 I just want to say that thank you so much for showing up on the middle of the week, and it's such an honor to be invited, especially since I'm a, you know, a San Franciscoan boy, and I grew up here, and at the far end of Mission Street, where San Francisco ended and Daly City began when I first came as a refugee from Vietnam, and I used to take the bus, the 14 mission, for five cents up and down. That's how old I am. It was five cents a transfer last the whole day, and you can even take the cable car with it, and I explored the city and I listened to the voices of the city, and I grew up in the city, but I never imagined one day I'm sitting in an auditorium and reading from my American work, because I didn't speak English when I came here, and English is my third language, so it's really a strange voyage for me, you know, 40 years since I came here, that I am here, and that literature literally took me around the world. You know, I've sat at many events in around the world, from Bali to Beijing to Shanghai to London, and it's like, it's an extraordinary moment, because each time I have to self-out-of-body experience thinking how did I get here, and the only thing I can think of is because I love to tell stories, and so without any further ado, I've written three books, but this one is being celebrated, so I picked a story that has to do with very much the city, all the stories that are really about the Bay Area and being a refugee, but this one, it's about the tenderloin, which to me is dear because this is where I go and eat most of my Vietnamese food, and it's called slingshot, it's page 39, and the voice is that of a tomboy around 15 years old. This dude, right, a loner and everything, made his sorry ass part of our family, and mama insisted that me and Pammy call him Uncle Steve, but I would not. I called him U.S. for short. U.S. came to eat our restaurant a couple years ago and ordered mama special who deal soup, kept saying he hadn't eaten authentic Vietnamese cooking since he was stationed in Nam and such. Next thing you know, dude's a regular, and mama and Pammy's sweet tooth, please, Pammy started to treat him like a long lost relative. Poor Uncle Steve, mama once said in Vietnamese, he's a nice man and alone. He fought on your father's side during the war and even knew his infantry. So treat him nice, you two, especially you little monkey. Sure, I say, sure mama, or whatever. The thing about regulars is that they sometimes get too personal. They like totally get on your nerves. They don't leave at closing time. They walk up the cash register when you're way too busy adding up the bills or something and start kicking it with you, yammering and yacking till you get real distracted and lose your place, and then you just want to tell them to shut the hell up. I mean, they pay for good cooking and give a tip for good service, but excuse me, what does it say on the menu that our special dinner combo of spring roll salad and curry chicken for 6.99 come with psychological treatment. Some regulars just hang around late, you know, and ask if we need help cleaning up everyone and escort to our apartment after we close, even if it's only two blocks away. And what dish we're preparing for tomorrow, but like, hello, it's the same menu every day for the last three years. Some of them just didn't want to go home, period, and I'll tell you why. Most regulars are hell of a loner's. But US, he was worse. Kept telling us how he hated being American and everything. Hated this damn country. Hated how his wife took the kids and skipped out of his sorry ass back to Texas after he came back a little loony-toony from NAMM. Sometimes, US get way annoying when he pretended like he's somehow Vietnamese because he's been there and knew some stuff like he knew all about that. You dress up nice and you go visit relatives and you give money in red envelope to little children, am I right? About wedding traditions, the groom side of the family comes over to the bride's side, and bearing gifts wrap in red. They carry a roasted pig on a lacquer tray and fruits and tea and the smarter ones and the smaller ones, isn't that, Pammy? And about funeral arrangements. You wear white headbands, you burn paper offerings to the dead, and you play real sad music. I remember people in the rural areas prefer to live near their ancestors grave so they can tend to them. Hell, I've seen graves in people's backyards live and die together. That's the way you people are, am I right? If that's not enough to yank your chain, there was this hella annoying phrase US always use when he came a little tipsy. And sometimes mama when she's in a good mood, she laugh and class her hands and answer him with a broken English. Uncle Steve, you, you Vietnam, people like us. Whenever he heard that boy do be beaming like mama just announced that he won the Oscar for best actor or something. But mama was only humoring his ass. I mean, you asked us of Vietnamese? Who was he kidding? A doofus from Texas with receding blonde hair, thick mustache and a beer belly who loves to wear obnoxious smelling cologne and allow Hawaiian shirt on the weekend. Please put black pajamas on that dude and he'd be looking more like, I don't know, a chocolate truffle or something. Anyway, soon US got too friendly. He brought us flowers, irises and tulips and roses and what have you. And then he sent us postcards when he traveled. US travels for free or for very little money because he's a baggage handler at United Air at SFO. London been there. Hong Kong done that. Morocco been there. Even if it's only for the weekend, you has to be going off to someplace far. That one time he came back from France, he got us gifts. He got a little purse for Pammy, a blouse for me, a hat for Grandma Tin who I call Grandma T. The first time she got hired by mama to help out with the cooking a few years ago. And for mama, a real kick asked her coys necklace. We all say no, no, no, thank you, especially mama who kept saying no gift uncle Steve, no gift. Postcard okay, flowers okay, expensive gift not okay. And waved her hand in the air like she was hailing a cab but US wouldn't listen. Until mama pretended to be angry and placed US's gift in a towel on the table and he had to give up and offer the loot to Grandma T and she took it too because she has more grandchildren than she can feed. Still, it got so that US wouldn't think twice about going back to the kitchen and standing there like he was the chef himself tasting the soup and chatting with mama and Grandma T about this and that, that and this. It didn't matter when we were way too busy, US would yap, yap, yap. Sometimes he says something stupid to mama like