 Good evening everybody. Can you hear me? Oh, there. Welcome. Welcome. Thank you all for being here tonight. It's nice to see folks in the beautiful corrett auditorium in person. We can spread out here. You have seen the slides going by of all the amazing things that we have going on. So, you know, we are still in summer stride. There's still time for you to do your 20 hours of reading, coming to events like this, exploring our city and getting your iconic SFPL tote bag. I hope you all know what I'm talking about because if you don't, back at the back table, you can pick up your tracker, fill it out, take it to any library branch and get your free, cute as ever, tote bag. We want to acknowledge that we occupy the unseeded ancestral homeland of the Ramitosh Sholoni peoples, who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland and as uninvited guests, we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples. We wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the Ramitosh community. There are some things coming up since it is summer stride. We've been celebrating a month of themed events. August is celebrating food. So, our next two events coming up will be Miyoko's Creamery, the vegan powerhouse who's got the corner on the market on vegan cream, cheese, cheese, cheese, butter, mozzarella, everything. So, she'll be here next Saturday, this Saturday the 13th, 11 a.m., there's gonna be samples. And then the following, the 20, I want to say Sunday, the 23rd, is a panel of Bay Area food co-ops. So, I don't know if you know about all the food co-ops in the Bay Area, but we'll have Eris Mindy Bakery, we'll have Other Avenues, one of my favorites. We'll have The Deep, who are from Oakland, and Community Cultivating, who are from Benesha. And they'll be talking about the past, present, and future of food co-ops in the Bay Area. One City One book is coming up. If you don't know what that is, we've been doing this for 17 years. It's our largest literary campaign. And our selection for this year, this round, the years have now morphed into weirdness, right? So, 17th One City One book is This Is Ear Hustle, Unflinching Stories Behind Prison Bars. And this is Nigel Poor in Erlon Woods. We'll be joining us on the main stage, November 3rd, moderated by Piper Kerman from Orange is the New Black. Books will be hitting all libraries, all 28 locations on your bookmobile, September. So, look for that, there'll be book clubs, and then two months of programming that align with the topic of Ear Hustle. All right. Without further ado, tonight's three amazing authors. Definitely not to miss. We're so excited to have these three women and their new books. Kirsten Chen is an award-winning, best-selling author of three novels. Our second novel, Berry What We Cannot Take was named a best book of the season by Electric Literature, The Millions, The Rumpus, Harper's Bazaar, and In Style. It was also shortlisted for Singapore's Literature Prize. Her debut novel, Soy Sauce for Beginners was an Amazon bestseller and an Oprah Magazine editor's pick. Chen has received fellowships and awards from Steinbeck Fellow Program, Hedgebrook, and the Napa Valley Writers Conference among others. Her writing has appeared in the cut, Real Simple, Literary Hub, Zizava, and more. She lives in San Francisco, teaches creative writing at University of San Francisco, and Ashland University's low-residency MFA program. Her latest book, Counterfeit, is available now. Also, all three books are available from our friends at the library at the back table, or you can place a hold on them through your library card. Vanessa Hua is an award-winning, best-selling author and columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her novel, A River of Stars, A River of Stars, was named by The Washington Post and NPR's best book of 2018, and has been called a Marvel by O, the Oprah Magazine, and Delightful by The Economist. Her short story, Collection, Deceit, and Other Possibilities was a New York Times edition choice received and received an Asian Pacific American Award in Literature. And was a finalist for a California Book Award and a New American Voices Award. Her new novel for Beddon City is available now. Ingrid Rojas Contreras was born and raised in Bogota, Columbia. Her first novel, Fruit of the Drunken Tree, was the silver medal winner in first fiction from the California Book Awards. And a New York Times editor choice. Her essays and short stories have appeared in the New York Times, BuzzFeed, Nylon, and Guernica. Rojas Contreras has received numerous awards and fellowships from Breadlope Writers Conference, Vona, Hedgebrook, the Cambargo Foundation and National Association of Latino Arts and Culture. She is a visiting writer at St. Mary's College and her new book, The Man Who Could Move Clouds, a memoir about her grandfather, the curandero from Columbia, who was said to have the power to move clouds is available now, and they are all available, like I said, on the back table from our friends of the San Francisco Public Library. All right, thank you all. And without further ado, Vanessa Kirsten and Ingrid. Welcome. I'm Kirsten Chen. My new novel is Counterfeit. It's the story of two Asian American women who band together to grow a counterfeit handbag scheme into a global enterprise, shattering the model minority myth along the way. The main character is a straight-laced, rule-abiding lawyer named Ava Wong, who gets pulled into her old college roommate's counterfeit handbag crime ring. And for a while, they're enormously successful, but eventually that comes to an end and Winnie mysteriously disappears, leaving Ava to pick the pieces. So I'll just read a short excerpt. And in this excerpt, Ava has traveled to Guangzhou in southern China to complete her first assignment for Winnie. And one thing to know about Guangzhou is it is the fake handbag capital of the