 Good evening. I'm Mark Uptegrove, President and CEO of the LBJ Foundation. Lady Bird Johnson established the Harry Middleton Lectureship in 1994 to honor the career, loyalty, and legacy of Mr. Middleton, who served in the Johnson Administration as a speechwriter before going on to become the Director of the LBJ Presidential Library for over 30 years. The lectureship was designed to attract and enrich the learning experience of UT students and the greater Austin community. Past speakers have included Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, President Jimmy Carter, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, News Anchor Tom Brokaw, and Actor Brian Cranston. The lecture series is co-sponsored by the LBJ Presidential Library and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation. This evening we're delighted to welcome author and professor Chang-Rae Lee. Chang-Rae Lee is the author of Native Speaker, winner of the Hemingway Foundation Pen Award for first fiction. He is also the author of On Such a Full Sea, A Gesture Life, A Loft, and The Surrendered, winner of the Dayton Peace Prize, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A 2021 winner of the Award of Merit for the novel from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Lee teaches writing at Stanford University. His most recent book, My Year Abroad, released in paperback on February 1st, was called by the New York Times Book Review, A Manifesto to Happiness, the one found when you stop running from who you are. It was also considered a best book of the year by Vogue, Time, and Marie Claire. Tonight's conversation will be moderated by Lois Kim, the director of the Texas Book Festival. And now please join me in welcoming Chang-Rae Lee and Lois Kim. Chang-Rae, congratulations on the success of My Year Abroad, one of my absolutely favorite novels of last year and his paperback has just been released. Thank you very much Lois. Just since the setting is here in the brown room of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library Museum, I thought it would be appropriate for us to start with a question about your career and your life that all may be started because of this broader historical context. LBJ championed the Immigration Act of 1965, perhaps the most sweeping immigration reform in American history. It was the law that ended up having a direct impact on Asian families like yours and mine who were part of the big immigration wave that happened after the passage of the law. So of course you're an accomplished novelist who's been in this country for 25 years and you probably don't get this as the first question but given this setting, will you share with our viewers today your immigration story? Well I've been in this country 50 years. But I'm definitely a child of 1965. Actually I was born in 1965 but in terms of immigration yeah I think we're all children of 1965. I mean it allowed my father who went to medical school in Korea to come here as a medical resident and I think he was at the time thinking just you know he'd do his training and then go back to Korea and but after a year as I think it often happens he called for us and so at that time my my sister was I think she was maybe still in my mother's womb but but there about to be born and so we came over. So that's like I think I've heard that story a lot from people that that I think the plan was originally just to come get some training and of course because back then you know they didn't have a lot of information about what was going to be on the other side of this journey. There was no internet they didn't really have you know I think they had a sponsor at the hospital but they had no friends they had no relatives and and I think the the prospect of of making a whole new life was pretty daunting but I think once they got here they realized you know maybe we can do it. Yeah it was a leap of faith. Absolutely and I you know I do think that partly my father also had a had a notion that there was a little bit of a glass ceiling for him back in Seoul even though he was a medical school graduate it was going to be a doctor of some kind his family's from the north before the war and I think a lot of northern you know northerners as we might call them kind of felt that way they'd never be part of the establishment and you know Korea's even though there's what many millions of people there it's kind of a small country yes very clickish yes South North Seoul even then even before the divide before the divide even now even though things are a little bit more fluid and mobile so so I think that was also a small impetus maybe an important one for him to think and there wasn't already family over in the states no no yeah and so on neither side and and the the the Korean friends they had were just people other people like them maybe some professors or other medical people that they had heard about you know who were around and we did not live in a Korean enclave or an ethnic enclave of any kind we lived in you know suburban West Chester so there really weren't very many Asian people at all then right where we were and there was like I grew up in Buffalo and there was a you know Korean church that was that enclave and there was a community there but in West Chester that was not the case no and we went to we went across the sound to Queens and where there was a Korean church yes you know that was pretty much the mother church mm-hmm of the whole area and my parents you know they weren't religious people it was a cultural yeah it was a cultural drop right a place to feel like you had some community yeah I mean I I