Mrs. Gwynn, correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't the river in Benchay arise real fast sometimes in the afternoon, especially when it's monsoon season. And mama would stop what she was doing and nod and squint her eyes and stare at the industrial size fridge as if she could see the damn river rising from somewhere behind all that steely grayness. Another time she was preparing banh tem bai, a southern Vietnamese dish that uses coconut, mint and pork skin and a bunch of other good but unidentifiable stuff. And US came in and said, Mrs. Gwynn, there's no better coconut than the ones grown in Benchay, am I not right? And mama would giggle and answer, Uncle Steve, you right, you right. Fresh coconut over there, only cans over here, not the same, no good. Pammy too, she's so sweet to US but I guess she's sweet to everybody, that's just the way she is. She's a year older than me but she acts like she's fresh off the boat. Just me, I guess, I'm the one who told the bums to get lost and the dog and customer to clear out. I'm the one who ambushed Dwayne Kowalski on that bike path that one time at Golden Gate Park on the southern grade field trip and shot him on the kneecap with Papa's slingshot using my favorite ammunition, a jawbreaker, a purple one at that, because he kept teasing Pammy, yanking her long braiding stuff, told that child to cut her short like mine to avoid the damn assholes like Dwayne, but would she listen? Uh-uh. So anyway, dude was lame for a whole week and couldn't tell people that a girl shot him with a damn piece of candy. So guess who was the one to tell US what's up? Yup, yours truly, like that one time, right, when you as insisted on saying, after closing time and helping me with Pammy clean up, it wasn't necessary, we all say, but dude insisted and suddenly when we all stacking chairs onto the table to mop the floor, he got all misty eye and blurted. You are my favorite Mekong Delta girls, so smart, so filial. I mean Jesus Almighty, I adore you both like my own. Mekong Delta girls, ew, what's up with that corny, crazy shit. I mean, I've nowhere this gringos confession, major vomit material. I get totally bugging when he'd be talking like that, like we were in the dingy little dive in tender full of fricks loin with the smell of fish sauce and pine saw up our nostrils while the bums milled about outside looking like zombies, and US talked to us like we were those images in the grease stain brush paintings hanging on our walls, you know wearing conical hats and planting rice by the river and rowing boats and singing folk songs and leading them oxen home to the village or shit like that. So I say, US, you're crazy if you think we're your girls, that's heinous, all right. We ain't living in your sorry ass Mekong Delta fantasy shit. Get a grip, we took a trip. We're in San Francisco like America, US, you ain't no Vietnamese and you know it. Boy, you should have seen him, but sucker had not heard puppy look. Your mouth, they tell me, he said, shaking his head, sighing. But I know you got a good heart. Then he said, I know we're in America. I know I'm not Vietnamese racially. All I'm saying is that after what I went through, Vietnam is part of me too. I don't know. Maybe you see it someday. Yeah, I said, sure, US, whatever. So it was escalating warfare between US and Mekong because that time of love, that coloration from US was nothing compared with the other time when US really got me royally bugging and in hell of a trouble with mama. He saw me with Adam Kay, you know, bedroom eye, Adam tall, brown hair down to his big shoulders, real light skin with a tattoo of a coiling snake with a blood red rose in its mouth on his left arm and with a turquoise earring and the best mile in last year's yearbook. Anyway, we were just walking and holding hands on the street, right? And I didn't see US buying on us or nothing. But when I got to the restaurant, he was all nervous and everything. At first I thought he was developing a tick or was having a stroke maybe. But then he said, I saw you with tattoo guided today, tell me. I hope you don't mind a piece of advice. But I just don't trust the look on that one. Sorry, I'm lost my mind. Oh, I've seen him real chummy with them gangbangers scoring some dope on hide the other day. Tell you what I think. He's the type that will get in trouble sooner or later. So go slow, okay? Tattoo guy. I couldn't believe my ears. He was like this in Adam. My bed reminds Adam. Worst US be talking to me like I was his own daughter. Not. No wonder Texan wife and kids took off on his sorry ass. Had to. Either that or Harry Curie. Betide's homie ain't relative no matter how much he fantasize himself to be. A regular, still a customer. And he's not supposed to tell his waitress who to date, period. He's supposed to sit at his table, you know, and order and eat and say, ah, that was delicious, miss. Thank you very much. And leave a big chip and then leave. So I totally lost it. I said, US, why don't you do us all favor and just fuck off. Unfortunately, mama heard it all the way in the kitchen because I said it loud and she got real mad. There were only two Hispanic customers at afternoon and they were too busy looking in each other's eyes like Romeo and Julieta. And they didn't give a hood what we did. But mama, she cared because right away she came out and made me apologize to US, even when she didn't even know a quarter of the story. Now mama, she may not know the true meaning of fuck off, but she pretty much guessed that it wasn't no nice respecting phrase like, hello, mister, how are you today? Or are you ready to order, madam? But I wouldn't apologize to US. No, no freaking way. No mama. I say no apologies. Little monkey, apologize. Mama said it again in Vietnamese. Her voice, daddy and cool as cucumber, which only meant one thing. Mount St. Helen when was ready to blow serious lava. Don't be rude to him. Uncle Steve, he's just like a relative. Hell no. I yelled. Why would I apologize? He ain't no real uncle. He solely ain't my father. He ain't nothing mama or nobody. So how's he family? Mama didn't answer. She just looked kind of surprised that I blew first. But it was like mama didn't even know what happened. And she automatically sided with this dude and outsider. So I went on in this cold bitchy voice, you know, pretending like I just figured something out that very second. I say, oh, wait a minute, mama, I get it. He's going to be my new papa soon. Am I right? And I heard Pammy suck in her breath. I mean, I shouldn't have said that, I know, but I was still bugging and before and and therefore went too far and dis me own matre in the process. So she slapped me slap right in front of us and Pammy and