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Yeah, test one, two, testing one, two. Test one, two, three. Test, test one, two. Test one, two, three. So it shows our test, six p.m. Six p.m. Test one, two. It's right, testing one, two, three. Test one, two, three. Test, test one, two. Test one, two. Test, test, testing one, two, three. You go a little bit closer to your test. You can push it up here. Okay, let me try. Testing one, two, three. Test, test, testing one, two, three. The volume's not up yet. Lungs over. Testing one, two, three. Test, testing one, two, put the volume up over there. Test one, two, three. How does it sound? Testing one, two, three. Does it sound good? Today's event starts at six p.m. I want to see how he's ready here. That's what we need. Right. Testing one, two, three. Okay, now we need to figure out how to get, like, there's a way to win, too. Let's sit down and choose. Testing one, two, three. True. You got it. Okay. Okay. There's a way to win to this one. I'm trying to minimize the output, the red one, so I can maximize the little other ones to get. That's what I was doing on the other events, is just putting lights in there. Testing one, two, three. Hello? So this is where this kind of, can we just have a talk? Yeah. What do you want to read, this? What do you want to read, everyone? I'm going to read a paragraph. All permissions granted by me, and all releases by me, will ensure the effectiveness and perpetuity. Two, two, three. And throughout the universe, all permissions are released here in extending the rights of the Mechanics Institute. And we're live on Facebook Live. Let's hold an IT discussion. To what do you do for a spring break? This is live. This is what you're doing right now. No, today's event starts at 6 p.m. And it's about, I'll let Matt tell you what it's about. Sure, yeah. It's explaining the East-West culture gap. And we're going to have a guest speaker, two guest speakers. We're going to have Guse Jen and Maxine Hong Kingston. And this is free for all Mechanics Institute members. And it's only $15 for the general public. It starts at 6 o'clock at Mechanics Institute Library Meeting Room. So if you're free, come swing by Mechanics Institute 4th floor. And if you're not free, you can still watch us on Facebook Live. Yeah, follow Mechanics Institute. Follow Mechanics Institute, and you'll have notifications on whenever we have a live feed. Perfect. We're good to go. Yeah, everything sounds really good. Let's go get some lunch. Yeah, I'm going to go get some lunch. All right, we'll see you guys back at 6 o'clock. Nice. Testing one, two, test, testing one, two. Test, testing, testing, testing one, two. Test, test, testing, testing one, two. Test, testing, testing one, two. Testing one, two. Test, testing, testing one, two. Two, testing one, two. Test, testing one, two. Testing, testing one, two, three. Testing one, two, three. Hello, this is Roy, testing one, two, three. Testing one, two, three. This is an audio test. Testing one, two, three. See something, so it's being ordered. Oh, hello, hello. Can you hear me? Okay. Test, testing one, two. It's good right here. It's just the lighting that makes it. We don't want there to block the speakers and we don't want there to block the camera. So we're welcome, so we're like, no, it should be fine, we're welcome. Okay, we're office. Testing one, two. Testing one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Now it's on. Oh, I don't know. Yes, oh, I'm fine, thank you. The fate of immigration. Okay. So good evening, and thank you for joining us here at Mechanics Institute at 57 Post Street in San Francisco. I'm Laura Shepherd, director of events, and I'm pleased to welcome you to our program on March 8th, 2017 International Women's Day. And we are honored to have two great women of arts and letters to celebrate. Author, Gish Jen, in conversation with writer poet, Maxine Hon Kingston. Tonight we celebrate the personal and public pride and achievements of women around the world, and also Gish's new book, The Girl at the Baggage Claim, explaining the East West culture gap, which explores how heritage, culture, and country shape our identity, values, and behavior. Now for those of you who are new to the Mechanics Institute, we'd like to invite you to come on Wednesday at noon to have a free tour of our library and our beautiful Beaux Arts building. Also, please consider becoming a member and attend most of our programs for free. The Mechanics Institute continues to be one of the most vital cultural and literary centers in the Bay Area, with ongoing author events, panels, Cinema Lit Films series on Friday night, book clubs, computer classes, writers groups, and chess classes and tournaments throughout the calendar year, seven days a week. So pick up our calendar, see us at milibrary.org and become part of our ever-growing cultural family. Also, after our program, we invite you to join us down at the data bar in our retail spaces below for a refreshment and members do get a 10% discount at the data bar and gallery. And now I'd like to introduce our special guests. Gish Jen is the author of four novels and a book of stories including The Love Wife, Mona in the Promised Land, Typical America, Who's Irish and World and Town. Gish's new work is an extension of her nonfiction book, Tiger Writing, from the Harvard Massey Lectures and a rumination on the East-West culture gap drawing on social science and her own experiences. Her honors include Lanin Literary Award for Fiction and the Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She teaches from time to time in China and lives with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Maxine Hong Kingston's first book, The Woman Warrior, China Men, was published in 1976 and won the National Book Circle Award. Her second book, China Men, earned the National Book Award. Kingston has also won the Penn West Award for Fiction for Trip Master Monkey and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. In 2014, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal of Arts presented at the White House by President Obama. Her most recent book is a memoir in verse. I love a broad margin to my life. Kingston is currently the senior lecturer emerita at the University of California in Berkeley. And this is the 40th anniversary of the Women Warrior, China Men, which will be out in a new edition this spring. So we are pleased to welcome our East Coaster, Yixzhen, and our West Coast gal, Maxine Hong Kingston to Mechanics Institute. I like that it gives a whole different meaning to East West, right? And there is a cultural gap. Anyway, I did just publish. Oh, you want me to stand down here? Okay. Oh, the camera. Oh, off camera, oh goodness. Okay, should I stand right here? Or sit. All right, I will happily sit. My book was just published last week and I gave my first reading at Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And right there on the front row was an old friend of mine. And I looked at her, and as soon as I looked at her, I remembered sitting on her lawn with her 30 years ago. And back then we were in heavy discussion about how some writers wrote too many books. Oh. Yeah, we knew. I don't mean you. It's not me. But anyway, back then we decided that the perfect number of books was seven. And at the time I had just started Typical American, the whole idea that I was gonna write one real book, much less two or three. You know, it seemed really beyond my wildest imaginings. But this is my seventh book. And I have to say that every single one of these books, I'm always aware that you can write too much. And every one of these books, I don't sit down until I have this feeling that I absolutely must write this book. It's something where I feel like I would rise off my death bed to finish it, right? And until you have that feeling, I feel like you shouldn't sit down. In fact, I often tell my students, I don't know how many of you remember the rhyme of the ancient mariner, and there's the crazy guy, and he's grabbing people by their lapels, and he's like, listen to me, you know? But I think until you have that feeling like, listen to me, you really shouldn't be starting your book at all, right? In any case, so I have written this book in many ways, it's my riskiest book. I will say it's very definitely my most useful book. And if he asked me, you know, so why did I write it? I mean, it is nonfiction, but I wrote it for many of the same reasons that I write my fiction. And that's to say it is, on one level, a deeply personal. A friend of mine once said that writing is like listening to a very soft voice. And I think that's true. You know, in general, one has to be very quiet in order to hear that very soft voice. But it is true that every now and then the voice just kind of pops out. And that happened to me 25 years ago when my son was born, and I was in a mother's group, and our kids were like four weeks old, and we were going around the circle. The first thing is that, you know, everybody else, the other mothers had all put their babies on the floor, like right there on the hard floor. And I could not do that. So, you know, I'm going around the circle. Everybody else has their baby on the floor. I'm holding my baby like this. And then we go around and we're each supposed to say, you know, what it was that we most hoped for for our baby. And everybody else said that they want, they hoped that their baby would be independent. I mean, you know, these children were breastfeeding. They couldn't hold their heads up yet. I'm just like independent. I mean, this had never crossed my mind. And I just said, you know, I wanted my baby to be happy, you know? But, you know, that was one of the first times, and I realized that even though, you know, I am the child of immigrants, and even though I kind of look like everybody else, and you know, I was doing just fine in American society, obviously. But that there was something about me actually