 We are live. Hello friends. We'll give it a few moments to let the room fill up before we get started. Welcome. Thank you for being here. Here is the link for tonight's event. We'll give it just a few minutes to one more minute for the room to fill up. Welcome, friends. Hi, Beth. If you would like to put in the chat where you're joining us from today, you could do that. We're joining from Eloni land. This map is really great. It's interactive. Let's you know any treaties that were in place at any time. Hey, I love the river of chat flowing through. It is our connection here in zoom land. All right, I'm going to get going for tonight's event. Thank you so much for being here on a beautiful Tuesday evening. And this is part of our ongoing series with the grotto, the writer's grotto. And it's called Grotto night at the library a conversation with writers tonight. We have Louise Nair, Louise Nair and say la cariat. And we will be getting there in just a moment. But first, a few announcements. The San Francisco public library would like to acknowledge that we occupy the unseated ancestral homeland of the raw mutish Eloni people who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco peninsula. We want to recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. And as uninvited guests, we pay their sovereign, they pay their our respects to their ancestors, elders and relatives of the raw mutish community. And you could find a lot in our doc for tonight, which if you have been to an event with me, you know, I do this for all of our events. This has information to the library and upcoming events, as well as all the links to our presenters tonight. And if our presenters bring up books and resources, I will add those live as we go. So welcome everyone. I do want to tell you about our upcoming events. The library has an ongoing literary campaign called on the same page. This is where we encourage all of San Francisco to read the same book at the same time. And for July and August, we are celebrating Fatima Oscar, and she will be in person live. That's right. She's coming to town specifically to talk to the San Francisco library community. So please turn out for the event Sunday, August 27, 3 p.m. in our beautiful Hormel Center. The book has hit the shelves today. You should find it. Many copies available at your local library or 28 locations. Or we have the ebook. So that is coming up. Please read. Go to the book club, if you want. It's a nice group. And if you didn't know, it's summer stride, summer stride. This event counts towards summer stride. If you read, learn, explore 20 hours, you get that iconic San Francisco public library tote bag. I see a little peek of it here in this illustration. Any library has it. Do your 20 hours and bring it in. But we have lots of things happening over summer. We encourage you to come to all of them, cooking, farmers market tours. July 15 is what we're really doing is the huge event out at the new farm that's connected to Bay Native Nursery. And the new farm, we're going to have chickens and goats. The bookmobile will have live music. We'll have hands-on craft and art, creative arts, screen printing and crochet jam, featuring Kaliksto and Ramicon. These are two very famous Bay Area artists. So please, July 15, join us there. It is going to be so fun. All right. And now, again, without further ado, I'm excited to have you here tonight for tonight's event with Louise Nair and Selah Kariat. And this is Grotto Night. And we have two more coming up. And it's in that dock. July 11 and August 8. We have two more Grotto Nights. And then hopefully we'll be taking this live and in person. We'll see how it goes. Tonight, we have Louise Nair, who has written six books, two poetry books, Keeping Watch, and The Houses Are Covered in Sound, and coauthored How to Bury a Goldfish about rituals for everyday life. Byrne and Memoir was an Oprah, great read, and won the Wisconsin Library Association Award. She's also the author of Poised for Retirement, Moving from Anxiety to Zen. And her latest book, Narrow Escapes. Louise is a member of the Ritos Grotto, a longtime educator, retired City College of San Francisco professor, and now teaches through Ali, UC Berkeley, and at the Grotto. She's done numerous radio spots, including on NPR. Selah Kariat is a writer, filmmaker, entrepreneur who has pursued a career as an electrical engineer, a builder while dreaming writing and filmmaking. After obtaining her PhD in electrical engineering, she worked as an engineer, manager, and marketer at IBM. She studied filmmaking at San Jose State University, and was valedictorian of the class of 2008. After making several short films, she wrote, directed, and co-produced The Feature, The Valley, the story of an Indian American entrepreneur seeking answers after the suicide of his daughter. The Valley was selected by over 20 film festivals and won Best Feature film in four notably being invited to the Mumbai Film Festival. Her current work is Jesus Land, an adaptation of the New York Times best-selling novel by the same name. She is in development on the movie based on the memoir. Kariat has published many technical articles as a research staff member at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. Her feature screenplays include Gods and Demons, Love in a Time of Corona, Release and Gray. She has started writing essays and short stories, a few of which have been published. She is also a member of the writer's Grotto, Film Fatals, and the San Francisco Film. Without further ado, Selah and Louise, please unmute yourselves. Well, I'll begin, and then Selah will chime in, but we're really excited to be here. Thank you all for coming. It's such an amazing topic, searching for home, because that's something everybody wants and everybody has tried to create. I guess I will start by asking Selah our first question, which is, Selah, how do you define home? Thanks, Louise, and thank you for having us public libraries, SF Public Library. You know, I've been giving this a lot of thought since we started talking about this topic, Louise, and I think home, for me, is a place where you feel safe and secure and comfortable, and it's a place where you kind of long for permanence. It's the elusive permanence. There really is no such thing, but in our mind, when we think of home, we want it to be permanent. We want a sense of stability, and I think that's what makes it so hard to find home. And so I'll ask you the same question. What does home mean to you? Well, I think very much the same things, safety, security, comfort, not always surrounded by people you love, because I've lived alone for seven years in my 20s, and I created a home with my poetry books and objects that I loved, and that was home. And now I feel a big part of my home is living with my husband and my dog, so pets have always been important parts of my home. And also, and this is kind of interesting, we just painted our house, you can see this green behind me, and I had no paintings on the walls for days, and I found this big photo that we had framed of my daughters, and I just put it up yesterday, and I just took a deep breath. So sometimes I think, well, I'm