the Romeo Lietta couple who abandoned the banana flambé through some money on the table and made like El Viento. For one thing, no chef should slap no waitress in front of no customers. That's no good for business for sure. For another, no waitress should cry in front of no regulars. But oh man, I just couldn't help it. I bawled. Go ahead mama. I said through my curtain of tears. You just go ahead and hit me some more to make yourself happy. But I ain't apologizing to this was all right. Who asked him to harass me in the first place? I don't care if he's been to Ben Trea mama. I don't care if he's new papa's infantry. I mean, what does it matter now? We're living in tender freaking loin and papa is dead. Burry somewhere in the reeducation camp by the goddamn vehicle and nobody asked me for permission to let this want to be ruined my life. I gear myself for the next assault, but it didn't come. Mama's face suddenly changed from being totally bugging to this real sad look. She raised her hand like she was going to re slap me, but she just turned it slowly toward her own face instead. Then she wept into it like a baby. Oh my goodness. Even now after all that happened, even after I did what I did later on, I can still see her thin shoulders tremble and shake. Shouldn't have say all that stuff. I know I know my tongue. I swear it's sharper than ginsu knives. Tell you the truth. I rather she's re slapped me. No problem. It's easier to take than her crying. I couldn't bear it. I felt so hurt inside like somebody was twisting a knife in my guts or pinching my heart with a long gnarly nails. So I did what came naturally. I grabbed and hugged her. My mama, who once held tiny old me and Pammy in her arms when we sailed out to sea in that stinking old crowded boat from Venture a zillion nights ago, but who fell suddenly so small in my arms, so frail, so bony, who suffer so much already. Oh mama, I'm sorry. I say I'm so sorry. And then Pammy came rushing to us for a team hug and we cried. The three of us like we were in some weird choir practice. So everything, you know, Les Mis, Les Vietnames, or whatever was happening right in front of US and the dude be acting like he was all tied up. He trembled like he was struggling to get out of some invisible robin to finally his hairy arms slowly reach out like an elephant's trunk toward me and Pammy and mama trying to touch us maybe but before he could accomplish his mission impossible I shot him my special Medusa lasers there and froze that XGI in his track. That was when Grandma T came out of the kitchen with her ladle. She looked at us for a second or two and she sighed and shook her gray head like she's seen it all before and she waved the ladle in the air like a magic one. Try, try, try. She said her voice low and throaty. You people are worse than the monsoon. Please enough with the crying already. My beef soup went sour back there because of your whaling. We all started to giggle because Grandma T's voice was raspy from years of smoking. She sounded like a Vietnamese Darth Vader or somebody cool like that. And her wrinkled up face was frowning like a sad old clown. US laughed too even though he probably didn't get 90% of what she was saying. Mr. I'm also Vietnamese. But Grandma T was starting to him. She pointed the ladle toward the door and say, Uncle Steve you should go and handle baggage. Let us woman folks take care of things. US stared at us like he wanted to say something but nothing came out. So he just looked at Grandma T's ladle like he was really thinking hard about something and then he nodded and left. Me, I was still bugging and thought the dude got away easy. I don't know. I kind of expected Grandma T to turn his sorry ass into a war talk or something. US did not come back the next day or the next. A week went by then another. Soon everyone started to wonder, including all the other regulars, whatever happened to Uncle Steve, the XGI who thought he was Vietnamese. Everybody but me, I guess. I mean, I didn't care. US was finally out of my hair. Good. Why ask why? It was like having a vacation. You know, it was like, it was raining for a week and then you woke up one day and the sun was out and the sky blue. It was like, too good to be true. The dark clouds came back pretty quickly. After a month or so, just when I got used to the idea that US was really gone, we got a postcard from, you know who. It showed this pretty Taipei dancer in the traditional costume with an intricate pointy headset. Her fingers were bent at an impossible angle. Her head leaned to the side and her eyes were wide and flirty and she had to smile on her like she was real happy. But you could tell that she was just pretending. Dear Mrs. Nguyen and family, if you are all wondering whatever happened to your Stephen, well, don't you worry. As you can tell from this postcard, I'm in Bangkok on an extended vacation. I finally decided I need to take a trip back to Nam to look at the past. I am heading home in a few weeks after much needed R&R and then I'll have a very precious gift for you and this time you cannot possibly refuse, guaranteed. Affectionately yours, Steve. PS, hello, Pammy and Tammy. How are my favorite gals? What's Uncle Steve saying, Mama? Pammy asks after she was done reading the card out loud for Mama. Yeah, I joined in. What's so precious that we can't possibly refuse? Don't we always refuse? Did you say we don't need any charity? We make our own living, right, Mama? No charity. Mama agreed. Postcards okay. Flowers okay. Expensive gifts not okay. She studied a postcard for a few seconds then pinned it on the board next to the cash register with all the rest like she didn't care. But you know she was still thinking about it. So that night, right, when we were getting ready for bed and everything, Pammy dropped the bomb. I mean, what if Uncle Steve wants to marry Mama? She said, what? I say, Miss P, you aren't LSD. Please, Mama and US, like they haven't even dated. Wait, what am I saying? Mama never ever dated. I just don't see it, Pammy. She's so virtuous. She lights incense in the altar praying and talking to Papa and dead ancestors all that every night. For God's sake, she's like I must suffer because I'm totally a traditional Confucian Asian babe. Tammy, I swear, someday your tongue will put you in insensitive care. My tongue, nothing, Miss P, if US so much as touches her, I'll shoot him right between the eyes with Papa's slingshot. I mean it. He's not right in the head. And you are, Pammy say, rolling her pretty eyes. You know what, Tammy? You put that slingshot away when you were 12. You're a sophomore now and you're still playing with that thing. I swear, sometimes I don't know whether you're