Refugee at the age of two oceans, long and his mom found themselves fleeing saigon, vietnam travelling across the globe and then opt into a world that was so. continuously a source of renewal and safety, while also delivering jelly dose of profound other ring and challenge the english language came slowly the ocean struggling to read at the age of eleven, but over time, his deep curiosity and sense. with the observation and openness led to a love of language that grabbed hold and just never let go in two thousand and sixteen he released a critically acclaimed, poetry, collection, night sky, that dazzle, the literary world, his gorgeously written and deep. stirring first novel on were briefly gorgeous, which became,

an instant near times best seller. It draws on his experience growing up in hartford connecticut with mom, who shared a a complex love in a community. He seemed perpetually estranged from paris. It being at the twenty nineteen macarthur genius grant ocean is also the winner of the whiting award and the ts Eliot prize. His writing has been featured in the atlantic. Harper's magazine, the nation, the new republic, new yorker, the new york times, and so many others so excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan fields- and this is good life project we're in this really interesting moment in time. I think you know, and I would imagine that handful of years, have have been strange and transformative in a lot of ways for you, but let's take a little bit of a step back in time, because a lot of the

You know the seeds of your story really don't just start in hartford connecticut in the usa, it. It really starts in vietnam in august eighties, early nineties, when the family fled, as so many dead and found themselves refugees effectively in connecticut. You coming up really just knowing your mom, largely and her, putting down in a place. That's probably when she was a child, the notion of her trying to find a life. You know in Four connecticut in the united states was the most bizarre and foreign danish can ever have imagined yeah. Yeah, it was disorienting. You know, I think war displaces and I think Just deals displacement. You know It's it's basically next year of trauma taking over the present, and so I always say that to remember it's a very costly thing for for anyone, whether it's a national memory or a personal one, because you

you literally risk the present. You forsake The present, in order to go back and so The costs of remembering is your very life and so are the women who raised me who suffer from ptsd. They had no choice. the memory I've been hijacked their present and so was a flickering you're living with them, then being nurtured by them. Was you know that this is almost hyper flickering time capsule they. It was second travelling through time through tv channels, and yet there's that internal disorientation, but also hartford, Erika was so different not only america but cities. You know my family came from rice farmers and it wasn't for the world we would still be right. I was even farming- that land for centuries

and so it was a lot to learn, but it was also very free because they did not have any framework to for me to be a career, in any way to be a doctor, this person, you know the sterile. Buckle asia, american plight of young people, there were just like It was all a blank slate site. Do whatever you can you to work on my donald. It's a job I had on one hand the disorientation created this out the freedom to explore whatever. I want yeah I mean? I mean if it so fascinating, because I think people very often they make different choices and their different motivations for leaving one country and making a life in another country elegant and sometimes it's a blend of running from and running too

You know wanting something and at the same time, wanting to leave something and in the case of you know, of of your family and so many others in it the in in the immediate choice it was a running from it was aimed at effectively. We need to stay alive, it you know, so I I think very often in circumstances like that. It's less about sort of this intentional choice of how do we pick among the different places. Where would you give us the best opportunity it was just like now? How do we stay alive right now, and then you land and in another place and then all the other things start on full yeah It's a mean! That's why I insist on the word, refugee and not even former refugee, because I think are understanding of the word. Refugee is coloured by the news. Real You know a woman or, parent running in dragging their children. In the midst of in a highly chaotic, instant? It's always about the instant

the scream of the refugee captured in the photograph is almost like edward launches, scream cyclist frozen moment, but in fact it's prolonged by one is a refugee, however, and I think that is really vital in understanding history that's often outside of that frame of that photograph, because would then have to ask why why? What is at the centre of the refugee, and I always said, my american citizenship didn't began when I arrived in Hartford connecticut, the laurel new england, world wars, stevens and mark twain, but it began with american foreign policy when the first bombs fell in vietnam, my country no larger than california. My american citizenship began there at my curiosity with that runs many levels, but on the surface of it is Is there a moment? You wonder where

more? Is there a generation where the transition becomes made from refugee to residents. You know, or do you feel like it is a perpetual it's almost like it's in the dna and that is the way it hinders. Why important to expand refugee to write. I think my a quick ass would be end to it and there shouldn't right, as we often ask up and- I can identity. When are you fully America is? When one do you move beyond the epicenter, and I think, moving beyond epicenter is how we get into trouble, though we get into country. We want forget that this? This name is founded on genocide and literally enslaving people for labour, for free labour, And so I think for me and more interested in what else? Are we refugees, even beyond the crisis,. I turn to the jewish state,

spread the holocaust in so many studies and researchers. Coming from that, you know They were that the research that came out of the holocaust with the first really have the fund. She epigenetic trauma in time about what are we ok and then is it It's not the ok even the upper centre is no longer within reach. The within felt a memory. You know we understand this through the conversation preparations in black immunity, so that we can we see that these epicenter something some sense, never lie. Their grip on us regard for we are just takes like vines, the country, and so I'm in more interested in redefining expanding. What but she is so that we don't have the sort of ok Now that we're done with it, who are we? I think who we are depends on what we reckon with our history. There

