Qian Julie Wang, BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY: A Memoir
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[0:41]Kion Julie Wang is the author of Beautiful Country, a memoir.
[0:46]She was born in China, and at age 7 moved to Brooklyn, New York, with her parents.
[0:51]For five years thereafter, the three of them lived in the shadows of undocumented
[0:54]life in New York City.
[0:56]Their first book is a poignant literary memoir that follows the family through those
[0:59]years as they held on to hope and joy while confronting poverty, manual labor, and the
[1:03]perpetual threat of deportation.
[1:05]A graduate of Yale Law School and Swarthmore College, where she juggled classes and extra
[1:09]curriculars with four part-time jobs, she's now a litigator.
[1:13]She wrote Beautiful Country on her iPhone during her subway commute to and from work
[1:17]at a national law firm, where she was elected to partnership within two years of joining
[1:21]the firm.
[1:22]She is now managing partner of Gottlieb and Wang L.O.P., a firm dedicated to advocating
[1:26]for education in civil rights.
[1:28]She believes that the first step to eradicating systemic barriers is affording underprivileged
[1:33]communities the quality of legal representation typically reserved for wealthy corporate
[1:36]interests.
[1:37]Her writing has appeared in major publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post,
[1:42]Elle Harper's Bazaar in the Cut.
[1:43]She regularly speaks on issues such as immigration, education, discrimination, and the power
[1:48]of literacy in the media, and it conferences, universities, corporations, community centers,
[1:53]and houses of worship.
[1:54]She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their two rescue dogs, Salty and Peppers.
[1:59]And I was lucky enough to meet her at the Poets and Writers, Gala, and she is just as
[2:04]amazing as she seems in the podcast.
[2:06]Hi there.
[2:07]How are you?
[2:08]It's nice to meet you.
[2:09]Good.
[2:10]How are you?
[2:11]Wonderful.
[2:12]Good.
[2:13]Thank you.
[2:14]Thanks for doing this.
[2:15]Have you heard this all the time?
[2:16]Beautiful.
[2:17]Beautiful.
[2:18]I shouldn't say beautiful since beautiful in the title, but it really was a really beautiful
[2:21]memoir.
[2:22]So congratulations.
[2:23]I know you've gotten a bazillion accolades, but all well-deserved.
[2:26]Oh, thank you.
[2:27]I'm honored.
[2:28]And I'm a huge fan of yours, so I'm totally fangirling right now.
[2:31]Oh.
[2:32]Thank you.
[2:33]And also your color-coded shelves.
[2:35]Thank you.
[2:36]Yes.
[2:37]Yes.
[2:38]That was a COVID redo of the room.
[2:41]So thank you.
[2:42]Yes.
[2:43]OK.
[2:44]Well, I'm sure many of the almost 600 people listening have read your book, and that's
[2:49]probably why they're here.
[2:50]But just in case, could you please give the rare listener perhaps who hasn't read your
[2:56]book yet a glimpse of what it's about?
[2:58]And I know you wrote in the book about how and what inspired you to do it, especially when
[3:04]you wrote it.
[3:05]But if you could talk about that as well, that would be great.
[3:08]Sure.
[3:09]Beautiful country is a direct translation of the Chinese word for America, make well.
[3:15]And the book focuses on my parents and my first five years in New York City when we moved
[3:21]here in 1994.
[3:23]We lived in undocumented status for that time, and I went overnight from being the privileged
[3:32]child of professors to working next to my mother in the Chinatown sweatshop, making pennies
[3:38]per article of clothing, watching her stand in ice water and sushi processing plant.
[3:44]And I wrote it really as a tribute to new immigrants, early immigrants, undocumented immigrants
[3:51]and Asian Americans who are so often erased from our country's dialogue and national
[3:58]news.
[3:59]I always dreamed of writing this book because when I arrived here, I learned early that
[4:07]to throw off suspicion about my immigration status, it was imperative for me to learn to speak
[4:13]English perfectly and fluently.
[4:16]And so I threw myself into the library and read as many books as I could.
[4:21]But of all the books that was available then in the 90s, there were none really talking
[4:26]about undocumented immigrants.
[4:28]And there were only a handful that represented Asian American experiences.
[4:33]So I remember turning to my mother and saying, why aren't we anywhere in the books?
[4:38]And she never failed to tell me that I would be one to write such a book that I would
[4:44]need.
[4:45]But I kind of put that dream off for a bit and pursued law and really needed a sense
[4:51]of safety, financial security and immigration safety.
[4:56]But in 2016, when I finally became a nationalized citizen, some 22 years after I first
[5:02]arrived here, that was when I realized that I then had a profound privilege and those
[5:10]responsibility to share my experiences because they weren't just mine, they belonged
[5:15]to a vibrant and expansive community, a community that is often silenced, especially during
[5:22]that particular election, but throughout most of American history.
[5:26]Wow.
[5:27]You did a really amazing job painting the picture of what you were like as a little girl.
[5:33]What it was like before you came over, the flight where you were on the plane with your
[5:38]mom, which by the way, I was sort of having a panic attack on your behalf as you're sitting
[5:43]next to your mom, trying to transfer flights and all this stuff as a young child.
