10:32]And the book was a lot longer if you can believe it.
[10:35]Really?
[10:37]But it's like anything else, you know, the China parts I had been doing research,
[10:41]like my last novel had a China component to it.
[10:45]And so, you know, about seven to 10 years ago, I was doing a lot of research on modern,
[10:51]and a modern Chinese history in contemporary China.
[10:54]So that part helped with a part of the story, and particularly the heroes of the story
[10:59]of the Chinese business man in this novel named Pong.
[11:03]But the other stuff, you know, I guess it's just about being in life and also the narrator
[11:09]of this novel, Tiller is a 20-year-old kid.
[11:12]And because I'm a college professor and now my daughters are in their early 20s, I just have
[11:18]a, you know, I spend a lot of time with 20-something-year-olds, and I, you know, as most
[11:26]writers are, I think we're pretty attentive to how people talk, the kinds of things
[11:31]they're interested in, and how they're in the world.
[11:35]And so I think it was, in some ways, it came naturally to me, even though I'm in my mid-50s,
[11:41]maybe being a college professor too, you know, my students never grow old, you know?
[11:47]They're always the same age, and sometimes, sometimes, you know, it sounds pathetic,
[11:52]but sometimes I kind of feel like, oh, I'm the same age.
[11:55]Well, we'll pretend, well, we'll pretend, you know, that I'm just sitting in class and,
[12:01]you know, I don't see how old I am to them, and we're just talking.
[12:05]And so I think I think through osmosis and delight, you know, I've taken up a lot of their
[12:12]interests, and of course, these days with the way social media is and the internet,
[12:17]you know, so much information is at hand, and not just for me as the writer, but as, you
[12:23]know, for the character, I, you know, for the purpose of thinking about this 20-year-old
[12:27]kid, you know, so much is, you know, within his grasp to know and to mimic and to, you
[12:35]know, kind of play back to us, and so, yeah, research is easier than it's been, but I still
[12:42]think you have to go out in the world, which I tell my students.
[12:45]And was any of it at all, based on your real life, I know that, like, novelists hate to
[12:49]be asked that question, but I'm always so curious.
[12:51]Like, did you have a moment where you snuck into a, you know, like a member's only golf club
[12:55]as a caddy, and, you know, like, did any of that stuff happen to you?
[12:59]Well, you know, I do play some golf, so I know about caddies, and I did do karaoke, and
[13:08]I go to Korea, I don't know, I'm mostly just a, you know, listener, the singer, so there
[13:15]are a couple things that, you know, obviously that I've had experience with other things
[13:19]in the novel.
[13:20]I'm glad to say that I didn't have any personal experience with, you know, given the
[13:25]extreme nature of a lot of the stuff that happens, but that, of course, that's the fun part
[13:29]of writing, right?
[13:30]Yeah.
[13:31]You can go anywhere you want, and most of all, maybe most importantly is, you know, sometimes
[13:36]we write out of our desires for something, but our fears of something, and so that's
[13:42]sometimes, you know, where lots of scenes in this novel and other novels might come from.
[13:47]So what are you really afraid of?
[13:49]Afraid of pain.
[13:50]Okay.
[13:51]Rejection.
[13:52]You've got like, it's okay.
[13:54]You know, just humiliation, you know, all those things, all the things that happen to
[13:59]tiller, and maybe it'll also, you know, in a more real vein, you know, losing someone
[14:05]you love.
[14:06]Yeah.
[14:07]And that, you know, as a fear that I've had all my life, and I still have, especially
[14:12]now with daughters, and, you know, I think about them.
[14:15]And that's the stuff of what drives, I think, you know, a lot of writers that is on specific
[14:22]kind of fear or things.
[14:24]And then we find the shape of them in seemingly unrelated scenes, but it's still there.
[14:30]And do you feel like it helps?
[14:32]Like, do you feel like after you address it in fiction, you feel any better?