not really materialistic, but special objects that you can look at and have in front of you are really important. Mm-hmm. Very true. So much of your book, I want to talk a little bit about your first book, Burned, which I read about a year ago. It talks about, you know, your parents had a tragic accident where they were badly burned and your mom was slightly disfigured, and so was your dad. They had health problems as a result, and how this trauma kind of shaped your life. And I am, by the way, reading this, Narrow Escapes, and I have to say I love this book. I mean, I love Burned also, but I love this book, and partly because I can relate so much to the narrator's voice. It seems to be more about what shaped you as an individual, you left home and you're going on this really kind of courageous journey. What inspired you to write this book? Well, it was really interesting because after writing Burned, I just thought, I'm never going to write another memoir. You know, you're really, you have to be so transparent and they're real people, but I started writing an essay about my journey in Morocco where I actually hitchhiked. It was the late 60s, early 70s. I mean, there were people standing on street corners all over Europe and all over the world sticking their thumbs out. So, you know, it was part of a wave of people. But I wrote an essay about Morocco which didn't get published. And the person said, well, it doesn't have an arc. And then I sent it in again. It didn't get published. And then she said, well, maybe you need to write a book about it. I never really wanted to do that. But this journey really coming of age, that time between 20 and 30 where you're breaking from your parents, trying to find your path. And I knew I wanted to be a poet early on. So, you know, but I just kept going with it. And then I also realized when you bring up the trauma for people who don't know Burned is about my parents while you mentioned who were Burned in an accident. And how trauma or difficult experiences follow you, you know, through teenage hood and in trying to form relationships and all kinds of things. So, you know, that was part of how that continued, you know, in this book. Yeah, I can ask you, Salah, about, you know, your film, you know, that I just watched it again. And I just encourage everybody to watch it. It's called The Valley. And I guess it can be, you can see it on what Peacock on Peacock, it's on Roku, Tubi TV and Freebie, I think. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's just such a powerful film of our time, you know, of people getting, you know, an Indian family living in Silicon Valley and, you know, just surrounded by people who are driven, driven to make money, driven to climb the ladder, driven to have their kids go to the perfect school. And it's even bigger than just Silicon Valley, because it's also about a family that sadly isn't listening to each other, you know, and the daughter commits suicide. And afterwards is why didn't we talk to her? Why didn't we find out what was going on? And it's so beautifully filmed. But I guess my question is what inspired you to write it and how does it, how does it fit with our topic of searching for home? So what inspired me, I mean, there are several things. I grew up as an immigrant, as an outsider. My, you know, I was, I was talking to you earlier about how there's so many similarities between the Jewish culture and the Indian culture. There's, there's a lot of, you know, emphasis on getting the right degrees and, you know, status and making money. And so that whole, you know, high pressure situation is something that I, and I feel it's all accentuated in Silicon Valley. Everyone is, you know, they're like on steroids, you know. And so, and so I feel all of those pressures are quadrupled. And that I observed it and seeing my children going through the school system, you know, and all the things they faced. And so that was part of what the inspiration, the other part of it is I had a brother who was schizophrenic and he passed away actually right before I started writing the script. And just the tragic nature of his life and mental health issues and how they're, there's a lot of shame in the Indian community around mental health issues. And I mean, it's changing. People are becoming more and more aware and more and more open-minded about it. They're, you know, akin to physical health issues. I mean, you have, if you have diabetes, you have diabetes, if you have schizophrenia, you have, it's an imbalance of the chemical imbalance of the brain. And so, you know, that was partly the inspiration. And I think there is the way it relates. I think displaced people really feel that painful loss of home and the searching for home. And what people do is try to substitute something else for it. And a lot of times in Silicon Valley, in a place like this, it's, it's materialism or, you know, ambition, workaholism is a substitute for that loss of community and the loss of connection and the loss of home. And that becomes kind of like a poor substitute. And I think people don't, a lot of times don't even realize what it is they're searching for, you know. Yeah. And, you know, I was, I was just thinking about the similarities because definitely, you know, everything was about education in my family. And when I did around 2021, I think the effect of, you know, the early, the accident, leaving home after, you know, college, that transition from leaving college, I started to have panic attacks. And my dad, who was a doctor, the first few times that I told him what was wrong, he just said, well, you know, take a deep breath, you know. And in other words, he wanted to be able to fix it, but he couldn't fix it. And, and to finally when I said, well, I'd like to see a therapist, it was so hard to get out that those words, because I felt I had failed. And also my mother was disfigured facially. And I was thinking, well, she got through life without therapy. So how should I, so there's a similarity there. And, you know, and sadly, I don't think the mental mental health system is a lot better. But yeah, certainly not quote fixed and all of that. So we have similarities there for sure. I think one other point, you know, in this is commonality. When immigrants, when they leave home, like my parents, they came from, you know, very humble beginnings, like my dad grew up in a village where there's no running water and no electricity, you know, and he had to, he literally had to walk six miles to go to school. You know, that whole, you know, cliche, oh, I had to walk six miles. He literally had to cross a river and walk six miles to go to school. So that those beginnings, your problems, if you say I'm lost, I feel lost and I'm searching for home, I'm searching for identity, they don't understand that they think, oh, well, we had so much worse. What are you complaining about? You know, these are not real problems. In their mind, real problems have to do with deeper, darker, harder things. And I think you face some of that in your situation, because you were feeling in the, especially I see in your book, you're feeling lost, you're trying to find yourself. But your parents