 Welcome, and thank you for joining the New America Fellows program for this discussion of the hungry season, a journey of war, love and survival by Lisa M Hamilton. I'm Jill flip a bitch. I was a 2019 ASU future security fellow at New America, and I'm now a columnist at CNN, and the author of two books. I'm really excited to be here in conversation with Lisa. But before we start just a couple of housekeeping notes. We will have a Q&A at the end of the event. So I hope that you will be asking questions. If you have questions during the event, you can submit them through the Q&A function, and we'll get to them in the second half. Most importantly, copies of Lisa's book, the hungry season are available for purchase through our bookselling partner solid state books. You can find a link to buy the book on this page. Just click by the book. Lisa, who we will be in conversation with momentarily was a 2019 national fellow with New America. She's received additional fellowships grants and awards from the UC Berkeley School of Journalism, the California Historical Society, the creative work fund, the James Beard Foundation and others. She is the author of deeply rooted unconventional farmers in the age of agribusiness, and her feature articles have appeared in Harper's McSweeney's Virginia Quarterly Review and California Sunday. She lives in Northern California and is here today to talk about her new book, The Hungry Season. Welcome Lisa. Hi, Jill. Did I miss anything important in your bio? No, it sounded pretty good to me. Okay, fantastic. So I'm so excited to talk to you about this book. It was so powerful and beautifully rendered. The center of the book is Ia, this extraordinary woman who perseveres through a man's hardship to make a life for herself. So I'd love to start by asking how you met her. Well, I would start by saying that I, well, thank you Jill for being here. Thank you, New America, for having us. I apologize if my voice is a little bit rough. I'm in the middle of recording the audio book and first time I've ever done it. It is a grueling process and it's taking a toll on my throat. So apologies for that. And working on this book, even long before I was even my new America fellow back in 2014, and I'm a writer who writes about agriculture and rural communities and my initial idea was to write a book about resilience and agriculture and to write about that through talking about genetic diversity, which is what brings resilience to agriculture, just like the rest of the natural world. And it was immediately clear to me that writing about genetic diversity within agriculture, the obvious way to talk about that was to talk about rice. So I set out to write a book about rice. And I was looking the world over for the human story that embodied that really long and complex story of rice. And I assumed that I wouldn't find that story in the United States because rice cultivation here has by and large become so industrial it sort of lost that, that human connection and a lot of ways. In India I was looking in Sierra Leone I was sort of going down a path in Sierra Leone and when one day a farmer friend of mine in Madeira California called me up and he said Lisa, I saw rice growing in the community garden in Fresno. And I was intrigued. And so, you know, being a journalist, I went out and found who was growing it and found a way to talk to that person it was a long woman who didn't speak English. And so, she and her daughter and I went to the community garden plot talked about it. And it was fascinating. You know, she had taken every square inch of this plot, planted it to rice, and she had also worked with every person in her household to get other to get plots for them and they had planted all of those to rice. So they had this block in the middle of the community garden that was just wall to wall rice and show me that she planted it in April and she harvested in October and she went there pretty much every single day if she could get someone to drive her there because she didn't drive. And so I asked her, well, so how long will this rice last you, you know, well last you for the year, because I was new to rice I didn't really understand how much it would make. And she said oh no this is for one meal. And I thought, what, and it turns out that this is a particular kind of rice that she was growing for the, for the sort of celebration of the new harvest that is that's really a central event in the long calendar. But it's not something you can do in Fresno, if you're not growing rice because you can't get the fresh rice that's essential to it so I was it, I was, I was fascinated, and I set out to meet as many Hmong women like her who were growing rice because it turned out that there was a whole network of women doing this at varying scales up and down the San Joaquin Valley and even up into Northern California. So, I'm most of these women were older, and by and large they did not speak English and so I started working with an interpreter wonderful interpreter who we could talk about more later. And her name is Laura Jean. And Laura and I would visit farms and basically just sort of hang out and talk. And one day we were visiting a woman named you at a farm in Fresno, we, it was harvest time and so we were out in the field with her. She, at that point, I wasn't allowed to help harvest I was mostly just watching and carrying bundles for her and then in the basket and. But at lunchtime, the farmer who had a plot adjacent to her called us in and said she, she wanted us to eat lunch with her. She had laid out this huge feast, and insisted that we sit down and eat with her. And so we did and had this wonderful funny delicious lunch. And, you know afterwards we made to go back out to the