Patrick Henry College Newsmakers | Min Jin Lee

[Music] well thank you it's a great pleasure today to be able to introduce to you min Jian Li she was born in a Seoul South Korea came to the u.s. in 1976 right when she was seven years old grew up in Queens in New York grew up in a also enough family wholesale jewelry store right and work worked behind the counter and grew up in church I'll talk about a little bit about that and then about the the serious liver disease that she developed and how she persevered through all that and a lot of other things so please join me in welcoming a National Book Award finalist min Jin Lee [Applause] so tell us a little bit about about growing up in in Queens and suddenly being in this amazing place called America oh well first of all Marvin thank you so much for having me here I'm delighted to be a Patrick Henry this is really quite a privilege to be considered a newsmaker I had no idea it wasn't a thing so I guess when I first came to America I was really surprised I was really surprised because in Korea I had read an enormous number of Western fairytales I read a lot of Korean fairytales and a lot of Western fairytales and it was a very private little kid I didn't talk hardly at all I didn't talk really almost until middle school in high school when I came to America it wasn't that I couldn't talk but I wasn't really talking so my whole world was really just books all the time so what I'm hearing said that we're gonna go to America I thought oh that's really interesting you know it's gonna be this whole other world and as soon as I land I'm going to speak English I don't know exactly how that happened and I wasn't so I wasn't a smart kid but I was I was thinking these things and then I went to America we came to JFK the airport and I realized oh my gosh it looks exactly like Seoul but was not Korean people and I was really disappointed because I thought oh it's going to be kind of like Cinderella that'd be stagecoaches on ball gowns and people wearing party dresses as if a fairytale would occur in JFK which did not and then I thought oh it's just like there that was a little disappointing but then of course it was also wondrous because they had all these cool things that we didn't have in Korea when I was growing up like peanut butter delicious I love peanut butter yes right I mean hallelujah peanut butter also one thing that was really expensive in Korea was bananas like it was something really rare and of course at that moment in 1976 in before you had these little tiny bananas from jeju which is a kind of a little island off the coast of the south eastern coast of korea very rare very expensive and we didn't have them at home and my uncle who was who we were staying with Uncle John he knew that bananas worked quite dear in Korea so as soon as we got there he bought us this enormous tub filled with bananas which of course now I know is like cheapest fruit they could possibly get and he just said eat as many as you like remember thinking what a great country you can have as many bananas as you like and peanut butter too now I must ask about the exquisite pairing for sophisticated tastes ray nut butter and banana don't you feel sorry people have allergies because they're sinking like you're missing a little available and then some people they know they read or they do about pairings with certain food and certain wines but they don't understand the best pairing of all of peanut butter and banana yes absolutely anyway moving moving right along until literature I've been to literature no are you one of these kids who sort of starts crawling and writing a lot and and writing stories no no not about I never thought I was gonna be a writer I was a reader and I even now I really see myself as a reader I'm a very good reader I can read very quickly I could read very thoroughly I could understand plot I can tell you exactly what happened I'm very good at recalling characters names but I didn't see myself as a writer I didn't think that people like me became writers I come from a working-class background also as a korean-american there were no there were no Korean American authors and I knew of when I was growing up and even when I was in college when I started to write stories I think I was 20 so it wasn't like I had this early start but I had a very early start in reading so I'm probably better read than most people with at age 20 so that was a huge advantage so I kind of knew what I started should look like but I didn't think of myself as a writer and I wasn't writing stories like lately if you talk to kindergarten kids they'll come home and they'll say things like I published a story today and they'll show you you know two four pieces of paper fold it together a staple and kind of hand it to you they're like I'm an author I'm going yes you work so I didn't have that education of that kind of liberating feeling that you can kind of make a book at age four I didn't have that okay so you're going to Yale you're majoring in history first of all why Yale oh I went to Yale because like well I got in I was so lucky and then and I do really think you were so lucky oh my gosh oh absolutely because I went to Bronx science and in my graduating class of 760 kids three kids got in so I felt really really lucky to have gone in I applied early and I got deferred and then I got in regular like I guess I got an April or something and even then I was thinking off but I wanted to go because my favorite writer went there Sinclair Lewis okay so if Sinclair Lewis had not gone to Yale I would not have applied totally true okay you want a couple of writing Awards at Yale yes how do by a fluke okay well first of all you've never been a writer no what what what led you do you're sitting you're sitting in Trumbull College Yale and you say one day I'm going to write something or how did that happen I took to writing classes okay one because I was I got into this advanced level seminar and was on literary nonfiction with this really wonderful teacher Fred stre B and I was not the brightest kid in the class as a matter of fact it was embarrassing because very often my socio-economic class revealed itself very quickly there are all these things that I didn't know so for example we have your sitting room this really big oval table with all these other kids who are writers and I'm the rube in the group and I was also the only non-white person in the room because it was an advanced class and I and I think I had to submit something and that's how I got in and one day we're talking about we're critiquing a story so everybody gets copies of the stories ideas written and then I was reading this one straight written by some kid and she had mentioned Stonehenge and I said I raised my hand like an idiot and I said Oh Stonehenge I don't know what that is maybe you should define what that is for the reader who doesn't know and all the kids turned around and looked at me like did you just crawl out of the cave like are you stupid or something because a lot of those kids had gone to Stonehenge okay and I remember thinking oh right I'm from Queens they don't have Stonehenge in Queens and also this is before Google Images we're now like if I don't know something