had such a, you know, such a difficult trauma in their life that your problems look kind of minor compared to theirs. Yeah, you know, I think I, I think it was very difficult because I was very privileged financially. I mean, my mother was very frugal and grew up in the depression, but I went to summer camp, I went to this very artsy private school. And so there was a part of me that thought, well, why do I feel sad or what's happening? Because there wasn't any real intervention. So I think there was a kind of guilt and some of it could be a type of survivor's guilt too. You know, I wasn't physically burned. And yet when I wrote burned and did a talk at the Phoenix Society, which is a burned survivors group, they said anybody in the family can be called a burn survivor. And, you know, it just opened it up that everybody goes through things. But in terms of finding home, you know, and that accident, I think that there was a lack of safety deep inside me, you know, as much as I was privileged and I had a beautiful home and my mother had paintings and, you know, she had enough Colgate toothpaste in the closet and everything was set. But yeah, there was a lack of that safety, although I liked being home, because I liked being contained in this kind of safe environment, but inside I didn't really feel it. But I was going to ask you about your mother, because you said your mother was very religious and traditional. And so how was it straddling two cultures and how did it how did and also you moved a lot, you went to five high schools. So how did that affect your, you know, that the straddling two cultures and the moving? How did that affect your search for home? You know, I think it made, I mean, I think to some degree, everyone goes through a little of this, the whole transition of feeling, you know, when you're young, you're kind of assuming you come from a good family, you're kind of feeling safe and home, and then you grow up and you start going out into the world and you separate from your family, all that transition and you figure out your own identity. It's kind of natural for everyone. But when you're in my situation, where your home life and your life at school look like two different universes, it makes it very hard to figure out what your identity is. Like the values that my mom had were so different than the values that were, you know, in the Canadian, I was most of my developing years I was in Canada. And that in Canada, you know, the values were very different. Like my mother would never think of dating as an acceptable option, you know, and whereas everyone was dating, you know, in high school. And so, you know, that was, that kind of confusion was really hard to deal with. What is good, what is bad, what is right, what is wrong, you know, you have to kind of look inward to find, figure those things out, because outside everyone, everyone's telling you something different. Yeah, that makes, you know, and it's hard to feel at home, even in your home. Right. Yeah, exactly. You're in the state of confusion. And, and there's this kind of rigidity in your home life that you don't, you don't understand or relate to. I mean, the other aspect is that in Indian culture, the women, and I think this is true Jewish culture also, it's pretty chauvinistic, you know, like, you know, the men, all the men eat first and the women eat, you know, and the moon are doing all the housework and the men don't do much. And there's just so much, you know, there's so many in those days, I mean, things have changed so much now. I'm talking about 50, 60 years ago, right, years ago, you know, that it was, you know, and my mom's generation, it was totally different. And those I can, and also just to just generally women are not treated as as of equal value as men, their less value, they simply have less value. And that is something I could never agree with. So I find I found all these things that I felt uncomfortable with and I didn't agree with. And so searching for home became a very complicated, convoluted thing for me. And we moved every, you know, we I've lived, I lived in so many different places. So my home has a special place, I think, for people like us. Yeah. And I think, you know, I mean, in a very small way, one thing I can relate to is that my parents sent us to a very artsy progressive school and the kids were this was in the early fifties and the kids were wearing blue jeans. And my mother was very strict. And so she said, you can't wear jeans to school, even though everybody else was wearing it. So my sister and I would actually cover each other in the stairwell, going down our apartment building and change into jeans, you know, and then stuff our dresses, you know, so so there were little things like that. And one thing that I guess we had talked about is that my mother was Christian and my father was Jewish. And because my grandfather was a minister and really wanted us to go to church actually baptize my sister when he was babysitting, when they were babysitting for her one night. You know, it was very confusing because my school was mainly made up of some Jewish Christian families, but they were basically atheists and not religious and certainly didn't go to church. So I think I was the only person who went to church. And I must say part of a longing for me, as I've gotten older is wanting more of the Jewish culture, because that was really kind of wiped out, actually. When, yeah, it was just not really one time I said to my mother, well, I'm half Jewish. And she said, no, you're not, you were baptized and confirmed in the Episcopalian church. So there was a way in which that part of my identity wasn't really acknowledged. And there's been a longing for that. I have a question for you. I know you've moved around so much. And you've also written about the difficulty in Silicon Valley, but in what place do you feel most at home? It's a really good question. And I feel like I was actually born in Berkeley. And then I left Berkeley when I was like two years old or something, and I ended up back close to Berkeley. So I think where I am right now is where I feel most at home. This is where I've lived longest in my life is the Bay Area. And it's very diverse. And I feel it's very accepting of people, whoever, you know, whatever, you know, faith, sexual orientation, color, ethnicity, whatever, people, everyone seems to belong here and don't, don't belong here. It's a strange dichotomy. It's interesting because almost, I feel like almost everyone is an immigrant. There are very few native Californians. They came from somewhere else, you know, either the South or the East Coast, New York, somewhere. And they kind of came and converged here. So you don't have to go back to too many generations to find that they came from somewhere else. So I feel like it's a good, you know, somewhere where I actually can feel good and happy. The other thing I feel, and here's a, you know, this is interesting is I formed a group of artists and which I never, because I, you know, as you, as the bio said, I transitioned from engineering, which was again, here was the acceptable profession, right? You know, it was more steady, more stable. It