field with you. But this woman pulled my in the or the interpreter who I work with aside and said, you know if you guys ever want to come talk to me, I've got some stories to tell. But you know, of course, that was, that was the beginning. That was Ea, and we went back to visit her the next week. And from then on, it was a fairly rapid transition for the book to cease being about rice. Pardon me, but sorry. To being about Ea. It was such a natural transition but I think what's what is so true for me is that it still is a book about resilience. It's not, it's so far from the form that I thought that it would take originally, but really at the heart of Ea's story is her resilience and her, or the adaptation I guess that leads to resilience and it all stems from there, I guess. I have a question for you about resilience lower down on my list, but first I want to ask about rice. You know, Ea is the main character in your story, but rice is a character as well and I think second to her the sort of most central figure in the book. You wove rice as a character in, I mean so artfully, so beautifully. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about that choice, you know how I understand the book came out of focusing on rice. But you know, so vis-a-vis Ea's story, rice became such an effective metaphor and how you use rice to tell the story of Ea's growth and her regrowth. Well, it's natural of course that rice would be a central part of the story at least right. You know so much of the farm, I'm sorry so much of the book takes place on her farm, or in memories of hers that so often have to do with rice. I mean she's coming out of a culture and a livelihood lifestyle in which people farm rice. I mean that is what her family did back in Laos, what she did back in Laos and her ancestors going back centuries. So it's natural that rice would be at the center of the book. And the way that the reporting went was that, you know, it was really important to me that my work not take away from Ea's work. So Laura and I spent five years in the field with Ea on the farm five seasons of rice. And when we would go there to report, really to visit, I would work alongside Ea. So if she was planting, I would be planting, and Laura would be recording us as we spoke through her. And if Ea was harvesting, I would be harvesting along with her. I actually was eventually allowed to do it and I'm not a bad rice harvester at this point after all these years. So my point is that rice was always there throughout the reporting of this book and it is a, it's a central part of Ea's personal economy, her finances certainly. I think a deep part of her self-worth and really her identity as the farmer who offers this really precious resource to the community, not just as food but as a sort of pathway to memory as discussed in the book. So I noticed over time that her fortunes, her own personal fortune was really running parallel to the rice itself. And so it was, it just sort of naturally became a metaphor. You see, I talk a lot about adaptation. I wanted to talk about that with a plant. But so much of what the, her rice seeds and the plants that grew from them went through is so true for Ea as well. As I see it, it's sort of an extension of her, the two are, and they're separate but they, they're twined. Yeah, the interplay between rice and her identity and her culture and all the ways in which that kind of shape, shape shifted throughout the book was just so beautifully done. And I was struck reading the book by how much gender shaped Ea's life from the expectations of her as a child to her marriage at 13 to the role that was expected of her in her new family. And I'm wondering how you can talk, I'm wondering if you can talk about that a little bit how gender shaped both her experiences and her story, but also what it meant for her to deviate from those gendered expectations. Well, I think it's important to say that, you know, a lot of a lot has been written about Hmong people and Hmong culture by people who aren't Hmong, including me. And so often that story is just sort of like blanket statement that about the way that Hmong culture is patriarchal and sort of top down and there's a lot of criticism out there written by non Hmong people. And it was really important to me in writing this book to reflect what Ea told me, because I know that, you know, women all over the world but specifically Hmong women have a range of experiences of their own culture of the men in their lives. And how they respond to any limitations or opportunities that they have. So again it was really important for me for this to be not a story about all Hmong women, but about Ea's experience. And as she described it to me, her experience it was really one of feeling the limitations of the role that she was assigned by being a woman. And, you know, a woman during really difficult times of war and the aftermath of war, and then in a camp for displaced people in Thailand. You know, she doesn't have a sort of feminist framework for seeing her life. She's not engaged with, you know, some discourse about women around the world, patriarchy, so on. And she was relating to me, what happened to her. And often that was that she got the short end of the stick because she was a woman, or she didn't get the respect that she felt she deserved. She was married out of her family when she was 13 years old, and for her. It wasn't maybe so much about the unfairness of that moment as it was the loss. And how she saw her brothers able to continue living with her parents and bring their wives into the family, rather than having her be sort of cut off. But she also showed me that her experience of feeling those limitations as a woman, and her response to it warrant