world, and fake handbags are sold out in the open in these giant shopping malls, just like regular merchandise. It was late morning, and the mall bustled with wholesale shoppers reeling oversized suitcases that would soon bulge with merchandise to be fanned out across shelves in Manila and Buenos Aires and Moscow. Tucked away in the very back of the complex, 0421 was modestly decorated and badly lit and had no sign above the entrance. Winnie would later assure me that their workshop produced some of the most authentic looking bags she'd ever come across, but they kept the good stuff hidden away whenever they were tipped off about a police raid. I told the attendant a model thin young man with hollow cheats that I worked for Feng Wen Yi, and he offered me a stool and a glass of hot tea before calling to check on my order. It's ready, he announced, and then went back to tapping on his phone. I looked around wondering what I was supposed to do next, picked bags right off the shelves. Was that the Gabrielle right there in the corner? Could I pull out my phone to discreetly compare it to the picture I'd saved earlier that morning? An older man burst into the store. He was short and muscular, sporting fashionably ripped jeans and pristine white high tops. Nice to meet you, nice to meet you. Come with me, he said, without bothering to introduce himself. I was confused, where? Now he was confused, where? To get your bags. Oh, I said, good, let's go. He led me down a back staircase that reeked of cigarettes woke. You're American, he asked, scanning me from head to toe. Yes, that's why my Chinese is so bad. He laughed, it's decent. So where are we going? I asked. He pointed into the indeterminate distance down the road. He walked briskly, dodging motorcycles, ignoring traffic lights. And I thought to keep up, raising the palm of my hand to drivers in both a gesture of apology and a plea for them to break before they hit me. We passed another massive shopping center that specialized in the metal hardware that festooned bags and belts and shoes. I didn't dare ask my companion how these stores, all of which sold the same few items, could possibly survive side by side. That's how little I knew. It would take me a few more months to grasp the size and complexity of the counterfeit accessories trade. The man turned out a narrow street and stopped in front of a shabby-looking apartment building. Here, I asked, I'd expected a warehouse with security, maybe a receptionist. He shot me a side-long look. Yep. He pulled out a ring of keys and unlocked the front door. I followed him down a darkened hallway, listening for any signs of life beyond the walls, sniffing the air for cooking smells. The building was eerily still. If for some reason I had to scream, would anyone come to my aid? He stopped before the last door at the end and I sized him up. He was only a couple of inches taller than me. But when he pushed open the door, his forearm flexed, displaying ropy muscles, bulging veins. He flicked on a light, a slim length of neon yellow glinted in his back pocket, a box cutter. I took a step back. Hold on, I said, pulling out my phone and studying the blank screen. Sorry, I have to take this call. He left the door ajar. I typed a message to Winnie. This man, older, short, muscular, wants me to go inside his apartment to get the bags. This can't be right. I stared at the screen, willing a response to appear. Who knew who else was inside that apartment waiting for a naive American to stroll right through? I removed the money from my wallet, two measly 20s and jammed them into my bra. I laced my house keys between my fingers and wondered if when push came to shove, I'd really dare gouge out an eye. I checked my phone, no response. The man's head popped out around the side of the door, startling me, ready? What choice did I have? I stuffed my phone in my purse and went inside. Bulging jumbo-sized garbage bags filled the floor of the main room, which was unfurnished except for two plastic chairs and a plastic table with an overfilled ashtray all pushed up against one wall. The door clicked shut and I heard the man turn the lock. Sweat surged beneath my arms, but my mouth went dry. Behind my back, I clenched my fingers around my keys. Want something to drink? I stammered. No, thanks. He picked his way to the kitchen and emerged with two green bottles of beer, one of which he held out to me. I shook my head and he shrugged and deposited the spare on the plastic table. He pulled the box cutter from his pocket, extended the blade and deftly popped off the bottle cap before taking a long swig. I don't wanna take up too much of your time, I said speaking loudly to drown out my thrashing heartbeat. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and pointed the blade in my direction. I sucked in a breath. You and Feng Wen Yi, how long have you been working together? What was the right answer? I said only a short while, but we've known each other for 20 years. She's very capable, he said, but it sounded like a question. Yes, she seems to be good at her job. He wagged the box cutter like a finger. Yes, too good. I could not parse where this was going. She got me in trouble with the big boss, he said. He doesn't like the price she bargained me down to. Make sure she knows it's a one-time thing. I'll pass on your message, I said. I don't make decisions, I follow instructions. I'm supposed to inspect the shipment now? He stuck the box cutter in his back pocket, took another swig of beer and belched softly. So where are the bags? I asked, like he's tumbled onto the floor and I bent to retrieve them. He narrowed his eyes. Why so antsy, you're in a rush? The lie gushed out of me. Yes, actually, my family's here in Guangzhou. I'm meeting them for lunch. My husband and son, your husband, he's American? I knew what he meant, yes. What does he do? He's a