just gonna go okay that's what it looks like like I could look up what first of all Virginia looks like immediately before I get here back then I really couldn't do those things so people would know right away if you hadn't had that experience so that class I did feel intimidated but I wrote a story in that class and I submitted it and it turned out that it won the best non-fiction writing of the college what was it about oh it was asking about my mother okay about my mother and I was about just growing up and all the questions that I had about what it means to be a mother like my mother who had just endured so many things about coming to America so it was personal but it was blind admissions so you didn't put your name down so I remember just sort of submitting it and then it won this thing and I was like that's kind of cool maybe I'll do that again so then I took a fiction class and then I wrote a story based on a newspaper article that my teachers happened to hand me she cut out a little tiny article from the New York Times where four little girls had attempted suicide because they were so poor and they did it in order to make sure that their younger brother had money for school fees and she gave me this little piece of news and she goes wouldn't you write something about it so I did and then I submitted that and it won a prize okay so two for two two for two I know okay and still I was like I'm gonna go to law school because that's a real job so so we were your real choices with your as far as your parents were concerned law school or medical school well I'm not bright enough for medical school okay but they wanted to have a lawyer or a doctor did you feel parental pressure there or no not at all okay my parents don't really like that my mother is an artist she's a piano teacher okay and my father is a business person I mean you know he had this little tiny store I think they definitely wanted me to have a job and I don't blame my parents in any way about this because I didn't think I could make a living as a writer and even now it's really hard to make a living as a writer I almost 50 and I'm considered a successful writer and it's really hard like I was just turned down for to write teaching positions I didn't get for fellowships this year that was right after the National Book Award well yeah you have your National Book Award finalist what is it what does it take together no idea but it did get two fellowships okay so I applied for eight things I didn't get six things I got two things okay so I'm not to you for two anymore no but two four six 333 will make you an American League batting champion the truth is I only need it to have one so I got two so it's like it's good okay okay so you graduated from from Yale you're going to Georgetown Law School and did you want to be a lawyer I like school so if you sent me to plumbing school I'm good okay like I really like learning and I also like doing stuff with my hands so when I was a little kid I want to be a carpenter like I thought it'd be so cool to make furniture huh and then I realized no I don't think I could really like lift all those things so then I thought I'll be an architect but in my mind it was not about being a writer okay so then you become a corporate law person yeah with lots of billable hours yes good how many hours should you did you accumulate the the months that I quit I built 300 hours if you're an honest person you're actually in the office about 350 to 360 so I would be there every single day and the only time I would leave I'd literally go to church on Sunday and come right back yeah what really made you decide no more law was there a certain breaking point you had when in your 300 hour a month or did you yeah it was exactly that okay okay this is not a life basically actually I have no idea how in the world those words came out of my mouth I quit because I am NOT an I quit person but after the 300 hours I finished this task and I was a baby lawyer and I was a very good baby lawyer because I'm really compliant so if you tell me minjin read 12 boxes of documents I'll be like okay but I'll sit there and I'll read every page and then I'll write the due diligence report and I'll go to my partner I go look and I'll show him the smoking documents and my clients will save a lot of money and they bill me they probably billed me out of like $300 an hour so if you think about it's like a lot of money that I was generating I wasn't paid that but for my firm anyway so after I finished billing 300 hours one month I went to the partner and I you know gave my final task and I was kind of thinking they're gonna tell me to go home to rest or something in fact I just got another assignment I was put on another matter or that's what it's called like all the different deals they're called matters and I would always have so many different matters because I was this really good little grunt and I actually said to him I quit I can actually those words like I can't do this anymore and I think they were surprised I was surprised because it wasn't like this rehearsed speech so and then and then I love like and once I said it I knew I wouldn't go back it wasn't something it was an irrevocable stance and I knew that once I had said those words it was done and then I packed up and I now you're married at this point right just recently and you go home planning to write you thought you had one you were two for two in writing Awards competition so that was your plan to write and we also interested them and having children right no no I wasn't thinking about having kids okay I didn't when I was growing up I didn't want to get married and I didn't want to have children okay the fact that it has happened to me is really quite a Marvel so I think people often think that I have these really smart plans I do not have a lot of smartphones as a matter of fact I have made so many stupid plans and I think that's probably the reason why at age almost 50 I have two books and last year I almost didn't have health insurance because I think I did make a lot of mistakes but I got married at 24 because my husband asked me to and I thought he was really attractive it was not like this well-reasoned you know thought because he's somebody that I met when I was 22 and he was really nice so I was like okay I guess I'll get married you know and then it worked out I mean it could be our 25th anniversary this year and then as for having the kid I really wouldn't have had kids except for the fact that my husband was such a nice person and he was very he's very principled like very he's a very thoughtful principled person I thought well he's more patient than I am maybe this could work so I had a child when I was 29 which is not like young to have kids and I was only convinced only because he was a good example of a father and he found you like being a mother oh I love being a mom but it's really humbling it's the hardest thing I've ever done it makes novel-writing look like a joke and tell us now about about the health situation involving your liver oh so when I was 16 I gave blood sir Red Cross for a blood drive and they wrote me a letter saying that you cannot give blood anymore because you're a hepatitis B chronic carrier