didn't fall along the lines that I as a woman who was, you know, born in the United States and raised in pretty individual centered culture would be. I discussed with her and witnessed in her this real conflict between her own desire to defy those limitations and her allegiance to and really believe in her role within the group. That's what makes her whole. As she explained it to me. And so her life has held this real tension from the start between the limitations that she feels because she's female, her desire to transcend those limitations, but how being a part of the group. It seems to be like a, like a chord pulling her back. So, part of the resilience that is so extraordinary in his life is about withstanding that tension, and yet constantly finding a place for herself. I mean one thing that is so interesting about this story is that one of the ways in which that she is able to. I don't want to say break free of that tension because she never totally is but she's able to defy some of those set expectations is because of tragedy. Right, so you know one of the worst things that ever happens to her and to her community as a whole. You know it's the war and then the end of the war and the displacement that that causes, which upends her life upends the lives of everyone who she knows. But then also upends these gender rules that had long governed the community, which works in many ways to use benefit, but also destabilized the larger group really destabilized a lot of the men. And I'm hoping you can talk a little bit more about how that tension between the obvious hardships that he and her family and her broader community faced. And also how those hardships unexpectedly afforded a lot more freedom than she have had at home. Yeah, I think that the word that sticks out there or the word that feels most true to me and what she just said is destabilization there. You know, as she described it to me there was a system for survival in the village where she grew up. Everybody had very set roles and expectations. And that's what made the whole system work and it was a precarious livelihood. Even in good years. It's still, you know, it was still work constant work to farm rice and then to supply all the other pieces of sustenance and shelter and safety and so on. And so that system felt like you couldn't you couldn't question it you couldn't rock it because that's the only you can rock that boat because that's the only way that she felt as a child. The family would survive. But then when survival comes into come the world is turned upside down. First during the war, then after the war when the, of course the communist forces won the Civil War in Laos, and the Americans left. And people like his family and other mong who had allied with the United States during the war were left to suffer this retribution from the now vested communist government. And it's been, you know, this is, this is why he and her family ultimately fled Laos to Thailand and then ended up in Fresno. And I think the moment that was explained to me and that I read about was when suddenly they crossed the Mekong River and are in Thailand, they were no longer allowed to farm. And so this cornerstone of their livelihood that had really defined everything in a sense prior to that was gone. And there was the, you know, the aid that was meant to keep people alive in the refugee camps but it was bare minimum. And so in order to have anything more than bare minimum. People had to figure out how to make some money, how to get by even just, you know, at an inch higher. And that's where he is opportunity came in so it wasn't. I think, you know, another trope that comes up with writing about the mong experience as a whole is, Oh, mong women came to the United States and, you know, had access to this sort of progressive or modern view of women here and and this is not his experience, but at least her experience was that she wanted to keep her children clothed. She wanted to give them at least a tiny piece of meat every day, so they could grow and be healthy. What she had to do was start hustling. And so she did. And the money that she was able to make. And this was, I think, true for a lot of women, gave them a new role within the family and within the larger group that they hadn't had access to before and for Ea. And ran with it, because this was unlocking this power that I think she has felt in herself since she was very young. And in that way it was an opportunity. I mean, you know, I don't want to. It's not a Hollywood movie. This is real life but but it is something opened up for her. And one thing I really appreciated, you know, and you're telling of her is that it is so layered and so nuanced and she both obviously did care a tremendous amount about her children and trying to provide for them and like you said making sure they had a little bit of meat. So part of why she was such a striking character is that you didn't lean into this other trope of, you know, mom doing it all for her kids. She also had this inborn personal ambition, right, and a sense of herself as a strong person. There's sort of early anecdote in the book about her as I think when she's maybe 11 asking for her own patch of farmland and then she then grows opium. She's just such a great little anecdote thing says so much about just this what seems to be this really deep inborn drive and determination that she has. You know, and yet her life has been so incredibly difficult, and she's been through events that for a lot of people, you know would just completely level us. I'm curious to hear from your years long relationship with yeah, obviously some of this is just who she is. But I would imagine there's also some choices that she made along the way and