surgeon. How old is your son? 12, I said, and then wondered why I'd bothered to lie. I pictured Ollie and my imaginary 12-year-old crashing through the door to rescue me. The man closed the distance between us and like one giant muscle, my entire body tensed. When his hand went for his back pocket, a cry rose in my throat. He pulled out his phone. My son's 10, he said. Almost as big as yours. He thumbed the screen and offered an image of a chubby boy spinning a basketball on one finger. I could have collapsed onto the heap of garbage bags in relief, very handsome, I said. Thanks. Thanks, Kirsten. I'm really excited to be here tonight with Ingrid and Kirsten and we were talking about how our second and third books are kind of coming out on the same cycle. So that'll be 2018 and now 2022. So I'll be reading from Forbidden City, which is about Chairman Mao's teenage protege and lover who becomes a poster child for the Cultural Revolution. And it's a project that was 14 years in the making, about a third of my life. So if any of you out there are writers with long projects that seem to be set by dead ends and wrong turns, all I can say is keep the faith. So I'll be reading, I first got inspired to write the book when I was watching a documentary about China about a decade and a half ago and up pops this photo of Chairman Mao dressed, surrounded by giggling teenage girls who look like Bobby Soxers. You can come have a look later if you want. But I was astonished and it turned out that Mao was a fan of ballroom dancing. In fact, he learned from an American in 1937, Agnes Smedley, who traveled to the Rebel Stronghold, teaching them foxtrot and square dancing. And in the years and decades that followed, he had these cultural work troops of young women he partnered with on the ballroom and in the bedroom. And what really struck me was that, particularly in the Cultural Revolution, when a time when so many rivals were getting taken down right and left, some of these young women were remained in his inner circle, were his confidants, despite so much chaos going on in the country. So I'll be reading from chapter one, where May, my main character, all she knows is that she's been selected for a mysterious duty in the capital to serve the party. Forbidden City. At dawn, Mao filled our wooden tub with hot water. She hadn't bathed me in years and wouldn't have done so again until my wedding day. A few meters away, my sister slumbered. Later, I'd wonder if they might have been pretending the parting gift to offer me the privacy I never had there. Mao squatted behind me and poured ladles of water over my head, descent of dust and sweat rising off in the steam. The drops trickled down my nape, my shoulders, my chest, every part of me cherished. I leaned into her hands. Her breathing became ragged and I felt her trembling through my body until we were both shaking. Little May, she murmured. When I tried to turn around, she gripped my shoulders. The water in the tub had gone lukewarm and I shivered the hairs raised on the back of my neck and arms. Mao, I asked. She didn't answer. She dried me in circling strokes, her hands slowed as if to delay our parting. It was the tenderness I'd always crave from her. Though she must have heard the fear in my voice, she couldn't face me. Not then, maybe not ever again. She would no longer warn me about fox fairies, shapeshifters who roam the twilight to lure travelers of disappeared girls, run away or raped, kidnapped or killed. She knew she had no choice but to give me up I can now see and didn't want me thinking about the dangers ahead. In that moment though, I hardened against her, against my fear and my anger. She couldn't help me and I didn't need her. The picture of the chairman on the wall seemed to nod in the flickering light. He alone would protect me on this journey. Mao helped me step into pants and a tunic that she had patched and pounded clean in the river. She braided my hair into a coil. I gave in to the gentle tugging, in to the mesmerizing firelight, hoping that I would be transformed like the braid, intricate and beautiful and strong as a model revolutionary. Shifting my eyes, I tried to hold still to keep from disturbing my mother's work. It was an hour spent on me alone for what seemed the first time in my life. Gazing into my mother's wrinkled face, I realized that she'd once been my age leaving her family to marry a man she had never met. She didn't know she would endure beatings from her husband endure the curse of daughters, the death of sons and swallow suffering as often as air. If she had known would she have left her village? That was how we survived by not knowing what was ahead. She pressed a wooden cup into my hands, a murky brew that gave off the smell of boiled pond scum. Sipping it, I winced my tongue curling back on itself. She pushed it towards me again and I half gagged. What's this? I asked. Instead of answering, she handed me a pouch filled with tiny lumps, the color of bone, their stench even more intense than what she brewed. The earthy scent reminded me of Dongguai, the golden flowers and stritty roots we gathered every autumn. A desperate neighbor had come asking for it after she'd given birth twice within a year. It helped keep a baby from taking hold. After I started my women's flow, Ba warned me against walking by myself at dusk telling me to bolt from men who got too close. Why he never said, but I understood. The curves that made me clumsy and set my running off kilter also invited the attentions of men who could ruin me. Drink this every morning, Ma now said. I finished the brew and set down the bowl. Every morning I repeated then swirled my tongue against my teeth to get rid of the sour bitter taste. The party's jeep arrived with a groan and a rattle. As the hen squawked, Ba climbed out of the bed, ladled me a bowl of porridge and dropped in thick slices of