was a real job, you know, versus if you say I'm a writer, you know, when you're young, they'll say, well, that's not a real job, you know. So I feel much more comfortable amongst writers and filmmakers than I ever felt amongst engineers. Yeah, see, that's in a sense, that's a home for me. Exactly. Exactly. Because I think by nature writers are a bit of outsiders. They're people who feel things more deeply, more, and they're searching for truth. It's like people have layers of existence, right? You have your real, whoever you really are, and people who are very close to you, like your spouse or, you know, your children, they know that. And then there's a whole layer of, of, you know, who you might be in your professional life. And then there's an even more superficial layer, you know. And so with writers, I think they try to look through all of the different layers, peel back the onion and look at what the core of a person is and what the real truths are of life. Yeah. And, you know, just as you were talking, I was thinking, you know, home is also where you can show your authentic self, you know, really your deepest feelings and feel that you're not going to be demeaned or, you know, your quote overly sensitive or all those things you were saying about artists. And, and so when you can be yourself, and sometimes you were saying with groups of writers, sometimes home can be when you're engaged in a project, you can feel so at home with a group of people. And sometimes if you work on a play, and then it's the last night, there's a sudden feeling of emptiness, because you've been with these people for so long, and you've created something. And that's part of home. And actually, this would be a good segue into looking at some of the art and queuing up the trailer for Sayless Film, The Valley. So, Anise, if you could do that, that would be great. Thank you. If we could make this process scientific, what really happened? I'm going to try and find out. I did the right thing. She was sweet, innocent. Do not tell anyone that you can destroy your entire family. Stop pretending now. I know. Leave it alone. The answer isn't in the individual pieces. It's all about strong connections. I'm having a really hard time understanding. Yeah, I mean, that film is powerful on so many levels. And one thing that I was thinking about is that the phrase were human beings, not human doings. It's not that you have to keep doing something and doing something and proving yourself. And I remember David Brooks, the writer, commentator, was saying that when you die, nobody really is going to care about your resume. They're going to care about what kind of person you were. Were you kind? Were you generous? Did you help people? And so the film really points that out. I mean, it's set in Silicon Valley, but it's so universal and also about parenting. And we're both actually parents of two daughters. And how do you really connect with your children and listen to them? Because for their mental health, it's so important. And there's been an explosion of anxiety and depression among young people recently with the pandemic and climate change. So the film's message is even more powerful for parents. So yeah, it was so moved by it. Well, thank you so much. One of the people that saw it told me afterwards, it made me want to go home and hug my children. And I thought, okay, if it has that effect, then it's good. That's what it does for you. But speaking of anxiety, one of the things that I was reading your book, I know I knew you talked in your book about having panic attacks and having anxiety. And it's a natural effect of the accident that your parents underwent, because you're always afraid of some impending catastrophe. And it's perfectly, it's very, we can all empathize with it. But the thing that really struck me when as I was reading your book is how brave you were. Like there were so many instances like where you're in Spain and you jump out of a car and you're, you know, you end up going to Morocco and you're hitchhiking with this young two, 20 year old girls and you're with these men. And I'm like, each time I was like, I was gripping my chair as I was reading, but it's like, oh my God, I hope nothing happens here. I mean, how did you get the courage to go through that you were definitely searching for something? And what prompted you? What were you searching for? And how did you get the courage? Well, you know, it's interesting because I, you know, that period of time in some ways doesn't feel individual to me. It feels like, you know, in terms of the late sixties, early seventies, the civil rights movement, reproductive rights, which sadly are being taken away now. But it's it and, and the consciousness, you know, some of it was drugs, certainly, you know, acid, what people were seeing with the world. It felt like we were very much, even I'm saying it now, we were a we, it was this really longing to just change the world and anti war. I mean, to stop wars, to have peace and love, which, you know, the media kind of made fun of. So in some ways, yeah, I was individually searching, but I was also swept up in the consciousness of the times. And in terms of bravery, it's interesting, I was thinking about this. My mother, despite the fact that she was facially disfigured, she traveled the world with my dad, even after the accident, she loved adventures and she loved to go places. And as soon as she got home, she'd be planning a trip for the next year, you know, where can we go and kind of drag my father who ended up having a good time. So in some ways, I was affected by her in a good way, you know, that life is about adventure. And we did have the resources to travel. So that was very lucky, but just getting out there and seeing the world and doing things. So I think it was a combination of, you know, the times and adventure and the bigger bravery for me was getting close to people in relationships. I think driving cross country by myself, traveling to Morocco, didn't really feel brave. It felt like I was just part of this whole movement. But you know, the more difficult things, learning to trust, those were the deeper fears, really. That's very profound. Can you read us something from your book that, you know? Yeah, I have a very short section where in some ways I felt totally free. And, you know, that's a hard feeling, especially if you grow up like I grew up, or we were talking about the cultures where, you know, you're supposed to be this, you're supposed to be that, you're supposed to have the, you know, in my case, the perfect boyfriend, the perfect job, you know, all of that. So when I drove cross country by myself, I drove in a 68 Camaro, no air conditioning, no radio, just poems spinning through my mind. So I'll just read this very short section. I had just gotten this little black hood that I needed to keep my car from overheating. On the road again, the black hood neatly over the radiator, protecting me, protecting the car, a new talisman of sorts. New York City, where my heart had started inside my mother's body, and outside her body at New York Hospital, now faded away. The further I went with the change in time, the earlier it