some tools that she used that helped her persevere through so much hardship, not just to survive but to build this incredible life. I know in this moment when a lot of us are talking and thinking about perseverance. I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what you saw from her you know how did you do this how how did she build her own resilience. It's a good question. You know, I think it really was a mixture of sheer survival and seeing each new opportunity in the, in the, the really the first opportunity that she takes advantage of or that she sort of sees, and there's this moment in the camp where she's in the refugee camp. That's a little weird to call it a camp. The. There's there's this new source of income, which is sewing the embroideries that I think a lot of us can remember from the 1980s. Embroidered pieces that women in the camps would so and then sell as piecework and then they would be shipped to the United States or to France or in other parts of Thailand and sold to tourists or to you know people at craft fairs or what have you. And a lot, a lot of women in the camps were doing this, he was doing this but it was grueling, and she was at the bottom of the chain. And it wasn't, it wasn't paying off the way that she wanted it to. And so she's just sort of watching around her for what other opportunities they were. One of them was making tofu, which the aid groups would buy and give to pregnant women in the camp hospital and, or as part of and as part of their food rations. And so you thought, I can make tofu, and she just sort of like squeezes her way in and starts working for someone making tofu and then sort of squeezes her way out of that and starts making tofu for herself. And then it the rest of her life is really just this little bit of she'll just see an opening and slide into it and go from there and then take what she builds there, build a little more over here. Her husband used to tease her that she was has this insatiable desire for more. And she, she just sort of like froze up her hands when he teases her about that and she's like I just I just do I just like I you know at the edge of she has this enormous rice field. She's like five acres that she's growing by hand at a certain point in the book, and all along the edge of it she's growing other vegetables and fruit that need taking care of. And she's just, she's growing out to the road, and she just hasn't this. Yeah, this insatiable desire so there's that, that sense of sheer survival mixed with ambition and desire. Yeah, I guess tools, tools I have. Yeah, you had asked about tools that the tools are. I asked grit and seeing the opening and not backing down and enduring my God that the, you know, it can be 110 degrees out in Fresno and she's still out there, weeding the rice. There isn't, I have yet to witness a circumstance where she stops working. I mean, and you know that's, it's not so much a tool as it is mindset perseverance it's like there, there isn't anything but perseverance for her I guess. Yeah, no I mean that makes sense. And so your conversations with yeah we're not happening in English, right because she doesn't speak English. So you're working with an interpreter, Laura, you said with her name. Yeah. Can you talk about some of the challenges that arose in reporting this book out you know across languages through interpreters and translators. Yeah, yeah. Well, it was challenging. It's not the first time that I have reported in or reported on someone who speaks a language that I don't and doesn't speak the language that I speak, but never for this length of time. I just give a shout out to Laura because in some ways she should be listed as the co author of this book she and I were together for years and she's an absolutely gifted interpreter, both of language. I mean just her own perseverance and endurance in that 110 degree heat going from long to English English to long back and forth back and forth. And so her ability to translate culture and to, and to be really a sort of emotional bridge for Ea and me the three of us built up a relationship that allowed really a deep friendship to grow, and had lore not been there had been a different person as sort of like, you know, AI robot just giving us language between Ea and I would not have been able to to connect in a way that we did so I just want to recognize lore. I think one of the great challenges of doing this kind of work is that it, it takes a lot more time and effort and sort of steps to understand what someone is saying to you, and I think about the sort of layers of listening that developed through the process of reporting and writing this book so you know if I were writing about you Jill, I would say something to you, you would say it back to me and probably I would understand, or at least feel that I understood what you had said to me I might you know ask follow up questions and and talk about it more deeply but your words would just be your words and in this case of course there is the you know the first step of my saying something and Laura saying it to Ian and he is saying it back to Laura and then Laura saying it back to me so it's not that layer, but every conversation that we had I recorded, and all of those conversations were transcribed so this is hundreds of hours of conversations transcribed. So that then there's another layer where I can go back and I can read what each of us said and think a little more closely about what was said there. I often I would go back to Laura, and we would listen to the audio again over the phone, and she would reinterpret this time simultaneously rather than in chunks. She would interpret simultaneously and so I would get sometimes some new information sometimes just confirmation