going to end up at Stanford or in San Quentin. But that was not the end of that. Pammy paused for a few seconds and then in this totally different, different voice in Vietnamese, all the mirror, like she said, little monkey. Mama's been alone for so long. Mama should have somebody. We shouldn't stand in the way. I didn't answer her. I just turned out the light in the dark. I think why I did what I usually do when I have a hard time falling asleep. I try to remember Papa. I have this memory of him so long ago when I was four or five before the asshole VCs took him. But I remember it so clearly. It's a Kodak moment. A late afternoon, a golden sun shining over the greenest rice fields you've ever seen. And the wind is blowing, making the whole field waver like it's an endless green sea. I am sitting on Papa's lap and we're swinging on this hammock in the back of our house, looking at this emerald sea. I'm pulling on the slingshot with one hand and try to shoot, but I don't have the strength and the rock flies less than three feet. Papa laughs and rubs my hair. Little monkey, you have to wait till you're older. By then you have to go hunting for wild ducks and rabbits to feed me and your mother. Papa shows me how he does it. It's so easy for him, so effortless. He puts a rock in the pouch part and holds the handle in his right hand, turns his head slightly, so he's looking at it from the corner of his eyes and then he pulls the sling back far, far back. He lets the rock zip into the air as he exhales, stuck. It hits a trunk of a star fruit tree grown by the edge of the rice paddies some 20 yards away. All of a sudden there's this commotion and a flock of wild parrots hitting the branches take off from the treetop flashing the red and blue and yellow feathers, a squawking rainbow towards the sky. I remember yelling and clapping my hands. It's magic, Papa. It's awesome. My goodness, it's the best moment of my life. But the replay button in my head didn't work that night. I mean, I couldn't see Papa's face clearly not to save my life. Instead, I kept seeing U.S. and Mama holding hands in my head. Worst when I fell asleep, I dreamed that Grandma T. was scooping soup out of a coffin into a bowl and asked me to drink it, but I wouldn't. Then I saw Mama and U.S. rolling around on this big bed made out of a big tree branch in this big old tree house doing the wild thing. And I just sat there by the bed and cried and cried. But it was like U.S. and Mama didn't even see me. And that bumped me out totally. So maybe it was just sheer luck. Or maybe it had to happen. Like Grandma T. always said, be careful what you hate or God will give it to you on the lacquer tray. So when Mr. Am also Vietnamese returned one bright Saturday morning to the tender freaking loin from overseas, he was in my target range. I mean, usually I wouldn't even think of shooting anybody from the rooftop, let alone a paid customer and a regular, no matter how much he gets in my hair. But Adam was with me. And before he saw U.S., we were already on the roof of my building getting stoned on one of his reefers and shooting at the billboard with Papa Slingshot. The billboard was hell of a annoyance. It showed this happy couple with their three children holding hands and smiling with impossibly white teeth as they walked out of this white castle. So Adam broke a candy machine the night before and stuffed his army pants pockets with jawbreakers just for me so that fake family didn't stand a chance. We sent one colorful piece of candy after another zipping toward the gringo family. Stuck. I took out the oldest girl's front tooth with a red jawbreaker. Stuck. Adam shot the mother in the chest. Stuck. I shot the father in the forehead. And then I just went for the baby, the one with the Mickey Mouse hat on. Stuck. Stuck. I made Swiss cheese out of that little boy. We shot and shot until the roof was littered with broken candies. It looked like a rainbow had shattered and rained down in pieces. We couldn't stop laughing. It was my second time doing pot. But the first didn't really count. Nothing happened that first time. So how would I know I was going to be hired and a kite the second time around? The stuff, as Adam said, was from Columbia. So it had extra strength, extra magic. One puff, I coughed, cursed, breathed in, breathed out two puffs. And I had tears in my eyes, pain in my lungs and my throat hurt like hell. Three and boom. I was gone. I was like, oh my god, I'm swimming in this thick gold bright air. My head felt like it had that gilded traditional hat of the tight dancer was wearing in US postcard. It felt heavy and weird but kind of cool too. Like the sunshine had found a way inside and was swirling around. I was laughing like the mad and messed up chick that I was when I saw over the parapet in all too familiar shape. He had this conical hat on his head and a red and yellow Hawaiian shirt full of flowers. And in his arm he had a brown vase wrapped in red ribbon. If you ask me, US looked like he was depriving some village somewhere of an idiot. That's him, Adam. I say giggling. That's him. He's back. The dude, that's the dude who's going to try to marry my mama. Look, he's even got a wedding gift wrapped in red for her, see? That shit had down there with that funny hat, Adam said. He's the one that called me tattoo boy. Tattoo guy, I said. Who gives a fuck, Adam said. Then he had this look on his face like he just thought of something funny. Hey, he said, tell me, listen, you can prevent a wedding. How, I said, and kept staring at the bleeding rose in the snake's mouth on his arm. When he flexed it, it seemed like it was slithering. Adam looked at me like I was real stupid. What you mean how? Look down, babe, that ain't no toy in your hand. I looked. Papa slingshot, made of mahogany and smoothed by years of use, was glowing like wildfire. Adam took out an orange jawbreaker from his pants pocket, blew on it for good luck, and took my hand. He made me squeezed it, then kissed me. Do it, baby. He whispered into my face. I closed my eyes. I could taste the sweetness of his breath, feel the intense heat emanating from his body, smell his salty sweat. Do it, hurry, before he's out of range. What happened next? I see it now like watching TV in slow-mo. I see me putting the jawbreaker in the sling and pulling it far, far back. I see me taking aim at US, and then the jawbreaker just flew. It took forever to reach that conical-hatted figure down below, years, decades, centuries. And for a moment I thought it would never reach him. But how could it not? Papa slingshot was magic. That morning was magic, and so was Adam's candy. It hit US up a left arm and shoulder with a small thud, and