became, like being born again. What was freedom? Lack of restrictions? Out here on the road, no one was telling me what to do or what not to do. School, a boyfriend who would become a husband, a job, enough money, a place to live, a bank account, publications of my writing in the right magazines, the ones that would lead to bigger and better magazines, everything always bigger and better, as if life were to be one great crescendo, rising to some peak like Everest, where I would stake my claim, drape a big flag that I'd made it to the top, voices swirled in my head, the shoulds of life. In the car between places, the voices descended to a soft whisper. The time inside my chimera was all my time. Crazy images spun through my brain, trees like dancers, the blue sky a silken robe, the cars in front of me, huge beetles, the road an alleyway to the heart, my heart not broken on this stretch of road. Maybe my heart had never really been broken when my parents disappeared. I wanted to believe that, sorry. I was always trying to get to an unbroken heart. These thoughts, Olympic runners of the air, like a spinning wheel or a player piano, went so fast I couldn't catch them, but I knew they were there and all mine. Yeah, and poetry was a home for me. And I found that path early. So I was lucky in that way. Very beautiful. Thank you. And I was going to ask you this question where you grew up with little money that you believed in the American dream and you achieved financial success. But when Trump was elected, how did that affect your feelings about the American dream? So when I was growing up in Canada, so this would be in the 70s and the early 80s, there was a lot of discrimination against Indians because Indians were, there were Native Americans and then South Asians and they were the visible minority back then. And so it was a lot like England. There was the Paki. You go outside and you'd be called Paki. I remember when I was one of my high schools, my first week, somebody wrote Paki, you stink on my locker. So these were kind of things that you had to face. And so when I moved to the US in the early 80s, I thought, oh my God, this is it. I've arrived because people were very different than the back in the early 80s in New York. New York is very liberal. As you know, you're from New York. It's very accepting and it's like a big melting pot of a lot of different kinds of people. And so people, I felt very much like America was so much better and I drank the Kool-Aid. Like, you know, I was, I came to America with a hundred dollars, literally. Wow. I ended up getting admission into Syracuse. I worked for eight months. I saved money. I got a Pell Grant. I did all kinds of stuff to be able to afford one year of college, basically. And then I went on and I got an assistantship and I basically put myself through graduate school. And then I got a job. And it was all like nobody, I never really got any help. So it was like, pull yourself up by the bootstraps and be innovative and you work hard and you'll make it. I really believed all of that and you'll be treated just like everyone else. Of course, there's a corollary to that. And I think that last part kind of was shaken over the last few years. As I got to see more and more, I feel like the messages you'll be treated like everyone else, but the reality is not. And even, you know, if you do all of the above, you are a good citizen. You don't commit crimes. You pay your taxes. You still don't get treated the way that others of the same who have done the same thing get treated. And, you know, really, Trump is kind of an in-your-face testament to that. There is a person who openly embraces racism. I mean, in both subtle and non-subtle forms, and yet 40% of the population still supports them. And it's obviously not a deal breaker for 40% of the population. So that shows something. And that was very disillusioning for me. Yeah. And you show that in your film too, you know, where the father who's Indian doesn't get invited to the president's house. You know, in other words, these things that just, you know, eat at people, you know, because they're being demeaned. And, you know, you could call it subtle, but it's not really subtle. It's very, it's just out there racism. And so you really show that well, you know, and had to deal with that. And yeah, I keep thinking, you know, Trump is the last gasp of, you know, the patriarchy or the white supremacist, but we'll see, you know, let's hope. I mean, we'll find out, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, that's another aspect of home. You want to feel that, yeah, you're accepted by your community and not marginalized and not, you know, treat not treated badly, just because of who you are. You know, I'm not sure how much time we have left. I mean, there was one last question. I was going to ask you and I can answer it too. But do you feel you found home? I guess in some ways you've answered that or still searching in some ways you answered that, but you might want to add. I think there's a part of me that will always be searching. And again, it's partly because of, you know, being an immigrant and being, you know, visibly different, you know, I don't know. I don't sometimes I think, I mean, there's certain choices that I wouldn't make that somebody else could easily, for example, I love Austin, Texas as a town, you know, I think it's great music scene, the film scene, everything is wonderful. But being a brown person, I don't think I would ever want to live in Austin, Texas or live in Texas. Let's put it that way. Sorry, Texans, but I'm not offending anyone out there. But, but, you know, it's not a choice I would make. So so the point I'm trying to make is there's always some part of me that's feeling like, okay, is this really my home or is it not? Or, you know, is this am I really accepted here or am I not? And I think it will always be like that. I don't think I could go back like if I go back to India, I'm like a fish out of water. Everyone's thought patterns, culture, everything is different. I know I don't fit there. Even my parents don't fit there anymore. They've lived here for so many years. I mean, that's what happens to immigrants when you migrate. And to some extent, it's happened to every American. You know, because you've migrated from somewhere, maybe Europe, maybe Italy. So if you ask an Italian American, go back to Italy and live there, they would feel very, you know, out of place, I think most Italian, most American Italian Americans. So, you know, at some, it happens to everyone in America to some degree. Yeah. And I also think that, you know, home gets imprinted on you really early. So I was thinking about New York City. And there's a subway stop on 14th Street. And it literally smells of cotton candy and urine. You know, it's just this mixture of city smells, you know, kind of sickly sweet. And but it kind of feels like home to me. I mean, a lot of people would say, oh my God, that's really awful. And yet, so there's a way in which New York City will always be my home. And there's also an intensity about New York, you know, where people talk a lot or talk loudly and it's all okay. It's cab driver screaming