don't want to I don't want to say they just went through the motions but but that wasn't really their passion right well this is you know my question about being an immigrant and maybe it's hard to answer because you know you've had the experience that you've had in your life but do you think that influenced you to become a writer I mean if you had stayed in Korea would I be talking to Dr. Dr. Lee you know working on this next appendicitis yeah well I think you know it I don't know mm-hmm I don't know I think I was always somebody who enjoyed the artistic pursuits mm-hmm mostly because I didn't like to follow assignments mm-hmm and so I have a feeling that I would have always done something that was kind of outside the lines mm-hmm what outside of what probably would be prescribed I think though the writing part you know that came about I think because of all the reading I did when I was a kid and part of that reading was because my parents were so keen on my learning English mm-hmm yeah probably the same with you very much and they were so afraid mm-hmm that we'd never learn English well enough and that you know there was a different attitude back then about English as a second language definitely it's you know it's your ticket to a survival right you know and and and my parents didn't speak English that well no neither did mine right right and and so they weren't you know they they entrusted both of us my my sister to you know all the professionals you know the teachers and we we really depended upon them and and you know I remember in school my first grade teacher who was I guess the first teacher I had when I spoke English because the kindergarten year I didn't speak any English because you know we we just grew up at home mm-hmm we didn't really go to school and so you know I was just speaking Korean and you know apparently I was a pretty good Korean speaker probably much better than that I am now but but I remember my first grade teacher telling my mother that I should read as much as possible and that she would you know give me all these books and then they had some kind of contest and I think I won the contest that year for you know reading more books than anybody else you know I was kind of proud of that but really it was my mother's you know their scheme they were anxious they wanted to make sure that and at that time it was a lot about assimilation and be American and totally you know there wasn't any right she wasn't I think she had her own private worries and and probably sadness that I wasn't speaking Korean but that was far outweighed by you know how quickly my sister and I you know were integrating into our lives you know at least lingu language while yes and and have you been able to keep you know I think of your command of the English language and it's Chang Ray it's truly remarkable I mean I feel like you go into every nook and cranny of the entire breadth of what English language has to offer and do you feel like that came at a cost of losing some of your Korean language facility or are you pretty bilingual no I'm not bilingual but I don't think I don't think that was the reason why I lost my career I lost my Korean because I just never spoke it mm-hmm you know we didn't have a grandma or grandfather in the house who didn't speak English most of my friends who still speak Korean my age you know same generation immigrants the ones who speak Korean well are the ones who had to yes you know just to communicate with you know a family member and again I did not live in a Korean on clay so so that's really I just didn't have practice I think if we'd had K dramas back then mm-hmm we probably would be speaking more Korean instead of Brady Bunch and right you know happy days Gilligan's Island all that stuff were that same TV way I think we're very close in age yeah and so but I think also because I learned the language and I very distinctly remember those those times and those feelings and the you know it was kind of stressful right when you spend a whole year and you it's just things are just gradually dawning on you and and suddenly you have it and then and then I think you know part of me was just had an affinity for language maybe you know my parents did say that I spoke Korean very very well for a kid so I think I always enjoyed language and probably you know like a lot of immigrant and immigrant writers do they throw themselves into the language you know Conrad yes the buck off right and I think it's because of a certain kind of maybe a little anxiety mm-hmm but also you know the passion of somebody who's coming to something where it's fresh and new and different and it's not just a given thing yes you know we're all I think writers are always conscious very conscious of their language at least on the page and but I think immigrants are very conscious of their language too and and and are very attuned to the way people speak very tuned to accents because that's how you know that's how they just see the world yeah and there's a little bit of otherness that you're bringing to it like you know this the sense of you know being an immigrant and paying attention and feeling of it and a little bit outside of it absolutely you know being more observer than participant mm-hmm which I was for you know the first probably two years of my English speaking life mm-hmm what is I'm a little low test this question because it's sort of a you know to ask about what it's like to write as an Asian-American writer when of course this is the identity that you've always had so I don't know that you can answer the question of what it's like because it's just the experience that