I absolutely agree with that. Interchanging also, because when you know you now in? I believe your thirty's. have a certain lens on this worse, when you're coming up as a kid, you know very often that that you wake up in the morning you go out in a year in your gear, single biggest your teens and- and all you want to do is be okay and, to a certain extent belong. I remember you sharing use the phrase I believe we erased ourselves to go to school when you're talking about high school, which is already the opposite experience in you, yeah yeah yeah. I think you know the pressure to conform. To find identity. becomes an obsession with self worth. You need anything in this We all have this. We all the tribulations of childhood is so fraud because we don't

really have all the tools. We have facts that, though the textbook give the facts in which, after we don't know what to do with I wish education? school education taught us how to question and allowed as how to be more than just one or two things, but up in new england. You know, on the other. Here allowed me to really understand a man, knowing that is a very crowded, place, everything Those together, you drive. twenty minutes and you literally slow through everything about america, social, political, race, gender, the economic ex class differences, and so on, one is in retrospect a crash course in what a marrow, It is, and I'm ultimately really grateful for that occasion, even though it might not have been intended for me in that way,

especially in hartford, connecticut, where you literally here you can go a couple blocks in a direction or five minutes in any direction. If here in a car, and go from some of the the wealthiest neighborhoods to your neighborhoods. That really are steeped in poverty side by side which which, like you said in almost any major city or any metropolitan or large enough town you're going to find that, but especially in the northeast, having grown up in the northeast as well. I I have seen and experienced that as well yeah seeing your mom also being raised effectively by a single mom who never read We spoke english, yeah, it's interesting I've seen the experience of kids raise in that situation, where sometimes they become the nurturers, the ones who rally the protectors and then sometimes it's the exact opposite sentiment. It's almost like

complete dissociation with that, because it is the source of the thing that makes you feel different and and in that field, other I'm wondering how you danced with that yeah. you girl up very quickly and I can't I don't know how it will be different. yeah you grow up, and you think why wish I had apparent that could take me to basketball game. You know it that been steadily, even though, when the sign up were right, because my mother never had an email address, sooner but you so you end up. becoming protectors of them, because you have the the act so the english language The english language makes people legible, and they weren't legible, because they couldn't speak and they were always in the background of the country. What

it's a store on the streets in the duty, and I would have to step up and speak for them. It's a fraud thing, because you don't want to speak for anybody. You know you don't want to speak for these adults. brought you into the world. That's not decision any child, or any person will really wants to do when you re You have two in order. To be valued and in a way- I'm still doing this in a sense It only on a larger scale, ultra- is obsess, were using media and narrative. To increase value on a certain group of people when those groups of people should already be valued from the gatt, go often ass to to narrate, often suffering. order for value to be placed on a group of people and I'm trying to protest in a way that resist that.

I'm curious. What's underneath that, I wonder if there are these multiple levels over on the level of society their reasons, but also on the level of self preservation and and and the way that you want to exert your energy moving through the world. Yeah yeah you know you see it. for example, the nineteenth century, the humanist movement where France and england was colonizing, the glow, the south. You see, Movement with lobo progressive artists in a phobia are going to Egypt and returning in saying we shouldn't colonise, had conquered these people because they have are right and so meanwhile he should have had we shouldn't conquer them, because their people, but so because they have heartbeats, not art, yeah yeah. So this human is. This was once very progressive. Humanist movement

was an attempt to kind of validate life through culture often consumable culture. That's all We pillage all of the hour and then put it in european museums. and I think this still happening suddenly over a hundred years later- there's this demand. Will amongst the liberal, progressive white new year, King Arthur of color to sort of Schuman it's themselves in order for a predominantly. Why audience to have empathy and its double bind because then you, your kind of limited to come simply narrating you're worth when you should be worthy funding. The and it is a difficult place to work in, and I'm still trying to figure out how do that. I go back to James Baldwin what he said: you know

when he considers whiteness in america. He says I dont know why people personally, but I know historically and in that sense you know there a well history, is much longer than the brief few years that we get to share as living people, and then I think In that sense, I, when I consider my role as an artist in amerika, I have the kind of consider how white Has seen itself, if purveyors of art you know, way beyond this country all way back to europe. Hundreds years ago. I mean there there's the m. The role of the arbiter of what has value, and get here. It becomes even more fraud when you have the overlay of. Can I stay myself. By doing this thing, I feel compelled for no other reason than the way it makes me feel anything it's the thing. I can't not do but the notion of then being able to not only have accepted and have it be a valid expression of who you are but