salted turnips. I ate while standing, holding the bowl close to my face. He did too. My father's fingers were the finest part of him, nimble whether mending a basket or plucking a radish. As a teenager, he'd left for the provincial capital to make his fortune. Although he'd wanted to work in a textile factory, he returned a year later, missing his little finger, a failure that still defined him and our family in the village. I was used to this dump, but his long fingers curved around his bowl now seem lonely, his hand missing its smallest part. He turned away and coughed, wiping at his mouth. My family never said anything about his cough, yet another ailment among us that lingered and festered like the sores that never quite healed, the scratch that persisted, the irritation in our eyes that went on for so long, we forgot we lived any other way. I stared at his hand, the smear of blood undeniable. Yet when I looked up, he wordlessly ordered me to ignore it. I sat down the bowl, unable to finish more than a few bites. Difficult as his life was, it was all I had ever known. When ma brushed down stray hairs at the crown of my head, my resolve disappeared and the urge to cling to my parents overwhelmed me. Ba lifted my elbow to lead me to the door. Gentle, not rough, this gesture gave me the strength to leave. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here as well and really loved hearing you both read, so. And thank you to SFBL for hosting us today. I'm gonna read from a memoir. And the memoir is about my grandfather who was a guendero and people said that he could move clouds. And guendero is kind of a mestizo, like medicine man. And so in his lineage, he came from a whole lineage of guenderos like him. And only the men could be initiated, except he didn't feel good about any of the sons that he'd had. He felt like all of them wouldn't be good for it. The only person that he thought could do it was my mother and women couldn't become guenderos because it was said that something very bad would happen that there would be some kind of tragedy that would occur. And she, what happened was that she had an accident where she fell down this empty well when she was eight years old. And she went into a coma and she lost her memory. And then when she came back to, she started to see ghosts and to hear voices. And so the family said that she'd come into the lineage through this accident that she had. The story gets wilder. So what happened after that is that in 2007, I had an accident where I was biking and someone opened the car door into the big lane and I crashed and I lost my memory. My family got super excited about that. And yeah, but I didn't come back with any powers to their disappointment. So I'm going to read to you from this chapter where it just goes back and forth between my mother's accident, which happened in 1964 and then my accident, which happened in 2007. Well, in the mountains of Ocanya, in the streets of Chicago, two incidents 43 years apart. In Ocanya, Colombia, in 1964, the same well behind which Nona had crouched in hiding from Nono and his machete was empty. The ledge stones had been pulled apart. All that was left was the hole that tunneled into the ground, which mommy's cousins wanted her to cut to see. Come, Sohala, let's go look at the hole. Mommy knew the well water was gone. Nona had explained that construction workers had drilled into the mountain and we're rerouting the ground water into pipes so that the whole neighborhood could have water in their homes. Mommy was looking forward to that, to turning on a faucet and watching the water spill, but she could not get excited about some opening in the ground. But you don't know a darkness like this dark her cousins protested. It's really nice. You can almost lose your breath looking down. Mommy thought about it. The darkest dark she knew occurred every new moon's night in the bedroom she shared with her sister Perla when the silhouette of their curtain and mattress could be only mutedly described. Maybe she would like to know a darkness more absolute. The three of them, the cousins and mommy, mounted the dusty slope to the cliff. Ledge stones lay scattered in the grass in the middle of it all was the hole. From where mommy stood, she could tell by the richness of the dark that the hole was deep. The cousins skipped right up to the edge, their long black hair dangling over the darkness. They yelled hello and giggled as their words stretched and distorted on their way down. There was no telling where the hole stopped being a hole. Mommy was too afraid to move any closer. One cousin offered her hand, come, so Hila will look together. Mommy liked this cousin. They passed whole afternoons playing tangara and hide-and-go-seek, stealing fruit from neighbor's trees and taking naps at the haunted crest of Cristore. Mommy took her cousin's hand. Together they stepped to the hollow. Mommy stared at her toes, touching that black circumference at the light diffusing over the rows of stones that lined the well and had once showed up water. She leaned over to make sure, but she knew it was true. Never had she seen darkness like that gnashing black which whirled and howled on the distance of that hole. Mommy breathed in the damp, moth-eaten air. An updraft filled her ears and then an eternal hush. Just before everything goes blank, the last thing mommy remembers is a hand on the small of her back, giving her a gentle push. In Chicago, I found the dress so beautiful, the silk so rich and lush, I didn't care that mommy made an international call to my cell phone to warn me that the dress was bewitched. Earlier that morning, I had emailed her a photo of the dress on a hastily composed message. I present to you the new love of my life. It was a black bear wang, which I bought on impulse during a flash sale. I was entranced the second I laid eyes on it. I wanted