so I was an asymptomatic chronic carrier and I didn't know that meant really because I felt fine and then I went to college and then one break like I the winter break or spring break I came home and I in a bet and it turned out that I had become symptomatic and I literally had hepatitis and then I learned from the doctors at Yale New Haven Hospital that it was very serious and that I would likely to get I was likely to get liver cancer my 20s and 30s I did not get liver cancer however I knew that I had the tendency to go from being well to not being well depending upon the stress situation so I know that for a fact I think what gave me courage to stay away from the law is because I was working far too much and I thought being a writer would be a lot easier okay so you have left law school some of your your operating on one income rather than two in New York City a very expensive place to live and then along with the health problems there are also financial problems from involving your parents right not my happy parents but other other relatives other relatives have you felt responsible I'm still responsible and so this is where's the money going to come from is this what's going through your head at this point it's so going through my head I mean I think you know money problems are always at the door it just really depends on how your expenditures are so I'm very mindful of the way we live our lives and you know I made this decision to be a writer like I could have stayed being a lawyer we could have had a lot more money but at the same time I feel like the work that I produce is something that's important to me and I was really worried about it last year because my husband lost his job last year but then he had he got a job in October so we're fine we have health insurance again which is huge and then in terms of this year I got funding for this big fellowship so I feel again like oh I guess I should be writing this third book because I've never been fully funded before it's always been kind of like whenever I can figure things out I would write and it feels like this real privilege to have somebody these two fellowships actually believing in my future okay so with the liver problems your energy is really sapped yeah and but now I'm totally well okay so now you know yeah but but that back then I remember and I found this actually very moving the he said we'll only had maybe a couple of hours of energy a day and you want to say those for Sam yes so my son was three three and from the moment that I delivered my son until he was about three my energy level was really terrible and also I was having these very strange problems where I had inflammation in both my wrists I couldn't hold this and if I was going up the stairs my tendons would really hurt so they initially thought I had some sort of autoimmune disease and then and then they thought that I had bilateral Decker veins tenosynovitis which is kind of inflammation in your wrist so I even had surgery and then it turned out that it wasn't those things it was all related to the fact that my liver had cirrhosis and they couldn't figure this out until it had all these other systemic problems and the ones I had the liver cirrhosis my doctor really felt that I should do this experimental treatment with interferon B and I did it for six months and I became cured and was like a miracle and even now it's quite miraculous that it occurred because so many people haven't been cured so you you grew up and you're going to a Presbyterian Church all these things are happening to you yeah are you are you starting and you you have cirrhosis of the liver without ever drinking right I mean and so I still don't drink yeah and so and so do you do are you I can act drunk though Marvin let's let's let's talk about that a little later here it's good so most people who are drunk owners think about acting sober buddy no no I can do the exact opposite because I'm always the sober one everywhere okay so I'm paying attention very carefully so if people are drunk around me I just want you to know like I'm a vault but I'm also Xerox like I can remember everything okay so health problems financial problems despite being two for two in college you write you write a first novel and it's turned down all right you write a second novel and you send you decide it's no good it's terrible yeah and so okay again financial problems health problems you only have two hours of energy a day and you're devoting that to Sam rather than to your writing are you starting to say at this point well why me Lord I think that I'm the kind of gal who says why me Lord all the time like I am NOT very I guess I'm not very it's not a very good person I mean I always feel like whiny in my head I always feel irritated and join the club yeah I feel like I complain a lot in my head I try really hard not to share it with other people but I have this kind of like aah and then when everything newspapers I'm always angry because they're such it's such horrible things are happening all the time and I know that we're all pretty horrible but yeah there's definitely a sense of why me yeah and why now or why not now and so ok so let's say you you are you are Jacob wrestling with God and you wrestle a lot and then what happens to you I lose every time right I mean that's the problem that's because if you believe it's God capital G it's not an equal relationship so but I think what's really funny for me because I was churched my entire life my grandfather was a minister is that I do feel the sense of personal relationship where God is you this is very funny most people think God is really angry I think of God as being very humored like I think he's a very funny guy I always think God is very humored by us and tolerates us kind of like the way we look at like like puppies trying to move furniture like that's kind of the way I think God looks at us it's like isn't that cute that puppy cannot move that sofa and your puppy's really mad at the sofa it's not adorable like I feel like that's who God is to me we had a three-year-old who was trying out his strength and carried a bucket of paint essentially all the way across the room of carpet leaving a trail behind I was it was very impressive that he that he did that and so this is how God looks at this is cute it's a cute Petric boys and also it's like what the pain is ruining everything yeah so but you still believe oh yeah I mean yeah like I've made a decision it's kind of like for me this is it yeah and you're not gonna say I mean it you don't say that quick basically no because God doesn't quit American Vince I feel very convinced for me that this is what I believe and you're reading Hosea now no I'm always reading the Bible and Hosea is a chapter a book that I really admire because it's so troubling it's a troubling book in the Bible God tells Hosea Mary the prostitute yes you know God tells her they are a perfectly nice guy go marry the town I mean that's pretty much what it is I mean we shouldn't use that word but she's not she's very promiscuous which would be difficult person to marry like who would want to marry somebody's very promiscuous so and he's got to do it he knows that she's going to hurt his feelings