you've always had but you know of course you're often described as an Asian-American writer very important in the Asian American canon you know what to you today you know feels what are you tired about thinking about and being asked about in terms of being an Asian-American writer and what still feels really enduring and important about that identity I don't think I feel tired about thinking about anything because those are the things that are just naturally going to appear or occur to me bug me mm-hmm disturb me you know all those questions about otherness about belonging about you know feeling as if you know you lead multiple lives at the same time and but you know sometimes it's more about responding to people's expectations of what either they thought you wrote or they think you should write it and you know a lot of my students have this you know have this sort of quarrel with themselves to particularly my Asian-Americans is like should I be writing about certain things they ask me and I always say of course not you should write about your particular experience part of which of course is mm-hmm somebody who looks this way in this place in time in you know universal history right because it's all about context right you what you were going to be writing about will be absolutely different than what I'm going to be writing about even if we're the same race even if we're the same ethnic have the same national background even if we even grew up in the same neighborhood I think there's still a universe of difference between us you teach a Asian-American literature class at Stanford yeah and what is the makeup of that of the students there well because there are so many Asian American students at Stanford they most of the students are Asian-American of all all kinds yes it's a it's a really wonderful class because I think it's the class itself demonstrates to the students how diverse their experience really is and and and and more importantly how diverse their ways of thinking are mm-hmm well and we were talking when I we were driving back from the airport about how I mean I was an English major you were an English major and you were talking about how there aren't that many English majors at Stanford anymore so aside from the great variety of students of different kinds of Asian backgrounds that are in your class but they might not be English majors because there aren't that many English majors at Stanford and I wanted to ask you you know your teacher you're on the forefront of what's happening in a higher education today with some of the brightest students in the country and the world you know what what is it like teaching in the university today when you have this tension between the humanities perhaps the shrinking humanities and then here you are in you know a university that's known as a tech incubator in a very tech epicenter of the world although Austin might be giving a pillow for its money and that tension you know what are you what are you seeing and how are you feeling about that I don't think it's just a Stanford problem being in Silicon Valley I know that you know hearing from colleagues in smaller liberal arts colleges back east and where I taught at Princeton before Stanford the same issue there's so there's so fewer students who get into the humanities from the start and and you know for especially at the so-called elite colleges where you know they you know the it's it's a it's a function of also that they can draw from socioeconomic backgrounds that right because of their wealth then because of their endowments they can they can draw you know a lot of students from backgrounds that are you know they don't come from any kind of money and in particular the students that I have say that Asian American not a biograph autobiography class so many of those students have had all these interests they love theater they loved painting they loved music they loved writing they loved poetry but once they get to this point in their lives and have an idea that oh my goodness you know my my dad and mom ran the dry cleaners they did not send me here to be an English major to be an English major and I completely understand that I mean I I can see why you know that's such a hard choice for them the I think it's just the way that the art our society and our you know our world economy is going and so I don't know what to say about it you said you mentioned the word tension I don't think there is a tension I think the humanities are dying because I do know that the students that we have in creative writing in the English department because I'm in the English department and but we also have our creative writing program within that and we serve a lot of students we serve actually very a lot more students than the English department does for their traditional courses and you know that that's not a surprise because students love to write but what happens is that most of the people end up becoming majors in the English department come through creative writing and because they're they love creative writing and then of course when you when you practice it when you talk about it you then you think you know what I should I should expand my reading I should have I should have a foundation in all this and so maybe that's the way to do it you know maybe that's the way is to encourage the arts arts maybe even just arts making first mm-hmm you know it used to be the other way around right you studied you learned all the traditions you read the cannon or you you know and then for the chosen few deemed by whoever you got to practice now because of the way the culture is everyone's making