to be enveloped in it for the black to hide even my toes for the train to leave a stigian wake behind me. I rolled my eyes at mommy over the phone, annoyed that she could not acknowledge the beauty of the dress, especially when I had already taken it to the seamstress for alterations and couldn't return it. It's new, how can it be bewitched? You listen to me, Ingrid Carolina, that dress will turn you into a widow by side, a dress. Will make my husband die, I'm not even married. Just listen, I'm telling you to stay away from that dress. I heard you, I said, by which I did not mean I will listen to you. When the seamstress called to tell me the dress was ready to be picked up, I got on my bike and pedaled as fast as I could to make it to her shop before it closed. I never arrived. On my way there, a car door opened in front of me and I crashed. The last thought I had before denting the door, twisting in the air and cracking my head on the pavement was of mommy, of how delusional she had to be to believe that a black dress could have such power as to undo me. Nono was hacking, so that's my mother's father. Nono was hacking into a kakota tree when a desperate need to find mommy gripped him. He could hear a thin ghostly version of her voice calling to him, papa, papa. He dropped his machete, left it stabbing the grass and sprinted to the house to ask each of his six other children if they had seen her. Nobody bore word of mommy. Nono darted outside to the dirt road. The house of Cristo Rey were built on cement foundations two feet above the road so that when rains flooded down the mountain, the houses remained intact. Nono's family all lived next to one another, uncles and second cousins all around. Nono peered down the road. It was possible mommy had gone further down the mountain to have breakfast at a stranger's. Mommy was always behaving like a stray cat. When Nono sent her out to sell pineapples, mommy enchanted whoever crossed her path with stories and after a while, when it seemed to natural, she let them know her favorite food was fish and that she would come eat it if invited. Nono hopped down onto the dirt road and made his way to Mamadillas. He spotted mommy's two cousins sitting next door, dangling her their feet over the road, staring off into space, quiet. He bounded to their side. Have you seen Sohala? They looked at each other. Sohala, they said the name as if trying it on their tongues for the first time. I have not seen Sohala. Have you? No, I have not seen Sohala, you either. No, not today, not today. No, I'll stop there. Thank you. I'm so fascinated by what it was like to write a second and go from the imagination of my first novel and then finding another story. And I wondered for you all like what was the, either like the moment of Genesis for the second book or what it was like to switch from one idea to another? Well, I think it's been said, how do you know you're done with a book? When you're so sick of it, you can't look at it any longer or you fall in love with another book. So I think my experience is a little bit different in that Forbidden City is the first book I ever drafted, but the third one I published. So just it's a long and winding story, but just briefly it came, I wrote it in grad school. It came close to selling in 2009. Didn't realize that the recession would have any impact on the publishing industry. And in fact, it did. So it came close to selling, but didn't. And I was heartbroken, breaking out in hives, just worrying as they kept, my agent at the time was trying to sell it to smaller and smaller publishing houses. But all I could do was continue writing. And for me, that meant continue to work on my short story collection and to begin what would become a River of Stars. The first novel that I ended up publishing in 2018. That book is a pregnant Chinese Thelma Louise. And much of it is said in San Francisco's Chinatown where the two pregnant women hide out. But yeah, I mean, I think you always, I remember talking to a book editor who said, oh, everyone has a first novel shoved in their desk. And I thought, okay, well, that might be true. It's still very painful. But yeah, I mean, I think I was able to start on the next project and even say on the project I'm working on now, because although this book just came out in May and I want the best for it as it enters the world, I'm now caught up in the world of the next book that I'm working on. So you're committed to like the four year cycle? We'll see. What about you? What you just said, Vanessa, about how you know a book is done when you're too sick of it to even look at it really resonates with me. And I think because of that, I've seen through the years. This is my third novel that each book is a very, very clear reaction to the book that came before. So to give you an example, my first novel, Soy Sauce for Beginners is set in contemporary Singapore. It's centered on a family business. That's an artisanal Soy Sauce factory. And it has a protagonist that on the surface looks very much like me. And so I would go on book tour and the first question that I would get is does your family own a Soy Sauce factory? And if so, what is the Soy Sauce called? Because I Googled it and couldn't find it. And I was so kind of irked by having to answer that question and say, no, it's fiction. That for my next book, I wrote historical fiction set in 1950s Southern China. And I was like, nobody will ask me if this character is me because I wasn't born in 1950s. And so that was my kind of reaction to that even though it was subconscious. And so when it came to this book, now I can see very clearly that when I was working on my last book, very what we cannot take, it was a book that required an incredible amount of research. And that was kind of the largest challenge that I had to overcome in order to write that book. And I remember that one day after