go beyond that and in some way enter, with other people with enough other people in a way where they see enough what value in themselves at their willing to support your work, just it brings as whole additional layer to it, which I know for for every artist weathered painting. Music has been this perpetually fraught dynamic. It prayer in the dark you knew you dont know if anyone's listening. The thing that at its core, at its most, vital lonely partner, watching endeavor writing staying lay staring out the dark window. asking of the page Articulate something of value. Is I pray it's the same thing is when we are in crisis and we need down at the bed in an hour,

if, wherever that, we believe, is in power to help us. But I think the beauty of this is that writing is ultimately an optimistic. If I didn't have hope if I didn't feel positively- indebted to species constant improvement. I wouldn't sit down right. In the same way, someone would pray without hope. They pray because- want to live in one of the better. And in the same way I right, because I think they're improvement is this The ahead of me, even if it means, is the improvement of a sentence which, as any writer, would tell you- and you yourself know- that's a win a day- and you can write a good sense then there are times where I sit down and I read other sentences and I think to myself. In five years I may be able to write a sentence. It may be more remotely worthy of that one sentence and an oddly, like you just shared, I'm, ok with that, because to me there's a

operational element to it and there's a sense of possibility that that there me growth, there will be progress and a certain amount of even beyond hope, faith. Yeah yeah, absolutely think you can you couldn't be pessimistic as an artist it it's just so an idle and think most people at other core, our path, MR I've been reading. Thomas Martin recently I read him all the time I go back and You know his engagement with buddhism is so thorough and earnest, and duration right, think the way his mind works the way he sees the war as a means of illumination I myself saw inspiring to me if you look at our daily life everything in infused with goodness so much more than we actually think mean just look at a chair. The chairs so well consider of the human form.

the person making the chair, even if they're having a horrible day they still succeeded fusing that chair with the goodness of the intention of making a serviceable thing for people they made sure the study is it does this, it rotates it up and you can see that with almost everything you look out and I think the goodness and the intention of of species really outweigh the horrors. Even though horrors predominate. What we see on the news, because they're so no control by so few, but they are, so many and that's the dynamic that we, I think so, focus on at the end of the day whether it's in novels or media or podcasting is power, but it all comes down to power. Yeah, it's just that you reference got a buddhist sensibility and mountains, writings, which are our eyes. I see that very same thing, which is an untenable

buddhist studies are buddhist ideas. Ideals text is something that you were drawn to fairly early as well. I think it in high school is when it is starting to become something that really serve a future. Thinking tat, I think I see I don't know you know, maybe I'll be. I would be a buddhist. If I was in you know, katmandu but I think for something about growing up in new england. me, they're even further, because I just saw so much wealth and privilege I saw what we now stan ass white male privilege thought so close, they were. They were my peers, and I saw- them at their most vulnerable, witches they're coming to manhood and I still despite of the structural privilege I still saw the joy and happiness was still so rare, even amongst them. I think buddhism begins right there right suffering,

is the law of the land. And the question, then, is how we transform it into useful and I just want a library- and I just thought I gotta find a way out of here. And in and it wasn't about moving geographically about finding a way out of the soul of america. That was so corrupt that was turning boys. To you, know the most reductive holograms approved they could be, and there were suffering and I got to see it so up close and endowed with. I think that the great privilege of examining white male privilege, without underneath all of the facade of power and the structural gifts that this country offers it have. There is still so rare and fraud and times inconceivable and so

It did not have the same power that it does on paper. That I saw in life in so I didn't want it. I didn't that that with that was the pinnacle of this country, we're in trouble. It's not something not a destination that I want to go to. So I had to find something Yeah, I'm in the realizing that at such an early age and not that the the depth of your awakenings, I would imagine I won't make assumptions, but them The lens at you just shared, I would imagine something that has unfolded over a period of years, yet you start into the role that put his ideas and really to a lot of different types of eastern thought. plant seeds that very often take years to blossom into saplings and then eventually gaelic law. your plans have thought that make a coherent, blossoms and flowers, but the. you know when your starting to dabble

in his ideas and start to bring them into your life and and becoming aware of the world around you in and having different tools really to understand process them at the same time as it's interesting to me, that As you move out of being a kid and decide, okay, so on what is my next place? That there was something inside of you that even for a heartbeat said? Well, there's? this voice that says, follow or traditional power go to business school. Do the thing: that's gonna be sustainable and secure and safe and supportive and an end. that than the narrative for you is. That was this relatively short experiment and you know impulse and intuition surely took over, but I'm wondering about that short moment that those four or five weeks where you decide like me, I'm gonna, give this ago yeah. I want business school before dinner, among and like any,