art everywhere a tick-tock Instagram but that's okay but maybe we can you know channel all that good energy and I think as we're doing in our program and getting kids you know back into you know just a literary study it's a democratization you know of art making that it's not that you need the degree you just need to do it from my vantage point it seems like in publishing there are more books being published than ever you know and and maybe that's part of the you know commerce aspect of publishing and you know here we are in this kind of stage of capital late-stage capitalism and globalization and so we do see the arts you know taking off but perhaps it's just as you say not happening in the university in this in the traditional ways and you're in a position where you're both in the academy and outside of it as a novelist a successful novelist does this stuff find its way into your work you know and your preoccupations as a as a as a you know novelist who's publishing who has this paperback version of a very successful novel come out is that you kind of like on both sides of that equation I try not to mix my worlds the you know the the work I do in my school office is all about the students you know how to present to them the literature that I think will be most you know provocative and and in some ways lasting and and then in Turk talking about their work you know I'm kind of you know their therapist right I'm there to try to bring out the ideal forms of what they're trying to do and to steer them here and you know to massage their their direction you know in a certain way I I hope I don't ever become a gatekeeper of any kind but in my work at my desk at home that's necessarily exertions that are really intense very private and where I really want to block out the world I mean the world is of course in me because of everything I am read you know just as we all are but but at that point I don't want to ever hear anything about writing quote unquote say the craft I don't want to hear about you know any kind of suggestion of what I might do because of some other hat I have so because for me the the pursuit of of novel writing is is about complete liberty it's a about complete freedom and that's probably the best thing about it truly well it's also a great a great boon to your readers who who get to read it and let's dig a little bit more into my year abroad again a book that I truly loved it's it's an adventure tale that the New York Times described as a wild ride pick risk wise cracking funny ambitious full of sex in danger you have some epigraphs at the beginning of the novel one being from Thomas Mons novel confessions of Felix Krull confidence man he who truly loves the world shapes himself to please it will you explain that choice and how it kind of you know as epigraphs do create a little springboard for the reader to dive in right I mean that's a great I love that line from from Krull obviously it's a confidence man's line also right I mean because the confidence man is is the zealot he'll he'll be and and and conduct himself or she will or her conduct yourself in in the perfect way where where they're the key for any lock any any lock that comes comes about right in the form of a person in the form of some scheme and so there is a mercenary and and you know a kind of you know a sense that of course they want to master the moment but I like the other side of it too which is you know it's not just about getting over something on the world it's about actually connecting with it right it's about actually being the you know a more beautiful side of that of that universal key the idea that you know we can go anywhere and if we're really truly open if we're really truly curious if we're really truly vulnerable in the best ways then experience can be magical and it we might put on a persona to fit into this other experience that we would otherwise not be able to have well yeah we don't always have to be so locked in to this idea of oneself right because that's really all I mean people say oh yeah I'm this way but if you really think about they're probably mostly I think I'm this way yeah who's your who's who's the confidence man is Pong or is it I'm not sure it is you know I think I think you know the the young hero of this novel tiller is trying to is becoming you know or gaining an understanding that that maybe we're all confidence men if we actually have open hearts you know he's I guess the confidence man of course in in the traditional sense is again someone who's going to gain advantage but in this novel I think that the gaining of advantages about is not about taking but about experiencing and experiencing something about the world experiencing something about the other way the ways that other people think and and believe things are and and whether or not that leads to always pleasure or enlightenment or or something else is okay so I think I think tiller somebody who has completely ceded you know himself to the idea that the the possibilities are worth it wherever they lead them in even to dark places and let's back up for him and for viewers who haven't read my your broad yet like set it up a little bit so that they know who these characters are right well there's that the narrator of the novel is a young fellow named tiller Bartman he's 20 years old he's one eighth Korean seven eighths you know European American and and he's on a on his junior year and and about to go on a typical semester abroad probably to Europe but before that happens he meets a local businessman a Chinese fellow named Pong Lu who is kind of a famed local entrepreneur with lots of