and God says that I want you to do it Hosea because I want you to know what it's like when you cheat on me and I always thought wow what an interesting thing what an interesting idea and it's troubling it's very very troubling so I like that book it's a weird book it's very very short you can be doing like 30 minutes so God composes very interesting stories I mean I always think about God being a writer because the word is so important and whenever I'm in this whole publishing world I kind of think well God is a writer and neither publisher and he kind of gets it he's an editor you know those things I wonder what God thinks about my little troubles like I hope that he can I don't know give me a give me a break so just continuing with perseverance for a moment all these things are going on for a time you really can't write because you're your small amount of energy is devoted to Sam and but then you get better and you're able to write and still at that point the the path is still not there's not still a glorious glow you're still struggling you're trying to get published I'm still struggling Marvin okay it's really hard writing is really hard this it's not a you know what I always tell my affection students whenever I have fiction students or whenever earnest fiction writers come to my readings and they go what do I do how do I get published and I always say forget that it's a courier don't think of it as a profession don't think of it as a job it's work it's a vocation it's really really difficult but earn a living somehow somewhere else because this is not how you're gonna make it I mean I know very successful writers and they don't make money from selling their books so you do it because you love it but don't do it because you think it's gonna deliver something in your life as a matter of fact I recently said this it's not redemption your book is not Redemption it will not redeem all the pain and suffering in your life it's something that you make because you feel called to write that story and if you don't feel called to write that story don't write it there's a leave when you look back yeah when you when you're back at these at these two I'll say I mean - terrific novels you've done free food following your chinko don't you think oh yeah it's worthwhile with all the struggles I do I'm I'm very proud of my work I am I'm proud of my work and one of the things that's really cool about the Bible that I always thought was really cool by the Old Testament when he talks about certain craftsman people like Bezalel or I think it's a holy AAB like there's certain people in the Bible in the Old Testament who are called to make parts of the temple right right because or they know how to craft things and I always think you know I like the idea of be a craftsperson like I don't think of myself as this big intellectual this big artist I think you know I want to make something really beautiful I wanted to shimmer I wanted to stand the test of time that's who I really see myself as but do I think it's really worth all that I'm not sure I'm really not sure because I mean I got to tell you last year it was really not pretty and that was considered my best year so I don't know I feel really humbled by the fact that I get to do this but I hope that I get to continue to do this because it does take all this time so when did the National Book Award finalist status come to you I mean is it this point where your husband is unemployed you don't have health insurance that's right and then it came it came I'm supposed to come a telephone call you know about the long list which is when you when the fiction gets up narrow down to ten bucks that was on Twitter okay found out on Twitter okay and then when you get to five the finalists the executive director phones you and I remember when Lisa Luke is called I just started to sob because I was like oh my goodness and at that point Christopher had just gotten another job in Boston and I was like wow - four - that's awesome okay tell us about about pachinko and and why that was so meaningful to you I mean why how when when when he had a job husband had a job in Japan I mean you were able to interview lots of people she really worked at it again like a like a carpenter and but he kept at that why because this novel is really about what it means to have a home it mean it's also a book about parenting what it means to be a true father who is a true father is a biological or is a the adoption experience what does it mean to be a parent like as a mother as and also what does it mean to be a child like all those things are happening but the big reason why I started this story is why do people hate I really wanted to understand how children could hate other children because that is how I learned about this story like I didn't know about the Korean Japanese until I was in college and when I was in college I attended a talk where an American missionary who works with the Japanese popular Korean Japanese population in Japan came and gave a talk and I went because the university chaplain had asked me to go and I was like all right Harry I'll guess I'll go and it was me and another student who came so it was the missionary the organizer and two students so I couldn't leave and he talked about all these Korean Japanese historical aspects I was like that's kind of interesting and it's too bad that the Koreans retreated second-class citizens blah blah blah whatever and then he told a story about a 13 year old boy in his parish who was Korean Japanese who had climbed up to his apartment building and he jumped off to his death and his parents who are also Korean Japanese who are also born in Japan were devastated and they went through all of his things Eila found his middle school yearbook because a boy had just graduated and in the middle school yearbook his Japanese classmates had written go back to where you belong I hate you you smell like kimchi and they wrote the words die die die and that story is the reason why I started this trajectory of trying to understand the Korean Japanese history and then to write a novel the first novel that I wrote in 1996 to 2003 was called motherland about this story I was just terrible it was a terrible book it was really boring very self-righteous very angry and I think it's because I was too close to this idea and then when I went back to Japan went to Japan for the first time to live there from 2007 until 2011 I met all these Korean Japanese people and they were not victims they weren't people who felt bullied they were so interesting and so full of love and I thought oh maybe the question of hatred isn't more hatred it's actually responding in love and how do you become that person and then I realized it doesn't it's not like an overnight thing it's actually enormous trajectory of time and then so I put aside the first book that I wrote motherland I'd saved one chapter and then the rest of it I had to write again well it was motherland also dad because in a way you hadn't you hadn't done the research no I had done the research you know the research was perfect okay it was not a novel it was a kind of treatise okay so as soon as the research was perfect for a treatise yeah but not for a novel but it