a really hard day of research, I turned to my partner and I said, listen, the next book that I write, it's gonna require zero research and it's gonna have to be out the only topic that I know about and that is designer handbags. And so I said that as a joke, but eventually, because of various circumstances, it grew into this kind of crime caper involving the counterfeit handbag industry, which in the end required a lot of research. But my kind of avenue in was really this desire to feel expert for once in something that I was writing. How about you? I, yeah, I love that idea of books being a reaction to what you're experiencing. I feel like mine, yeah, so I wrote an autobiographical novel first and it was the story of an immigrant family who ends up as a refugee family in the US and they're fleeing the violence of the 90s in Columbia. I did a lot of research for that one and I think I went the other way where I wanted to even, I think what was exciting for me was to do, to switch genres completely and to do nonfiction. But I really loved, I guess I've always really loved the research element of it. And for this book, it was really fun. So that felt like a change because for the novel, I was just reading a lot of newspapers and reading a lot about car bombs and violence and guerrilla groups at the time. And then for this one, I was just interviewing people about things that are not easily defined or you can't quite comfortably talk about them, like seeing ghosts, having conversations with people about what it is that they thought they'd seen and what it is that they thought they'd experienced and getting kind of like multiple accounts on strange occurrences like that. So it did feel very different. But yeah, I do feel like it's kind of very reactionary the way that I'm kind of going through. Well, it just made me think about how all three of our books are about topics that maybe fall outside of any official record. And so did you feel a particular urgency in telling your family story, like things that wouldn't necessarily be in a textbook or that had to be found through or a history of say, elders who know how much time is left to get those stories? Yeah, I was completely thinking about that. I think with my novel too, I was concerned with the part of the political story that we get or the part that is reported in the news and how the reality of falling in with the guerrillas that it would be a very complicated situation and one character in my novel is kind of threatened into collaborating with the guerrillas. So I felt like that was kind of an underreported story. And then for this one, I did feel like the, if I've seen any story like this, I've seen it in fiction and I hadn't seen it in nonfiction. So for me, because it's my family and these are the stories of my family and where we come from and what we, yeah, the stories that we tell about ourselves that it became so important for me to put that into the record. Yeah, did you feel that way? Well, definitely with my character May, I felt she did, she was emblematic of the millions of young women who have a hand in shaping history but don't ever make it into the official record. Don't even end up as a footnote whether that's in China in the 1960s or in the United States in 2020. So I think as a journalist and as a fiction writer I've always been interested in shining a light onto untold stories. And I think, my three books, Some are contemporary, historical but that's sort of one of the guiding forces behind it, I think. How about you, Kirsten? Yeah, I mean, I don't know that I set out. It's interesting that you described all our books as being kind of apart from the official record. I don't know that I set out to do that. But when I have, you know, we've all been kind of touring for our books and I have gotten a lot of reader responses where people say like, oh, so refreshing to read a story with two immigrant characters behaving badly. And you know, you said that about your previous book, River of Stars. It's an Asian Thelma and Louise. And, you know, I didn't set out to kind of break a stereotype. Although I was interested in subverting the model minority myth. And so, yes, in that way, yes. But it did strike me how rare that is. I remember, you know, this book was picked for the Reese Witherspoon Book Club, which was incredible, incredible honor. But part of the vetting process for that is kind of inside baseball. Part of the vetting process is that they do a mock club, the kind of see what kind of, you know, how the book would do in a book club setting. Who's in the book club? The staff. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. They do like a mock book club to see how a book, I don't know too much about the process, but they do that to see what kind of questions will come up and what kind of, what are the discussion points. And one of the things was, you know, is it okay that this is a book that in some ways celebrates or is that centered on two women behaving badly? And then their ultimate conclusion was, but shouldn't characters of color be allowed to behave badly just like any other characters of color? And just like any other characters rather. And so that was something that I've been thinking of just by seeing the reader reception of this book. How long did this one take you to writing it? This one took me four years, which is actually very fast for me, which sounds kind of odd, but as you all know, a book's taken as long as they take and often for me, five plus years. And I think part of it was because I started it in 2017 right after the election, which I know, I think we all have talked about how that was an incredibly hard period for many reasons, but creatively, I think a lot of us didn't write for most of that year. And so I think when this idea finally came to me and it is very much a book that is set post-election. It also happens right after the election of 2016. I think when the idea finally came to me, there was like a combination of rage and relief that sort of fueled the writing. How about both of you? Well, I heard you say it took how many years? 