that was a little bit different, you know, was some of my first glimpse into this fact. And, you know, since then, I've had many, many, many more moments like that. And, you know, I should tell you that, you know, this is not because I was, you know, in any way the stereotypical Asian. I was like, quite the contrary. I mean, I was a rebel from the get-go. So I did everything wrong. And I do mean everything, including becoming a novelist, which by the way, by the time I did it, you know, only one person in America had successfully done it, and who looked like me, that was her. This is definitely not the career path of choice, let me just say. So, you know, I was not in any way, you know, you would never look at me and say, oh, of course she feels different than everybody else. You know, you would never have said that. But like I say, there were many, many moments that followed that, where I became aware of the fact that actually there was something about me that was a little bit different than the mainstream. And not only about me, but also about my family. You know, to this day, my mother is 91, and you know, I have three brothers, and you know, my brothers have lunch with her every day. You know, sometimes two of them go, sometimes all three of them are there, like every day, you know? And my brother, I will say also, goes to see my father's grave like very often. And he sits there, he tells my father, gives him the report on everything. You know, it's clear to me that you know, all these years later, that you know, my father is still my brother's most important audience, you know? And that this is, I realize is not like everybody. Now, all this said, you know, I didn't actually only write this book for myself. I also wrote it because, you know, I have been going to China since 1979. I have taught in China any number of times in any number of places. So I have taught in Shandong. I've taught in Beijing. I've taught in Hong Kong. I was just teaching in Shanghai just this last fall semester. And you know, of course, China has changed enormously. But it is clear to me that there is still quite a cultural gap. And such as the gap that really, you know, actually with globalization, you don't even have to go to China to encounter this gap anymore. It's right here in many of our classrooms. I think pretty much every Western educator I know of who has, you know, students from China in their classroom has a story, right? A story rather like the girl in the baggage claim. The girl in the baggage claim that that story is a real story. What happened was that there was a girl who applied for admission to Milton Academy, which is outside of Boston, very prestigious independent school. She was applying from Asia. She had great TOEFL scores. She wrote a great essay. She had great, you know, everything, right? Great Skype interview. Milton was very excited. They went to the airport to go get her. And right, pretty much as soon as she arrived, people realized this person is not quite what I'd expected that we'd expected. And as the semester went on, it became increasingly clear that something was really quite different. And by the end of the semester, it was clear that the person who had come was not the girl in the Skype interview, but her sister. And this shocked the head of school. It shocked other heads of school. In fact, I first heard the story from another head of school. But I tell you, listen to the story. I was not shocked, you know? I mean, of course, it was wrong. You know, it was wrong. It's fraud. There's no way that, you know, there's nothing that you, there's no way that you can dress this up. I mean, it was wrong. But the idea of substituting one person for another, you're already laughing, is very ancient, you know? I mean, you know, this is really not that unusual thing. In fact, my Chinese tutor last semester when I was in Shanghai, you know, she told me that, you know, she had a best friend. Her best friend was not very athletic. The school had a physical fitness requirement. And so when it came time to go do the long jump, she, my tutor, went and did the long jump for her friend. Of course, she did so well that her friend was then recruited for track and field. But, you know, this is the kind of thing I can't even tell you. This kind of thing happens all the time. You know, I myself, I gave a reading with Su Tong, you know, kind of did event very much like this. I had a little Su Tong, as many of you may know, as the author of Raise the Red Lantern, many other wonderful books. And, you know, at the end of the thing, everyone was very excited, and people just really wanted me to sign something. But we were at a Chinese language bookstore. I didn't have any books. So they said, well, would you just, you know, would you just sign Su Tong's book? I said, this would be like, oh, Maxine, I'll sign your book. Okay, I'll sign yours. Yeah, I look at Su Tong's book. Oh yeah, sure, sure, sure. You know, so, you know, I happily signed Su Tong's book. I mean, I did sign my own name, but it was clear to me that I could have signed his name and everyone's would still have been happy. But I can't tell you how common this kind of thing is in China, actually. And for those of you who know things like the story of the stone, you know, the dream of the red chamber, if you'd ever seen the manuscript, you would say, you know, he had, Tal Shui Qin had, you know, had people, other people who were kind of helping him. His collaborators have written all over the manuscript. You know, this is not like notes in the margin. You know, it's not like a little common fox over here. No, no, no, it is, they have written all over the manuscript. And those of you who know what a, you know, what traditional Chinese painting looks like also will know that, you know, you can have the painting and friends will write things on them, you know, around the painting and people have owned the painting will also write on the painting, you know. You know, the idea that this piece of art is like a precious thing that should not be touched and that be kind of solitary is totally absent. And you know, I think that when we think about these things, you know, it's really no surprise that we have problems with, you know, intellectual property laws and so on. But if we really ask ourselves, you know, why is it that we have so many issues around originality, you know, every single matter that has to do with originality, of why do we have so many issues between the East and the West? And the answer is that the underlying self is different. Now, I know that, you know, maybe people will say that China is changing and of course, you know, if you equate, you know, individualism with self-centeredness and collectivism with altruism, then, you know, you would say, well, Chinese, the young people today are really not very collectivistic. I mean, you know, because they're so selfish, you know, especially these kids who've grown up, you know, the results of the one-child policy, I mean, these kids are very, very, very spoiled, all these little emperors, right, very self-centered. But I would actually argue that, you know, the way that we think about individualism and collectivism is actually a little bit off. And, you know, that individualism is not coincident with self-centeredness, but something else. And that's why in my book, I use these different terms to try to get away from this individualism and collectivism thing. I use the terms, big pit self and flexi self. And you'll ask, oh, what do I mean by that, right? I will say that, you know, before I can say anything about the self, you know, that, you know, just as you can be left-handed or right-handed, but you can actually use both hands, you know, so you can be a big pit self or flexi self, but, you know, we both have both selves in us. And just as some people are really fully ambidextrous, there are people who really have both selves and I would put myself in that category. Absolutely. And, but what do I really mean? But anyway, and I would say that, so these cells are on a continuum, right? I mean, it's not like a black-white unit, it's not like either or, right? But if we looked at the two ends of the continuum, they are quite different. And I would argue one dominates in the East and one dominates in the West. The Western self, we're very familiar with from all of our ads, you know, the whole dominant narrative that we have, you know, it's very much like an avocado, right? It's an avocado, we have a big pit in the middle. Very big pit. A big pit, a sacred pit, I will say, by the way, it's a big, sacred pit. We feel that this is our essence, it is our identity. It is the thing to which we must above all be true. When we think about our education, so much of our education is geared toward developing that pit, toward understanding what's unique about that pit, right? The free expression of that pit is very important. So that, and all the products of that free expression are also important, that's why we protect them. That's why we have intellectual property laws because they are the expression of our sacred avocado pit. And also, it's also why we think freedom of speech is so important, right? So this pit must be free to express itself and to us, that is a very, very important priority. But in the Far East, they don't have this big pit at all, right? They have a flexi-self. So if you imagine that, you know, our ideas about what's really true, you know, that it all comes from in here, but you know, in Asia, what's really true is in the culture. It's outside of ourselves, right? So, you know, if in the West, you know, our highest cultural ideal is the genius, somebody with a big pit, right? Somebody who listens to themselves, you know? In Asia, you know, the ideal is the master. Someone who has absorbed the tradition, absorbed the culture, and then added something to it. You know, it's not that, you know, it's not that the self is not there, whatever that means, but it's not