Immigrant first generation kid but a college. I thought well, make money so that My mother and my family can thrive. Be an artist. I always wanted to to be an artist. I did know how and I just thought I owe it to them to take care of them first and I tried I couldn't do it. You know I was in classes and my peers would come in with suits and they would go off to internships morgan chase you gave me mortgages bank and all that, and I just thought I don't know how I can do this, you know I'm learning to just lie. I was an international marketing students and it was basic. lying for companies. That was my future and I thought, if I'm going to lie in my small lie in my own work, liars and artists, which is the greatest pleasure and

it was ultimately an act of failure. I failed, The american dream. Colin Powell inside thought me studying literature was just a way of salvaging the failure and he's coming home in giving my mother a degree, which she couldn't read. I could have told her. It was chemical science I couldn't bioengineering it wouldn't matter So I got a degree in literature, brooklyn college and It was kind of me surrendered that was, Ok, I guess I'm gonna be a bomb I'm not gonna know what starbucks and go back to pin era, and we both said, the library in an you know a kind of resignation. because there was not ass prospects. I threw myself at leisure. I just said this. Is it go a hundred ten percent and then one lead to another, and here I am so it's

it's actually disorienting you know. No one really wants writer or not a country that this is going to be a writer and so I can't really complained that I chose this path. how hard it is it's hard, but it's not the hardest, but I can't I I wanted to be nothing ultimately again is an act of optimal it's an aspiration, act and act of prayer that, hope I can manifest something taking your intention into your own hands and manifesting a book out of tat you, you naturally gained a lot of was just with that just because you cared about something so small. You know a book about sixty thousand if thousand words and to care about eighty thousand, in tiny things not dimension, com was about duration involved. its interests. You right and you can come out. The end of that endeavour is very few things on this earth there. Today

the mind to care about so many minuscule things. But what absolute intent, in consideration Naturally, changes is an act of meditation in itself, like completely resonates with me, I'm having been through the process a number of times myself as well as it brings everything up, and I almost wonder if it. If that process does change. You Then why are you even saying yes to it? Yeah it's a itself the minutes and act of utmost humbling, because to be an apprentice of the sentence which I believe every right or should be, is to be an option a failure, so you know better time any writer publish it I think probably failed, on a daily level. More than most folks. And so I think

we're with failure. Brings you closer to the human condition It's very anti social in the sense because we like to celebrate triumphs. We don't like to talk about depression and Securities and loneliness- and you know our failures at the dinner table, not at a dinner do not. Now we always said we stave off the dark and until its we permit one person us and then we toil away, and I think, if the pandemic has really, ample five loneliness, especially around men, particularly men in their thirties, there's an epidemic now, mental health suicide rates among men in the third, because we we didn't equipped, our men to reach out Wallen, you know, there's all this phobia around men king, each other for drinks. They always when you trying to do, and then they

toil away and were seeing the ramifications of it. The young veering off here, but I think the act of a writing anything giving more versions of yourself to one thing: teaches you at least teach me how to live, thereby give more versions and myself to attacks Then I should also try or aspire to give more versions of myself to my loved ones. Then my community etc. when it comes to relationships. A genuine connection is everything only when we're with people who get us like real get us. Can we be our true selves, so fine, a better connection with e harmony, the dating apt that helps you be more true to yourself. Eharmony gets to know you better, so they can match you better with people who will really get. You may a genuine connection

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There is a poem from from night sky, which I guess it's twenty sixteen right, title some day, I'll love ocean long. Will you write ocean ocean get up? The most beautiful part of your body is where its headed and remember. Loneliness is still time spent what the world, which I think really speaks to what you were to sharing. Yes, yes, because you, I think. the world is infuse again with a sorcerer intelligence, everything we see the plant trees and sound. I don't mean to sound new agency, but I think You know the more I grow older. The more I cortical accomplish and the more I fail the more I come it it's in. This sort of strange binary binaries are not very cool nowadays, you know they're, not trendy, but the more I live. The more. I see that you know what star

wars had it right. It is good and evil or anything but the world is not complex. I dont think this Be very controversial, I don't know, but I think human beings are complex. The word This now complex and we look at it. Manifest either in goodness or in or in the oven, star? just two is kind of bury it in a way the very black and white. But it's us, right and I think this is something That's very important because we have to take more agency in our actions that the food, two of the human filters a manifestation that is useful and good and one is harmful. Words are, like we saw this in the trump administration. How word the harm we still see the relevant she's with his. You know china virus in the asian hey crimes spreading across right? but the manifestation, I think, are often clear, but the ambivalence the

the contradictions in the is within us the more agency, we take the more responsibility we take in that the more goodness weak filtered through the vessel, the person and the older I get mean years ago. I would say this: is you know that this complex everything is open possible, but then why Look at it. The more I see them. when it lands and the earth when the lands in the world when it manifests. It is Clear which side it on- and it looks very, very much like you darth vader in only one can only it's an interesting concept, writer make this operation, yet the world itself, as is fairly straightforward, but it's it is what we bring to it through our internal processing, lenses and filtering.