businesses and they become friendly and and Pong says why don't you come along with me and help me on some business ventures that I have and instead of going off on your doing your thing and and tiller is just at that point in his life when I think he feels like sure I definitely want to do this I I don't want to do what everyone else is doing because it's he's already bored by it bored by the thought of it of course he's also looking for something right he there's some void in his life and emotional void having to do mostly probably with his family life and lots of things that didn't happen and so they go off together and on a lot of crazy crazy adventures stuff that I didn't even know would happen but I think I think that was right that I didn't know because I think if I didn't know before that's the funny thing about writing novels sometimes if you knew before what you were going to write you probably wouldn't write it you're not a writer who has the end in mind and knows it there are writers who are that way right that that they've got it all different ways of sure course and but my my what I'm comfortable with is in terms especially with with character and psyche and as it has to do with where what's going to happen to them in plot I'm pretty associative I don't plan out I just feel my way into it and and try to have faith in in where my gut is telling me to go with them and I've heard you say in in interviews that you often do start with character right and that they're in this case you know there was pong there's tiller can you dig a little bit more into that process of you're feeling your way into it but then what is that how does that roll out like what does that look like over time as you're feeling that out like building that character and then how does it turn into a narrative and then how does it turn into this complete novel well you you certainly need to start out with a fairly good foundation for what you believe that person is like the way the style of their thinking maybe even the sound of their voice and the way that they would describe themselves both externally and then internally so but that doesn't mean that you know if if 100 percent were absolutely knowing everything about that person which of course you can never get to anyway I would say that I probably start out a novel knowing probably 35% of what really makes this person this person what makes them tick what but it's only in pushing them and putting them in situations that are going to challenge rub up against corroborate sometimes reveal you know as as paradoxical some part of their psyche some part of their makeup and you know we are all you know creatures of what's happened to us we've been raised who's been there who's not been there creatures of context so I think as a novelist I'm always trying to constantly put that character in a dynamic set of series of contexts and so that so that I'm always looking for well what should happen next to this person so that some other part of them will be revealed or clarified or refuted even so for me yes there's plot but the plot makes no difference if we don't continually have you know a deeper and more profound kind of appreciation for who this person is and why they're telling us this story and so that's what I tell my students is it's not that you have this character and then you just put them into situations mm-hmm that's that's a murder mystery mm-hmm where it's just like who done it right mm-hmm as I tell my students I want to know why they done it mm-hmm I want to know how they think they're gonna done it right I want to know you know what they thought they had done when they done it and all those things are the things that make up I think you know a really rich character in a rich novel and the context that you're putting them in it's all about that tension is in this novel so I feel like we're on the precipice of this this capitalist excessive culture on the verge of collapse but in its fullness of you know insanity right of commerce and globalism and and everything that it involves it is incredibly entertaining to read but it's also quite dark well I do try to and I think I do this in many of my novels I try to pervert things a little bit and not necessarily sexually right but but a certain kind of perversion where it's it becomes dark strange mm-hmm very idiosyncratic yes there were things I read that I didn't even know existed yes and that I thought would be appropriate to this young fellow's journey mm-hmm that yeah it could it you know it's not simply just wealth and luxury and finding out wow look how rich these people are and look how powerful they are it's for me I had to investigate well look how human these people are look how messed up they are look how obsessive they are about things that they believe are important and I believe that will shape them and that's you know that the novel in the end is is a novel of maturation about about coming into the world but as I always say about this novel the world also enters tiller in many ways it you know it he shaped himself to please it but he's allowed the world to absolutely inundate him and and it's a you know it's a clarifying and I think in many ways traumatic experience mm-hmm yes these characters that you're building it you know in these very you know world-building novels and I kind of want to turn back to some of your other work this novel is is it a depart do you feel like it's a big departure from your most recent novel before on such a full see that's a speculative fiction novel that's got a kind of dystopian you know society that is really telling the story of what has