he automatically jerked forward and yelped, and the vase in his hand fell out of his grasp to shudder on the sidewalk in this nasty crackling noise. No, he wailed and stepped one step forward before sinking to his knees. Then he checked his shoulder to see if he was bleeding. Of course he wasn't. Who did this? Who did this? He yelled and took off the conical hat and looked around, but didn't see anybody. So he looked down again at the mess. Oh Jesus, Jesus Almighty. And then Adam had pulled me back away from the edge out of US's sight. Holy fucking shit, Tammy. He kept hugging me and laughing like a madman. You're my girl. You're in the house. But I wasn't even listening to him anymore. US's voice was the only thing that registered. It sounded so wounded, so hard down there, like an injured dog. I pushed Adam away. I went to the parapet and looked again. US was still down there on his knees, busy now gathering the damaged goods into the hat while yelling something like, all that work, all that negotiation to himself. But his voice trailed off in the morning wind. A strange gray white powder had spilled from the broken vise and was spiraling upward from his hands and into the sky like smoke. I must have moved then because US looked up and our eyes met. Suddenly the giggle went out of me. His eyes were in tears and his face tanned and smeared with that gray white powder was in such pain and hurt that it took my breath away. I mean, I didn't recognize it at all. But at the same time, it felt like I'd been staring at it all my life. When he spoke, his voice with awe joked up, these are your father's ashes. I brought them back from them for you, for the family. Something had gone off in my head at that moment of flash, I guess, or a flood of light, and it formed a circle between us. We were somewhere else another place, another morning. The street below was fast turning into a dark river, and the light poles were sprouting silvery fronts. I could almost smell the jasmine fragrance of the rice fields in the air. Here the parrot's grappling somewhere in the sky filled the burning heat of a tropical sun on my back. Your father's ashes, US said again, and then held the conical hat with its broken urn up higher for me to see his gift. For the first time since I knew US, I didn't have a thing to say to him, not a thing. So I just stared, and suddenly I couldn't help myself. I raised my arm high in the air and waved over and over again, like I was waiting at the dark welcoming him home or something. Thanks. Well, that took a lot out of me. That's a lot of performance right there. And thanks, Amy, for conducting the conversation. So great. Thank you. So why don't you tell us a little bit about that story and how you created it and created this character. Yeah, you know, you're a fiction writer, so you probably appreciate it more than most. A lot of time, ideas come to you out of the blue, right? And sometimes it's plotted, and other times it's, you know, this story was born out of a restaurant in the Tenderloin many years ago when I went to eat a foul place that's no longer there. And the mother was so kind and sweet just like the mother in the story. And the daughter who was in the summertime, and she was working with helping her parents, was hell on will. And she was in the back, in the kitchen, talking to her boyfriend. And out here the mother was like, hi, how are you? What do you want to treat me today? And then in the back she was like, motherfucker, you want to break up with me? I'm going to break up with you. And the whole restaurant was like, oh my god. And I laughed so hard. And I didn't think about it. I didn't think about it as a story. But I went home, I kept laughing all night long. And then her voice stuck. It was like being possessed by a girl I didn't even see. You know, she was in the kitchen. And then sometimes past and then she's in the voice, not the real girl, started telling me her story. And so I felt like being possessed a little bit. So I had to get her narrative out. And it worked, you know, six months later when the story was done, she stopped talking to me, thank god. But that's how it came about. Great. So one of my favorite things is her voice is so unique. And in a way, all the stories reveal a different aspect of the Bay Area and about this world. Can you tell us a little bit about how long did it take you to write this collection? And how did you realize this was going to be a collection that really captured these unique years of a Vietnamese America in the Bay Area? You know, it felt like, you know, I was in the creative writing program 89 to 91. And then I got hired by Pacific News Service Bank and to become a journalist. And so I started writing fiction at the beginning, but I stopped because I became a full-fledged journalist traveling the world, writing essays and so on. So it was always in the back of my mind that I would want to one day revisit the fiction stuff that I created. And so it's always, you know, so I would say it took three and 25 years. I mean, you know, three years to really write it, but like 25 years of character design and thinking about it while being a journalist full time. But I wrote a lot more than the 13 stories. It's just that when you, you know how it is, when you put together a collection, you have to get rid of stories that are too similar, you know, in term of narrative. And so of course there's another collection waiting, you know, because of that. But I wrote about 20-something stories and it got paired down to 13 for this collection. What made you decide on these 13? Did you feel like they captured a certain Yeah, because it captures this. I wanted to write about people who all have a point of trauma, but all live here in the Bay Area and are adjusting on different degree to success or failure to American life. But they all were defined by this exodus that really defined the community. So San Francisco figures as a large character also in this book. And it really does capture a lot of your feelings and a lot of the diversity that is happening in this city and how it's changed. Could you talk a little bit about your relationship with San Francisco as a writer and as a I grew up here. I went to coma junior high. I remember when we hit the softball, it flies over the fence in the morning is foggy and you have to climb over and pick it up. And you think you're in the film of like the night of the living dead. And I went to low high school, went to Berkeley, came back, went to San Francisco State and then Stanford. So everything was the Bay Area. So in a weird way, my sense of America is so small, San Francisco Bay Area. And when I travel to New York or Midwest, it's like visiting