That makes it so much more complex, yeah yeah an account put into question. What is a good person wants a battle. It throws at the window, because our only acts. Right- that's why you know sometime you, You see The trial, the serial killer, is the interview. The parent is a. He was so perfectly my baby? You know, and as these, Complexities are in us and the acts are clear acts land on either side, but the people flags and the more we invest in the thinking of our complexity. The more we can nurture goodness and maybe this is too naive, maybe in in another ten years I would laugh and myself, but right now This is what I fear. No that's resonates deeply. I remember reviewing some researchers from the world of social science, positive psychology,

and they were speaking to phenomenon where, when we see somebody else do something we perceive as a quote bad act. We view that as an identity level action while they are, we label that person. Oh, that's a bad person, When we do something That would be on a similar level. Could bad at well. It was just a bad decision were good people. The bad choice or took a bad here like action in the world There is this human phenomenon that tends to associate The bad act of others on. identity level basis, yet the very same behaviour from us is just an aberration, but we are fundamentally on an identity level. We see ourselves as good, it's a little strange quirk of human nature. Why describing giant and right. There is storytelling.

right, because you said, there's dares to objective observations. One has a different narrative than the other one of them. The evil person, the other one, is all I'm a good person commitment. I or was forced to make a bad decision, and that is stories. and this is why storytelling is so poor, if not just novels Entire nations are built on them. Of storytelling. and this is why I'm really I'm so excited to be a writer because at the end of the day our entire species depends on how we transform observation, transformed phenomena and infuse it and transform it using words to land one way or another, and then everything begin What that you know you can have all the technology in the world are the medicine weaponry. The nuclear

weapons it could be the most, bans, arson you can never deploy it without a story and it's no accident. That the majority of the president's. for who led about this country and the people who led seo positions in businesses come from a liberal arts background from a law backward. their ultimately snorri tell it takes the story to harness the resources, either for good or for this action, but it begins with the story we think of the odyssey, the story of, woman, stolen right and we will launch a thousand ships to reclaim the mid those. weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that never came through by the mid those that You know Washington, universal noble man with wouldn, t, save this country

But ignoring the slaves right, Myth is what we make and also what we take out. and it transforms how we see the world. And we are a species that has this tool that such a valuable thing, the more we pay attention to it, but I think are education hides that. We are told that we need to learn a standardized english. in order to write a good email and get a job in pretty much. I learned the rules and carry on what we should be telling our children is that this is your inheritance. We're, leaving you this well that can change the future. It's called language, look at it, ass, a plastic. now? You pull world oh you determine what you want to be where you want to live in. This world depends on what you say to each other. Imagine a with it. We taught them that, rather than just you know, here's a com splice, you know,

don't start your sentence would because if we imagine you know- and you know I don't know of its intention or not, but it is very clear at least what my education that language was just a sting. to catch up, and if I didn't than I was shamefully sub par in it, but it was not something that I possessed and I think We taught students that they truly possess. This. There thou with life. The quality of life would determine. Will be determined by how they use this material we'll be social, incredible I saw agree with that on every level and I feel it is lying, It is especially the art of story is sort of the bastard child of education, a hunt in in no small extent. These days we become so obsessed with, the quantifiable, you know with numbers and

code and systems and process, and these things matter, you know the scientific process matters you evidence based things matter. And yet at the same time, if all of those things exist, and yet we lose the capacity to tell and understand and share and relate to one another through story, What does a wholly the rest really matter? And yet it's the thing meant None of us were really taught effectively unless you went out and deliberately sought to, That he now it's not sort of a party that the core curriculum of the way that were taught near that the fundamental skill set, not just the fundamental skill set, but the fundamental lens of looking to see. Clearly, so you can understand what the source fuel for the stories. Are it the It's the classic greek dichotomy between. at and logos, and it's not even that logos, he's better a wish. We should lie in the past This manipulated

it is what they have it so happens. That path is often wins by every dictatorship every issue, movement, either you know four. Liberating our people or condemn and enslave our people. Other species begins and ends with pattern. Harnessing an emotional response in order to try Form the phenomenal reality and I think knowing that It- is not so much a good or a bad thing, but in fact it might even be a good thing in that we are species that spawn compassion. Industry often propaganda was manipulate our compassion to get us to. Ultimately, destroy each other, and so at the end of the day, we seek A certain goodness I don't know how to translate that inside. I think, core. There is something very promising here, but which is not.