that there isn't an active person grappling and choosing, making decisions, but very foundationally, it looks outward first and then thinks, how can I add to this very great thing? And this difference of emphasis is enormous, and we can talk about it some more, you know, in our Q&A and so on. But I will say that I do think that it underlies an enormous number of issues. You know, we look at, you know, east to west, and you think of all the things that are most baffling about the east to the west, and most baffling about the west to the east. Underlying many of them is this difference in self. And I will say that we see evidence of it in the literature, not only of Asian writers, but also of our great Asian American writers. And I was really struck by this passage from you, Maxine, when you sort of say, you know, whenever I come to a low point in my life or work when I read Virginia Woolf's Orlando, that always seems to get my life force moving again. That's your chi, right? I just love the way she can make one character live for 400 years, or that Orlando can be a man, Orlando can be a woman. Virginia broke through the constraints of time, of gender, of culture. And you also said, William Carlos Williams does the same thing. Abraham Lincoln is a mother of our country. He talks about this wonderful woman walking through the battlefields with her beard and shawl. I'm sorry. Abraham Lincoln is a mother of our country. He walks, he talks about this wonderful woman walking through the battlefields with her beard and shawl. I find that so freeing that we don't have to be confined to being just one ethnic group for one gender. Woolf and Williams make me feel that I can now write as a man, I can write as a black person, I can write as a white person, I don't have to be restrained by time or physicality or I might add my big pit. And now, you know, Gishwin, I'm getting ready to come here. And oh my gosh, I'm giving another presentation. I feel stage fright and I just call my sister and she can come. I'll write the books and she'll get up here and she'll talk and you won't know the difference. And she'll be, I mean, she looks like me. She has the same voice. She's read my work. I'm sure she could answer all the questions. Okay, so this is the 40th anniversary of the Woman Warrior, the book, but it's the 1500th anniversary or it's been 1500 years since the chant of the Woman Warrior began. When you write out the myths in your own words, then you capture the power of those people. And so I wrote out this story of Fa Mulan in prose and I wrote it as a feminist battle story. Okay, so then 30 years go by and I become more and more of a pacifist. And I think, well, you know, that war story, maybe I should take a look at it again and the more I looked at it, the more translations I would find or the more versions I would find from people. You know, the chant being 1500 years old and being chanted, it changes. So there must be like millions of versions. Every time anybody chants a poem or a song, it's different. And the more I tried to get closer to the original story, the more I saw that I had made a huge mistake by writing it in prose. It should be done in poetry and it should be done as a chant. And so I translated the chant and I got it closer to the way it should be. And in Chinese, it begins with a sound. Chick, chick, chick. And that is the sound of weaving. It's a sound of the shuttle going through the loom. But chick also has a meaning. Chick means to weave. It chick means to knit and chick means to heal. Chick, chick, chick. Chick, chick, chick. Pharmuklan is weaving the shuttle through the loom when news of the draft comes. Each family must provide one man to be a soldier in the army. Sparing her dear father the wretched life of a soldier, she disguises herself as a man and goes in his stead to war. With heavy armor and her hand-fitting sword, she fights wars. Her horses hooves pound the earth. She cannot hear the voices of home. She is away long years and many battles, so long a time that her father and mother grow old and die. At the head of her army, giving chase and being chased, she suffers wounds. Blood drips red from the openings of her armor. Her army chasing and being chased passes her home village six times back and forth past her home. But she cannot stop to place offerings on the graves. In terrible battle, General Muklan defeats an enemy and the king proffers rewards. She asks to go home, the war be done. She takes her army to her home village and orders them to wait for her in the square. Indoors, she takes off man's armor and bathes, dresses herself in pretty silks and reddens her cheeks and lips. She upsweeps her long black hair and adorns it with flowers. Presenting herself to the army, she says, I was the general who led you. Now, go home. By her voice, the men recognize their general, a beautiful woman. You were our general, a woman. Our general was a woman, a beautiful woman. A woman led us through the war. A woman has led us home. Fa Muklan dispans the army. Return home, farewell. Beholding and becoming yin, the feminine. Come home from war. Chick, chick, chick. Chick, chick, chick. Now, it is not a feminist battle cry. It is not only a feminist battle cry and it's not just a war chant. It's a come home from war chant. It is also a filial piety chant. These are the values that we grew up with. Gish talks about this girl who takes her sister's place at school. What about a daughter taking her father's place in war? I mean, that is so, that is so drastic. And this is the ideal that you could even do that for your father. This is one of the more palatable poems or ways of talking about this value. There's another one. I think Amy Tan puts it in one of her books. If a famine comes and everybody's hungry, you cut off your arm and cook it and it's for your parents to eat. So those are the ideals that we're reaching for. Now, she wrote this book, The Girl at the Baggage Claim. So I'm also going to tell you about a girl and on an airplane. As you listen to this, thinking about the interdependency of these families and clans, this poem is about me and it's about my mother and it's also about this girl on the airplane. But see how the identities shift, how everybody is identifying with everybody else, even to the point where you may not figure out who's talking or who's thinking and these voices and relationships go through time so that we're talking about the past we're talking about a past migration and also a present immigration. Once I was on an airplane beside a village girl in the window seat. At takeoff, I asked her, where are you going? Why? She shouted in surprise and grabbed ahold of my hand. You speak like me. Yes, I speak Seya language. Are you from the village? No, my mama and baba came from Seya villages. They left for New York. They lived in New York, then California. I was born in California. I feel like a child younger than this girl. I'm telling about parents as if I still had them. I'm talking in my baby language. Why, she exclaimed, loud as though yelling across fields. I am going to New York. I am meeting my husband in New York. He's waiting for me in New York. He works in a restaurant. He's rented a home. He's sent for me and waits for me. She did not let go of my hand. I held hers tightly as we flew the night sky. She looked in wonder at webs of lights below. Red, red, green, green, she said. Red, red, green, green, my mother used to say, meaning, oh how pretty. The lights were white and yellow too and gold, blue, copper and above, stars and stars, mother, mama. As you leave the village family, you'll never see again. Grandfather walked her as far as he could walk. Stood weeping in the road until she could not see him anymore when she turned around to look. She's off to that lonely country from where he returned broke. I felt that I was dying. Mama, girl, you are not traveling alone. I am traveling with you here holding your hand. I know that country you're leaving for and shall guide you there. I know your future. I'm your child from the future. Your husband will certainly meet you. Baba will be at the East Broadway station. You will recognize each other, though he be dressed modern Western style. You will have a good life, a good, good life. You will have many children and live long, a long, long life. You will be lucky. You are lucky. Your husband has work. He's rented an apartment and made you a home. He saves money. He bought your plane ticket. He will be waiting for you at the airport. She listened to the wise old woman teaching her. But how to instruct anyone the way to make an American life? How to have a happy marriage? For a long time in the dark, dosing, dreaming, thinking, we sat without speaking, without letting go of warm hands. The red, red, green, green appeared again. I told her, that's Japan. We're over Japan now. We'll be landing soon in Narita. Wah! You speak Japanese too. She admires me too much. Inside the horrible confusion of the international airport, how can a mind from the village not fall to crazy pieces? I found a nice American couple making the connecting flight to New York and asked them please to take this Chinese girl to the right gate. She thanked me. She said goodbye. See you again. Joy Kin. She did not look back. Good. Gotta go. Things to do. People to meet. Places to be. I want to begin this conversation with Gish by giving her a present. Whoa. A gift. Later on, I've got this crazy story about giving her gifts. So maybe we'll have time for that later. I'm glad I see you have both of your arms still on. So I know that's not in here. I'm not giving her my arm. And it's not a garish Chinese New York thing. It's just like Dave Yew. Yes, that's what I was thinking about. It's beautiful. Thank you, thank you. Oh, thank you. Okay, and that brings me to my question for you. Okay, so, I mean, she uses this avocado as a metaphor throughout her book, but I thought of another metaphor. This avocado is a writer. This