- Sergeant and Mrs. Smith, you're going to love this house. - Is that a tub in the kitchen? - There's no field manual for finding the right home. But when you do, USAA homeowners insurance can help protect it the right way. Restrictions apply. - With Walmart's new fresh and frozen subscriptions, you can save time when you're weekly grocery shopping. - Dad, you're supposed to be grocery shopping. - And miss the chance to embarrass you in front of your friends? I subscribe to snacks and wet napkins. You know how messy you are. - Dad. - Walmart, subscribe to your weekly list. (upbeat music) (people chattering) - Hey everybody, welcome to the program. This is the Other People Podcast, a weekly show featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. I am Brad Listi and I'm in Los Angeles. Thank you for being here. It's good to be with you. I have a great episode for you today. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button. Wherever you listen, you can also subscribe on YouTube. Follow me on social media, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and Blue Sky. So my guest today is Nina Sharma, author of a new memoir in essays called The Way You Make Me Feel. - Yeah, and I often say, you know, the fun doesn't have to be like a traditional notion of fun. It can be weird, it can be uncommon. I often say that, you know, me and my husband always talk about this. The fun of the story is sometimes you've just survived the hard thing and lived a tale. - All right, that was Nina Sharma, author of the debut memoir in essays, The Way You Make Me Feel. It is available now from Penguin Press. It is the official July pick of The Other People book club. The Way You Make Me Feel is a meditation on love and the allyship told through the lens of one Asian and black interracial relationship. I had an excellent conversation with Nina Sharma. I'm excited to share it with you. It is coming up in just a couple of minutes. A quick reminder that I do a weekly email newsletter. You can subscribe over at Substack. And if you are a regular listener of this show, if you love this show, join the Other People Patreon community over at patreon.com/otherpplpot. Help keep this program going into the future. So quickly, before we begin, I have a funny story. This comes from my good buddy, Pat. I grew up with him. He's my best friend from growing up in the Midwest. And he has worked in the restaurant business since he was a teenager, since we were like in junior high, practically. So he weights tables and like fine dining establishments. And he was telling me the other night 'cause we talk on the phone a lot. He was telling me the other night that he was at work and he gets there at the beginning of his shift. The restaurant is kind of slow. It's early in the evening. And his first table is this couple, like a middle-aged couple who are out on a Friday night for dinner. And he goes up and starts talking to them. He takes their orders and so on and so forth. And it's a very cordial exchange. He likes these people and he feels like they like him. It's a nice, pleasant couple. And his night is underway. He brings, you know, their food comes out. He checks in on them, all the stuff that a good waiter does. And then at the end of their meal, he brings them their check. And he thanks them and they thank him. And then he goes off to tend to some of his other tables because by now the restaurant has gotten busy and it's like the dinner hour. So he's dealing with other tables, taking orders, running around. And when he comes back to check in on this nice couple, they are gone and their check is left on their table. As one does, right? They sign their bill and then they left and they didn't get a chance to really say goodbye to him. But that happens, right? So he picks up the little like leather booklet that the bill is inside of, you know, that the check is inside of. And he walks over to the little server station near the bar to sort of ring it up or put it away or whatever. And he opens up this little leather booklet to look at the bill. And I think he's like checking to see how they tipped him. I think that's what waiters probably do. So he opens the booklet and it was like a $180 dinner for two people. And they left him like a 30% tip. So like a very generous tip on a $180 tab. So what does that come out to? That's like $54 or something. And then he looks closer and at the top of the check written by hand in ink, the guy who signed the bill, the man at the table who had signed the check, wrote go back to Denny's in all capital letters across the top of the bill, meaning like go back to Denny's restaurant. And you have to realize my buddy Pat has been waiting tables or bartending for like 30 years, maybe more. And he's good at it. And when you do something that long and you're that good at it, you have a bit of pride in your ability to like function. Like to be the waiter who doesn't even need to write the orders down, he can remember them. He's like that kind of waiter, right? And he's standing there holding this check, reading, in all capital letters, go back to Denny's exclamation point. And he's stunned because this couple had been so nice and the rapport between them had been so good and