sadly there yet so the fact of a moment is always limited by the story of its happening- yeah yeah, it's and yet we focused so much on articulating the fact without actually articulating the story that makes it real for so many people, story, allows us to zoom in, and I think for whatever reason, we as a species respond very viscerally, very importantly, when we soon in an email, If because me we come out of tribal back swear. You know the person whose whose most hurt is the centre, and we call We tend to that person when their ill under her and then so their story. Becomes the story the tribe for that era for that community. For that moment, and until they are healed basis, a problem solving species build on empathy, and

That gives me a lot of hope. I think it's been manipulated. I think that knowledge in the hands of corporations and military industrial complexes has harm, does but to know that those who we are in a sense give me a lot of hope. You know, there's is found, I dont know if it's absolutely true. I know it's debated, but I keep But this fact about you know, the trigger rate. can soldiers in what were too it was determined that it was while twenty five percent twenty twenty five percent. And it's only one quarter of american soldiers fire their guns, and that's you know if anything that is tat. We are not built for war. We were not men too, a machine of death at another person. And the american military kind of understood this, and so when the vietnam war came.

the firing rate up to ninety percent while so the question is how and the answer is storytelling- support first time, the miller, harry training from basic training forward draft is infuse would de humanizing work An element right now started here. What's a good right you don't chink, charlie and then the what american foreign policy of measuring success at one point right after says, we will now measure the six I said this war through the actual bodies on the ground, the actual corpses were gone, this, whether their enemy, combating it and so basically to the military understood that too, have a better machine of death. You must use.

Storytelling words. to transform a huge. Being into in lesson than that. So, at the end of the day, the soldiers did not feel that they were killing people, but they were hunting something less than, which made the triggers much more easier to pull in the same way, it's much more easier to hunt and tear than to shoot a person it through the power of language, and so when you about language as something. Corral or religion to the dusty hall, the liberal arts college. You know A composite stan you greatly mistaken, because it is actually incredible technology. Perhaps them advanced technology, we yeah I'm just every part of me is nodding in agreement with you.

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He cast helps creators launch grow an monetize, their part gas everywhere, a gas dot com you know it's fascinating, also in in the context of your novel on earth? We're briefly gorgeous. You know when a lot of the stories that that you've been talking about here and a lot of the frames that we talk about when we're sharing stories is there. There is in a quote us and then measure them. There is a victim and there's a villain or an entire class or category a culture that is one or the other stories are you know I've I've heard I've heard it said in the in the film writing world. You know the are about conflict resolution, There's gotta be conflict. There's gotta be the good there's gotta be the battered nasty beethoven. The villain and the story lies in the conflict and the resolution or or the non resolution, and because in in your novel

wit, which is effectively written as a letter and the characters writing to the mother but effectually. It's also it's it's there's so much of your life in here writing to your mom, knowing that, in fact, you know the mother will never be able to read it that within this whole beautiful story as its unfolding that It is there- are no clear victims or villains, it's less about conflict and less about like who wins, who loses whose right, whose wrong and its more about what you are talking about before take How can I tell business in a way that creates the space for all that focuses in that really assumes airlines in an holds at all, without necessarily create that tension that conflict and still have a powerful story which is stunningly difficult to do, but so beautifully done in this world. Thank you for saying that I, I think it's

different way of viewing story should do and note that the fray tags inverted arc example of clay, anti climax resolution is a traditional when it comes from the greeks and romans and that's the pillars of western thinking is high drama resolution, and we see that a lot is not nothing wrong with it. I just for me, I just fell, or I believed life is already consulted that history is a like ted background, conflicted soil, so that for girls out of that soil. Come is all about. Fraud, the danger is complicated and ultimately. Climatic you foundation so too, then take

out of that and throw them into an orchestrated tightly. One plot was a kind of In a way ignore how seeing their histories are inside. I always felt that people are already conflicted in life in a story, can be interesting just by allowing people to be here. Each other proximity creates friction just like chemicals. Hydrogen oxygen put it together water transformation happens when potent energies stand beside each other so in a way I just wanna, created space for these characters to live, and I put them in You know, I insist that a distinction, because every scene in the book came out of my head, it's not a medic of my life? The context is an of model. I'm interested in the autobiographical project, because it's an american project

from Salinger to Sylvia, apply to moby dick to what the american self to fight in literature It's the legacy of of american and I wanted to participate in that. It also raises the stakes. You know to render these people well because there built from the foundation, the people I know, so I owe it to them too to to be ethical. In how I betrayed them, and I, like that, challenge it made their histories more thorough, and in your right. In that I don't, I never will, did a villain or victor in this book, but simply people- and you can see it more as a trick gallery, rather than a carnival ride that often driven tracks are pushed on there.