happened to society and it's also feels kind of realistic like it could happen you know it also involves China you know how are these novels talking to each other I think that the previous novel on such a full see is also kind of a adventure novel in a way that the young heroine fan is set out into the world a dangerous world a strange bizarre world at times a very sad world at times and so I think this the stories have that in common I mean I think my novels I think on this it could be said that on this on the surface of things they're completely different I've written about immigrants I've written about war I've written about sexual slavery I've written about environmental disaster but I think you know the thing that that ties them all is that it's really not about all that it's about how someone usually trapped in a certain context is trying to figure out who they are in this new context or in this pressurized context and whether it's war whether it's being an immigrant whether it's being you know a young girl in a very dangerous world and and seeing and trying to take steps and psychically to understand that relationship they have with their context and to see their way to another stage of who they might be I think all the books are about that and they have vastly different stories but but ultimately I think they all go back to that do you feel that you know I was thinking of some of your earlier works and that there is a lot of war right and you've taken you know taken some of the big wars of the 20th century and they explore the effects of those war on the psyches of the very human characters that that that that you're providing for your reader is it feel like that is a little bit not your interest in war in the same way now like the 21st century wars that we're dealing with you know they're kind of ambiguous a war on terror you know places that are wars that are really different than the wars of the 20th century are those in your psyche at all are you thinking about like you know Afghanistan and Syria and are those things that you're dwelling on or have you kind of moved beyond that topic in the way that you treated it in your earlier novels even though they're all the same story like you're saying right there's a universality to what your characters are dealing with yeah I think they were more character my interest in in those wars specifically the Pacific War World War two and the you know in the Asian continent and and the Korean War they derive from the character my interest in those characters I don't know that so so unless I find another character say you know who finds it who he or she finds it herself in the Middle East that's when I think I'd be interested in in a certain kind of conflict you know a particular one that one of the ones you're talking about but but no I I try not to I don't I don't think about topics of interest really I think about quandaries of humanness and then and then look for a particular soul in a particular time and place and say huh even if it's speculative huh okay let's see let's start the ball rolling and let's see where that goes and those quandaries of humanness are the universal ones like our relationship with our parents or they include it should include everything yes right even if it's a war novel mm-hmm it's going to be a novel about companionship or about family or about love it's all the same thing it's all about our our connection and disconnection mm-hmm to others and but those things the you know the important thing about connection is that it can be so warped by circumstance right mm-hmm and and I think I guess that's where as a novelist I'm most excited and most interested I'm we I'm looking and riding that warp mm-hmm looking at and and riding that warp and and tracking it and describing it mm-hmm as it expresses itself in other scenes other incidents in that in that character's life and that for me is that for me you know it gives me confidence that I'll never run out of things to write about because that's always present right that's always present yeah and I tell my students you can write about a life one particular life once mm-hmm you can write about someone's that the life of a consciousness an infinite number of times mm-hmm that's why sometimes you know you have a right to write a great autobiographical novel but they're writing about that life right that particular life but that's I hope that's not what I've been doing mm-hmm so there's an endless an endless well and an endless reservoir for that larger question it's endless yeah the problem is choosing one that you have passion for and that you feel that you can you can discover something interesting about and if has has two years of pandemic and and sort of isolation had changed that calculus for you in terms of things that inspire you or you know the human human dilemmas that could become that character that you're going to you know explore has that been affected by just not around people and not seeing people yeah I it's hard because I I tend to be a quite a social person so I depend on that both just as a you know just in my everyday life for fulfillment and happiness but but absolutely as a writer you know and so that was a little tough mm-hmm that was a little tough I don't like to write about you know some writers are very writing about other books and writing about other stories that they love and in essentially writing about other kinds of characters and literary modalities and I'm not that kind of writer I I really do love people in you know and not I love them you know what I'm talking about I mean you go all in on how people are mm-hmm