and, you know, all of that. And and and even I remember going to summer camp. And I was thinking, what is this noise? It was the crickets. I was used to hearing the sounds of sirens, you know, ambulance sirens. And that was just part of the city. So so I think you get imprinted really early on. So yeah, as much as I guess for me, you know, that question is the older I get, the more I find that nature really calls to me. And is my home, you know, I was thinking even going camping, being in a tent, it feels like home because it's so beautiful outside. And so New York City, you can get out of New York, but it doesn't have that kind of constant beauty that San Francisco has. And I'm very lucky I'm looking out at this beautiful garden that my husband basically created. And so I can have that much more easily out here. So there, there's a way in which I'm getting pulled more towards California. I've really resisted it for many years. I find also as I get older, I think more than a place, it's the people that start to matter to me. Totally. If I'm surrounded by my, you know, my family, my husband, my children, my friends, you know, like what I would miss most about this area are my friends and my if my whole family move, let's say, I think I would really miss my friends and my grotto people. And you know, it's like, you know, those are the things that I feel more attached to than the actual place or the objects around me. It's become more of an internal process and a process of those that are close to me, the feeling of home, you know, and maybe that feels comfortable, you know. Yeah. Well, I think that that's so much what home is, having, you know, a spouse who's a best friend. And I've mentioned pets and you have a dog too. You know, I feel so, I mean, my dog really brought me through so much during the pandemic. And I think that's true for a lot of people. He saw all these people with new puppies suddenly. Yeah, so yeah, just having that lot of your love circle, you know, exactly, exactly. Yeah, some questions. Sure, I see one question that was early on. They were talking about Stephanie Foo's book, which is called Let's see, I put it in a chat. It's called What My Bones Know. And the person was talking about how they were reminded of parents trauma and how that, you know, gets intergenerational. And they were wondering what, how you absorbed that and how you then put it out in writing. Okay. Well, it was that, was that for, I could, I could start by answering it. Yeah, I mean, it's called, you know, different intergenerational trauma, vicarious trauma. It's very hard not to pass that down, you know, and, you know, I think in my case that I've gotten tremendous help with looking at it and seeing how it affects my life. And also when I wrote Burnd, at first it was a more, what about me kind of book, you know, I suffered to, even though I don't have the burns, I suffered to, and then the book became a book also about my parents because how did they cope with suddenly being, you know, having their children wrench for them from for nine months and dealing with the hospital stays. So I think it's so important for children, you know, mainly as they get older to understand, you know, what their parents were dealing with and had to go through, you know, whether and, and, you know, in my parents' cases, we were talking about the American dream, they had arrived, you know, that summer that they were burned. I mean, my dad was a doctor and he didn't come from money, really, and my mother either and, and then suddenly boom, you know, and then how do you, how do you cope with that? And, but, you know, in talking about mental health, it's just so important to be open, to listen to both sides, to put the parents go through and what the children go through. But Sayla, you might have more thoughts about that question too. Yeah, I think, I think when you're younger, you basically, your parents, the way you view them is how they treat you and what they do for you and what they didn't do for you. And then the older you get, the more you see them as individuals, you know, and what they went through. And I mean, as difficult as it was for me to be an immigrant, it was more difficult for them, because they grew up, they were basically we're the stranger in a strange land, you know, they, they couldn't relate, they, you know, I could somewhat relate to the outside culture, they couldn't relate, they could hardly relate. And things were not, I mean, this is something also that has changed so much in the last 50 years is the globalization has changed people's understanding of other cultures and their, their kind of level of knowledge about other cultures. Back when in the early 70s or the early 80s, people didn't know, I mean, they would come to me and say, what are you? And I would say, I'm Indian. And they say, are you Apache or Cherokee? You know, that was the level of knowledge they had no understanding that there's country like India. And they, where's now? I mean, like my daughter had a, they had a presentation about India, and they asked us to help. And so we did this PowerPoint, me and one other lady. And we took a bunch of food, I cooked a whole, you know, bunch of food to take. And this little six year old kid came to me and said, oh, I love Saghpaneer. I was like, I'm sorry to fall out of the chair. Not only did he know what it was, he knew the name, the Indian name. Right. You know, in the early 80s, no one would know, you know, what that was, you couldn't even find an Indian restaurant or, you know, where we live. So it was, it was, it was a different time. And I'm sorry, I digressed here, but yeah. Yeah, you know, but I wanted to add to that, that when I was traveling in Morocco and other places, I didn't want these sanitized type trips that my parents went on, you know, with the itineraries, even though there's something very comforting about that now that I'm older, but I didn't necessarily want that. I really wanted to be with quote, you know, the real people. And even though there were risks with that, my friend and I got invited into the home of a Moroccan family and, you know, we were strangers to them and they just invited us into their home. And so I really wanted that kind of travel. So I think on the one hand there's globalization, but it doesn't mean that people are really, really understanding somebody's culture, you know, so it takes a real openness, you know, beyond, I mean, the food is very important, but beyond that too, to really understand somebody else's culture. No, I agree. But at least at a superficial level, they know something. Yeah, that little six year old. But, you know, at a deeper level, it takes years to really understand a culture. Totally. Yeah. You have to live amongst them for years and then you sort of get an idea. And also language is a huge barrier. Totally. You know, if you don't know the language of a kind of culture, it's very hard to understand that culture. Yes. Okay, we also have, there's a lot of thank yous going on in the chat. I hope you can see that. Thank you both for your beautiful reflections. To what extent was your acceptance of Berkeley slash SF as your home's intentional