I love that an ever more things that fascinates me about it is when take a book like this, and yet the publishing industry, which is notoriously in love with the formula You know they want to know. How is this like something that has succeeded before before this? Yes, granted, you show up with it with you. With a tremendous surge of energy momentum, around juice or written literary world and an a fantastic both of poetry? Before this then, when you show up with, novel, which structurally, very different and then the publisher say. Okay, so we will do this. Let's do this may bring it out to the world the that it has been received. So, astonishingly, well, in fact now is in the process of being made into a movie. I think it also there's a bigger statement there

at the assumptions that we made about how we need to create these. He like darkness and light in this very prototypical art, and that's the only thing that people want, That is not true that speed and I think it is an under cuts. You know the intelligence of readers of all all walks of life in the country and across the world to say that The justification that's never been done before, therefore should be done, is is incredibly silly and fraught and infused by capitalism. My does is fear that we lose money and in it hurt it hurts art and you know it wasn't about it's the people, this global battle is not without its struggles. I was very lucky tat to meet publishers entered to them and see which one I wanted to hear with an eye ultimately went with anger, My editor who's. A legendary, brilliant,

yes, you know she understood this book through and through she's publish thomas pensions, eighty sniff Mary oliver, so I just. it was just like meeting an old friend and we were already talking about how this book would live in the world, whereas in other meetings, you know I've had publisher, say you have a book about five topics, pick one right. You have three endings You know one even said what what what what this book for like for a western region. and I said well. What would a few like for any red what is a midwestern reader by the way you know I mean it's, it's so condescending in a sense, and this is part of the problem of publishing being polarized in the You're in new york and in the west, by it actually characterizes

american populations towards cartoonish versions that happen well semblance of the actual ground the actual reality and then I think, I'm still, despite all that, quite surprised that this book, has done what it's done. I dont know why my heroes were esoteric hype weird. Barely red poland, you know bosh show no teresa he'll char marguerite wrong. You know strange writers, very Hannah, you know that in so I don't know why I didn't have best sellers as my role model, son, a little bit perplex still, but I think it's prove that people. Are they that they live conflicted like that, oh, that their lives are not put in the wood chipper plot.

And so for a book to kind of reflect the Stay in living in the mundane eating meal, together and having difficult conversations with loved ones that african line from the very beginning to right now and probably long after. I note part of the m. the through line as your writing. This book is that you're moving through the creation process, the creative process, the story tell him publishing, process and also standing, increasingly in in your seat or taking her seat as a teacher and a lot of what you were just sharing to me. It was the voice of a teacher. It was night. There is it's an invitation and in an invitation to think deeper and to think more broadly and more inclusive way, inexpensively and

and that role for you has been formalize. You know you now you mass teaching in the writing programme there when you say yes to that when you say yes to okay, so I I'm a writer and- and this is This is what breeze me to no small extent I am also saying yes to say: I'm gonna play the role of a mentor. A teacher people who are just stepping into this themselves when you think about what that is really about you and what you hold sacred as you step into that role and cures. comes to your mind, yeah yeah, I don't see a major difference between the two One is very, very private horse writing of reprisals and teaching republic. as I do that the only difference is that You have to be willing to give

your students, everything and that's not back any secret known and in the willingness to open up the coffers. An empty. The saves to have no safe to say I'm gonna give you everything, I know and you take it and you do what you can essentially this, my pedagogy. And what I know changes what I know grows based on how I live in what I understand, I'm in so it it's. It's simple. but it's very hard work. because you really have to to teach damn guide them, but also route for them. and it's over it's an emotional process and in that especially rooting for them in a day and age were being writers very challenging. You know what. Why do this thing? What were taught that you should we do, something more useful right in course I ate and tell them what I told you that you're talking about, the most useful. Then technology. We have

Surely this endeavour always feel like thinking about your work actually the majority of the world, it's kind of like the beauty of a podcast like this, where you to kind of developed a soil. What I mean by that is at the book is one flower that comes out of the soil, its limited its fine night. new tab conversation like we're. Having now what Think about your work, pedagogy in your philosophy, ethics, you're, not the soil, so the soil then becomes inexhaustible. Any book can come out of that soil. We tend to it. You know I like in new england. I am lucky to know a few queer farmers and they all tell me how important is to reinvest in the soil to re nourish the soil, to bring the soil back and so theory and ethics and fuller,

safety is the soil in which all things come out. If I didn't have that, We wouldn't have the ability to articulate the soil. The obsolete ass were teaching, is its splaining and articulating the soil so that it doesn't look just like a dark mass, its cutting The stratification lifting it up, seeing it through a thing. This is where the sediment is. This is what this this is. What does this nutrients are in This is where the woods go didn't the ability to do that is so important, and I think if I was any other rider, if I was a younger writer publishing a book of poems, helped me grow and think mature in a way I could see how a lotta writers could enter those meetings. We're publishes, says pick one or You know our mid western readers won't like an and cave today. And surrendered to that, because it have the soil so