[5:48]Like I don't even trust my kids to go to the bathroom on an airplane by themselves.
[5:52]And there you were sitting there and your mom is essentially passed out because of her intense
[5:57]motion sickness and you have to navigate getting her off the plane and a wheelchair
[6:01]and connecting flights and getting to America and not speaking in the language and just
[6:06]is like an introduction to this terrifying new world that moment and the emotions that
[6:11]you evoke and writing that scene were just so overpowering and it immediately just made
[6:18]me want to be like, oh my gosh, this poor girl, let me give her a hug and oh my gosh.
[6:22]And then of course, that was just like the prelude to everything else to come.
[6:27]So I don't know.
[6:28]The way you immediately drew the reader in and evoke emotion like that.
[6:34]I mean, that's good writing.
[6:35]That's what that is.
[6:36]Thank you so much.
[6:38]Yeah, I really wanted to render from the first page the experience of an immigrant
[6:44]child where that she has put in a position where she has to almost take care of her parent
[6:49]and that is so common.
[6:51]Yeah, children who immigrate because of language barriers and cultural barriers.
[6:56]But I hope that people would be able to relate to it even if they didn't immigrate if
[7:00]they had a sick parent or a parent who was otherwise incapacitated being thrown into that adult
[7:06]role out of nowhere and then just learning to grapple with it.
[7:10]I think is an important to celebrate feature of of child that children are have this distinct
[7:16]resilient ability to roll with things as they are presented.
[7:20]And that's really what I did.
[7:21]I mean, I was told I had to get my mother to New York somehow and when you're in the moment,
[7:28]that's what you do.
[7:29]Wow.
[7:30]Unbelievable.
[7:31]The way you portrayed your dad also during the same time, which you almost did with
[7:36]like this diminishment right physically and emotionally and everything right first you
[7:40]were really close and he moves ahead of you by two years.
[7:43]And then as you reunite with him and his communication with you got less and less robust
[7:49]if you will, when you see him again, he's this like shell of himself.
[7:53]And then as you go through life and you see this prestigious man who would wear white gloves
[7:58]and teach and you know, this just total rock star man in his homeland becomes so overlooked
[8:06]in every way just struggling to make do and you can see him sort of shrinking.
[8:10]Oh my God.
[8:11]Just tell me about that and and how you had to like cope with, I mean, I know you just did
[8:16]it because you did it, but that's a lot to shoulder.
[8:20]Yeah.
[8:21]It was strange too because he left when I was five and then I didn't see him for two years
[8:27]and that's two years to a seven year old as a long time.
[8:31]And as he was gone, I remember not being able to recall what exactly he looked like.
[8:36]We only talked on the phone and he would send us letters and gifts, but there was no
[8:40]zoom obviously.
[8:42]And I would watch TV and there was a very esteemed emperor in Chinese history channel
[8:47]alone.
[8:48]And there were a lot of shows about him and I just started pretending that that was my
[8:51]dad and that's what he looked like.
[8:53]And so he if anything in his absence grew even larger in my memory and in my mind.
[8:58]And so when I got off the plane and we collected our bags and I saw him at JFK, I was
[9:03]like, well, that's not an emperor.
[9:05]That's not even a bad dad.
[9:07]I remember because I also got taller.
[9:09]So he seemed smaller, he wasn't eating that much.
[9:12]So he was kind of this really truly a shrunken version of himself.
[9:16]And more so than physical features, it was how he carried himself.
[9:22]It really did seem like he had been beaten down and kind of shell shocked.
[9:26]And I remember one of the first things he told me when I got here of how things worked was
[9:33]that he said I was a full man, at least in China, despite that I was from a dissident family
[9:39]and prevented from teaching a real history.
[9:43]I was a full man.
[9:44]People treated me like a full man in America because I am Chinese and because I am Asian,
[9:49]I am half a man because I'm seen as weak and people assume that they can take advantage
[9:55]of me and I never, I mean for all those years I didn't quite understand what he meant.
[10:00]I only knew my own experience as a little girl.
[10:04]But looking back, God would have blown that must have been
[10:08]to a professor in his 30s to arrive here
[10:11]and all of a sudden faced his diminution
[10:14]in status and regard and not at all be prepared
[10:18]to deal with it.
[10:20]And your mother too.
[10:21]I mean, she was a published professor in math and physics
[10:25]or something crazy.
[10:26]And next thing you know, and you show us as you go there
[10:30]to watch her sort of hunched over to become one of the,
[10:34]I can't remember what word you use, but it was something great
[10:36]that I can't think of because-
[10:37]And oh, yeah, I got it.
[10:38]Yeah, I got it.
[10:39]Yeah, like these hunched backs over the sewing machines
[10:44]and how identity is essentially stripped away, right?
[10:48]Because that's really what's happening
[10:49]in these giant places that you describe,
[10:52]whether it's the sewing or the horrific sushi freezing
[10:58]cold.
[10:58]I mean, I was cold just reading about how cold you all were
[11:02]and the effects of that on skin and everything in the sushi.
[11:05]I like feel terrible eating sushi every again
[11:07]after reading this whole thing.
[11:08]But anyway, but what happens is like, who are they?