or incidental? Did you have to be in a certain life stage to accept even having a home? Shall I read those questions again? Well, do you want, you want to hear it again? Sayla or? No, no, I think. Yeah, no, I have just a quick thought is, I mean, in my book, I, I got in, well, it was equivalent of an MFA from SUNY Buffalo. And I, I was probably going to go back to New York City and look for a job. I don't know in what with an MFA at that point, but something. And a friend of mine called me from Berkeley and said, Oh, I have an extra room in my house because I'm leaving. Do you want my room? I never been to California. And I just said, yes. So, um, and called my mother and said, I'm moving to California. So it was so impulsive. And I'm not usually that impulsive, you know, and so it was just, so that's how I ended up on the West Coast. And I kept trying to move back to New York, but then I got a California Arts Council grant as a poet in residence for senior centers and nursing homes. I taught poetry to older people and those grants supported me as an artist. And I knew I couldn't say no to that. So I remember having a dream of the California sun and I was in New York then and I just came back and my mother cried and she never cried much at all. But she cried when I drove away. I think she knew I was really going far away for a long time, but it was totally impulsive how I ended up here. And for us, it was, it was actually kind of a fluke because we, my husband and I were working on a startup and we got, we got, we were, we had absolutely no money to finance this thing. So we got money from venture capitalists, but he said, the only way he would give us money is if we moved out here. And so that's why he ended up moving out here. And then over time, it became more and more of a home. And I realized, you know, that this is, this is a good place for us. Yeah. And I think when I, you know, when I met my husband who was working at the Haydashbury senior center where I was the poet in residence and we created a home together, you know, it was okay and family, I'm going to stay here. Then that was pretty clear. And I think when you have kids too, you're engaged in so much, you know, there's schools or activities. So there's a home in that too, in the whole system. Thank you. Someone's given you a writing prompt. So here we go. What would you do if you were encouraged to write the next great chapter of the American story in an email response from the White House after sending a poem of out of your poetic memoir? Whoa, could you read that again? Sure. What would you do if you were encouraged to, to write the next chapter of the American story in an email response from the White House after sending in a poem of out of your poetic memoir? I think there's a little typo, but Karo, if you want to unmute, you can ask your question in person. I cannot make that happen. Yeah, so the thing is actually I received an email response from the White House after I sent in the poem. So that's why I was kind of asking you guys if you were to receive something like that from the White House. Wow, that's really exciting. I would be totally thrilled. And yeah, that's all I can say is it's very thrilling. And it must have been a poem that really meant something, you know, and was important. I'm not sure what the poem talked about, but it must have been a great poem. It was about our world. It got the title, it was about world and talking about war. Oh, yeah, well, yeah, important topics. Yes. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. That's really exciting. How about what are you reading now? What's on your nightstand? No. Sailor. Good one. I would read it again once I finish. It's really a beautiful book. Recommended highly. And library friends, we do have it on order, so don't worry. But if you do want to go get it, get it from a local author. I mean, a local independent bookstore. Yeah, there's some copies of Green Apple on the park. I know. Yeah, I'm reading a book. Oh, gosh, what's the whole title? The stationary, it's about a stationary store. It takes place in Iran in the 50s during the rise of the Shah. And it's about two young people who fall in love. And the young man is an activist. So it's a kind of dangerous love story. And I think at the very end of the book, she, or no, it's actually earlier on that she's been married, but she meets him again. And so that's part of the story, too. And it's pretty compelling. I really like it. The stationary shop. I put it in the shop. Yeah, okay. There we go. Yeah, so you don't do the read five books at a time? I'm not good at that at all. I'm like, I have to focus on one thing, or I'm just not good at reading five books at a time. Thanks, Beth. We'll try to get, and Beth, are you talking about narrow? Get narrow on Access 360? We can definitely try to do that. We can try. Let's see. How about any favorite children's picture books about searching for and or finding home? Hmm, you know, it's been so long since I, you know, read children's books to children or grandchildren, but there's something about, you know, looking for my mom. Are you my mama? Is that, is that, is that a children's book? I remember that. And I'm thinking, yeah, mama is home. So there are a lot of books like that. Yeah. Any more questions or? I can ask you a question that I had. Sure. Do you feel that searching for home is more of an external process or an internal one? Like you're, first you're kind of physically leaving, you go to France, and then you go to Morocco, and then you go to California. So you're kind of moving from place to place. But do you feel that, you know, the internal journey that you were taking is really almost more, more about searching for home? Yeah, I think, I think that, you know, I even remember one time being at a friend's house and looking at a map and thinking, oh, I could live here. I could live there. I could live here. So there was that sense of adventure externally. I think the internal journey allowed me to create a home. I think it wasn't until I had this counseling session called co-counseling with a friend. And she said, what do you want to work on? And I'd never mentioned the accident, hardly to anybody. And I was 24. And I suddenly realized that's what I have to work on, you know, in order to feel, I guess, safe enough to love somebody deeply, to have children, you know. And yeah, I mean, definitely I've been an anxious mother, but I've always been working on that too. But I think to get to that point, and sometimes, you know, and not everybody has to have a partner, you know, there are different choices in life. But I definitely felt like I had to go through something very deep. And I guess in a sad way, I guess I had to leave home to do it, you know. And that's a little bit of the sadness. I think, you know, maybe I could have stayed in New York, but maybe having my parents so close and everything there, it would have been harder to really go so deeply into what I needed to go through. So yeah, there are two levels of the journey, external and internal, yeah. Yeah, for me also, I feel a lot of, there was a lot of internal journey for me, because I think growing up