wasn't an academic treatise because I had all this fictional stuff in it so it was kind of like a bad everything okay we'll go to your questions in a moment and then I'll have some more but let me just ask you this the you right at the beginning when you started writing you had difficulty doing it and then you read the Willa Cather yes had done a particularly different so tell us about that oh I could being a lawyer in 95 and every morning I would go to this desk this little desk that my sister had bought me because she wanted me to be a writer so she ordered from the Levenger catalog okay she bought me a desk it's like four hundred dollars I still have it because I'm so grateful that she believed in me and I would go to my Levenger desk and I feel like a camel right or now right not really so then I would read the New York Times Wall Street Journal in their Financial Times every day and I would think okay inspirations gonna just come did not come then I was just writing I was writing every day but it wasn't really good and then one day I read that Willa Cather a fiction writer I love apparently she had a chapter of the Bible every single day before she began work and I was like I could do that so I started to do that and then later on I started to read I bought a Study Bible no I'm sorry that's not true I was given a Study Bible at my wedding by my mother's best friend from childhood I was given an NIV Study Bible great wedding gift I mean I didn't think so at the time to be honest I was like great a Bible you know I wasn't this grateful person I told you there's something wrong with me so I was like I have this thing and it's you know big enough and it's got all the stuff in the bottom the commentary I was like I'm gonna read it I have time I don't have a job so I would read the chapter I would read the commentary and I would read the chapter again and then I would pull a verse that troubled me sometimes I would pull a verse that consoled me but most likely I'd be like why is that in there and I would write it down in a like a notebook and I've done that now from 95 until now I've read the Bible I don't know five or six times like a loop and it's great because I think it is such a foundational incredible work of art like the Bible is a view work of art and in just a book of Genesis alone I think could definitely spawn thousands of novels it is that it is the text which pretty much every great western writer classical writer has turned to for story so it has helped me to understand story better and I feel really inspired by it and now that I'm older and I have cataracts I even bought the large print so that was my big indulgence okay and the first variety of issus I've got in this room the first story you wrote I mean after several years of struggling the story you wrote that got published and actually encourage you at that plan was the Missouri review with a story which starts out about a person who's reading a chapter every morning oh no that's actually a narrative axis of happiness okay right but I do have a piece in the Missouri area which is the chapter that I saved for pachinko so you're right okay but in axis of happiness which is one of my very few first-person stories I had my main character do this thing because I thought it was so weird right because I mean in my world of writers in New York nobody reads the Bible it's like almost like saying I don't know I watch porn it's like it's like a weird thing that people think that you do yeah questions for any of you hi thank you for talking to us all right um so I'm actually working through pachinko I am well I don't want to say like what's happening because I don't spoil it but I'm almost done and so I'm sorry if you could talk a little bit about why you chose pachinko as your title what's your name my name is Evie so are you a student here I am I'm a junior Oh how's that going ah it's going pretty well my journalism professor is actually beside me so the best really well I think Eevee should get an egg how's that Eevee well first of all thank you for reading the book and secondly your questions really great because my publisher always wants me to talk about it and I always forget so I feel like maybe I published or contacted you did they contact you no I'm teasing so pachinko is a 203 billion dollar adult gambling game in Japan it is twice the export revenues of the Japanese auto industry so if you think about how important it is for the Japanese economy you have to realize that it's it has a lot of significance it is also a business that is dominated by the Korean Japanese people and the reason why that is is because the Korean Japanese were not allowed to have other jobs even now it's difficult for them to get hired for certain positions so if you were a working-class Korean Japanese person or a very poor immigrant and you want it to become let's say aspire to be a postal worker that option was not open to you so if you are a male most likely you went to the pachinko business or other like independently owned businesses and if you're a female most likely you wanted to the food industry the yakiniku business so that was something that I became aware through all of my research the reason why the book is titled pachinko is because if you have gambled at all you know that the house always wins the favors will the odds will always favor the house and one of the things I was trying to suggest is that life in many ways feels incredibly unfair to all of us and very often we have to do things in which we know that it's rigged like we don't have the right person to call we don't have the right resources or we don't have the right look whatever it is things may seem really unfair and yet we have to still play and for me I was really impressed with how the Korean Japanese people knew that there was structural inequities legally allowing them to be dispossessed and discriminated against and yet they continue to have faith and they continue to play and that was really quite remarkable and consequently the book is called pachinko because I think pachinko is a kind of metaphor for even you and me when you get to live in a country like America even in America there are many things that are very unfair and yet we still have to continue you know but I've watched chinko players in Japan I've also watched people in casinos in this country and there's a certain almost some zombie zombification I mean so just that when you look at that is it sad I mean here to here people human beings were created in God's image and yet we're we've turned ourselves into zombies in a way just sort of you know hour after hour we did we do that not just with slot machines but we do that with our cell phones today yeah like we do this all the time we're constantly turning into zombies and there are people who are really interested in turning us into zombies and we have to be very mindful that the tools that we have that are wonderful in technology don't become our masters and that we don't become enslaved to these things like I think games are lovely I think that the phone is lovely I think the Internet can be a lovely thing a lot of these things are lovely and good but then we become addicted to it or they're also designed to be