[11:12]All the amazing parts about them are gone.
[11:14]And they're valued what for their fingers,
[11:17]for their ability to gut a fish for there.
[11:19]And what about the rest of them?
[11:20]This brilliant intellect that they have
[11:23]and the personality and everything.
[11:24]And it's not just them.
[11:26]It's like, I mean, it's really,
[11:27]it's almost like a prisoner.
[11:29]It's like a prisoner situation really where you become
[11:32]just one of the masses essentially, right?
[11:36]Yeah, yeah, but prisoners are given a place
[11:39]to live in some food, food is so in some ways
[11:42]it was more challenging.
[11:44]I think, yeah, my parents just had to eviscerate
[11:48]that intellectual part of themselves
[11:51]because I could see it when the intellectual woke up
[11:56]and thought, what am I doing here?
[11:58]I could see it in my mother very clearly.
[12:00]This is not my life.
[12:02]I am a public professor.
[12:04]I'm developing advanced computer science
[12:06]at its earliest days.
[12:08]What am I doing here?
[12:10]It was this look of like trapped terror.
[12:14]And so in the book I try to show
[12:17]how they kind of deaden themselves a little bit.
[12:21]I saw parts of them kind of go away
[12:23]and I think they had to.
[12:24]I mean, what choice did they have to survive?
[12:28]And the funny thing is, I mean,
[12:31]I really admired my mother.
[12:33]I still admire my mother.
[12:34]But as a child, I saw her as this regal, poised, tall
[12:39]and brilliant woman.
[12:40]And she would just almost float from lecture hall
[12:43]to office and kitchen and seamlessly
[12:47]just take care of everything.
[12:49]And on the plane, I started to see, oh, she's vulnerable.
[12:54]She has weaknesses.
[12:55]I have to take care of her.
[12:56]And she kind of lost a little bit of that God-like quality
[13:00]that so many children attribute to their parents
[13:02]and especially their mothers.
[13:04]But I remember looking at her at the sweatshop
[13:07]and at the sushi processing plant.
[13:08]And I could still see a bit of that regal spark in her.
[13:12]Some of it was dimmed, but it wasn't completely removed.
[13:18]And as long as I saw that little spark
[13:21]or when she was working at the warehouse
[13:23]and she got so angry at her exploitative boss
[13:25]that she spent in his cup,
[13:27]like that spark showed itself to me in many ways.
[13:31]And it told me that my mother was still in there
[13:34]and that we would be able to make it out
[13:37]in those just temporary
[13:38]and then she could be her floating regal self again.
[13:41]And I really can't overstate the influence
[13:46]that my mother had on me in those years,
[13:48]the ability to kindle that hope and that ability to dream
[13:51]and believe that things were temporary,
[13:54]it really got me through all of the experiences
[13:57]that we were thrown into.
[13:58]I mean, it's not so dissimilar to,
[14:01]I mean, I know we're here with the Stregar Center today,
[14:02]but to the in the Holocaust and some of the work camps
[14:06]or even in the movie like Life is Beautiful, right?
[14:09]But they have to disguise the camps for the little girl
[14:13]or something, right?
[14:14]It's the power of parents to get through whatever
[14:18]they have to get through is to make sure
[14:20]that things are okay for their kids.
[14:22]It's really like this elemental sort of evolutionary instinct,
[14:27]which you see so clearly in your parents
[14:30]and their willingness to fight and do whatever they can.
[14:34]I mean, anyway, it's very powerful, very powerful story.
[14:38]And so much trauma too.
[14:39]I mean, to witness and like how do you go from that
[14:44]and that survival and you had a moment
[14:48]where you were describing this gaze of your dad,
[14:51]that's right where he would sort of stare off into space
[14:53]and he would be inaccessible for that moment.
[14:55]And how do you ratchet all that back?
[14:57]How do you recover from something like that?
[14:59]And yet here you are, right?
[15:00]Yale Law School and this that is the thing,
[15:02]like how do you go from, you know,
[15:05]how did you go from all of that to here?
[15:07]And how do we make sure that other people,
[15:11]like what is the secret to getting past something like that?
[15:15]I think people often talk about trauma
[15:18]as if it were an antithesis of empowerment and insight.
[15:23]But my book is as much a tribute to childhood
[15:26]and family as anything else.
[15:27]And I don't think anybody gets through childhood
[15:30]without trauma is just not possible.
[15:33]It's a part of growing up and part of growing up
[15:36]and reclaiming your power or claiming your power
[15:39]as it were is understanding that trauma,
[15:43]understanding the effect of what happened to you
[15:46]so that it no longer becomes something that happened to you
[15:50]but something that you've made sense of.
[15:53]And so I wouldn't say that going to Yale Law School,
[15:57]clerking on a fancy court of working a fancy office
[16:00]to find my ability to heal from that.
[16:05]I thought that it would.
[16:06]I for most of my adult life thus far,
[16:10]that's all I chased.
[16:11]I chased prestige and status and security.
[16:13]I thought once I made X number of dollars
[16:17]and got these fancy degrees and I would be heals
[16:21]and the past would no longer be with me
[16:23]and I would never have to worry about it again.