there had been nothing wrong with the food that they had indicated or the service. Everything had happened in a timely manner. Everybody was on their best behavior. My buddy is a pro. He's not rude in the least and yet he's reading this and he's thinking to himself like what did I say? Or was there some sort of indicator in my appearance that made them think of me as like low class or? You know, it's like all this stuff. Like it really hit at the heart of his own self-concept and he was like quietly devastated in this steakhouse in the middle of his shift. And it was like fucking with his head. He was like, what have I done? Like what is this? Do I belong at Denny's? Do I suck at my job? Like did I not see these people for who they were? Was I mistaken? Whoa, what just happened? So for like the next 10 or 15 minutes he's, you know, racing around the floor of the restaurant, trying to continue his evening, you know, covering his other tables and just kind of going through the motions, trying to make the best of it. And at some point he's walking from one of his tables back towards the bar and one of his coworkers, whose name is Hugh, walks past him and like slaps him on the back and is like, hey man, don't worry about it. I was just fucking with you. (laughs) And like came clean that it was him, or that it was he, who had secretly, when Pat wasn't looking, gone over and taken the bill that was left on the table and had written, go back to Denny's, (laughs) across the top of the ticket just as like a practical joke. And like Pat just like exploded and laughed her and relief. You know, it was just like, he said it was one of the funniest things that's ever happened to him. And as it turns out, this guy named Hugh is notorious for this. He basically does this to everybody who works at the restaurant. And I forgot to mention that Pat is relatively new at this restaurant. So Hugh was sort of like hazing him. And you know, he made my buddy Pat feel for like 10 or 15 minutes like he had failed in some kind of singular way. And I don't know what it says about me that I find this very funny. I think it's, I mean, it's a good practical joke. It's a little mean, but it is funny. So anyway, if you work in the restaurant business and you wanna have some fun, there you go. All right, my guest once again is Nina Sharma. Her new memoir and essays, her debut, memoir and essays is called The Way You Make Me Feel. It is available from Penguin Press. Again, it is the official July pick of the other people book club. That is my book club. Nina Sharma's work has appeared in a variety of publications including The New Yorker magazine, Electric Literature, Long Reads and The Margins. She is a graduate of the MFA program at Columbia University and has served as the programs director at the Asian American Writers Workshop. She currently teaches at Columbia and Barnard College. She is also the proud co-founder of the All South Asian Women's Improv group called Not Your Bewy. I'm very happy to welcome Nina Sharma onto this program and to talk with her about her new book. So let's get to the conversation. Here she is, ladies and gentlemen. This is Nina Sharma and her memoir and essays one more time is called The Way You Make Me Feel. - I'd say formally when I started to think about book with a capital B I guess would be graduate school. So round 2013 is when things started to really come together and I started to think of like an essay collection. I had been thinking about that earlier in the earlier years. So it's kind of two things going on at the same time. I think I almost kind of parallel it to like I have never delivered a child but my sisters have. And in both of their experiences like the first baby, the labor took a long time and the next baby for one of my sisters to kind of like just shout out through her. So I think that there's something happening first that is sort of bigger than the project. - Yeah, I think that's accurate. I think you're learning how to do it, right? You're learning how to be like, not only learning how to do the writing and the bookmaking but also just like you said, you're learning how to make a life that accommodates this practice of like what daily writing or close to daily writing. - 100% and it doesn't even necessarily mean daily. You know, I think that for me it, the word like permission came to mind. A lot of those years were also just figuring out like a kind of a mental permission that this is your life, that this is the path that I've taken. I don't come from a family where there's a lot of art and a lot of art making, but professionally more of my family members are in medicine, are in some kind of like track career. So this felt really like far off to me. So I think for me, even alongside having becoming equipped with a tangible writing practice, those 10 years were also this spiritual journey of me giving myself permission to pursue this career, pursue this thing that felt very different from where I came from. I often say that even though I never took like a pre-med class or something for some reason, I had this idea like I felt like I was like Spiderman, that like doctoring would just like come out of my like spider webs where, you know, I had been writing for