addictive there are two things going on and sometimes like I mean if I have difficulty self-regulating at the age of 49 like I feel so sorry for the eight year old like I don't think it's about him having more grit or having more self-control I think no it's a totally and unfair fight because these technologies are designed to be incredibly engrossing and immersive how do you fight that oh my gosh this is the hardest part about being a parent lately I think because I'm not a Luddite I do think technology's great at the same time I think regulating is incredibly difficult so I don't know because you can't seal people off because at this point you really cannot have any kind of job without understand some aspect of Technology yeah questions lots of Christian aspiring writers they they ask themselves well should I enter the Christian subculture the submarket you know for Christian fiction Christian movies those kinds of things from I take it you're not living in that world I don't so right so what most people are really surprised when I tell them I go to church to like you I think I wonder what I've done must be all my cursing yeah that's probably it sure I promise Marvin that would keep it clean today so you haven't so far not dropped enough bomb yet right no nor have you put on your drunk invitation right right good well yeah that must make it a lot easier than in situations um so I'm like what what do you think of that debate that often happens among you know Christian college students you know like you know sure should I go into the subculture should I try to make it in the you know the mainstream world you know what should they know about this kind of thing well you know it's I really like your question so much because it's so important but at the same time I wanted to say something really interesting whereas if you feel very inclined to write science fiction you have to write it if you if you feel inclined to write things that are very theologically explicit and you want to write it in that way you have to write it but in terms of trying to make it I have no idea how you make it because most people who are writers who are quite successful if they're fortunate enough they can get teaching positions so they're not making it either so I think you have to write what feels really natural to you so even if I tried really really really hard I could not write James Patterson's novels it's what he does it's to what he does well like if you're and people keep thinking that what he does or what John Grisham does or Brad Meltzer those things are easy they're not easy if they were easy everybody wouldn't do them so Brad Meltzer has to write Brad Meltzer's work and only he can do it like JK Rowling can only write what she writes I you know I think like for example like Graham Greene Eudora Welty Marilyn Robinson they write literary non literary fiction or they wrote because they passed away it's what they felt called to write some people don't I mean how many people read The Hobbit and absolutely refuse to believe that Tolkien is Christian it happens all the time and I think okay well then that's what's interesting about art it can be perceived by many multiple audiences I think it's a real privilege if you can have multiple audiences at the same time I do know that the Christian publishing market is a very big one it's probably more lucrative than literary nonfiction I mean literary nonfiction usually the first run you're lucky if you sell 2,000 copies once you make what you can make that only you can make the market will be obvious to you because you'll see what you created it's kind of like I remember I had an editor once she said to me well he were he were working in a bakery what would you make and I said I would make wedding cakes like I don't make cupcakes I make wedding cakes and it's obvious from what I make it's like it's always like this big thing it's not for one person but at the same time wedding cakes have a special market like people don't want them it wouldn't kick every day right so I know that about what I do it's it's gonna be for what is it a hundred two hundred people maybe it might be smarter to make up cakes question over here oh okay thank you so much for coming we really appreciate having you so kind of off that note how then would you recommend aspiring authors specifically discover their voice and what experiences helped you discover that voice and specifically following up with you saying that authors have to find what they're called to write so I I'm not a very traditional fiction writer like I don't really fit in with a lot of fiction writers who are contemporary right now because I don't work on voice so I guess people would say I have a voice in my work but it's something that I'm not really conscious of the things that I'm very very conscious of our themes so when I start working on something and this is very again very non-traditional a fiction writer behavior and I think this might be because I was a history major and because I was a lawyer I think in a very different way and I've been told I've think in a very masculine way so but um but Megan I shouldn't make fun of that because so much of my education was originally intended for men right so in a way maybe I do think in that vein in a Western masculine tradition so I I'm not I I don't want to completely dismiss that comment because I've got had it several times that I think in a very kind of logical traditional way in the form of almost like writing a brief so I'll start with the theme and then I'll do all this research and then I'll create a thesis and then I do more research and then the characters come and then I write something and that I usually throw it away that I write it again very indirect very stupid way to work I don't really recommend it but like let's say if you took a fiction class I assume that you are an undergraduate here oh okay you look very young you should probably still get carded so if you took a writing class or if you were gonna write an assignment you will like so if I said to you okay your name is Giovanna Javon oh can you please write a story about love put three characters in it and I want you to write six pages you have one day please make it a terrible story like that's pretty much like if I was your teacher that's what I would tell you why I why do I tell you that it's a terrible story because I don't want you to worry about it I just want you to be free like I one of the most important things about writing fiction is you have to feel a sense of freeness because if you think too much about the market or throughout publication all that kind of stuff it's gonna block you so I want you to just say like write a terrible story for me six pages I just gave you the theme and I gave you three characters after you finished writing this thing most likely it's not gonna be terrible but most likely we're gonna understand oh she feels more comfortable writing present ten sentences she feels more comfortable writing stories that are set in Italy rather than Virginia right and then I'll kind of know what you're interested in maybe you might write about something from 2018 or maybe you might write about something from 1818 you're gonna know because