14 years. 14 years, yeah. 14 long years. Yeah, I think with this book, the story was so complicated and it had just involved so many different storylines that one of the things that I really felt that I needed before I could go on was getting the first chapter right. So I wrote the first chapter over and over again for seven years. Yeah, so I have like this folder in my computer that's just first chapter tries and there's maybe like, I don't even know. How did you know when it was right? It just, it felt like it was doing all of the things that I wanted to. And it felt like I wasn't kind of giving anything a way that I didn't want to, like politically, I mean. Yeah, and then the rest of it I wrote, so I came upon the right chapter or the right version of it in this universe, in this, while I was on tour for my novels. So this was in 20, probably 2019 at that point. And then I wrote the rest of it during pandemic. So I also wrote this one very quickly. Yeah, I remember being blown away by an early version. I think I heard you read in 2013 or for the Feelin' Awards. Do you remember what year that was? Yeah, for that I wrote my part of the Amnesia accident. So I wrote that and I didn't think that that was part of the memoir back then. So yeah, so really like the, me understanding what the story was, it was like a really long journey into that. Well, I mean, I think that's why it's so exciting. We're so lucky to live in San Francisco, in the Bay Area, all these wonderful readings of things that aren't yet books, but someday might, and it's just like an opportunity to be able to read. I remember when you read from the book, I remember when you read from this book in 2009. Yes, at Redlow. Yes, I mean, and here we are. I am so curious though, because both of you write fiction and non-fiction and I don't at all, I only write fiction. If you can talk about like working into genres, like how you know a story is going to be fiction versus non-fiction, what are the joys and the challenges of that? I would love to hear your answer. Well, it's interesting because one of the next, next projects I'm contemplating is an essay collection. So although I regularly write for the Chronicle every week and a column, it's been interesting kind of writing in a longer form and also trying to think about what the overall organizing principle will be. I think it's going to involve time and foraging, which is a pandemic habit or way of life that I picked up passion that I picked up. Where do you, where do you forage? Oh, anywhere in my neighborhood. I mean, I think just there's wild plums, wild mint, blackberries, miner's lettuce. Yeah, it's always exciting. You're going to be my apocalypse buddy. Okay. Oh, you are, I already know, Ingrid, do you seem like someone with great knife skills, axe skills? Yeah, I can contribute that. But just in terms of your question, I guess with fiction, I'm always interested in exploring where that official record ends. And so maybe things, maybe with non-fiction or with essays, I'm exploring things that can be sort of known or stated or at least I'm willing to pull back the veil to say like, this is non-fiction. Whereas fiction, I feel like I have the freedom to, I don't know, to go wherever my imagination goes and still have that cover. How about you? Yeah, I think that with, one of the things that I asked myself is, is this story going to be more interesting as fiction or as non-fiction? You know, with the memoir, it was just clear, if I can interview people about seeing ghosts, to me that's just so just, it's, you know, it should be memoir, to me that's so exciting. And I think if I told it as fiction, you know, adapted it that way, that it would almost seem like it belongs in fiction, so it just becomes less exciting to me. Yeah. And I do agree, though, of Vanessa with this part about the willingness to pull back the veil, because I think non-fiction memoir requires so much of the author, because you have to, you know, you have to, it's truth making, you know, it's you're telling everybody's truths and you have to be willing to do that. And so some stories are like, I'm not willing to do that publicly, but I can do it through the veil of fiction. And I can kind of do a very similar truth telling or even be more truthful in fiction because I have that veil. Did you ever, you mentioned your first novel was autobiographical. Did you ever consider that in memoir form? Or was it always? I did, I think I, one of the first things that I did was trying to write it as an essay. I thought that it could be an essay. And I wrote one paragraph and was terrified and I was like, I think that's a good way to tell too. Yeah. But here is overwhelming. People are actually, think terror in general about whether you should embark on a project is motivating force. Not to necessarily run away from, but that like you have very strong feelings about something that have to come out in whatever genre you suppose. I think we have time for a few questions if anyone, or if there's any online. Hello out there. Oh, there's a question. So this is a question. ISL Gucci LV Chanel. I've been asked this question before. What would be my bag recommendation? Well, I'll promise that with just a little, now that I've been on tour, I get asked a lot of questions about handbags which I'm happy to answer because I consider myself an armchair expert on handbags. Like I said, but one thing that has been interesting having to talk about it a lot is that I feel like prior to writing a book about handbags, my love of handbags was very pure and unequivocal. I was just a fashion lover and I never had to talk about it because writers really