meetings. I had to kind of do the ted talk to explain the value in my work and to convince some editors. what I'm doing is not arbitrary. This is not lucky accident. This intention of this kind from deep long enough, in the soil and what you're seeing is the blossoming that came from that. I could see also how a lot of writers can lose themselves in this process If they dont know where they are coming from it, they don't know, what's soil they come from and they can take your that they could be wiped out. They're having a deep sense of ladders, Give such a sense of forty two in a certain way or it makes you understand. I think, where your line in the sand. As you know, it's interesting because I almost didn't,

in a complementary way. I know I've also heard you offer the phrase to privilege your sense of bewilderment and wonder So it's almost like, on the one hand, yes net. Till the soil know what that soil looks like be deeply familiar with it and at the same time, been yourself to the vast sense of of the unknown and what you may emerge before you? Yes, what Can I put into the soil right, you know that this year I learn to extend the metaphor, the: u cup, of coffee grounds, and what did wonders for my house plants. I never knew that at an end I reacted to say: where reacted anything, you know that delights and wonders and acknowledge informs us? I was an oh, my god, coffee my partner in like in my characters and end. It was so delightful to thinking feeling and beyond today. I think.

You know I've never sit down at the desk. where deciding to do to write a lump power I actually wanted my assignments. My students are very sneak. Toby sneaky, they say our next week. Write me a level I just you know, but fairly plaza, just drop it and actually comes around and I could see their faces right and I say was an easy one that you'd be surprised how many of them you know just couldn't. Do it because Why would anyone work that way right to two to put the mantle of, a huge subject aunt, above your head and right towards that cripples created, in the same way that two right only as an asian american or a queer person, labels, also a narrow, the possibilities bewilderment and wonder I dont sit down writing as

whenever label the world offers me, because often the world only offers you one or two but I know I have more Dog lover affair, mixed, martial arts, you know vegan at best and in so all these thing, I have all the swell of ontological troops. Why would I right only under one mantle and especially was expected of me. You lose yourself and so, I always remind them to a kind of you dont give yourself a clear object. give yourself a hopeful horizon. Move toward something not just aimless but move towards something knowing that whatever you make towards that movement? we'll still be valuable. Even if you don't get there, there's! No, your destination. The other resonates deeply

an interesting corollary in the world. Business in oddly enough and entrepreneurship. In that I am and feeling somebody who's been through the process of founding a number of times over that in the early days and end its very much like any creative endeavour, including starting to write, I've come to believe that movement is far more important than direction that the direction will? Sometimes you you, you do sit down in your compelled by very precise thing, but, but I dont necessarily think that's necessary and, like, like you, said in certain situations, I think its counter productive, where it's more potent just simply start moving in almost any direction to move from being static too in motion and The process movement that reveals the direction or the eventual outcome, and sometimes, if you try and lock that down to quickly, you may get there with stumbling

but the there that you'd land may not be anywhere close. To representative of the fair you could have landed absolutely. I think apple roads only take you to places a road takes you to some where someone already been the road never takes you to a new place right and I. It's important to remember what, regardless of what you're doing writing starting, a business that underneath the grid There we are so familiar with the gps, has now underneath that grid is a field in it. Always there. That the grid mapped over it is still arbitrary is that is not a true route but something that has been mapped over, but Neither is a feeling you can truly go, and you should wander in that field

and had to be lost in it is not to be wrong, love that feels like a good place for us to come. Full circle on our conversation is well, sir. sitting here in this container of good life project. If I am the phrase to live a good life. What comes up? Ah a life full of examination that you can harness What you examine and enact it. in satisfying and fulfilling ways with the people. You love But very important, I think. The cash. I often ask: how do I make something? Had I make up I don't make a poem and and surviving looking back at the world But I am also interested in. examining alive thoroughly and looking at a world carefully towards no.

final object. That's just important too, because a book is very rare. Some folks don't have the privilege, They didn't have time they don't have the capacity they're, not healthy anna you know. So I more setting the more challenging The more I'll kill you righteous endeavour. Admirable one is to be so curious and open and wonder shock at the world nothing with the other, then allow have to grow and to come, ok with those you bought them. No final product, no book, no commodified thing but just as simply expand as approach I think that is even more noble. Perhaps what most people would

I'm doing rather than writing a book on making some. Thank you. Thank you. It's a pleasure hey before you leave. If you love this episode safe, that you'll also love the conversation that we had with actual men sore about experience of being a third culture kid and how he found an outlet in music. You'll find a link, axles episode in the show notes, and even if you don't listen now be sure to click and download. So it's ready to play when you're on the go and, of course, if you haven't already done so, be sure to follow good life project in your favorite listening up, so you never miss in episode and then share the good life project, love with friends, because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold

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