that Laura was amazing in the first round. And other times I would go. Sometimes at the same passages have a separate translator and do a written translation of the words, and the man who I worked with is particularly adept with the sort of layers of meaning that can exist in speech, particularly among elder mom. So there were all of those layers. And that's just sort of the first round of a story with these, you know, most of the stories in the book. I went back and spoke with you on multiple occasions. And so went through all of these layers over and over again so by the end of the reporting over all these years. And I remember it's it's such a rich and dynamic sort of landscape of information behind each piece. So, you know, all of these layers are why most journalists don't do this. It takes so much time it takes so much effort, effort, energy. It also takes a lot of resources and so another, it wasn't really a layer of understanding there was a layer of work that there was a fundraising component here to, to pay for mostly for Laura's interpreting but also for the travel, you know, we went to Laos three times and Laura and I. So paying for all those things I was an additional challenge. But again, you know, there are these. It's hard to to really go and talk to and more importantly listen to someone who doesn't speak your language. And as a result, you know so many people are left out of the news out of books. I don't think of yeah really even as being like on the sort of the, the margins of the media landscape she's outside of it. You know as telling to me that early on when before I met Ian I was just sort of trying to meet as many long women rice growers as I could. A lot of a lot of people were suspicious of me, thinking that I must be an agent of the government there undercover saying I was a journalist. Because as I was told several times, these women had never no non long person had ever shown any interest in them, they had never tried to speak to them, never asked them what they thought or what their story was. And so I was, I was a real anomaly in that way. So. Yeah, I mean I could go on challenges of the process but I think that, yeah, that getting to understanding. It took a lot of work but I am what was so meaningful for me was to be able to, because it, you know, writing this book required spending so much time together and talking so deeply. It really built up a deep friendship, again, and, and a new sort of intimate place to write from, which is where I most like to write from, and not someone who zooms in gets the story and writes it up and moves on. And that outsiderness, yeah, and her community being outside of the media apparatus right because it's so there are so many challenges to reaching them. She's outside in sort of two different directions right media is not reaching her but she's also not and members of her community are also not able to consume the kind of media that's produced in English about their community right. Yeah, a lot of other among people, if they don't speak English won't be able to read the book. And I mean the same is true about so many books that aim to start conversations about marginalized and non English speaking groups. So, I mean what kind of questions does this raise about what it means that people can't directly engage with works that are about their communities and their lives. And what are you doing specifically to try to make sure that the people that this book is about can actually access it. Yeah, it's such an important point Jill. You know I would, I would actually start by saying that it's important to to, I guess, make the addendum to what I said before the, you know, is outside of the media landscape that I'm a part of. There is a whole long language media landscape that you know there are television shows and a lot of YouTube shows and a lot of innovative forms of communication and news gathering and new sharing that I don't have access to that I'm not side of so it's important to establish that. It's true that, you know, the, the, the media landscape that we hear when new America are part of is is pretty separate from the moan community and so I recognize from the start that, you know, from the really the first day that I went to a farm and Fresno, I came with the understanding that I was a visitor, and there, you know, there are kinds of reporting that where the journalist is, you know, goes in like the FBI, and you just, you know, wail on the door and barge in or you like squeeze in through a crack and there's information and that's vital reporting. I mean that is so important, but that is not what this is. For me, you know, I was a guest in this house, and I entered when I was invited, and instead of, you know, FBI, breaking down the door. I came in and I just sat and listened, and it sounds maybe a little simplistic but I think for me at least when I'm reporting about some person, people experience that isn't my own. The most important thing to do is just simply to listen more than you talk, and to sort of put my own, my own perspective or my own worldview at the door and just enter into the world that I've been invited into and just watch and and try to understand. The, you know, one of the challenges that came up between Ia and Laura and me in my writing this book is that Ia does not read in any language, and she just doesn't have experience with books it's not a part of her life. She just has roots in part in that Hmong is pretty much as far as anyone can remember a an oral language. You know this, the stories are that there was once a written language but it was lost when the mall were displaced from their original homeland in what is now China. Really up until the 1950s, there wasn't a working