is what writers look like. Writers have these big pits. And the way she's thinking about people who are independent. They have this large pit. Maybe we can even call it an ego or a big self. And all this time, we are working on how are we gonna be both interdependent and independent? Can we find the skills to live in this world in both ways? But being a writer is a very solitary activity, very independent that you are alone and you are working and actually keeping other people out of your studio space. And so, how can we be avocados and be writers? I mean, what do you do with this self that insists on being alone when you are born into this culture where you can even share your arm with everybody else? If you cut off your arm, you can't write. There's always the dictaphone, there's also the software now. But I hear you, let me just sort of say first of all, that actually, of course, even flexi-cell people have always written. And actually, Buddhists, as I don't need to tell you, are very flexi-cell. So the whole idea of being a Buddhist, right, is to kind of be one with the cosmos, you know, to dissolve that boundary around the self, between the self and the greater world. And that often involves being alone. So the question is not whether you're, you know, in terms of we think about whether someone is flexi-cell or big pit-cell, it's not so much whether you're physically alone. It's, what is your attitude toward yourself? So are you trying to, are you cherishing the self at some level, trying to really understand what's in that self? Or are you trying to break that boundary down? And you know, you could be sitting perfectly quietly and, you know, in solitude. And you can look exactly the same from the outside, but actually the activities are completely separate. It can be different. You know, I think that, actually, both of us, I think, you know, have quite an interest in social activism. And I think that's one of the ways we square the circle, right? And so for me, I will say that, you know, although I spend many hours in what would appear to be quite a big pit activity, so that, you know, I am trying to understand the self, but if you ask me, well, what am I trying, what is the purpose of my looking within that way? And the answer is, you know, I love this quote from Gortzestine, you know, the artist works by locating the world in himself, because we wish he'd say herself, right? But anyway, she could say himself. But I mean, the answer is that, you know, I'm always, I'm very tuned to what, in myself, is reflective of the larger world, so that looking within is never only about myself. Do you know what I mean? So, and that's one of the many ways, I think, in which at least I square the circle, and I think it's very similar, actually, to the way that you square the circle, you know, because you also, you know, many hours running this beautiful poetry, you know, you're listening to that voice within, but that voice always has to do with the world, right? So I think that these are kind of, you know, the kinds of ways that we deal with this apparent contradiction. I think, too, that, you know, when I think about kind of our larger purpose, like what are we doing? You know, like in one way, you know, we're expressing this truth, which may be quite a private truth. But, you know, in my mind, you know, ultimately we are trying to change the culture. You know, in the narrative I have in my mind, for better or for worse, is that, you know, culture is supposed to serve people, but culture gets a little stuck, you know, it has its own inertia, and often it is not quite responsive to the people that it ought to be responsive to. And the way you know that is that we look within and we feel the rub, you know, and it's our job to kind of, to represent that so that everyone's gonna say, ah, the culture is out of step, you know, the culture is out of step. And so there was a way in which, you know, at least in my mind, so this very big pit activity is related to something larger than myself. And I will say that, you know, I think that we both have ideas like that. And I have to say, many of our colleagues do not. You probably have noticed this, you know. Many of our colleagues do not. I will say though too, that in a general kind of way, you know, this idea that the writer should be this kind of the solitary figure, you know, whether it's just a matter of how much time we spend in the office, or just kind of, you know, the way we view other writers. I mean, I think that you and I are a great example of like, we're not on the sort of the traditional big pit model, right? I mean, as you know, and the traditional big pit model is that I should want to kill you. Anxiety of influence. You know, my strong predecessor, obviously, I should want to murder you. But actually, but we totally agree, if we murder anybody, it's gonna be Donald Trump. Yeah, oh, yeah, we were just saying that. Oh my, we were just saying, oh my gosh, and we're televised and it's all going out. You know what? Those two murderers. You know what really surprised me, who went, okay, I could be working alone and I am writing these books, but I do feel that I am speaking to the world. And then I am hearing voices of everyone and putting all that together in a story. So, but I was really, really surprised when my first book gets published and right away I am attacked by our people. And you know why? It's because we belong to them and we are expected to tell their story and we can't say anything bad about them. And we have to, we are their voice. This is how interdependent it is. Yeah, that's really right. And of course, you know, in my view, both cell constructions, these are cultural adaptations. The question is, there's no right or wrong, good or bad, neither is better or worse. The question is, are they adaptive or are they maladaptive? But anyway, but one thing about the flexi-self is that the flexi-self tends to have very malleable boundaries between the self and intimate others and the family, right? A lot of unspoken communication, a lot of feeling that you would do anything for the whole, because you don't really, it's the whole that matters, right? So your arm really, you know, other people have arms, don't worry. I'm quite young, has a thousand of them. Yeah, but it's a very strong boundary between in-group and out-group. And there is a way in which, when you are on that Western model of writing, the Western model is about complete, what they call radical candor. Well, radical candor doesn't go with being in an in-group, right? Radical candor goes with saying, you know, telling it like it is, let the chips fall where they may. And, you know, and as soon as you adopt that stance, which we must in the West, of course the in-group is furious at you. And, you know, and the fury of the in-group of this feeling that, you know, you have left, that you have individuated, even if, you know, in the larger picture you really haven't. But any kind of move like that is greeted with, you know, a level of anger, which is surreal. And I always really admire you that you survived it, because, in fact, the matter is, from the way that we were raised, we're unbelievably sensitive to that anger. You know what I mean? And that's a weird, because we're so attuned people around us that, you know, that anger reverberates in such a terrible, terrible, terrible way. As I can see, I mean, I can't tell you how it pains me to hear you even remembering it. So many years later, I can see, you know, it's still, you still haven't forgotten. And that makes me want to kill certain people. God, you keep talking about killing me. Oh my God, that's good, they're in good control. But I mean, but my point is that I, but I do think that, you know, when we think about, you know, the bad things about the, you know, there's so many things about the felixie self that are really quite beautiful. But both selves, you know, they both have upsides and they have downsides, you know? But one of the downsides is that, you know, there can be a kind of psychic and prisonment, I hardly need to point out, especially of women. You know, so this idea that, you know, you belong to them, that you had, who did you think you were? What right did you have? I mean, of course all women have these problems, but if you come from, you know, if you're an Asian woman, you really have this problem. And, you know, I do sort of feel like sometimes, you know, when I'm in China, there's so much that's warm and wonderful, but I could never have lived there for exactly this reason. I mean, you know, I'm so rebellious and I would have caught so much hell, really. And I don't think you would have done very well there either, let me just say. But it's hard, it's hard. And so, you know, so adopting this, you know, like this Western stance, it's besides the fact that it's just hard to get the pages, you know, it's hard to find the hours, it's hard to, you know, get the words out, it's hard to make your story work. You know, all of these things are hard. And in addition, I think that we do have a kind of psychic burden, an additional psychic burden, which is often not apparent to others. I am influenced by that negativity and those attacks. And then it's up to me to not self-censor as I go into the next book, because I don't want the attacks to continue. And then, and of course, I'm a very open-minded person. And so I think, well, are they right? So in many, here's the main way that they have influenced me. I started thinking about the ethics of a writer. And do you have the right to another person's story? What do you do when you're talking about real people? You know, you could change their name and everything, but they're still there. And so, in the latter part of my career, I made a rule for myself that I will show everything that I write about somebody, a real person, I show it to them. And we talk about it. And I take it if they tell me that I've gotten them wrong. And I even tell them that