[14:36]Or do you still carry around the same fears?
[14:38]Like, do you?
[14:39]No, you don't feel better.
[14:42]You, I think you maybe can maybe not understand it, but kind of can live with it a little
[14:51]bit.
[14:52]You can walk around it, peer at it, maybe, and maybe it becomes something that becomes
[14:58]more complex.
[14:59]You know, just like people, right?
[15:01]The more you know somebody, the more complicated they really become.
[15:05]And if you want to continue thinking about them at least, and they are who they are, that's
[15:10]about it.
[15:11]And also writing about the fear, at least now you sort of shared your fear issues with
[15:17]all of us, right?
[15:18]So now we also feel those fears if we didn't already.
[15:21]So it's really like a contagion.
[15:23]Like, okay, if you guys feel as scared as I do about these different things, it'll somehow
[15:27]make me feel a little better.
[15:29]Yeah.
[15:30]It's a little lonely all vicariously, you know, experienced life.
[15:34]Sometimes we don't want to experience life, right?
[15:36]Because it's just too much.
[15:37]Yeah.
[15:38]Yeah.
[15:39]That's the job of novelists and friends.
[15:42]And to many, I feel like a good novel is like a really close friend.
[15:46]I mean, that's why so many people turn to novels and like the worst times of their lives
[15:51]and, you know, you can escape immediately.
[15:53]And I don't know.
[15:54]You know, I think that's absolutely right.
[15:56]You know, it gives you a way to live in a consciousness that you wouldn't choose yourself,
[16:01]but that you can, you know, play out things with, right?
[16:06]Because it's not just that you're passively reading stuff that happens.
[16:08]You're also kind of thinking back on it and thinking, thinking upon it and thinking about
[16:13]yourself in those situations, you know, it's an active experience.
[16:17]Yes.
[16:18]It's not just watching.
[16:19]No.
[16:20]Totally.
[16:21]Yeah.
[16:22]And your emotions get so triggered by it as well.
[16:23]Right.
[16:24]You're in it.
[16:26]I, the amount of times I've like closed my eyes, you know, hands over my eyes while
[16:30]reading, like peeking through my fingers, like this is not going well.
[16:34]Well, did you have that, did you have that feeling working for a book?
[16:40]I read the whole thing.
[16:41]I was okay.
[16:42]It was okay.
[16:43]I made it through.
[16:44]I made it through.
[16:45]So what was your writing process like like for this book in particular, like do you outline
[16:50]it ahead of time?
[16:51]How do you do you have like an office where you have posted everywhere?
[16:54]What is your sort of writing environment look like?
[16:57]Well, I don't have posted everywhere.
[16:59]I do, I do write little notes to myself, but sometimes I don't look at those notes
[17:05]or I lose them.
[17:06]I think it's more a way to put down things and then the things that stick, I kind of
[17:11]don't have to rely on notes for.
[17:15]They kind of build up in my head.
[17:16]So I do do some planning, but those are, you know, those plans are pretty general.
[17:23]Right.
[17:24]So I like to find my way to those plans.
[17:28]If I'm diverted by some interesting thing a character says or this digression feels right,
[17:34]I'll just go with it.
[17:35]And if that's something that I've learned over the years is not to try to engineer things
[17:40]too much, because when you engineer things too much, it can kind of feel flat and a
[17:46]little bit airless.
[17:48]And especially this book, which is so much about, you know, what what life is and what
[17:52]vitality is and, you know, what it is to feel something.
[17:56]I didn't want it, certainly didn't want this book to be, to feel like it was a planned
[18:01]out.
[18:02]Well, I mean, it takes a considerable amount of skill to do that.
[18:05]I mean, if I sat down and tried to just wing it, it might not work that well.
[18:10]I mean, so I feel like you need to get to a place of sort of mastery of some of the
[18:16]finer points of fiction.