another foreign country. And especially because low high school, even back in the 80s, it's like half of them were Asians already. So you didn't particularly feel like a minor person in San Francisco. So my sense of myself is kind of centralized in the narrative of San Francisco, even though you kind of know that you're marginalized on the mainstream narrative. For me, San Francisco was always diverse. My friends were always a bunch of mixed kind of people. I didn't hang out with the Vietnamese community. So I have Filipino, I have white, I have Samoan, I had black friends all across the board. And that had always been the way in which the stories evolve is that it's never just going to be a Vietnamese person. There's a white guy who wants to be Vietnamese. There's a white kid who's going to be best friend with a Vietnamese kid. There's a woman who falls in love with American GI. There's always going to be interaction with the larger world because that's really the story. So do you think your relationship with San Francisco has changed or has just deepened? It deepens, but I kind of want to leave San Francisco at some point to write about it from a distance because I've always been a San Franciscan boy. And frankly, speaking as a journalist, I'm growing disappointed with the way the city is going, with the wealth and the poor gaps so widened. And the kind of makeup the city has changed so much compared to the middle class people that I knew that sort of defined the large world that I grew up in, that so much has changed. And a lot of artist friends have gone away. And so it's kind of depressing. I don't know how that can be reversed, but in terms of the San Francisco of memory, my childhood, there's a lot of wonderful, delightful moments. I mean, my cousin's here. And we kind of... I mean, our San Francisco is very different than the one that we found ourselves in today. I think that's interesting because so many Asian American writers, specifically Vietnamese American writers seem to be blocking to the Bay Area and moving here so that there's a thriving community. Yeah. And a lot of well-known Vietnamese American writers come from here. I mean, when Quy Duc and then Vic who went to Berkeley and grew up in San Jose and now just won the Pulitzer, right? So it is a fertile ground for a lot of Asian American writers. I mean, you have Maxine Hong Kingston here and so Amy Tan. So there is something unique about the Bay Area with its diversity and its willingness to embrace different culture that allow people to not see themselves completely marginalized, but that their voice matters, that there's always somebody's going to listen to your story, that sort of thing. You don't feel that way. I mean, Midwest, I don't think. Right. And I think that's a large reason why this is going to continue to remain a pretty thriving cultural pot. Hopefully so. Yes. Yes. So you mentioned Viet Nguyen and so this has been a landmark year, I would say, for Vietnamese American writers. Well, South East Asian too, you know. Yes. Especially Vietnamese American men. Yes. With Viet Nguyen winning the Pulitzer for the sympathizer, Vu Tran with Dragon Fish and Ocean Vong for the next guy with exit wounds. And as a journalist, you have interviewed and you know so many of these Vietnamese American writers. How do you think these voices have evolved? It's so wonderful, I have to say, because it's not just writing but films also. Couple friends of mine having the documentary around, and one is Vietnamese, Chinese, and the other one is Cambodian American. And the Cambodian one, I just reviewed his book called His Documentary Days of Justice. And it's just one another award. It's got a kind, independent award and now I just want an indie film award for his look at Cambodia, you know, efforts to reconcile with the Khmer Rouge memory. Why I bring him up is this. He's sort of second generation. He came when he was two or three and he has no memory of Cambodia. And in the film, he's dealing with another guy who's the son of a mass murderer. And both of them came to this conclusion that they cannot ignore the past, that they need to address it, but address it from a second generation point of view. I consider myself a first generation because I have full memory of Vietnam. I left when I was 11 as young enough to change, but I have clear memory of the war and the exodus and the suffering was a lot of people like Viet or Ocean, they come from a second generation who decide to speak of that narrative but of completely different angle, you know. And to me, that's so refreshing and necessary because who wants to, you know, it's funny. I mean, I still write about it, but I guess because it's my experience, but a friend of mine, he reads letters application to colleges. He's an English professor and he say, but I, you know, if I have to read like my mother was a boat person essay again, I'm going to throw up because so many of them, right? But so if there's just too many similar narrative, it becomes boring. Whereas you have a different way of looking that same like Viet story is different than say both people experience, right? So then it's refreshing because it challenges you to look at your own, what you thought was your view of the history and then someone else from another point of view showed up and say, hey, you haven't seen it this way. And I think it's refreshing and it's wonderful because I think that will enrich the way we look at history rather than just, oh, we all suffer, you know, that, right? So I think it's wonderful. So yeah, I remember reading, there's been some really interesting articles, including yours about Obama's recent visit to Vietnam. And I remember Sunny Lay wrote a really interesting piece about how he's tired of the narrative of America coming to visit Vietnam, you are not my enemy anymore. And Sunny pointing out, we haven't been for long years and the narrative has to change. Right. And it has to progress. Right. I think in a way that's why it's refreshing to have new way of looking that history. Because, you know, if any country that we had historical involvement with is he'll static to how we imagine it, that we don't really see that country for what it is. I mean, Vietnam, you know, went from 30 million to 94 million population since the war ended, meaning that it's a new country. It's a greening country. You cannot just go there and say, how do you feel about the war? Right. And people often do that. Like, how do you feel about the war? I mean, I've been with American journalists in Vietnam who were like, ask the kid, what do you think of the war? And you know what his answer is? Which one? Because to him, it's just another war. Right. He didn't