if they don't like it, I will not write it. So what's happened is that I negotiate. There have been a few people who said they didn't like it. And then I said, well, what if I did this and this and this? And actually, what I do is I make it even better. And then they love it. And so it's worked so that the writing gets even better. So this is my way of dealing with being a flexi-self as well as an independent self. And so you have that other word, ambidependent. And could you talk to us about your success as an ambidependent person? I mean, I don't know why I'm that bad. I don't know if I can talk about success. But I think that, let me just say or say, just what you describe in terms of your sensitivity to how other people and how they would feel, that is not typical among writers. Mostly I wrote it. It was my truth too bad. Your feelings are hurt, forget it, you know? And I'm just saying that that is a flexi-self attitude. And I just don't write about people that I know. Or it's just that reason everyone's like, oh that must be your mother. Like, trust me, it's not my mother. But I will say that in a general kind of way that I actually feel that while it is complicated to have these two selves, I actually feel it's been a huge gift. And I mean, I think that one of the things that became clear to me as I did the research for this book and the book before this is that there are perceptual differences between these two selves. So, if you have a lion and savannah, the big pit tends to see the lion, right? And if you ask them, can you take that lion out of a savannah? Is it still a lion? Well, of course it's a lion, says the big pit, right? Well, the flexi-self is not so sure. That lion really belongs in the savannah. And it does not have that feeling that you can just take it out of the savannah with impunity. It belongs in that savannah and to take it out as a violation. And it's not really the same thing once you've taken that out because the context really matters. But anyway, but when they look at the lion in the savannah, they see the savannah and it's relationship to the lion, right? So in a very kind of general kind of way, you could sort of say one self has a kind of, in intense, the big pit self likes to analyze. It's looking at the lion, it's looking at the lion's pit, it's going in, in, in, it's slicing and dicing. You know, it's analyzing. But the big pit, the flexi-self is much more holistic, much more interested in pattern. Now, in my mind, of course you're better off with both. You know what I mean? It's just like, you know, obviously every lens we have, no matter how powerful a lens, it only shows a partial truth. You know, of course, if you could have both lenses, that's the way to go. And I feel like that's our great gift. You know, people will say, like, how did you make those connections? I'm like, you didn't see them? You know, I mean, I find it very surprising. But I can see now that it's simply that, oh, I see, you know, I looked at something this way, I looked at it with my big pit self, and then I looked at it with my flexi-self, and I saw something else. And I think in fiction, you know, of course, actually, you need both. Because, you know, on one hand, you've got to understand every character, and you've got to understand everything about them. On the other hand, you need the arc. And if you're going to have very complicated patterns, you know, if you want those patterns to be nice and complicated, you know, as we see, like in Shakespeare, you know, there's very complicated patterns. If you want to have those complicated patterns, I think you need to have a substantial flexi-self side. So to me, you know, I think it's actually been a good, I'm not saying it's not without problems. I mean, obviously it's hugely problematic in many ways. But, you know, very big gift. And I will say also, just in terms of, you know, our ability to not just produce, you know, in the world, you know, but to be human. I just think it's so wonderful to have these two selves. I think that the big pit self, you know, it's like, look, if you were just a Buddhist in this world, you know, you would end up like Cambodia, you know, in Southeast Asia. You know, unfortunately, the world is such, and I just say that because, you know, Cambodia was predominantly Buddhist. And, you know, that kind of opened the door to there being invaded by everybody, taking advantage of, you know, one problem from the next. Finally, in this world, you know, if you have to have a roof over your head, and you have to, you know, a means of living, and really just a means of protecting, you know, what's yours, you need a big pit self, or you know, you're going to be in trouble. But when it comes to life, I think that the flexi-self, there's so much of the richness of life that's associated with having this flexi-self, you know? So that, you know, and I have to say, I really take issue with, you know, the branding of everything which is flexi-self is sort of un-American, you know? In Boston, you know, we have these triple-decker houses, every popular kind of housing, and you know, that's been, you know, that's, these triple-deckers have been occupied by many ethnic families. You know, where you have the grandparents living with the parents, living with the children. But you know, at the first opportunity, you know, the kind of the narrative is, as you become more, quote, unquote, American, you should move out, right? And you know, you should individuate, and you should move to your studio apartment in New York City, right? You know, people move to their studio apartment, you know, they've done it, that, you know, they have succeeded, you know, and then they spend most of their adult life feeling really quite isolated, and you know, in dealing with that isolation, and then if they grow old, by themselves in that apartment, and frankly, it's kind of a terrible thing, or let me just say that I don't know why we must brand the flexi-self triple-decker as un-American. I don't know why we have to be either or about it, and why we can't be both and, you know what I mean? So that we can have the studio apartments, and we can have the triple-deckers, and they can both be okay. You know, so that they are both options, and we do not have to feel that, you know, one is somehow, like I say, you know, the old country, and something that, you know, if you had to act together, you could put behind you, you know, if only one of your children was a doctor, this would not be happening. He'll be stuck in this building. You know, so I really, but, you know, so in my view, I think to have both of these models, it's a good thing. You know, there's, in my book, Tripmaster Monkey, there's a young man, graduated from Berkeley, and it's time for him to, he's interviewing for a job. And, you know, his parents are immigrants, like ours too, and he's getting ready to do this interview, and he's thinking, why can't I bring my mother and father along, you know? And if we're going for an interview, why can't I bring my husband and children? And because, but these are the people I'm supporting, this is why I need a job. And it comes from watching Cambodian refugees, I've seen them go into places, trying to find a job, and the whole family is coming along. Okay, so just to show how much I'm like that, not too long ago, my agent was taking me around in New York, and we're meeting with publishers, and I'm doing all these business meetings, and she says to me, don't bring your husband. I mean, she had to tell me that, because I, you know, when I go on a book tour, it rolls there. I wish I would do anything to have my husband come on my tour. I would, I would do anything. You know, he's a job, damn it. Very inconvenient, very inconvenient. I will say that too, I say, you know, Earl Kingston goes on Maxine's book tours. I hate him, but see, my agent is a real avocado, and she is, she really pushes, I mean, she's gonna get you on that bestseller it is, and she's gonna get the right business meetings, and she had to tell me, you know, don't bring your husband. I mean, she could have said, don't bring your baby, you know. You know, it is something that I do think about. It's a different model. You know, it's just like, you know, I gave the Maxine lectures at Harvard University a couple of years ago, you know, and you know, the chair says, you know, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, you know, the first words out of my mouth were, well, because I was, you know, it was in, you know, it was, they were in Cambridge and I lived in Cambridge, so I knew they had a travel budget that they weren't gonna need for me. And the first thing I said was, can you bring my parents in? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The chair was just like in the history of the Maxine lectures, no one has ever said, oh, thank you very much, I'll give them, can I bring my parents? Yeah. I took a look at it. But I have to say, it was absolutely the first thing that occurred to me. And I just knew how much it would mean to them and, but the fact of the matter is, in that moment, you know, these people occupy our imagination. You know what I mean? And you know, and this is like the really, when people sort of say, okay, so how do you know if you're a flexing self or not? You know, the question is, you know, if something is in your way, you know, if you, you know, first of all, most Americans have, you know, you have two chairs in Starbucks and they're positioned in kind of an inconvenient way, most people just move them. Now, if you told them, oh, actually, somebody put them there on purpose, you know, then they wouldn't. But their first impulse is to clear them away so that they can move forward freely. And, but, you know, and this is an actual experiment, I will say that it was done by a professor at New Jersey Chicago Booth School named Thomas Tellham, wonderful, wonderful guy. But if, you know, but if you were to have, you know, an Asian person, you know, if those chairs were there, and then, first of all, they would not move them. But if you say, unless they thought it would help somebody to move them, and if you ask, well, why should you not move them? They would say, well, you know, somebody, maybe they put them there, maybe they needed to have more people in the shop to make money, maybe, you know what I mean? In other words, they assume that someone, there are other people that they have to think about and what their purposes were and that is their first frame of reference. And if you told them, oh, actually, they didn't mean that at all, then they might move them. But the question is, which is the default, right? Is the default that this, the world is for you to move around about freely in or is the world really something where you really must consider others first and, you know, that what first comes to mind? And, you know, in a very basic kind of way, I think what you're saying is that, you know, your mind is populated, you know? It's not about your pit first. It's populated and it's full of concern for others. And, you know, as you can gather by my story about the Matthew lectures, you know, mine is too. And then what's so, when you say this about your agent, I think that's what's so hard for us in the publishing world is that, you know, we belong to a world that is among the most individualistic of worlds possible, even in the America. And almost everybody in it, you know, the editors, the, you know, the agents, you know, our fellow writers, almost, I mean, I'm not gonna say everybody, but I'm gonna say 97%, that might be conservative, you know? 97% of them are, have big pits and quite big pits, I mean, and are very, you know, and are fiercely devoted to this idea, you know what I mean? So, you know, if you sort of say, is that safe, you know, if we can imagine there's a graph of how sacred do we think the pit is, you know? This is a group thinks that the pit is very sacred, you know? And so it's just a funny position for us to be in because we're so often, you know, at loggerheads with the people around us, you know, we're supposed to love all of our other writers, and we do love them sort of, but everything they say, we think, you're kidding. You know, you should see Gish's tour schedule, our book tour schedule. There isn't another one like it, in that there's all these events that she's going to, all these cities and bookstores, and most writers, their schedule, it would show them going all by themselves to each bookstore. You know, when she filled her schedule, she would ask me to be with her tonight, and other bookstores, she would bring another writer, and she would do this in pairs. Her schedule- It's so much more fun. It's full of pairs. It's so different. Everybody else is out there, all by themselves. I see it as a generosity that, you know, I get to share your book tour, your publicity. I love it, actually. I mean, I do love it, but I will say that actually people also have volunteered. Do you know what I mean? So, I mean, but they're mostly Asian-American. Yes. That Ian Lee, you know, I met her in Shanghai. She was like, we must do an event together, you know? And, you know, it's like, you know, we're busy working our, we've all got books coming out. We're busy leaning on a publicist, and the publicists are like, what? No, no, no, no. Really, Ian, and you know, she's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. We made it, you know, actually in the end, I missed the event because my mother was ill, but anyway, but, you know, but my point is that, you know, this was mutual, and this last one I was just in Seattle with Eric Liu. He wrote to me, he said, how can I help? Can I do an event with you? I'm like, of course I said yes, but I mean, but this is a little bit, I would say that this is where we're very different. I mean, the whole idea of most of our colleagues going out on their book tour and if somebody's saying, sure, I'll show up, you know, can I help? It's just like, people just don't say that. You know, unless I was so Asian, so we were at Elliot Bay Books in Seattle, and so they had my books out and they had put Eric's books out, and he said, he was horrified. He said, oh no, no, no, no. Please take my books away. You know, he didn't want them. He said, this is Gish's evening. It was just like, cut off my arm, right? It was kind of like, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's so nice, it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, you can't sell my book because it's Gish's evening. Of course, when we had the big Asian fight, you know, they were out there, no, no, no, no. Please leave those books there. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. He said, you can't leave those books there. But you know, but I have to say, you know, when I talk about the sweetness of it, you know, we could talk about the dysfunction and there can be a lot of dysfunction, but there's another part of it that is just really sweet and that, you know, I personally would not trade for the world and so I love, you know what I mean? And there's a recluse and here you are. And you know what I mean? To me, it's really very touching and I frankly, between you and me, I know this is a public statement, but you know, I feel like, you know, maybe the writing world could use a little more of that. You know, I mean, I have to say that it's very hard for me to see that as a bad thing. I mean, I think that I think that writing is very tough and I think we could use a little camaraderie. Yeah, okay, I think that she's saying good questions. Oh, she's, oh yes. Well, we have both of your books available tonight, but we're all gonna open up for questions, so please wait for the microphone. Questions? So thank you, this was just wonderful and it brings to mind a really big question for those of us who didn't have an Asian upbringing. I'm sold completely and I'm also thinking of Iranian friends of mine who seem to have this same kind of worldview and interpersonal relationships. It's very, very similar, I think. But given how deep culture is, what do we do about this for those of us who don't have that kind of cultural upbringing? I mean, given that the combination of these two world news and these two ways of being in the world is a good kind of combination, how can we replace this very deep cultural combination for those of us who don't have it? Gloria Steinem said something wonderful that I remember and live by. She said that she will never be alone. She knows how to make community. Everywhere she goes, she will be able to make community. It's like Martin Luther King saying to build the beautiful community. And Gloria Steinem, well, if she goes to jail, she will make a community in jail. If she is put into an old age home, she will make community there. So I think this is an existential making of ourselves in a community. There's been a, it's even a fad of fashion. I'm alienated and alone and I can do anything. I think most of us here were raised like that and then we learned this new way and their skills that you learn, how to bring a sangha together, how to do a workshop, support groups, that's what people are building. I think that you're right though that there's another layer of it which is a lot deeper and that, because if you really talk about your actual self, I mean, that stuff, most of us lay down very, very early. But it is true that most of us, even the very big pit self of us are malleable. I mean, we're much, much, much, much, much more situational I think than we like to think, which may be a bad thing, but it's also a good thing, I think, and I think that in my view, if perhaps the people who have ambidependent or flexi-cell sides will not be made to be kind of in the shadows or not marginalized, if we could have more of that out in the open, if culture isn't anxious, will you become like the woman, the girl in vaccines poem? Probably not. Can you be shifted, kind of you're over here, can you kind of be shifted a little bit by your environment? Absolutely, people say all the time that people come to San Francisco, it's so Asian that they become more Asian from being here. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. So the answer is that I think that if you let more, if you let more flexi-cells kind of operate more freely maybe, without some of these labels and so on that kind of keep them, you know, in enclaves, I think that probably some of it would rub off on other people. Well, God, oh God, oh God, it is actually, all of this is a very pro-immigration, I hardly need to point out. I have one quick comment and then a question. And the comment is that there is a line in American intellectual history, beginning let's say with Emerson and Thurow and continuing on internationally with people like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, both of whom were influenced by the transcendentalists that I think emphasizes what you're calling the flexi-cell. And maybe in a culture that's so consumed with ideas of individualism, this counter-current is something we ought to pay attention to at least right now. But the question is this, do you think that artists, especially writers and let's say painters who deal with social subjects, do you think they are more likely in all cultures to combine what you're calling these two selves and therefore have lines of communication cross-culturally that might not occur for people who are not artists? Oh, I think the answer is yes. Yeah. Yeah. You know, speaking of Emerson and Thurow, look at them like this. They were experimenting in community. They actually formed a commune with Bronson Alcott. But at the same time, Thurow would take off by himself. And so he was learning to be deliberately independent. And so they're doing both experiments very consciously all at once. And this brings me to the title of the book that I am selling tonight. Oh, I can do this. Oh, it's both coming out. The book is