as long as I could remember, but it felt sort of like impossible to me. So it was getting, you know, there's that spiritual journey to built into those 10 years. Well, both of your parents are doctors, right? - Yeah, yeah, both of them are doctors. - So was there pressure on you from family to kind of pursue that course? - I think it was more like, well, this is what we do. And so this is what we know to tell you to do. I think the pressure came more like sort of worried about, you know, where I was in life, a lot of my teen years and into my twenties, I also was struggling with a lot of depression, depression that kind of snowballed into bipolar disorder diagnosis. So I think it was just sort of like a worry of like, what's gonna anchor you? And here's this thing that we know that anchored us. So why don't you do that instead of, you know, and so this thing, I don't think I even really quite named it, but like instead of this thing that feels a little bit more out of the norm or out of stability. So that kind of thing, but they also, you know, have these moments where I think, you know, raising children is full of contradiction in paradoxes. There's moments within that where I, you know, did talk to my parents in the beginning of my writing career moments where I felt like giving up or stopping and I just remember my father saying something to me like, don't switch horses. I forget what the phrase was. Don't switch horses in midstream or something like that, which felt kind of like extraordinary from this person that I didn't quite always even have a candid conversation about my writing life with. So yeah, what's-- - And yet, I have to interrupt because if I'm recalling correctly, your father, when your parents met, was playing in a band. - Yeah, yeah. - So your dad has, I feel like your dad has a little bit of an artist in him. - Yeah, absolutely. - And I grew up with that like a very unabashed love of the arts in our household. My, yeah, my father's a musician, a singer, an actor. So, and every weekend they'd have people over as far as long as I could remember. And my parents would have a house party and my father would perform with a band. And just like that, that was the event of the weekend. Just hearing that permeating through the house. - So wait, what kind of music, man? - Yeah, I was like Indian classical music, also Bollywood songs. It would be him and a tabla player and a harmonian player. And my dad's like, they all had day jobs. My dad's a doctor. And one was a computer programmer. I forget, one might have worked at like Merk Labs. We grew up in Edison, Merk Labs was right there. So they all kind of like had another life. But just, you know, grew up in this town in New Jersey that was like kind of a burgeoning Indian community. And these parties at my parents' house were like the event, like Indian community would gather. My dad would sing. And so it was kind of like an unabashedly performative household and household work. Like creation was like part of, you know, being alive. My dad had a full-on sound system in this like small little, we called it the music room even. It wasn't just like a room. It was like, this is the music room where the parties would take place, where the AV equipment was, where he would make recordings. We still have those recordings. Yeah, so it definitely is something that was, there's a lot of appreciation of art and artistic production. And it was a lot of ways that I think also that I understood kind of like art comes from a place of longing. When I think of it now, hearing him play and talking to him about the music that he loves, there's a certainly kind of like longing there, I think longing for not to be like grandiose about it, but for home, for place, for identity. And I think music is a way of grounding yourself in home, place and identity even as you move, you know, even as you migrate for immigrants. Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. And just to give listeners a bit of an overview, not just of the book, but of the lives depicted in the book, namely your own. This is one of these, it's a memoir and essays, I think is the fair way to characterize it. And it's my favorite kind of book of this kind because it has real velocity, it moves around, it makes connections between disparate subject matter and draws unlikely parallels between the two and all of that stuff. So it's fun to read and your family history, I mean, you've touched on it a little bit, you were born in Edison, New Jersey, your parents immigrated in the 1970s. And forgive me for forgetting the particular like immigration law that they were taking advantage of. They were both coming over as like excellent science students, people on like a med school track or something. Yes, it's the 1965 Immigration Act, it's called the Heart Seller Immigration Act. And it was specifically to bring immigrants with science training to America. It's during the Cold War era and that competitive nature of let's bring this certain expertise to the country. And that's how they came. That's the time where America opened its doors wider than it ever had to Asian-American, out to Asian immigrants into this country. You know, we can talk about it from like the standpoint of