even as ugly as they can be I find it fascinating yeah no hand and so but reading about that in the paper as we did in the pandemic mm-hmm you know just constantly just being at one and a remove from that is frustrating mm-hmm and I just love going places and talking to people and mostly listening and just watching so that's more your inspiration than reading you know all all writers are huge readers right and I know you're of course of course but but but we write for different reasons mm-hmm right and and some writers as you know are are into writing about the act of storytelling about the tradition of literature you know of of certain novels about what you know I I'm not really that way right or I don't think so mm-hmm who are you in conversation with any writers now that you're really enjoying like that are sort of you know I always like to ask what what what you're reading that is kind of you know whether it whether it has anything to do with what you're writing or not just what you're enjoying well I enjoy some I mean I really enjoy so many different things I I have two recent folks who went through our Stegner Fellows program at Stanford the Wallace Stegner program is wonderful creative writing program that we have for kind of a postdoc program people already have advanced degrees and they're often well published already if not a full book then lots of you know journal publications and such and two of the folks who have recently been in the program and published books to short story collections I love both of them so much one is by Yoon Choi it's called Skinship I don't know if you know that book I think I think it might have been just shortlisted for a pen Hemingway nice and the other story collection is by a writer named Kate Folk called out there and there you couldn't have two more different collections you know Skinship is you and writes like you know Alice Monroe and William Trevor yeah as she you know her her her her stories are so elegant and and quiet but penetrating just full of just beautiful human moments and so humane and and center around Korean immigrant experience but in a way that you know is new and different Kate Folk stories are just you know they they kind of a border on science fiction but they're to me they're exciting because they're so about as all great science fiction is they're absolutely about human possibility and and the way that she creates her characters some of them are literally robots of a kind androids or something yeah I I I learned so much about how we are by reading her very very strange stories so so those are two two story collections that that couldn't be more different from one other but but I find them both very exciting and and and that feels that feels optimistic about your excitement about new writers coming up and coming and doing interesting work despite our earlier dark dark sense of the fate of the humanities in in the university that there is still such an important role for books in our lives like what they do and that there's a place for them to thrive I just hope that we can get them in front of as many people as possible because once people you don't have to be a literati to enjoy these stories and that's the great thing about literature you don't need to be you don't need to be some kind of right book monk it's one of the biggest hurdles to recover as I think people feel intimidated and that they about the idea about reading but really it it is just a pleasure it is just pleasure that makes you a better person and makes makes all of us better you know so I do think that's that's that's still something that of course we we all believe in and and advocate for absolutely well thank you so much chain ray it's been a delight to talk with you and I feel that you know sibling hood of just having a very similar immigration story and and a kind of optimism about you know we we we came to this country our families did and there was a lot of opportunity here in in being here and it's it's always a kind of duality to still be pondering these questions of being being immigrants and exploring our our identities in this larger sort of American landscape are you can you share at all what you've been working on there anything well I just I'm working on new novel and I don't love to talk about yeah yeah too soon yeah it's always too soon right it's always too soon till it's out yeah well we'll look forward to when that happy moment arrives because we're we're I'm such a big fan of your writing and have really enjoyed the opportunity to talk with you today no thanks a lot Lois it's been great my thanks to Chang Ray Lee and Lois Kim for that inspiring conversation the store at the lbj presidential library is selling signed paperback copies of my year abroad you can purchase copies at lbjstore.com amplify Austin the biggest 24-hour giving event in central Texas begins on March 2nd and runs through March 3rd during those 24 hours you'll have an opportunity to support and amplify the work of more than 700 local nonprofits including the lbj foundation and its education programs visit amplify atx.org to see what the lbj foundation is doing to support civics education for our nation's youth and we're very excited to resume our in-person programming in the coming months I'm delighted to announce three of our upcoming speakers New York Times op-ed columnist and author David Brooks will be on hand on April 4th former U.S. congressman Will Hurd will join us on April 11th and author and podcast host Julia Swag will be our guest on May 11th we hope to see you for those events and others and I'm Mark up to Grove hoping to see you soon