called I'd Love a Broad Margin to My Life. This, I didn't make this up, Thurow said this. I love a broad margin to my life. Okay, so one way you could look at it is that he is going off alone. So there could be lots of space between him and other people. But I also feel that it means that there is spaciousness. And so there's lots of room for everything and everyone. I also love the idea that he says, I love a broad margin, because a margin is a border. And what was happening was he was alone, and but he hears martial music coming from Concord. And he says, my neighbors are gonna go to war with Mexico. They're gonna attack little Mexico. And that's when he gets into refusing to pay his taxes. So here you see this solitary artist, the socially responsible person. And his living alone was only an experiment in the context of his community. His community, Emerson, Bronson Alcott, they gave him land to build that little house. So he was functioning in both worlds. Plus they say his mother was doing his laundry. Yes. I mean, in truth, he was nowhere near as isolated as we like to imagine him. But it's good to be with your mother. I know, I know. And I give all my point is that, we think the narrative as it has come down to us is quite a big self narrative. But in fact, he was, I mean, he was trying to stay in jail for a little longer, no doubt to take some notes so he could write his essay. But his relatives were in there so quickly, bailing him out that he couldn't stay. And they're like, you've been bailed out. He said, you're kidding. Like who bailed me out? No, there are a lot of wrinkles in the Thoreau story. And he's busy in rallies, anti-slavery rallies. And we think of them as living alone in the wilderness. But in fact, they're having parties, right? And so it's, you know, it is complicated. But it's interesting your question about the arts. I think that in a way that, you know, artists should be that way. You know, we should be the most kind of flexi-self and pit-self, you know, back and forth and so on. But it's also true that, just as I was saying, because so much of the literary infrastructure is highly big pit-self. So then when you ask yourself, you know, who are the great writers? And then lo and behold, they're all, they're all male and they're all big pit, you know? And this is true, you know, actually it's not just our industry, you know? And I was trying to, you know, bring up some slides for a talk I was giving and I was, I brought up, I just, I just Googled great movie directors, right? Great movie directors, you know, they're like, so 10 thumbnails across each screen. Six screens worth, six screens worth all men. There was not one woman among them. And this is very much tied to what we're talking about today. You know, so the answer is whatever might be the kind of the truth of what should go with what you're doing, actually there is an infrastructure. And you know, and this is where, you know, the dominant culture has a very big say over what that the peak is gonna look like, right? And that is very much reflective of, you know, what we all agree to be the dominant narrative, but that we are very vigorously trying to dismantle. Question here. Hi, Maxine and Gish, I just wanted to thank you again. It's such an honor to have both of you here tonight. My question connected to that last comment that you made is, as you've been talking, I've been thinking so much about how we are right now living in a time of big pits versus flexi self, the way I see it in terms of politically. And I wanted to ask you, given that 67% of those who voted who were white males voted for Trump and 53% of those who voted for Trump were white females. And these are the numbers. What can you say in terms of how you hope your work can shed light? And also when we talk about, say for example, the immigration ban, it is a non-West, it is a West versus non-Western cultures. That is the climate that's under this administration that many people are supporting. What are you hoping, Gish, that your book can contribute maybe to that conversation? And a question to both of you, what do you feel is the role and responsibility or your hopes for how women of color who are writers and artists can rise and add to this moment to advance change? Thank you. Well, I will say that in a very general kind of way, obviously everything that we're talking about is extremely relevant to all the discussion about immigrants. And so, I mean, if I had to add another layer to people who are arguing pro-immigrant, they'll say, first of all, it's on principle, it's who we are, we should be open to the immigrants. People will argue and they're good for the economy. It would be crippling of certain businesses to not allow immigrants to stay and not to allow immigrants to enter. Also, that immigrants start many new businesses so they're actually good for the economy. I would add to all those arguments that they bring perceptual diversity. And that the perceptual diversity, I think, is one of our great strengths. And we can know this by the fact that Asia and China, especially, does not have the kind of diversity that we have, and that is one of their great weaknesses. So why would we shift our whole, why would we want our perceptual menu, if you will, to be narrowed in any way? No, no, no, you want it to be as broad as possible. So I would, and I think that that's actually, this idea that I have is borne out by the number of immigrants who get Nobel Prize and so on, the number of scientific breakthroughs where it is over and over again, you'll see somebody, something's being approached in quite a big pitway and somebody comes in with a more flexi-self, more holistic view or pattern-oriented view and that changes what everyone is seeing, which I, by the way, I think is very well accepted. I mean, I don't know if they don't use these terms, but I think the scientists see it themselves. And actually, in contrast to the artists, actually are very openly kind of supportive of other ways of thinking, I mean, they're looking for diversity of thought. So I would argue that, so I would argue that it is, if you look at it through this flexi-self, big pit lens, that it is what is going to make, I hate to even say it, America great, that our greatness lies in many ways and in our openness to all these different ways of seeing things and to close ourselves off is, I mean, I can't imagine what the rational could possibly be. Maybe women of color, I'm wearing a holy medal on my safety pin and this is Father Torridio Romo. He is the saint of immigration and when people cross the Sonora Desert, they will see him and he gives them water and gives them food and then he will direct them to El Norte and he even has some ideas about where you could find shelter and a job. So I think that the role of the artist is to write the stories so that we have compassion and empathy and sympathy for those immigrants. This is what I'm doing in, I guess in most of my books. I am showing people, even illegally, they are illegal, I'm my father, illegal. My father is illegal as well. Oh, yours is illegal too? Yeah, my father also was an undocumented immigrant, but ours was well-documented because we only had all the fake papers. But to tell those stories and to make us feel compassion for these people, to tell the story of how hard they work and the children that they are raising or the money that they're sending home to destitute village when you see human beings going through these things, then you have the compassion to figure out how to help them. This is what's really lacking in our government right now. This is the worst thing. When Donald Trump said that he would take the remittances away from the Mexicans, this means they are working these field jobs, saving their money, didn't they send the money home? They're gonna intercept those envelopes and take the money? I mean, he actually said that he used the word remittances so it sounds, I don't know, legal or something. But what he's saying is take away, just take the money away. I think it's in one of my books where I'm saying that there's immigrants here all over the world, they're working so hard and they're sending money back to villages all over the world. And to take the remittances away. He just says this. I can't think of a, there couldn't be a legal way to do this. I mean, you would have to steal the mail or something. Yes, thanks, thank you for the book. I finished it today. And it just really got me thinking about you as a writer that you're putting on the sociological psychological hat but you're still funny throughout. And that's great. And then you start with a girl and then you get back to the girl at the end is terrific. And that's, there's a different writer in there at the end. It just occurs to me that the perversity of the Western model is very strange. I mean, we were talking about art and writing. I'm in theater. So much of Western theater is built around that singular, lonely individual. But what's strange about it is that we come together to celebrate aloneness. If you think about waiting for Godot with so much and movies echo that, that communal people are sitting together feeling divided from one another. And that to me is what's very strange and that unfortunately pretty as a male model. Yeah. That's what it is. No, I so agree with you. And I think that one of the problems with the idea that to kind of be an ideal person in this model is to always to have this big alakana pit and to define it against society. So it's always about protecting your own integrity. It's always kind of a vanity really as opposed to why not construct a society that you didn't have to stand opposed to, right? Why is the good guy always opposed? Why can't we have something which, you know what I mean, we wouldn't have to oppose in order to be a good person, right? It seems to me it's just very kind of self-defeating. And no, I couldn't agree with you more. And of course, these ideas, these very