[16:26]And so for all of those years,
[16:28]I never talked about what happened my parents
[16:30]and I were just like, it's fine now.
[16:33]We don't need to talk about it, right?
[16:34]That's the point of rehashing those wounds.
[16:37]But I think as we all know,
[16:40]when we let a wound just fester ignored,
[16:42]it only gets worse.
[16:45]And when I was in those fancy spaces,
[16:49]I started to get a sense that I was just running away
[16:53]from things and acting a role rather than being who I actually
[16:58]was and it wasn't on sale.
[17:02]And I have to say, those things were helpful to me
[17:05]in that they did give me the security and resources
[17:08]to go into therapy and feel safe enough to look back
[17:12]into the past and read my childhood diaries,
[17:16]which was something that was really eye opening.
[17:19]To me, I copiously wrote down the details of my life
[17:24]as a child.
[17:24]I was really inspired by Harriet the Spy
[17:26]and I wanted to solve a great big mystery in New York
[17:29]and I couldn't find a mystery.
[17:31]But so I just meant that I just had these diary entries
[17:35]of just mundane details.
[17:37]Like people ask me, how do you remember
[17:39]that your classmate ate a short strawberry,
[17:41]short cake popsicle every day?
[17:42]I was like, well, because it was in every other page
[17:45]of my diary, I was so happy to have one.
[17:49]Reading, oh, finally find the courage to open up
[17:52]those diary entries that my mother saved
[17:54]through all of them in years.
[17:56]Because she said, one day you might want to have this
[17:59]and being able to bring back to life that little girl
[18:03]and everything that she grappled with,
[18:06]everything she was thrown into.
[18:08]And everything that she was even,
[18:10]many of the things that she was afraid to even put down
[18:14]on paper, like I didn't once write down in my diary,
[18:17]we are undocumented, I am scared, right?
[18:19]That's not what I wrote.
[18:20]But I wrote and rant and fit and what I observed
[18:24]of like, you know, I saw a cop around the corner
[18:26]so I turned and walked the other way.
[18:29]Things like that and really being able to feel in my heart
[18:34]what that little girl was going through
[18:37]and did not feel safe to feel.
[18:40]It was decades of bottled emotions that was just locked
[18:45]and taped down.
[18:46]And once I opened that and embraced everything,
[18:50]everything she felt, everything she did,
[18:52]the good and the bad, like playing nasty pranks on people,
[18:55]everything, all the joys that she faced
[18:59]getting a tamagotchi going to McDonald's.
[19:04]And in addition to the fears, it wasn't until I was able
[19:07]to experience that full slate of emotion and experience
[19:11]that I felt, I'm really understanding myself.
[19:15]I'm really understanding my life and who I am.
[19:17]And I'm really claiming all of it.
[19:19]I wasn't until then that I felt that I had true integrity
[19:24]and authenticity because if you're not able to be honest
[19:28]about yourself, if you're not able to accept yourself
[19:30]for everything you are, then there's no way
[19:33]that you're able to accept anyone else.
[19:35]And that was something that I noticed
[19:37]in my early adulthood that because I had this major secret
[19:42]that I never gave voice to, there was a natural wall
[19:45]to intimacy.
[19:46]No one could actually get to know me because they wouldn't know
[19:49]why I was, you know, I would go with a supermarket
[19:52]and buy a ton of food for no reason.
[19:55]Even though I had a ton of food at home,
[19:57]this inclination to just like hoard food.
[20:00]because I had once been very, very hungry as a child.
[20:03]And there were all these things about me
[20:05]that as I learned, like, yes, you've been hungry
[20:07]as a child.
[20:08]Yes, you're afraid that you're going to be hungry again.
[20:10]You might always be afraid that you're going to be hungry again.
[20:13]Once I was able to say that to myself,
[20:15]and then once I was able to say that to someone outside
[20:17]of me, that need to cling to things and secrets dissipated.
[20:25]And in lieu of building those walls,
[20:27]I was able to build security and connections
[20:31]and being open with myself and in turn,
[20:34]learning so much about how everyone has secrets like this.
[20:39]I mean, I truly, I thought I was singularly bad and illegal
[20:43]and only I had secrets like this for most of my life thus far.
[20:47]And it wasn't until I began speaking about it.
[20:50]And I learned that regardless of your circumstances,
[20:53]as a child, you learn there are things about you
[20:57]that are unacceptable.
[20:58]And those become the things that you guard
[21:00]and those become the barriers to building
[21:03]through connection with the world.
[21:05]Wow.
[21:07]Well, your therapist is amazing, is all I have to say.
[21:11]I have several.
[21:12]OK, all right, go down to one person's job.
[21:15]No, it's, I mean, your introspection.
[21:18]It's great.
[21:19]I mean, this is like the emotional awareness people crave.
[21:23]I mean, it's sometimes, I mean, obviously it's you, right?
[21:25]Sometimes people can try as they might,
[21:28]but they'll never be able to process
[21:30]and then redo in their brains, their past experience
[21:34]and then actually open up.
[21:35]So it must have felt so liberating in a way,
[21:38]although probably terrifying, to let go of all that.
[21:41]It must have been so comfortable to have it there
[21:44]and then suddenly feel so crazy not to have it
[21:48]sort of hanging from your neck if you will.