[18:17]I mean, I know there's some people who are just starting out who have to map it almost
[18:21]like a screenplay, right, with different beats and different this.
[18:24]And, you know, I mean, I don't think that's that's unhelpful.
[18:29]I think that's that can be good.
[18:30]I just I would just always say, yeah, map the whole thing out, but don't let yourself
[18:34]do it.
[18:35]You know, once you're in a certain place and if things are happening in an interesting
[18:39]way that you hadn't planned, don't try to bend it back towards that other plan.
[18:44]Because because maybe you're not ultimately interested in another plan, you know, we
[18:49]actually don't know what we're interested in half the time when we start an album.
[18:54]We think we're interested in this in X, but actually it's X prime or Y or Z. And once
[19:00]you figure that out, that's when, you know, you're writing something that's distinctive
[19:04]and singular and just you rather than writing something you think you should write for
[19:09]someone else.
[19:10]It's also, I mean, you could have just said that same thing about life, right?
[19:13]We try to make all these plans and we have all these things in our calendar and yet maybe
[19:18]we get there and we don't want to go to that event, right?
[19:22]Exactly.
[19:23]And I'll just like guide posts to make you feel like you have a path, but really we'd
[19:28]just end up doing whatever we want in the end essentially.
[19:31]Right.
[19:32]Well, and that's what people always ask and you know, me sometimes, what was your path
[19:35]and journey?
[19:36]What was your story as a writer?
[19:38]And I say, as a storyteller, I know there is no story if that's all just a dream.
[19:44]It's all something that we put up on our lives after the fact to make sense of it and
[19:49]to make sense of it to other people.
[19:51]But actually, no, there's no story.
[19:54]There's no story.
[19:55]Things happen for good, for bad, for, you know, for worse.
[20:00]sometimes, but I don't know. We need to make sense of it. Sure. That's why we tell ourselves story.
[20:06]But no, no, there's no sense of it at all. This doesn't mean that it's hopeless. It's just,
[20:12]you know, just accept the fact that you're a storyteller.
[20:18]I feel like my high school English teacher used to say that fiction is really just the illustration
[20:24]kind of change. So I feel like in that way, you know, story, it is almost a story. I mean,
[20:31]everything, right? We are content. Everything is a story, but don't, it's, but we don't play out
[20:38]stories, right? I mean, you know, my life as a success story or my life to hear a story, a story
[20:46]of reconciliation or a story of, you know, it's great to say. And it's great to put that. And if
[20:52]if you can live well by it, sure, right? But I don't really feel like that's, that's really the way it
[20:57]goes. That's true. And going back to the novel, I always felt like that's, you know, that's sort of
[21:04]how I thought of, you know, the people in the novel is that they're not, they're not planning
[21:11]anything. I mean, especially the hero, the novel, he's, he's just kind of on the rough seas
[21:17]and just kind of being tossed about and, and trying to make sense of all these things for his own
[21:22]life. Wow. So what did you do with all of the stuff that didn't make it into the book? Where is it?
[21:28]Is it like what are you going to do with it? Or is it just on the cutting room floor, so to speak?
[21:33]No, it is. Yeah, it's, it's not in snippets here and there. There's some scenes that I really
[21:37]like that. You know, I wish could have been in there, but when they're funny or something, and
[21:44]but they're, they're lost for good. They're useless for anything else.
[21:49]Well, I feel like this is like an obnoxious question to ask when someone has just come out with like
[21:53]this massive book, but what's coming next to you? Are you working on anything out of there?
[21:59]Yeah, I work on, you know, trying to figure out what the next project is because I write novels
[22:04]only. I don't really write short stories. You know, I have to make a big commitment to it,
[22:09]so I have to pretty be, you know, be pretty sure that this is it. And so I do some like test
[22:16]novels or I'm testing out different kinds of books and different kinds of narrative modalities and
[22:22]different kinds of voices. And so I'm working with maybe three different ones right now and trying
[22:29]to, you know, figure out which one I care most about and that I'm most curious about and that,
[22:35]you know, delights me in the ways that it needs to delight me to sustain years of work,
[22:42]which is something that, you know, again, I had to learn through trial and error, you know,
[22:46]sometimes, you know, you think, oh, yeah, that's a cool story. I'd like to do that.