written language for Hmong and so books are don't hold the same place in Ia's world as they do in mine. And so, along the way, I had a lot of conversations about what it meant for her to be telling me her story and trusting me with that story that I was going to put in a book, because, you know, when it came down to it and I was describing the book through the fact checking process. She was, you know, I was saying, you know, this is what happens in chapter one and sort of giving the lay of the land and she didn't know what a chapter was, because she's never read a book. And so, excuse me. A lot of conversations were had along the way between us and making sure that she felt comfortable in the process and that she understood what the consequences could be of telling me very intimate stories. And giving her, you know, agency to say this is not for the book. But what the conversation came back to every time was, Ia said, listen, Lisa, I trust you. And for me, that's what that's what I sort of held as I navigated my own way through this, but pretty complex position. I knew that he had trusted me, and that it was my role to honor that trust and to respect her through the process. And as long as I was keeping that respect at the forefront, and I was letting that sort of guide me through the process. You know, we found our way. So here we are with the book published, which is really exciting for me. I love this book. I'm so proud of it. And I'm so happy that Ia's story is now told to at least part of the world. But it breaks my heart that the number one most important person to read it cannot. So I've, I vowed that I would find a way, again, raising more money, and that I would find a way to have the book translated into mall and recorded as an audio book, so that Ia could listen to it of course first listener but then you know I hope other people and women like her who have had, you know, parallel experiences similar experiences can access that audio book and, you know, hear themselves represented in some way. That's when when Ia finally listens to the book. That's when the process for me will be complete. And it's still a ways off but I'm working on it. And is there a way for people on this conversation today to support that effort? You know I have, I have, I have not been doing small amount donations but certainly anyone, if there's anyone out there who's interested they certainly can contact me through my website there's a form there. My website is Lisa and Hamilton.com. And, and yeah, I would love what, you know, donations but also if people are interested and have ideas about how to make this happen it is a it's, that would take a whole another whole webinar to explain the complexities of this process but it's fascinating and it's worthwhile and yeah I welcome any kind of support. It's good but important. Yeah. Well, Lisa, those are all of my questions I now want to turn to audience Q&A is focus can still submit those if they have anything you're curious to ask Lisa. So we have a question. Asking a bit about your perspective it says you are a writer as well as a photographer. Can you tell us more about your creative process for each pursuit. How does your approach differ when choosing a subject to focus on? Well, you know, I think being a photographer does play a role. I do make a lot of photographs along the way and I use those in the, in the course of writing, I turn back to my photographs often but I think I also sort of look as a photographer in a way that I, it's sort of an added dimension to looking as a writer, seeing the just exactly what is on the floor of the shed at the farm, and seeing the way that the different pieces interact and then if just a pile of trash or noticing the way that the light changes through the course of the day at the farm. That certainly plays a role and because you know because the photographs aren't published in the book, I have to find a way to write those things. And that's always been a part of my process. Finding the story. I can't remember the exact wording of the question, but in terms of finding a story, I'm, I go through the world, looking and listening and there are 10, if not 20 times as many stories that I find that then I'm able to write. I don't know, I don't know Jill I mean how do you find a story it's like when you're at you go through the world. It's a little bit of a curse right like you everything is a story. I have, I have a firm belief that anybody out there could be a book. You know there could, I know that's a weird way to say it but that, you know I could walk out onto the street right now and walk up to the first person I met and if there were enough time, and enough sort of intimacy that everybody has a story, it's a sort of revealing it and putting it in context and really understanding someone. So, that is to say, you know I've approached the world just to always hearing stories, listening for stories and I guess some just rise to the top. Some come up to me and say, listen to this, like you did. A bit of a related question. You said that the book ended up being very different than you initially envisioned it, and then it took twists and turns. What was that like, and how did you meet those changes. Well, I mean, you know initially it was a book about rice and boy I'm glad that it was not because you know what's exciting for me about this book is really the story and the way that it moves from beginning to end rice is a sort of impossible story it's there are a million stories they're sort of at you know as many stories about rice as there are people who grow it. So, but it was initially, it was hard to let go of that initial idea that I had written down and actually sold to a publisher and I had the incredible luck