[21:50]Yeah, I mean, it was my security blanket.
[21:53]Like this is, this is my, the chip on my shoulder
[21:57]that no one knows about.
[21:58]I'm carrying it around with me.
[21:59]It's my only true friend at Yale Law School
[22:02]because nobody else except this chip knows everything about me.
[22:06]And this is my armor.
[22:07]This is how I keep people at a distance
[22:09]so they can't hurt me and I can't,
[22:11]I don't risk anything ever again.
[22:14]And when I started to try to, I guess,
[22:18]cut that chip off that I'd grown attached to me,
[22:23]I mean, I think anyone who's been a therapy knows
[22:25]there's an incredibly terrifying breakdown.
[22:29]I remember waking up in my fancy,
[22:32]a pretty side apartment and just being like,
[22:35]what is my life?
[22:36]I thought that I had arrived, like I haven't made.
[22:40]Why is it that I cannot get out of bed?
[22:43]I just want to cry all day long
[22:46]and these tears are not even,
[22:49]they don't even feel like present day tears.
[22:51]They feel like tears from 20 years ago.
[22:53]So they're like almost, I don't know, fermented tears.
[22:57]And it just, it felt like no matter how long I spent
[23:00]in bed crying, I would never get be done
[23:04]or get rid of them.
[23:05]And until one day, you know,
[23:07]I was, I just allowed myself as my therapist
[23:09]to wallow in all of the feelings that I had locked up
[23:13]for so long and just believe that they will pass.
[23:18]And they did and the next day was the first day
[23:22]of the rest of my life of being myself
[23:26]and it took a lot of practice to even let people in
[23:30]on on small details of my life like that I had been born.
[23:35]In China was not something that I readily told people.
[23:38]And of course it was an incredibly long journey
[23:41]from that to having a book out there
[23:43]that detailed everything that I never shared.
[23:46]I was gonna say definitely like ricocheted
[23:48]in the opposite direction here.
[23:50]I mean, you know.
[23:51]And I still have days when I wake up
[23:53]and I'm like, oh my God, this is out there.
[23:55]I can't take it back.
[23:56]And just yesterday I was like,
[23:58]okay, so my future children are going to be born
[24:00]into a world's born.
[24:01]This is just public knowledge and it just,
[24:05]I just never appreciated what an act that would be.
[24:09]And for, you know, all of September,
[24:12]I just felt incredibly exposed.
[24:14]Like I was naked on that little stage.
[24:17]And I still have moments where I feel like that.
[24:20]But the connections that I've gotten,
[24:23]the people from the undocumented community,
[24:26]the Asian American community who have reached out,
[24:28]I mean, that has meant the world to me.
[24:30]But they say that they now see themselves
[24:32]on a shelf and a bookstore and a library.
[24:34]That's everything I dreamed.
[24:37]So it's really an honor.
[24:40]Well, I hate to throw around the word brave
[24:43]because it's so trite when it comes to memoirs and whatever.
[24:46]But there is this stoicism required
[24:49]in sharing so much, so intimately
[24:53]and doing all that work to get yourself to this place.
[24:56]So anyway, bravo to you.
[24:58]I mean, I know you know that,
[25:00]but not for the book necessarily,
[25:01]although it is amazing.
[25:03]But more for the fact that you got yourself
[25:05]to this place where you're comfortable with all of it
[25:07]and can live a totally different life.
[25:09]Like you easily kind of gone on sheltering yourself
[25:12]from all those raw emotions and just like, right?
[25:16]You could have just gone on like that.
[25:17]Many people do.
[25:18]Yeah, I was looking down the barrel of that.
[25:23]And I thought that it was not the life
[25:25]that I wanted to sign up for.
[25:28]And there was something, it was that little girl in me
[25:32]that was like, I just want to be free.
[25:34]And freedom to me, I had gotten to a level of privilege
[25:38]where freedom to me was not just money and housing
[25:41]and food, although those were important still.
[25:44]But emotional freedom, psychological freedom
[25:47]and being able to confront all the fears
[25:50]that I had been running away from.
[25:52]I just felt like I would be running forever
[25:54]if I didn't turn around one day and say this stops with me
[25:59]because it wasn't just my experiences.
[26:02]It was also generational trauma.
[26:05]I was past my blood from my parents' experience
[26:08]and the cultural revolution.
[26:09]And from their parents' experience
[26:11]as being intellectuals and writers in a country
[26:14]that have very much valued censorship
[26:16]more than anything else.
[26:17]And I really did not want to continue passing that down.
[26:22]And I'm sure I'll mess up my future kids in some,
[26:25]but it'll be entirely new.
[26:27]I hope you'll mess up our kids.
[26:29]Don't worry about it.
[26:31]And I just wanted to, at the very least, understand
[26:35]why it was that I was responding the way that I did
[26:38]and creating the life, the adult life that I had.
[26:42]And when I took a close look at it,
[26:44]it was that fear motivated everything.
[26:47]And I just did not want to live a fear-based life.
[26:51]So then when you sat down to do it and wrote,
[26:55]what was that like, like, did the, did it all,
[26:58]I mean, were you looking at the diaries
[26:59]and then synthesizing or was it all just like
[27:02]coming out for memory?