so much of immigrant history is rooted in exclusion. You know, the 1970s, 1917 Immigrant Exclusion Act, National Origins quotas. So there's a lot like this, there's a lot that kept Asians out. And this was really just like the kind of the widest the door had opened in a very long time. In an unprecedented number of Asian immigrants came in, I think more than the country expected, the government expected, yeah. And I guess you would characterize your parents as like they're great immigrant success stories, right? Both doctors in the United States raised their family in Edison, but there is a lot of examination of what it means to immigrate and to be a minority in this country trying to assimilate. There is this, like what do you call it, the quiet model minority characterization that you sort of grew up with in a predominantly white private school. I know that the community that you lived in, I've never been, but it's called Little India, right? - Yeah, everything. - There's a huge. But it sounds fabulous. Like for people who are immigrating in particular from India, there's like this very vibrant community that has formed there, correct? - Yeah, it definitely. And I got to see it change, you know. It was already changing by the time my parents moved to Edison, but you could really see it start to flourish as this like burgeoning Indian community. You could see businesses change, you know. I was saying like I saw the Pizza Hut becoming Indian restaurant, but preserving like the Pizza Hut Hut. And I could see the ice cream store become a Chothouse and you can still see like the banana split on top of the awning. And I'm like, oh, that works for Choth too. - Wait, what is to forgive me? I should know this, but what is Choth? - Choth is like, yeah, it's like an Indian snack that you can have. It's not like ice cream, it's like more savory, but it's like, yeah, it's like a more of like a savory snack that you can have. So it literally, yeah, the banana split is a fair trade, I would say, for the sign. Yeah, and it was incredible to see it change in that way. And, you know, in that same way, it's while that was occurring, you know, I wanted to just, I want to back up and say there's like a, I mean, even with the country opening its doors wider than it ever had to Asian immigrants with the 1965 Immigration Act, it still, America still opened their doors to a particular type of immigrant. Like those that were able to access science and medical training, right? So that kind of like is, you know, you already have some level of mobility, upward mobility in your home country to be able to access that education. And then you have that certain type of immigrant coming in. And I would say like, you know, want to like flag that as thinking about that's also that's something that comprised Edison. It had changed over time. There's, you know, immigrants of all different socio-not economic levels and backgrounds. And Edison, you know, broadly from that, from that immigration law have come into this country. But all to say that while this ethnic enclave was, you know, coming about, you know, I think that going to a predominantly white private school, also my parents as these, you know, upwardly mobile doctors, there's also this sort of chasing whiteness in some way that is like paradoxically occurring while you're in these communities. And yeah, and it's chasing whiteness in this way that is like cut in the cloth of the model minority myth, which emerged during 1960, but during this time of immigration, right? Because it was also, you know, the time of the civil rights movement, you know, then blossoming into the black power movement. And so the idea of the model minority, the Asian American model minority, was this sort of construct to, you know, contrast the idea of the black American problem minority, you know, positioning people that were advocating black people, advocating for equal rights, you know, calling out injustice as problem makers. And so it's, you know, the model minority myth and the problem minority are at least both these stereotypes that were used to keep us apart and also uphold the ultimate myth of white supremacy. You know, the sly that is a lived reality that we all live with. And so yeah, even in these like massively Indian enclaves, there is still this chasing whiteness that's occurring and in particular chasing it through being a model minority being, you know, another way of thinking it is a part of whiteness while being a part from it. Yeah. - Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's just to like put a finer point on it. When you say chasing whiteness, it's not like chasing being white. It's chasing the privilege that comes with being white, right? And accommodator and being accepted basically by this white supremacist structure that exists in this country. - Yeah, I think both things are true. I think that you are certainly first and foremost chasing the privileges of being white. But some of that is like deeply like Tony Morrison and Bluestide, some of that like occurs in chasing the like how whiteness is presented. Yeah. - So you are going to, as a teenager, a mostly white private school in the Edison, New Jersey area, right? It wasn't like a boarding