individualistic ideas are built not only into the characters and the storylines, but just the fact that at every turn, everything depends on choice, right? It's kind of like the whole story structure is an exercise in choosing and with the consequences of your choices in choosing. And in fact, in a well-lived life, I think of course we must make do a lot of choosing and I'm not suggesting that we become like, that we become like Cambodian pesses or anything like that, do you know what I mean? But there's a middle ground and in any well-lived life, there's gonna be accepting too. And sometimes there's a liberation in that. I mean, I love that you actually hit the liberation theme when you talk about in writing how liberating it is actually not to have such a big pit. And the other day, I was talking to somebody who was taking care of his mother who's very sick and he'd always had a difficult relationship with her and he's going on like, I really, I want it to be a joy. I want it to be something that I choose. Do you know what I mean? I want it to be in some way kind of fulfilling. I want it to reflect the circle of life. He was asking it to be a lot of things that it just couldn't be. And I just looked at myself, if you were a flexi-cell, you would just say, this is just my duty and you would just do it and that would be the end of it. You know what I mean? You're not asking it to be this expressive gesture. You're just doing what humans do and you're doing it for your mother who you never liked. The end, it's kind of liberating, right? Not to have this additional burden, it's just life. One more question and then we'll wrap up. So I want to come back to, first of all, congratulations. I love your book, especially since I've read your book. I want to come back to the lion in the savannah. The story reminds me of when I was traveling in Bali and I was talking to a woman there who said, a Balinese woman says she was having this conversation with this Western tourist who was coming through and was saying that he was thinking of changing his life. She's like, what do you mean changing your life? You can change your clothes, you can't change your life. And it got me thinking as I'm also thinking of the lion in the savannah. Can the lion exist outside of the savannah? I mean, you two are examples of how the lion can. You have the savannah within you, even as you're in a different environment, even as you're embraced or open-minded, you've embraced other ideas, other ways of thinking. And I'm just kind of playing with the idea of, what is the big pit and what is the plexi self? And might it also be that the big pit is the tribal self, the self that identifies with blood and with where one is from? And the plexi self also can be about the imagined communities, the created communities that you talked about, that Gloria Steinem says that she can always make, that you've made. And I'm just kind of wondering whether you feel there's room in your definition of the big pit and the plexi self, for it also to carry that meaning. Yeah, I would say it's exactly flipped though, where it is the plexi self that tends, it is the big pit self that goes with imagined community and the chosen community and the community that you can take with the portable community, which religion is for many people. And so I would argue that that is the self that can do those things, all of which are elective. Whereas the plexi self tends to be a more situated self and a self that tends to recreate its situatedness wherever it goes, you know? And I would argue that in our case, that because you have that base model and because we have the substitution, that actually you can have a very similar structure, but with different people in it, or maybe not your family, and this is the modern adaptation, maybe not your family, and maybe there is more of an elective component to it. And yet, very strikingly, I think the structures look the same and I think that a lot of people would say that of me, as I go about my life in Cambridge, I have all these little networks, and everywhere I go, I never know anybody for two years before they have to become some kind of group and then we all have dinner together and then we've been doing it for four years and then we've been doing it for 10 years and then we know we can't stop because we've been doing it for 15 years. But I have like a number of these, all of which have quite a flexi, I mean, they're not blood relatives, so they're not flexi-self really, but they have quite a flexi-self character. So I think that, yeah. And then you can sort of say, you know what I mean? No, no, no, no, no, no. You've been spending more time in China now and so how has that affected you? Well, I do think that it does bring out some of the flexi-self in me, but it brings out the opposite as well. And I will say that of course, of course one of the things we haven't talked about is kind of how these different cells get reified. I will say reified and used for political purposes, right? And I think the same way in the United States, I mean so much of our big self, big fit self, you know, it's been commodified, right? And so it's not really clear to me that we would have such big pits, you know, if it weren't endlessly, endlessly, endlessly drilled into us by corporate America, you know? And I mean, so you know, so that's, you know, video games, you know? I mean, it's kind of, it's, the answer is they have figured out that they can sell product this way and we ourselves reflect that, sadly. And then of course, I hardly tell you that, you know, that the Chinese government has figured out that, oh, we have this base self, we can use it, we can use it as an excuse to do all kinds of things. We can reify it in any number of ways, including the Gaon Kong, for instance, and just name just one institution, you know, the Hukou, everything, right? And so, you know, so it's complicated, you know, I think it's complicated. And I think that if I had to pick, of course, you know, I did grow up here, if I had to pick between being manipulated by corporate America and being manipulated by the Chinese government, I'm afraid to say, I would still pick corporate America. Well, because it's so inescapable, you know? I mean, I think that, you know, the level of control is so huge that, you know, for me, I feel like, yes, it is difficult for yourself and many things here, but nonetheless, we have a little more room to operate. I think we have to bring our evening to a close at this moment, but thank you for all of our ideas, inspirations, and introspection. I think we need compassion and community, so continue on. Please join me in thanking Yish-Jen and Maxine Hankinsen. Thank you so much for doing this, Maxine. Thank you so much for inspiring these things, and to come up and meet them in person and buy a book or two. Thank you. No, it's just on or off. This is, oh, it's still on. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Okay. Very convenient, you know, create, I made my first one actually. I justieth it here, hold on, let me just get it back. That's, okay, I got one for Anj rien, let me just get the other party. Somehow took one more. I came up there and you told me you were busy but I wanted to go around and I can get you a cup of coffee. Do you want to take a shot right after I get it? I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, that sounds so weird. I bet I have to see it. I don't know. I'm wondering. Maybe you... I don't know. That sounds weird to me. Don't write something up. This is that word weird to weird language. Weird as language, yeah. There's a weird index. I love your books. So, like, you can kind of... You know, like, get together. Yeah. Y-I-N-G. England. Y-I-N-G. Sorry, I pressed the wrong...you know, these little gizmos and stuff. Y-I-N-G. L-A-N. Okay. Y-I-N-G. L-A-N. Okay. Y-I-N-G. L-A-N-G. L-A-N. L-A-N-G. L-A-N-G. L-A-N-G. L-A-N-G. L-A-N-G. L-A-N-G. L-A-N-G. L-A-N-G. L-A-N-G. L-A-N-G. L-A-N-G. L-A-N-G. I-I-I mean, it doesn't have the same impact as when I originally skewed. It could, it could come into my mind. And I definitely enjoyed that. And I know about that arm. Oh, you have both your arms? I know! But is it classic...? I mean, I remember when I was a little girl. And I remember that. It was always...the daughter-in-law that paid so hard. You know, the parents don't really appreciate her, but at the end, she did, yes! And I remember that story, and it was such a classic. And it just gets to you, you know? Yeah, and I was like, that's such an ancient thing. And when you blotted it up, I didn't realize that it was that classic. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it goes real deep. Yeah! And we still have it. Yeah! So, thank you. Good to meet you. Thank you so much. Hello! How are you? I'm so happy to meet you. I'm so happy to meet you. And you still can't eat? Yes. I'll say it once. I'll say it once more. I'll say it once more. I'll say it once more. I'll say it once more. But you just never understand that. She's Shanghai? Right, we're from outside of Shanghai, and that's how you travel and sea wagons. Oh! And the sea wagons... So anyway. Where the hothorns came from. Oh yes! Because that was a big, big trip. But the colours. I got a little inspiration. I've used a drink for so long, and I was so happy to have it with you. It's so great to meet you. I'm so happy to meet you. That's so nice of you. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Can we do selfie? I don't know how to do it. We don't know how to do it. I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry. I know. Do you speak Cantonese? No. Shanghai? I'm married to a cousin. I'm the in-law. I'm the in-law. I'm not good at it. I'm just like this. No, no, no. You have to look at it. Do you want to get somebody to know about it? The building? Do you want to take it over here? No, no, no. That's the feeling. I've been working here for 30 years. That's 30 years ago. I will contact you at home.