[27:03]Like were you crying?
[27:04]Were you like, like give me a picture?
[27:07]When were you, were you at home?
[27:08]Did you do it in a library?
[27:09]Like what was it all like?
[27:11]It was awful.
[27:12]So in 2016, I decided I'm going to write this book,
[27:15]never talked about these things,
[27:16]but I'm going to write it because I have the ability
[27:20]to write it apparently.
[27:21]And I sat down and wrote it and I was like,
[27:23]I can't write it.
[27:24]I don't know what I want to say.
[27:25]I have no idea.
[27:26]I haven't even examined those things.
[27:28]So that was when I went into therapy
[27:31]and spent a good year, year and a half crying in therapy,
[27:37]looking at photos and diary entries
[27:40]and really just getting to know the past me
[27:43]and my story.
[27:45]So I didn't write it all.
[27:46]Cause I was just, it was too much.
[27:48]It was just going to therapy itself.
[27:51]Turn my life upside down because I had just never
[27:55]so closely looked at my everything,
[27:58]the things behind all of my decisions all of a sudden,
[28:00]I was like, Oh, why do I get a bagel in the morning?
[28:02]Why don't I get a doughnut?
[28:03]I don't understand.
[28:04]Oh, maybe it has to do with this thing
[28:06]that happened when I was eight years old.
[28:08]You know, every little thing was under a microscope.
[28:10]And then finally I felt ready.
[28:13]I mean, I was still in therapy,
[28:14]but I felt like I had gotten to this point
[28:16]where I had not only embraced the happy memories,
[28:19]but also was able to step into the sad ones
[28:21]that I felt ready to start writing.
[28:25]But I was working 80 hours a week trying to make partner.
[28:28]I just didn't have time.
[28:29]So again, I would come home at like 2 a.m.
[28:32]and after sitting all day in front of my work computer,
[28:35]sit in front of my personal computer
[28:36]and just like, you're writing now.
[28:38]And I just be like, I can't write.
[28:39]I'm so tired.
[28:41]And there would be times where I fell asleep on my laptop.
[28:44]But one day I was on my way to work on the subway
[28:47]and anyone who, well, everyone who lives in New York here
[28:50]knows that subway has a lot of delays.
[28:52]And I was stuck between stations
[28:54]and there was the announcer came on
[28:56]with a dreaded announcement that we were being held
[28:59]by a signal, signal delay.
[29:01]And I was like, shoot, I have so much to do.
[29:04]And I'm just sitting here.
[29:07]I can't even call my clients.
[29:08]I can't, you know, review briefs.
[29:10]There's nothing I can do.
[29:11]And then I looked at my hand and my phone was in it.
[29:14]And I was like, well, I have a notes app.
[29:17]So I started writing the book in my notes app.
[29:20]And somehow that format also liberated me
[29:24]because it didn't feel quite like,
[29:25]I'm sitting in front of the keyboard
[29:27]writing with a capital W.
[29:29]I'm just typing notes like a grocery list
[29:33]of memories that I wanna hang onto
[29:36]or that I wanna pass down to my great grandchildren one day
[29:40]when I'm gone.
[29:42]And that format gave me the freedom to be truly honest
[29:47]because when I came upon times and memories that I said,
[29:50]I can't share this.
[29:51]What about my parents?
[29:52]They're not gonna want me to share this.
[29:54]I told myself, first of all,
[29:56]it's just a silly document in your phone.
[29:58]No one sees it.
[30:00]you'll never finish a book because what do you know about writing a book? And this is for people
[30:05]our descendants when I'm dead. No one will see this while I'm alive and of course that became a
[30:12]huge lie because many people have now read it. But it was what I needed to do to find that
[30:18]emotional truth and put it on the page. And yeah, there would be times on the subway where I'd
[30:24]be typing and just bowling describing the sushi scenes were it was really difficult to
[30:31]keep bolly. And then there'd be times where I would be typing and laughing that joke that my
[30:36]mother that riddle that my mother told me when she was learning to cut hair at the watermelon
[30:40]like that had me laughing out loud. Your person in the subway just laughing to herself. And that
[30:48]experience that range of emotions showed me that there was you know so often we paint as traumas,
[30:53]it's not just that. It's all the key to our joy and our empowerment and it really showed me how
[30:59]resilient and strong my family and my parents are. Yeah. And having that contained period of time,
[31:07]I mean I'm sure you have your own pieces of writing advice but this is one that I give a lot.
[31:14]Assigning a bucket of your day to writing and then just not worrying about it after was the
[31:20]most liberating thing I could have done because once I stepped off the subway platform that was
[31:25]my lawyering time. I didn't need to worry about the book. I didn't need to feel guilty that I
[31:29]wasn't writing the book because I had designated periods in my day where I would be focused on
[31:34]the book and only the book. And the rest of my day I could live my life and it was it was a way
[31:40]that truly freed me up to write the most authentic book I could while still being a lawyer.