school or anything. It was local. - Yeah, it's just a private school, yeah. - Okay, so you're in this milieu. And as the book opens, as I recall, you're sort of getting into your college years and starting to grapple with mental health challenges. You alluded to earlier like depression and then ultimately a bipolar diagnosis. And these events in your life, these developments in your life coincide, I think, with maybe your first really serious reckoning with all of the stuff we've just been discussing. And maybe like, and correct me if you disagree, but that's the way it seemed to me as a reader, is that you're kind of coming of age and you're starting to reckon with where you fit into this country, into this whole like white supremacist structure that exists here. And they're very funny. I mean, they're kind of funny, they're heartbreaking too, but these passages where you're, I think you're dating a white guy and like you're sort of fought into the grateful dead and you're at Brown. I'm a dead head, I went to Boulder. So like this resonated. - It's just a lot of time in Boulder and I'm still a dead head. - Yeah, I mean, you know, it's like in terms of crowds, like there are worse crowds of lots of white people. - Yeah. - If you're gonna be hanging with a big huge crowd of white people, like dead heads are pretty nice, I think, in general. - But we have a whole other podcast on the grateful dead, like I can go down a whole rabbit hole. - You and me both. - Yeah, but like it's just interesting that you were sort of on the road. I think you were in New Mexico somewhere in your house and you suddenly just were like, where do I fit? Right? You looked around and you're not like pretty much the only person of color except for like one other guy. - Yeah. - And it was just this moment. Is that accurate? Is that when it really hit? - Yeah. Yeah, you know, Claudia Rankin, I just saw her talk of a few, not just actually it was a few years ago. And she, one thing that she said really rung true with this moment that you're bringing up, she said that writing is an act of slowing down time. And I feel like that really is a moment where like, just giving myself the space to reflect and think about it, to slow that moment down. That was, in the moment, I was kind of just going through it and processing, but it really just felt like that scene, seeing that one other person of color in-house, the only other hippie of color. It always just stuck with me. And I think it was that moment where something started to crack open that I otherwise, had trouble acknowledging was bothering me. And I think a lot of, I would say a lot of my mental health experiences, I think a lot of it is rooted in the pain of assimilation, the pain of and fear that you live with as you are experiencing as a person of color, as a first generation person, the feeling of fitting in isn't just kind of fitting in, but almost feels life for death, feels like a survival strategy. And I think, as a teenager, I always would want to just think of it as having fun, but I think how it really felt, my inner world started to crack open in that moment, what it really felt like, what me as a teen had a harder time acknowledging the not fun parts of it. And so that was like a moment. Me seeing this other hippie, this black man hippie, and feeling like tied to him out of all the other people that I saw and tied to him in ways where I felt like I reflected some something going on with me, perhaps even projecting on him something that was going on in me. - And that was the first time that it really cracked, 'cause in high school, as you're saying, it was more of a repressed feeling, or something that you maybe didn't have a language for yet. - Yes, yeah, and I think that's a moment where, even then I struggled to name, but I was like, what is going on? (laughs) I sort of broke down to my boyfriend at the time, there's something going on with me, and I can't name it, we're in this sort of like, yeah, I was in this hippie, in this kind of idyllic, hippie moment, but it just something didn't feel right, even in what should be kind of considered like a good, like a good vibes moment, I guess. And it, like this thing was knocking on my door, and I finally had to listen to it. Yeah, this thing about it. - And then you ended up writing a whole book about it, more or less. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - With Walmart's new fresh and frozen subscriptions, you can save time when you're weekly grocery shopping. - Dad, you're supposed to be grocery shopping. - And miss the chance to embarrass you in front of your friends? I subscribe to snacks and wet napkins. You know how messy you are. - Dad. - Walmart, subscribe to your weekly list. - Hey, it's Kaylee Cuoco for Priceline, ready to go to your happy place for a happy price? Well, why didn't you say so? Just download the Priceline app right now and save up to 60% on hotels. So whether it's cousin Kevin's Kazoo concert in Kansas City, go Kevin or Becky's Bachelor at Bash in Bermuda, you never have to miss a trip ever again. So download the Priceline app today. Your savings are waiting. ♪ Go to your happy place for a happy price ♪ ♪ Go to your happy price, Priceline ♪ - So there's a quote