experience it. Just like, you know, I always say to the journals, like, ask your kid how he feels about Watergate. You know, that's how it is. So what, and there was another interesting story about how all these Vietnamese stories coming out right now. Yeah. About Vietnamese Americans who've been returning to live in Vietnam, Vietnamese nationals who come to America to live and work in the tech industry. Right. And so there seems to be a much easier migration back and forth, which seems, and they want to capture the fact that the older generations are confounded by this. Sure. The younger are not so much anymore. Yeah. And I think that's, for me, it's something that I have to struggle with because for me, it's always this double vision of the same story. For instance, I fly across the Pacific Ocean basically once or twice a year to either work or write or for fun. And I always travel thinking about my relatives who escaped by boat this way, you know, from the Pacific side to over here. And I always thought, how is it that someone like me who's so lucky to have a good life and, you know, get on a plane and sometimes business class, you know, to Asia. And then there are people who took 15 years to cross that same ocean, you know, losing half relatives along the way. You know, I'm not any smarter than them. They're just circumstances. And so when you see, and that's why there's this double vision all the time for people like me because, yeah, I see it and I welcome this change and young people go back and forth. And in fact, when would a friend many years ago to shop here because he didn't speak English, but he came over just to shop at high end stores. And I wrote a piece about it in EC2S. But, you know, it's like, you know, and I was thinking, well, wow, you know, this is the, imagine, you know, go back 15 years and they were writing letters from Vietnam asking for a care package because Vietnam was so poor. Right. And we had to mail antibiotics and, you know, high money in the toothpaste so that they can survive back home. And, you know, within, you know, 10, 15 years that whole world shifted. And then there are rich people who fly over to go shop at, you know, you know, Prada. You know, so it's like quite stunning a shift, right? I wanted to leave some time for questions from the audience. I think Naomi had a microphone in case anyone went to ask anything. So any questions about Andrew's books and about commentary on just the relationship I think between Vietnam and America? I'm going to take a Twitter. Don't be shy. Yeah, don't be shy. I have my glasses on so I can see you now. Over here. They're bringing it, yeah. I see that your story, The Palmist is in there. And I read it when it came out and then heard it on, I think it was, who was it read by on NPR? Public Radio International, I think. Yeah, who was it read by? Do you remember? Oh, it was read by David Strettern, Good Night and Good Luck. That was on Selected Shorts, yeah. Yeah, and I had shared it with my high school students by Creative Writing Kids and they just really loved it. And I was thinking about, like, I never did really ask you where that story came from. Like, when she was asking you that, I thought, where did that story come from? Right. So The Palmist claims to fame is that it was read on Selected Shorts, it was in New York, and to millions of people who managed to listen to it on NPR and American Public Radio, I think. And they want me to come out there, but they pay me $3,000 and last minute it will cost $3,000 to go listen to my own story read in New York. So I didn't go. But the story is about this kid who took the 38th Gary. How many people know the 38th Gary? Exactly. You know, if you're on the 38th Gary, a lot of shit happens on that bus. I mean, and I used to live in the Richmond, you know, Southern and Clement area. And I used to see, like, all kind of stuff. I mean, I can write a whole novel about the 38th Gary. But then I just, one day, I just sat there, and this story kind of came up, like this palmist who's dying, and his last reading is on the 38th Gary. And so I was on the 38th Gary when the story came to me. And it took me maybe 12 different drafts before it became the way it is. But I wrote it, didn't make any sense. And I left it for three years before I came back. It's in the collection if you have a chance to read it. Okay. Well, Amy can speak to Southern Cal and Texas? Oh, yeah. Well, Southern California, I'm from Southern California. So, I mean, little Saigon there has changed so much. It's amazing. It's beautiful. It's the place that my parents probably would have wanted in the 70s when they first came here, where there's a restaurant down the street from where they had a house for 35 years. There is Ranch 99, all these things. Oh, nice. Yes. It's amazing. And a lot of the most innovative Taiwanese dessert shops open up first in Orange County more than anywhere else. So, I feel like it's very strong and modern and really savvy. I have relatives in Texas who are incredibly conservative and Republican despite being, you know, Vietnamese American. And so you do notice an identity forming the Vietnamese Americans in Louisiana. Very different too. Yes. And then the Vietnamese in the Midwest, they all have a strong identity. Yeah. I mean, there are interconnectedness by, you know, religious connection like different churches or temples and political association. But in terms of cultural makeup of the local area, it certainly varies. I mean, I have relatives in New Orleans who speak with a twang, you know, and I love it because I go down there and in five minutes, I start picking up the New Orleans accent because that's just the way I am. And then I have relatives in Miami and Orlando who are very much like beach bums and they kind of like on the beach all the time. And, you know, and, and then Silicon Valley is like a lot of my friends from Berkeley, 60% were EECS majors. So they're all high tech people and they're running like high tech company and they talk microchip. And that's why I don't go to reunion because they're all show offs. I mean, they're like, Oh shit, is this online? Sorry guys. But but that, you know, they're like, look at my company, look at my Mercedes, you know, there's a lot of wealth. And now that and, and it's all it's kind of, you know, all high tech talk, you know, so there is a different a different shade of Vietnameseness, obviously. Yeah. And you curious about your writing process. So the hone in on like the tenderloin piece that you just read. Yeah. With the possessed girl. And I really got the possessed thing. What, like, what was your like the workflow behind that writing process? Did you, you know, did you