[31:46]Wow. Amazing. That's beautiful. I can't believe it. I feel like there should be
[31:53]like a video clip of like all these people on the subway and the subway like
[31:58]and then like it swings over to you and you're just like typing on your phone you know and then
[32:03]it's like future not you know future memoir is to award winning. Because you don't know what
[32:09]everybody's doing right? You don't know what you're just looking at people. I mean this sounds so
[32:13]obvious but it's just like with every story. It's like you just don't know what the people
[32:19]all around you especially here in New York and I guess you're here we could have like done this
[32:23]in person. I wish we were all at the striker center by the way I want that would be great to go
[32:26]back in person but you don't know what people are thinking feeling writing. I mean it's amazing.
[32:30]The person sitting next to you could be doing you just don't know. Anyway it's it's it's amazing.
[32:36]That's what I will actually this like comes from a diary entry. I didn't use this word but the
[32:41]the subway is a microcosm of everything that's beautiful about New York City like
[32:48]author could be sitting next to a doctor could be sitting next to an artist who's sketching.
[32:52]I often think people are sketching on the train and I really wonder where that piece will go
[32:57]and it's just inspired just sitting in the subway and looking at people in which I did sometimes
[33:02]when I kind of hit a block I would just look around and observe people and see what they were
[33:06]doing and wonder about what they were feeling and what they were going through and that kind of
[33:10]opened up my curiosity about my own life. Do you worry? I know there have been so many recent
[33:17]subway attacks on Asian-American women in particular. This is a while ago and probably off topic
[33:23]but my anyway I knew someone who was also pushed in front of a subway years ago and all these
[33:29]crimes and whatever like how do you feel do you how do you feel like walking through the world now
[33:34]with all of this sort of resurgence of I mean attacks. My heart hurts and I have to say that I
[33:45]probably am more afraid than I was before but part of me when this first broke felt somewhat
[33:53]validated because having grown up on the New York City subway system that stuff was happening
[33:59]way before the pandemic. It was happening in the 90s especially to Asian women who are painted
[34:04]as submissive and weak and sexual and nobody talked about it. So I'm glad at least that the media
[34:10]is talking a little bit about it certainly not to the extent that it should be but at least there
[34:16]is dialogue and communication and I have since spoken to so many Asian-American women who are saying
[34:21]yeah we just we're like oh this is only happening to me I guess because no one else is experiencing
[34:26]in at least now we have that sense of community but I've been I mean even before this I've
[34:32]been groped spat on shouted at told to go back to my country countless times and that never
[34:38]deterred me from going in and saying this is my city this is my train you will not keep me off it
[34:45]I do worry about my mother who is of course older and smaller and I've armed her with like five
[34:50]different pepper sprays and other tactical flashlights and I've just told her just don't don't go
[34:56]if you don't need to like I'll run the errands for you or take a car it's really my parents that
[35:03]I'm worried about and early in the pandemic they were wearing like almost disguises they put sunglasses
[35:08]on and hats on and mass on so nobody could really see what race they were that's what partnered
[35:15]they felt that's heartbreaking that's I that's oh my gosh especially knowing your parents the way
[35:22]I don't really but that I feel like I do having read your book I mean that it would fast forward to
[35:29]this how does your family feel about the book they were very resistant at first it took me six
[35:37]months after my book deal to find the courage to tell them oh it was only because my husband was
[35:43]like you know you don't want them walking down the street and seeing it in a store
[35:49]if you wait any longer that's what's gonna happen I was like oh yeah you're right I should
[35:53]probably give them some events notice and um I told them and it that night was like uh who's afraid
[36:00]of original will play there were so many emotions and what really broke my heart was the first thing
[36:06]my mother said she said so you want the whole world to know what an awful mother I was to you
[36:15]and that she believes that to this day she had carried the guilt of my childhood the guilt of
[36:24]systemic barriers that she used all of her force to overcome that she still blamed herself
[36:31]was so heartbreaking to me I just I had not thought that that was where she was but of course I
[36:39]had blamed myself and as the three of us talked my dad of course blamed himself so all three of
[36:44]us were separately and privately carrying those beliefs that we were singularly at fault and by
[36:52]virtue of not having spoken about it at all for decades of course there was no way to come
[36:58]together in that feeling and and build a connection around it and so you know of course they came
[37:04]around they they often come around to everything that I choose to do which is a real blessing
[37:10]and my dream became that if if my book could give my parents amnesty and forgiveness
[37:19]for the past liberation from the past liberation from that guilt then that I will have been
[37:25]a success and I didn't let them read read the book until it came out because there was still this
[37:31]little fear in my head that ice would come after us and I had this countdown on my phone to the
[37:38]to the days of my my book release but in my mind it was also like countdown to one we might be
[37:46]you know deported for some by some mechanism even though we were all documented and I didn't want
[37:52]them to have that fear I didn't want them to know what details I provided so intimately so that
[38:00]they would then become afraid of people coming after them so I thought if I gave them the book
[38:05]on the day it came out at least there would be no counting down they'll see you know either
[38:10]ice is here it's not and I knew rationally that ice was not going to come after us but there's
[38:14]also that you know emotional feeling deep down so anyway I gave them the book the day it was
[38:22]rashashana actually I'd spoken at central synagogue and we went to lunch and I gave them each