once you take away all the expectations your work will show itself to you and I really that's again an act of faith I actually believe that it's happened I've never seen that rule violated so whenever I take the pressure off from students they tend to produce work that's quite beautiful and meaningful to them it can't be meaningful to me it must be meaningful to you because once you create that thing you're gonna have to revise it because if you want it to be art then you could but then the hard work begins so there's a hand up over here hi I'm Olivia you know someone graduate of Patrick Henry I just finished reading pachinko and it moved me beyond words honestly it reminded me a lot of my other favorite book which is Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky I love dust we have the same birthday oh that's wonderful but so does Leo DiCaprio and Demi Moore um but I think that it really spoke to something true about humanity and about life in a similar way to crime and punishment and that was why I sort of saw those parallels I couldn't kill a landlady though that is true I was curious if you could speak a little bit to the theme in pachinko of women suffering that was really the start of the novel and also the conclusion of it why did you choose to focus on women suffering in particular and does this tie in any way to sort of original sin a mini Eve anything in that regard or is it just completely separate from that oh that's really interesting I never I never thought of it that way I always told the Adam and Eve story was really quite unfair I do I still think it is unfair I don't like it unfair to whom I think it's really unfair to Eve and also Adam looks like such a coward right like was her you like really really that's the guy but then it's helpful it's helpful to think of Adam being kind of a jerk and a coward right because I'm thinking well if that's the original dude and he's a jerk and a coward he's gonna blame his girlfriend just about all the biblical heroes right a person cowards that's true it's really true um so that's out of money but no I wasn't thinking Adam and Eve but I do think crime and punishment has always been an influence for me I I love dust ifsc I think he's so interesting his sentences are not great but of course we are reading it in translation maybe in Russian they're better but I do think is that as plot as fantastic as themes are probably the one of the most laudable so I like that a lot but in terms of your question about woman's suffering the men suffer in this book enormous Lee - but it's explicit of the woman's suffering in the sense that when I interviewed all these crane women they all kept on telling me one's Lauda's to suffer a woman's Lauda's to suffer I mean they just said like day-in day-out and I always kind of like I was so irritated by this because I'm modern I live in America I don't want to suffer all the time I'm a feminist and I think that I was trying to puzzle this out at the same time I will say this is that now having finished the book and having written how all these poor people suffer I have come to the belief that in a way to tell another person that suffering is coming is probably very good advice because I take umbrage and I get in trouble for saying this my first book free food for millionaires has taught at Columbia and every year I go to Columbia and I talked these students who read free food millionaires and the professor usually asks me could you please tell the students your theory on happiness and I go oh they're really not gonna like me because I always say I don't believe in the pursuit of happiness and the kids are like oh my gosh she's evil what is wrong with her and I always tell them I want you to be good I want you to do the right thing I want you to learn as much as you can and the happiness will come now and then but the pursuit of it is making you miserable the idea that everybody's always happy all the time and if you're not there's something wrong with you is making so many of you miserable so try to be decent like if you can't be good try to be just decent that's not a bad goal and the kids always kind of like and I and I tell them I think there's something really cruel about telling someone to be happy or to pursue happiness because there are seasons in your life when you're not going to be happy it's just you're not like people get sick people people lose jobs people get injured totally carelessly I mean to tell a student who went to park in the parklands shooting recently to tell a child to go be happy after this is just nothing short of insensitive and me right like all those children who witness this and all the parents and the people who've lost like they have every right to be furious they have every right to be grieving it may take a long time for them to heal so suffering has come to them it has come at their doorstep totally unfairly unexpectedly and we have to be honest so I think in that sense I have come to the point of view from going getting really angry at these women or like I'm tired of you telling me to suffer so now saying no I think these they have something there so trying to be decent and then having the hope or faith that it's going to work out this is actually a very traditional Presbyterian and reformed way of looking at things what is the chief end of man yeah to glorify God and enjoy him forever right right so you know so it's interesting to glorify God but that's that's the primary thing and then the second clause there is to enjoying forever in the hope and faith that that will actually come about if you believe that okay if you don't believe that then it's really hard yeah right yeah and also sometimes you don't enjoy God and I think there's a lot of evidence in the Bible where people aren't enjoying God at the moment right they're throwing things at him so and you know what I honor that too I honor that idea that you could be angry with God no I think actually God honors it in the Bible when you're angry with him yeah he doesn't he doesn't say Abraham for giving him some back talk and asking questions and so forth I mean I just think I mean I love the story of job so much right because job gets to do this and job is constantly saying things like just just cursed me and let me die and I think sure I would say that too if I was covered in boils sure okay well it will help me out because the the most frequent critical letter I get in editing world is if we have reviewed an r-rated movie and found redeeming social value in it or if we have reviewed a book to pull one out of random pachinko let's say and yet there are there are there are f-bombs yeah in it a lot and so and so and there's sex and there's sex and the reader says and the reader said no wait why are you recommending to us a book with bad words and sex in it and I have my standard letters that I respond and with some you know sleight of hand at times but but how would you respond to that well I am a Presbyterian and Presbyterians are probably the dullest right of the question before the frozen Chosin yeah we're the frozen Chosin we're really uptight and we don't have a whole lot of fun how I think that we're texturally pretty accurate and one of the things I feel like