like snap a picture of her, put her on the wall and go, Okay, for one hour, I'm just going to write what she's going to write. You know, I'm just curious about the nitty gritty. Yeah, you know, it's weird because creative process can be weird. Like, there's another piece in this book that is called grandma's tales. And this is a piece that has been on top anthologized maybe 12 times, you know, and taught at many university. And if you ask me how I wrote that, I have no clear memory of writing it. I wrote it in two days when I had a fever. And I didn't even know what it was when it was published. But I wrote it without thinking. So there's another way is like, I think John Gardner called it jazzing around when you just let the like the musicality of the words flow out. And then there are pieces in here that is plotted, meaning that I have a concept, you know, this woman who owns a restaurant, she falls in love with this man who she thinks had murdered her husband when they were farmers back in Vietnam. But now she's American. And what's she going to do with him? Right. So that was a concept and had to build something concrete out of it. But I would suggest that instead of thinking of the structure of your workflow, what you should really try to understand is the human character. Because without understanding the human character, his or her yearning and desires and fear and things that she or he won't even admit to himself. Without understanding that part, you can never create good fiction. It's always the human desire that you need to understand before you can flow. Because all human character is destiny. They act on their desire and then things happen in the world. So for me, it's about the well roundedness of a character. I have to believe that she's real, right? This dude, right? I mean, actually, I didn't have to believe she's like didn't get out of my head. But you know, so that there are, once you know who she is, it's like, damn, man, that girl, I know what she would do if she were in this situation, right? Once you know who she is, her story just flow, right? Any other questions? Yeah. Question I have is I'm one of business and not good at storytelling like you are, but the trend of storytelling is really being taught to us, whether it be in social media or storytelling and talks and, you know, business, you know, storytelling. So just as you think about storytelling, you know, how would you connect it to those of us in other forays and thoughts around storytelling? Well, maybe Amy can also address this, but I think without the ability to tell story, we wouldn't connect to one another. I think we naturally tell stories without thinking about it. When we go to a party, the typical American question is, so what do you do? Right? That is like a tweet right there, right? What you do is what your story is, right? How we see ourselves, we spend so much of our time creating this whole narrative about who we are by what we do, especially in America, where identity is so formed by work that we tell story nationally without thinking about it. Oh, yeah, I make computers, you know, I put chips together. How do you do that? You know, I went to college and, you know, I was going to be an art major, but I'm always always good with math. And so I just thought, hey, you can make money from this. And so I got into it. And one thing you need to know that I did my startup now richer than God, right? Whatever it is. I just made that up. But we all tell story without thinking about it. So storytelling is not something unnatural. It's just the way when you're consciously thinking about it that becomes a kind of like, oh, I don't know how to tell this story. We've been telling story all the time. My mother's a natural storyteller. And she's like one of the best storytellers I know. She doesn't think about it. You know, you give her something and she just play with it until, you know, a narrative comes out. And then she even changed narrative in mid-sentence in order to make it work for what her purpose is. For instance, my mother, you know, resented the fact that when I went to Berkeley, I rarely come home to see her. I'm the youngest and most adored or whatever. And so she was telling the story how she was allergic to Nova Cane. And I came home to surprise her while she was telling my aunt the story. And what happened in the story is that she overdosed on Nova Cane injection or something and she knew she was going to go under and she might not survive when she, this was when back in Vietnam and we were young. And she said, you know, in my head, I think if I die, who's going to raise my children, especially my youngest son, right? I heard this story many times. But as I walked in as she was telling this story, she turned and saw me and she say, but you know what? If they inject me with this Nova Cane now, I say, please give me another because why would I live? I have no reason to live because my youngest son, my youngest son, he doesn't care, you know. Yeah, make me feel numb because I'm ready to go under now. And I just stood there and I, you see what I mean? The storytelling turning into a joke make you feel guilty like you're a Jewish mother. You know, it's always been there. It's always been there. You just have to kind of realize it. Yeah, I'm Jewish. So I recently accepted an affiliate artist position at the Headlands Center for the Arts. So I'm excited about that. So for the next year, I'll be, thank you. For the next year, I'll be writing up there. Yay. It'll take me 45 minutes to get there. It is beautiful. And they'll have open studios. And I think I'm at a point in my writing where I'm really, I really like the idea of exploring and collaboration. And I'm in a collaboration right now with a Vietnamese American feminine collective with writers that Andrew knows and Thang Dao right there. She's a member as well, but it includes Isabel Pilode, Dao Strom, Bit, Nguyen, Angie Chow. And so the idea is to create work together. Wonderful. Yes. So we'll be at the Bay Area Book Festival next weekend. Yeah, I'll be there to June 3rd. Fifth? Fifth. Yeah. Other projects? Oh, my project. Sorry. I forgot. Oh, I'm working on a novel based on a real life story. So that's sort of my focus right now. But in the back burner, these other stories that didn't make it to this one, they tend to be more sexual, more like younger generation, looking like from the point of view of second generation, looking at the war or not looking at the war at all. And just sort of more distant from the point of PTSD, which basically a lot of these stories deal with. And so I'm working on those two projects right now. Thank you. Well, thank you for coming and go eat. You're hungry.