in such a place which had a lot of discrimination, you know, I kind of felt ashamed of my roots, you know. That was something I never quite accepted about myself. Like people would say, oh, you're an Indian American. They would always ask me questions about India, you know, but I left India when I was nine years old. Like they would ask me geographical questions, like where is this city relative to this city? And I was like, okay, scratch my head. Okay, remember my geography here. But so it was, you know, they identified me that way, but that's not necessarily the way I identified myself because I grew up, you know, with Mary Tyler Moore. Consuming all of the pop culture of the West, you know, and kind of isolated, so. Do you feel more accepting of your culture now? So yeah, that's something I really had to, as I grew older, I've grown more and more proud of it. And it's a little bit like what you feel about Judaism. Like you want to know more about that, you know. And I feel proud of the kind of fine qualities that old Indian culture has, you know, of the non-violence and the whole non-violent movement was started by Gandhi. You know, that whole, it's part of, in Hindu culture, it's called a hymsa, which means non-violence, don't kill anything living. In fact, like there's a whole sect called Jains. And when they walk, they sweep the ground in front of them because they don't want to step on a bug. That kind of gentleness is something I really learned to appreciate about the Indian culture, you know, and other things. So it's something I allow myself now that I didn't allow myself when I was young. Yeah, yeah. And to accept that part of that's part of who I am because that's what my parents are, you know, and it all comes, it comes from them. So so, you know, that's, that's part of, you know, the journey I feel is more internal in many ways. Yeah, and it kind of comes full circle. It's in a very beautiful way, you know, that you kind of come back to these roots that have always been there, but for whatever reason, well, for a lot of reasons that you mentioned, you know, feeling ashamed or trying to fit in or all those things that, you know, you don't necessarily embrace. Yeah, it's interesting. I think sometimes as people get older too, you know, sometimes I was once bitten by a spider. I used to love them, but ever since that bite, I don't really love them. And so sometimes I will kill them, but now I'll apologize, you know, really badly. Like, oh, I'm really sorry. You're probably not a bad spider, but I just don't know for sure. Yeah, the whole Charlotte web syndrome. Yeah, but it's very beautiful. We're all, we're all, you know, they're living creatures. We're just one of them, you know, on the earth. But we take one more question and, you know, keep these questions do keep popping into my mind. Stephanie Fu's book, which is called, I just had it, What My Bones Know, and Stephanie Fu was in conversation with us about a year and a half ago. And I put the link to that in the chat box as well as the doc, but she writes a lot about her parents' trauma and how it really affected her. So we have another question about in that line. How do you write a memoir about traumatic childhood and continuing deep family dysfunction without violating the privacy of family members who are still living? Yeah, it's, well, I'll start. It's tough. I must say, and maybe my sister's on this call, but, you know, she helped me tremendously, you know, with, with memories and all of that. And my parents had died before the final version came out. And in a way, that made it easier. And I, I, I checked it out with my cousins. And, you know, one cousin was very upset that I said, the dog was a basset hound because it wasn't a basset hound. It was another type of dog, but, you know, and some other things that we talked about. I'm actually really believed that it's important to check things out unless you want to sever relationships with people. So I, I, I feel pretty good with burned, you know, that I checked it out with mainly with my sister, but definitely with my cousins and my parents had died. They knew I was writing the book before they died, but, you know, you get into all kinds of fun research too. And then if you love to write, and I just wanted to say to all of you, to many of you who are writers, you could even take the five senses and just think of a word that means home to you, like, you know, smell, coffee. And so you, you create a rich world. And so that, that took precedence over a lot of the difficult things, but I think there are real ethical questions when you write memoirs, and it's always good to check it out with people. Selah, would you like to respond to that? This is why I write fiction because in fiction, you can kind of disguise many real things in other characters and what other people say, but they're actually based on, you know, tangentially on something real. And, but that's a very gnarly question. I've never written a memoir, mostly because of that reason. I don't want to hurt people who would be written in, you know, and, yeah, it would be, it would be really difficult. Yeah. And I changed some of the names in my new memoir. So, but also Louise's book, I feel is burned, was a very gentle treatment of, of the whole, you know, her childhood. I mean, I feel her parents look like heroes in that book. I think they would have been proud of, proud of it. Oh, thank you. Because it's a lot about, you know, family, how family comes together to survive some tragedy like that. And that was what I found, you know, it was so hard to read in some places, but it was so inspiring because they don't, you know, fall apart. They actually come together and they, and there's such a, you know, kindness in the people and parents and the sister that I found it inspiring. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Do we have any more questions, friends? Let me make sure. I think we're looking good. I'm going to come back up. Thank you, Louise and Sailor. We so appreciate you sharing this amazing work with us tonight and just being so open and honest. And again, giving so many resources, you know, the, the chat. I hope you were paying some attention. If not, I can always be happy to send you the chat from that. And YouTube friends, we thank you for being here. Zoom registrants, we thank you for being here. Library community, we can't do this without you. So if you like this kind of program, virtual programming, just let us know. Keep, keep coming, keep letting us know. And I'm going to throw in the link one more time for this document tonight with both Louise and Sailor's links and where you can find their work. Sailor, I have a question. Have you tried to get your movie on canopy yet? No, I have not actually it's with a distributor and he kind of controls what happens to it, but I could suggest it. Suggest it. You would be in libraries all over the world. Yeah, it's such a great feature. And I did look, it wasn't there. So, but there are many other places to see it. Everyone, thank you so much. And we'll see you next Grotto night, January, July 11th, July 11th. All right, friends. Thank you. Bye bye. See you. Thank you.