don't care. Like nobody ever asked me what my bag was. And now that I have to talk about it for the first time I am like actively interrogating why it is I love handbags. And so my, you know, maybe I will write an essay about this someday but it is no, it's now quite fraught. I remember doing a podcast right before my book came out and the podcast host said very sweetly, she wasn't trying to like stump me. She was like, so Tony, why is a handbag? Why does this cost so much? And I was like, no reason. Like it is, it's not really better quality. It's not really, no reason besides the tag that is on it. And, you know, so that was a long answer. But I would recommend, I would say, if I had to pick a brand that I really love a kind of under the radar brand, Loewe is a brand I really like. I still think it's good quality for the amount of money that you have to spend. And it's not like super logoed. Where is it from? Made in Spain. Okay. Thank you all. That was great. I have a question for Vanessa. Could you talk more about your research process? How did you kind of get the information that you needed to write your book? Oh, sure. So I guess first off, a huge thanks to libraries everywhere, especially I love interlibrary loan. It feels like you have access to every book anywhere. So I remember, I was still living in Southern California at the time. And I was putting in so many requests when I went to do the pickup, the librarian said, oh, you're Vanessa Hua. Cause I was just hauling in stacks of, you know, whatever books I could find, whether, you know, and so I read all the historical accounts that were available. But it's funny, it'd be about a tense meeting of officials, but I'd be most interested in like, oh, what kind of couch were they sitting on? So I combed what was available and took what was most useful. I also traveled to China. I got a fellowship in grad school and was able to go to villages west of Beijing and talk to many is about their time during the Cultural Revolution. And just, you know, and because this project took such a long period of time, more information became available later. And some of that information in some ways substantiated what I'd already guessed at in my imagination. For example, there wasn't anything in English written by any of Mao's former young lovers, but then I found some translated interview maybe two or three years ago. And the dynamics they described in the dance troupe were as I had, you know, written, right? Or even there's a moment where she's standing on shore in Hong Kong on these mud flats and looking back on China. And I wrote the scene before I ever got there. And when I got there, it almost felt as if I'd somehow willed it into being, which of course I hadn't, but it kind of just speaks to the power of imagination. And then with the training I had as a journalist and doing the interviews or tracking down research or following the footnotes, I think helped me write the book. But just one last thing though, it is always important with historical work not to get too much into the weeds because in some ways those accounts have already been written and I've read them and you don't necessarily want to read that in a novel. So for me, the focus was figuring out using it as the floor and not the ceiling to my imagination. Thank you. Did you find Ingrid that you used research differently for your novel versus your memoir? No, I'm curious. I think I did. Because the research for the novel was so political. And for this book, I found that the research that I wanted, I couldn't find actually. So I couldn't find it in books. So I had to do a lot of oral interviews and just going to places, walking around, talking to people, type of work. Yeah, and just asking weird questions. Just great. What did you have for breakfast? We do have a question from the online audience and that is for Ingrid. Will the book be in Spanish and did you do write in Spanish? Also, it's a three-parter. How does your family feel about the book? Okay. Yeah, the book will be in Spanish. It comes out in Spanish in September. And we're having an event with SFPL and Medicine for Nightmares bookstore. And I write in English. I write in English. I've written in English ever since my family migrated from Columbia. And one of the things that happened in that time was that for me, just the experience of losing everything and just having to move and leaving everything behind kind of required a new language for me. And it was a very interesting time because I had very rudimentary understanding of English. So I didn't keep any of what I wrote then but I'm very curious about what it would have even sounded like. And I think over time as I just continued to move around in South America with my family and then eventually made my way to the US, that English became the language of migration for me. And so now, because I've thought of it that way, then it feels wrong for me to write in Spanish directly. Yeah, it feels like I'm skipping part of my own trajectory or part of my own history. And the last part, so my family hasn't read yet but I've gone through and told my mother just kind of done an oral telling for her of what's in the book and she's loved that. She's very happy that she's on the cover. Oh, you took photos for the book, right? Your own photos are in the book. Yeah, yeah, I took, there's photos in the book. I traveled with a Polaroid camera and there's some old family photos that are in there as well. I love that. And so yes, as Ingrid mentioned, September 9th, Medicine for Nightmares in Spanish. Ingrid will be there. And they're also having a book club. So check out Medicine for Nightmares. Thank you so much, everyone. And there are books available in the back. If you want your book signed, I'm sure they will do that for you. And thank you for coming tonight. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you.