about the Bible is um you know what the bible has incest the bible has explicit sex there's prostitution there's a legitimacy there's murder there's rape and in Joe's family life in Jesus family what and I do think that if you are a Christian and if you believe in God and there's a lot of room for discussion and I want there to be discussion I would I think that we are of this world and we're not of this world and if you are of this world that you can't seal yourself off from everything that you disagree with that does not promote democracy I'm a big believer in democracy and democracy means that I need to do business with people I disagree with I need to hear people that I disagree with so even though I am a New York liberal you can call me whatever you want and I probably believe in lots of things that very traditional Christians don't believe in however I am very willing to listen to them and I hope that they're willing to listen to me and I hope that we could do business because we have to grow as a community and America is a great country because it is a democracy in which people are allowed to say the things that we don't agree with can I call you a Christian writer sure I'm a Presbyterian writer I'm also a feminist writer I am and people may not like that questions have a couple minutes left hello thank you just again for coming and speaking with us today I was wondering you mentioned earlier that in your early childhood you read a lot of Korean fairytales and Western fairytales do you think that influenced your writing at all and if so how oh I think it influenced my reading to the extent that I like knowing the fairytales of every culture so the fairy tales will tell you important foundational myths of every community right so for example if you read Italian fairy tales they'll be different than Korean fairy tales Korean fairy tales where you have central characters who are girls very often focus on sacrifice submission silence all those things are very important qualities for the virtuous girl and knowing those things I'm sure I internalize some of those values and then as I became older I had to actually resist some of those values and say I don't agree with those things and of course coming to America and again I've been informed by American popular culture as well as American Western literature popular culture so so if you read Charlotte brontë's Jane Eyre and if you read a Korean fairy tale you're going to have different heroines and how they approach life however they're both virtuous in my mind so I think that all that exposure has helped me to become I guess more of a global thinker and I think that unfortunately or fortunately what's happening with education in America as well as in advanced economies is we're having people who are becoming global citizens and all the other people are not so all of us when we're fortunate we can have a more global education and there's a whole world out there who's not getting that at all so in a way I feel very fortunate that I could be a global thinker and everybody here is a global thinker but there's an enormous number of people who feel left behind and who may feel resentful of the global culture and to this I feel terrible I feel terrible about that yeah now when I we talkin and I see the the way God's providence refuses his writing sense of self-sacrifice I mean these are all things that might end well of course she's a Christian writer I mean these are these are things that are there and so the same thing when I read whenever we to books it seems to me pretty obvious yes she's coming from a Christian understanding a Christian worldview and yet when I have when I've read and I may have missed these I mean I've read some reviews of your book I don't see secular critics pushing back at you theologically which surprises me in a way is it something that they just missed because they're not expecting it or do you think it's has anyone have any secular critics actually criticized the implicit theology of your novels all very good no no and I think it's because if you think about it the secular critics are really well versed in Western literature and so much of great Western literature that I admire and I try to imitate in some ways have the same judeo-christian themes of redemption of forgiveness so it's not even like they need to push back because they think that's normal storytelling I think that what people don't like is when you don't leave space in the text for any other answer there's a lot of space in my work to disagree with me and to take other characters points of view like you could say my worldview will be just like Honsou who is a God lowercase G in the book and I've met a lot of people like Honsou whose attitude is he's a gangster in the book and he is very clever he doesn't believe in God he doesn't believe in government he doesn't believe in really people he believes in his own abilities and that kind of person might be really attracted to some reader like I've met several readers who've said to me I love this character and I love this character too as a fiction writer because you can't have story without a strong villain villains are great but when they're looking at this villain they're seeing somebody who's really attractive and my work has space for that and and and I do think that if a writer is has faith so if a writer is let's say Jewish or Christian or Muslim or any other religious practice does it show in their work probably but I don't know if the readers want to see it and maybe in a way the reader should have the right to choose what message that they get because they're going to come to you where where they are and you know in a way books always meet people where they are and in a sense writers who aren't Christians but they are well-read they've read lots of other writers are living off the interest to a certain extent right there if you say the word redemption you're if you say the word soul you are saying something that comes you know very specifically from certain religious traditions and so I'm reviewing a book right now by an author and the word soul is mentioned maybe like 60 70 times and I was trying to understand where she's coming from because Buddhists actually deny the existence of the soul and they're certain some of her characters reject Christianity and certain of her characters are Christian and I was trying to figure out what is her point of view about the afterlife so I've been wrestling with this idea and I don't know what her background is and in a way I was kind of glad that I don't know so it was very helpful to me to figure out okay well from the text itself I will deduce this but clearly she is mindful of the fact that there are different ways of interpreting the idea of soul well we are out of time oh but this has been great thank you all for coming thank you especially for coming [Applause] you

Channel: Patrick Henry College

Views: 9,233

Rating: 4.9661016 out of 5

Keywords: PHC, Patrick Henry College, Newsmakers, Inverview, Marvin Olasky, World Magazine, Faith, National Book Award Finalist, Pachinko, America, Culture, Literature

Id: 8wquzhWpRAE

Length: 63min 32sec (3812 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 04 2018