where you say living as a minority, and I do this every time. I think this is from the book. It might also be from an interview you did, but you say living as a minority in America is living in a house laughing at you and living as a model minority is joining in that laughter. - Yeah. It's a really heartbreaking line, and I feel like the moment that you're talking about in Taos is about disengaging with that laughter. - Yeah. Yeah, and finding something horrific underneath it. Going back to the line you just quoted, that was me thinking about the movie Evil Dead 2. And I just love that scene. I think not like that doesn't give away too much of either my book or the movie 'cause it's such an iconic scene of like when everything in the cabins just starts to laugh, starts to cackle. And it just always captivated me. And I wondered why. I think there's something that was the most truest expression to me of thinking about while underneath all that kind of enjoyment that I was presenting out into the world. I was a teenager enjoying her life, enjoying these experiences, this counterculture that I was existing in. But in some ways it was like that frenetic laughter of this possessed house. And underneath it is something like more horrific happening. And I was finally able to kind of like touch it. And I think in touching it and naming it is my first act of disengaging from it. And I always feel like for many people, anything laughter tears. Like just being able to be in contact with the feeling, the way you make me feel, the feeling of something is your first kind of place where you can start to make different choices. - That's well said. And it's amazing to me as human beings, myself most certainly included, the ways in which we can avoid feeling, be totally out of touch with how we deeply feel about something and then in these moments of reckoning where you actually do engage with the feeling of it. Like what? - Absolutely. - You weep or it's surprising. I've had moments like this and it's like surprising where you're like, "Oh, Jesus." I didn't realize I felt so strong. - Yeah, absolutely. I'm no expert, I have to say. It still is something that is, I'm always kind of surprised by something I've numbed feeling to. This book was one journey into naming and exploring that. But it is surprising how it keeps coming up. - Well, this is what I would classify as an unusually candid book, even for its kind. Like even for a memoir. Like I came away from reading it, feeling like, "Well, I really know Nina Sharma." Like you didn't hold back. I feel like I got to know you as a person. I think it solidifies my feeling that if you actually really get to know any human being intimately, like if you really get the truth from somebody, you're almost definitely gonna like them and root for them. Like warts and all. Do you know what I'm saying? And this is very much like a warts and all book. Like you don't, it doesn't feel like you are, God, I think you even have a term for it in the book. I'm gonna blank on what it is. But you're not glossing over the difficult stuff. And you're depicting the intimacy, the intimacies of courtship and marriage, family stuff, racial stuff, all of it. And you're kind of looking at it as clear out of way as you possibly can and putting it down on the page in that manner and writing about sex in the body, writing about like I said family, writing about really delicate political and cultural context that can be like challenging to engage with and to articulate, you do all of it. And I'm curious if it was a struggle for you or if this is something that you come by naturally as a writer. Like does that level of candor come easily to you or did you have to really like work it out of yourself? - Yeah, I think that is my training really of like, and it's also for me like a thrill of writing essays, of writing non-fiction is like, I would say it's like encountering your blind spot, noticing you're avoiding talking about something or going somewhere and then dropping deeper. I just love it. I feel like it's like my version of like bungee jumping or doing something that's like full of adrenaline. I love adrenaline activities too. So I feel like this is like my writing equivalent to that. I'd say like, I feel like I might present, I don't think all the time I think that's changing as like a shy person or like a reticent person. I'm saying to somebody like, I'm trying to get better at gossiping because gossiping, I think is a way like people come together, but I'm just not great at it. I feel like people give me their intel and then I'm like, oh great, that's great to know. 