[38:27]a book and I always do this I had no idea it was genetic I was read the last very last sentence
[38:33]of any book first I don't know why I do it my dad apparently does the exact same thing he
[38:39]flipped to the very last page which was the acknowledgements and he read the last sentence which
[38:44]was thanking him my mom for giving me everything when they had nothing and he said oh I like
[38:51]this book this is very well written yeah my mother immediately burst into tears just seeing my name
[39:00]on the cover and they confess that they didn't know if they would have the courage to read the book
[39:06]at all because there were just it was the hardest years of our lives and they didn't know if they
[39:09]could go back there but of course they did curiosity got the best of them and later that day my
[39:16]parents reached out and said that they cried every page every single page the happy page is a sad
[39:22]pages but they also felt liberated because there's nothing that they're running from anymore there's
[39:30]no secret that they're burying there's we have made the story hours finally and and they they
[39:40]realized that I didn't blame them which I think was a big fear that they've been carrying my
[39:44]whole adulthood yeah so my dream had come true I thought I I didn't imagined it but my father
[39:52]said there's nothing I am afraid of anymore which to hear that had given his life just met the
[40:00]world to me. This is so moving. So inspiring. I mean, it's just truly amazing. And now with
[40:10]the success of the book, what now? I feel like you're, first of all, one of the most articulate
[40:18]people I've ever spoken to in my life. Where do you go from here? I feel like you should be
[40:24]some sort of, well, not politician in a way that would be, you know, I don't mean that in a
[40:31]negative way. But activist politician, like speaking out, I know you are like traveling around
[40:37]doing all sorts of things and whatever. But like, do you feel this greater sense of mission? Or
[40:43]or basically what do you, like what do you see now? I do feel greater sense because the more I
[40:50]talk to people around the country, the more I see that the very things that my parents and I
[40:54]faced almost 30 years ago now are still happening. It's the same systemic barriers. Nothing has
[41:01]really changed. Even my life has materially changed. So it just gives me all the more inspiration
[41:09]to keep forging ahead. So I actually I left my big law firm and opened a firm with my husband,
[41:15]who's also a lawyer, when we focus on representing immigrant families and families with children
[41:22]with disabilities and in securing the educational accommodations that their children need, whether
[41:29]it's language support or support for learning disabilities and whether that's improved support
[41:35]within the public system or placement in a private system and funding for that. So it's been
[41:43]incredibly inspiring to meet these children and these families. Most of them are single parent
[41:49]households just trying to get by many of them don't don't speak much English and just feeling
[41:56]connected kind of to my own inner child, the child that I was gives me more compassion and ability
[42:03]to see the realities of these children who are still very much facing some of the educational
[42:09]that I was. But I feel like nothing I do can ever be enough and so my mind is constantly
[42:16]kind of running through what else in terms of advocacy I have gotten into political advocacy and
[42:21]activism meeting with senators and representatives to push for whether that's funding for undocumented
[42:29]workers or more mental health support for the Asian American community and those that live
[42:34]amongst the Asian American community. I think for the first time I'm not on I don't have a five
[42:40]year plan I don't have a track I'm not chasing anything because I'm not running from anything
[42:46]it's just what the community inspires me to do and and what I feel called upon to do. I'm also
[42:52]working on a second book which is a novel about American women working in big law firms in
[42:59]New York City. I just needed kind of a breather a lot of people have asked me if I were working
[43:04]on a second memoir which I maybe down the line but I kind of needed a breather and kind of that
[43:11]freedom to make some things up and have more fun with it and most of all I think my parents are
[43:16]very relieved that I'm working on fiction like go go write science fiction or fantasy that
[43:22]it's anything that's not a memoir again. Yeah so it's been it's been really fun exploring that
[43:30]as well and yeah and a full I've had several full circle moments I've gone back to speak out
[43:35]PS124 some of my fellow classmates are now teachers there which it's so beautiful. I've gone back
[43:43]to Chatham Square library and spent a lot of time speaking to the librarians. I will be speaking
[43:50]a conference for undocumented students from all over the country where being brought to Swarthmore
[43:55]when where I went to college so the conference is providing funding for all of these students to
[44:01]come together and build that piece of community so all of those things have been just so incredibly
[44:08]special and and the ability to kind of travel across the country and meet people in all pockets
[44:14]and communities and hear their stories has just made me I think a more empathic person more
[44:22]a fuller person with a better understanding of of how things vary and don't vary so much across
[44:29]America. Well I'm voting for you for president. You have my vote I don't even know you believe it but
[44:36]I'm I'm in. Wow well I know there are a million questions and I'm sorry I ran over with just the
[44:43]interview part of this but I could listen to you forever you're really captivating speaker and
[44:49]amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you for your time. Take care. Bye bye.
[44:55]Hi I'm City Owens and you're listening to the award-winning podcast moms don't have time to
[45:00]read books if you like this podcast you will love my new anthology called moms don't have time to
[45:05]have kids check it out and you'll hear from 49 authors about all sorts of things moms don't have time
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[45:16]my other podcast sex talk with Sivian Tracey check out moms don't have time to write on medium
[45:22]and of course my new publishing company called Sivian Books and now back to our daily author
[45:28]interview site and a quick hello from some of my kids. Hi hello. Enjoy the show.