[22:51]But sometimes I cool stories and the one you care about most, you know, and so
[22:58]so I've learned through, you know, some unfortunate thing where I'm throwing away novel because
[23:03]in the end I was like, huh, you know, kind of was not really the thing I was so jazzed about
[23:10]that and that I can continually be curious about and discover that's the key for me.
[23:16]So I'm just wondering, have you ever shared with your daughters? I'm sure you have, but have you
[23:21]shared with them? You're sort of fear of something happening to them and how that you're sort of
[23:26]coping with that informs your novels? Because if not, I feel like you should tell them.
[23:31]Not well, every day I tell them to, I fear for their lives. I don't want anything bad.
[23:36]And nothing to do with my work just, just, just our sanity, you know, and of course they
[23:41]that they're not in danger, but you know, just, but you know, the world is a, as we know now, you know,
[23:47]the world is a place where, you know, it can get you back. You know, this is a book too that,
[23:53]and I want to celebrate the world in this book and celebrate, you know, all the things that can
[23:57]happen. But, but part of that is also that the world can, you know, take a chunk out of
[24:03]YouTube through no fault of your own. And, yeah. Well, do you have any advice for aspiring authors
[24:12]aside from the eight million things you've already said, which are all great pieces of advice,
[24:16]but I just like to, you know, if there's one sort of nugget to share at the end?
[24:21]Well, especially for people starting out or in younger people who might, you know, enjoy writing
[24:28]is that I think they have to read as much as possible. You know, don't, don't write, don't read
[24:34]about writing. Read, just read. And any kind of books, anything, really anything. And especially
[24:41]the things you like, but, but, you know, don't, don't, don't get into writing advice, don't read
[24:48]writing advice, just read. And I think that's probably my number one bit of writing advice.
[24:56]Well, I've been debating sort of collecting all this amazing writing advice that everybody has
[25:01]given me on my podcast into some sort of book. But now you're saying, don't read writing advice
[25:05]books. And now I'm thinking, maybe I should just scrap that idea. Yeah. Yeah. Writing advice books
[25:11]have good advice. But again, they're not applicable to you because it depends on what you're doing.
[25:16]Yeah. What is applicable is just having a deep and wide and, and very reading experience. That
[25:22]way, all this kind of language storytelling voices, you know, lingual music is there for you.
[25:29]Not to copy, but just to be part of who you are. Yeah. All right. Okay, fine. I'll scrap it.
[25:38]Well, thank you so much, Changrey, for coming on this podcast. I'm sorry again about being a
[25:44]a few minutes late. And I just love talking to you. Congratulations. And I'll have your success.
[25:49]And I'm hoping that by the next time we see you in board shorts, your, your calves are much more
[25:55]fun. Yeah. Me too. Good luck with that. Yeah. Thank you, Sydney. I'm just getting okay. We'll have a
[26:03]great day. And thank you so much. Okay. Okay. Bye bye. Thanks to today's sponsor, chicken soup for
[26:10]making me time 101 stories about self-care and balance edited by Amy Newmark. And just a reminder,
[26:16]again, please pre-order a copy of my book, Moms Don't Have Time to A Quarantine Anthology,
[26:21]and go to my website under the anthology tab for the fundraiser. And I hope you'll buy a ticket
[26:28]and join me for, and I should have mentioned, um, I'll proceed to COVID-19 research. So please join me
[26:35]for the fundraiser. Thanks so much. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to
[26:40]Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zibioens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read
[26:45]Books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zibioens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots
[26:51]of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for
[26:56]the sound editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and
[27:00]now trim music.