to, or good fortune or whatever it was synergy to have found an editor who believed in following the story. Vanessa Mobley at Little Brown, who was the editor I worked with first she eventually left and I worked with another editor Alex Littlefield who is equally wonderful in just two different complimentary editors but Vanessa said, stay with it. And it's okay if your deadline passes. And it's okay if your deadline passes again, and we'll just put it off because you're, you're feeling something you see something and you know, one of the challenges of that is that a book that I was, you know, sort of contracted to write in two years became like added on an additional five. It took a real toll on my own health. My family really took a hit. They're wonderful to support me through this. But I guess I just I, you know, but I traveled to Fresno so often that there was this sort of joke among my friends that I had a secret family in Fresno, which I do not but but in a way I really did marry myself to this project. And I was, I reached a point where there was no way I was going to turn back even as the years started adding up. And I think any creative person, you know, Jill, I see you not in your head I mean this is when you feel it you just go there and no matter what it takes and no matter how long it takes so it was not easy, but I had a lot of support along the way, and I'm glad that I was able to to follow and you know I will say one last thing which is the book that I would have written if I'd stayed within my contract two years would have been, you know I talked about those layers of understanding on a sort of micro level but on a macro level there are so many layers of understanding of Iya's experience who she is, what matters to her and and also how she has changed over time just in the course of my knowing her. And I hate to even think of the book that I would have written in two years because it would have just been sort of a slice off the top of that really, really deep layered understanding of who she is. So I feel so fortunate that I got to stick with it and know her with the depth that I do. I have a few really interesting questions so I'm going to ask you one that I think we'll have a short answer so we can get to know what makes this particular rice so special to the Hmong people, and can you taste its difference from other rice. The very quick answer is that these seeds are all brought from Laos in different ways and and sort of adapted to being grown here in California in Georgia in North Carolina in Oklahoma all over the country. But they are Hmong rice so they're coming from relatives in Laos and being planted here so that's the first step but the second step is that this rice is roasted, and it has a long history of being, you know, the title of the book is the hungry season and what the hungry season is is that period of time between when last year's rice harvest, last year's rice crop has all been eaten, and before this year's rice can be harvested so this is period of sometimes months when you don't have your staple food and you're really longing for rice out of hunger but also for a lot of other reasons and so back in the day. So there would be a little bit of the harvest that was that was picked just a little bit green. And so that you could start eating rice sooner. And that rice was roasted over a fire, and what it did was there still the sugars in the rice that haven't yet changed to starch. Through a myriad reaction, and it's almost like caramelizing, but it's so much more complex. That is the rice that you use to offer to the ancestors to sort of open the door to the rice harvest and it's a momentous event every year. And as we talked about, as you know, the people who fled Laos crossed over the Mekong River they sort of severed this relationship to farming, because they weren't allowed to farm on the on the other side of the river, and lost this farming but also of having this moment each year when you have the new harvest when you feed the ancestors with it, and then you begin to feed yourself with it. And that's what is happening in Fresno now is growing this rice she's roasting it and giving people in the community the opportunity to eat this particular rice again, and have that experience again. I have eaten this rice now for many years, it is markedly different from any rice that I feel pretty confident, unless there are people out there who have eaten this rice, it's very different. It has an incredible aroma when you cook it that fills the house. I keep it in the freezer because I can't eat it fast enough, and I want it to stay fresh and when I pull it out of the freezer and let it sit and come to room temperature it already has the aroma even without cooking it. And tasting it, I, I smell it more than I taste it, but the, you can feel the sort of you can taste the like sort of nutty overtones. For me, it's the texture of the rice that's so soft, it's it's become comforting to me, this rice. So, I don't want to, I don't want to play it up too much because it's really hard to get out of your hands on and maybe if there are some foodies in the audience they want to try it and good luck. Making me hungry. Yeah, sorry. Well, unfortunately, I think we are just about out of time. If we didn't get to your questions, I apologize. But some of them are actually answered in Lisa's book. So, it is wonderful. It is the hungry season, a journey of war, love, and survival. You can buy it anywhere books are sold or through New America's partner solid state books. And that link should also be on the event page for this event. Lisa, thank you so much for writing this for such a beautiful and important projects, and for having this conversation today. Thank you Jill.