'Cause I'm not, or like my gossip is like, this is what happened in the dairy aisle, I don't know. So but this becomes, this feels like a place where I'm like, all right, this is me doing it. This is me giving me to you. It just feels like a place where I can, I do that most naturally. It feels like something that I want to do anyways and I found this great outlet, this way that feels like really true to me and really natural to me to do it. And I think it, you know, it comes first from being captivated by the form itself. I didn't always identify as like a memoirist or an essay writer. I tried my hands at all different types of writings and then I fell in love with other essays and their candor and their ways of saying things that I realized, oh, I thought otherwise without reading that essay would have been a shame to even think about that part of my life. And so I kind of began writing because I was so inspired by other memoirist essays, boldness and I thought maybe a, before I could even think of an audience, I thought maybe I wanted to do that too and then later maybe I wanted to do that for others too. - Yeah, I feel similarly and I love to read this kind of stuff because it's like medicinal. It's a relief when somebody's just being truthful with you. And I think that as a consequence of having read a lot of stuff in this vein, when I do read fiction, I'm always trying to extract from the fiction whatever kind of truthful story is undergirding the fiction. Do you know what I'm saying? - Yeah, totally. It's really interesting that way. I mean, for me, I've been thinking about this a lot 'cause now I've been started to write satire in the last couple of years and I do a bit of improv comedy on stage and all of that is like fiction, but it's almost like I trick myself into like a fictional space and still feel like I'm coming at it from a non-fiction person. But I do think like when I work in those genres, it does feel like it seems like they work best, like my improv characters work best. The fiction writing, I like works best when it comes from like seizing on our truth. And I feel kind of paradoxical for me, to be honest, like memoir is extremely, it is the truth, it is fact. But for me to get to the most truthful place for it, I almost have to use like I often say this, I have to think of myself as creating a fictitious world that I'm a character or that my husband's a character. And that way, I know that I'm not filtering anymore. I can finally tell like this character's bad behaviors or something like that. So fiction is a real gift to my craft in that way. Yeah, that's a really good trick. Yeah. I mean, it's like you know you're tricking yourself, it's not like you actually believe that you're a character, but just that simple distancing technique in the drafting process, it gives you the permission to just say right about difficult family stuff, but to do it truthfully. And I should underscore that again, I like everybody in the book, like even when your parents are maybe struggling with Quincy's blackness, right? And there's like racial tension within your family as you're falling in love with this guy and heading towards marriage and all this stuff. It's not that I approve or agree with like the difficulty, but they're human, these people are human beings and you get them in all of their dimensionality and when you get somebody like that, you sort of, I don't know, there's like just a kind of love that happens between reader and character or reader and people depicted on the page. So I can imagine how some writers might shy away from writing about that kind of stuff or might have trouble wondering like, well, what's gonna happen if I put this all down as I actually saw it happen and are they gonna be offended? How did you navigate that part of it? I'm imagining your parents have read the book. - Yeah, I mean, they've started too and they're very supportive so far. I was telling, you know, when the book first launched and we were getting texts from them and I was telling my husband as like Quincy, are these like written by AI? Like I couldn't like believe like their thoughtfulness these texts coming to me. But I'm also like, I would say I'm ready for the harder conversations. Like that's what you sign up for as a memoirist and whatever way you choose to involve or not involve your loved ones in the process. I think part of it is also being ready for those hard conversations. But yeah, for me it was not easy. I'm glad that I had my husband's one of my readers. I'm glad that I had people there that were, you know, helpful eyes and reminding me that I was creating human beings. And that was really important to me. You know, when I started working on this book in my MFA program, I remember like some initial essays I wrote that were just about me and Quincy. They're still like very, in my head like gritty essays dealing with, you know, a couple of conflicts. But there's something just like still too perfect about them. And I just, they did not go over well in workshop. People were just like snooze or whatever. And then when I finally just, you know, it took that, I think it was like my first semester. It took that first, you know, pass that writing and sharing being like, people wanna see you in your realist manner. They wanna see, I say with couple writing, they wanna see you like fight over the dirty dishes. And then some. And those are the moments that people resonate with because that's who we all are. We're all warts and all. And so I hoped in creating these complicated characters, making every character that I was creating human beings and in that way that would resonate with all of our vulnerabilities, all of our, you know, we all have blind spots. We all have things that we're working through. And I hope that in that way, I always say that I hope I created characters that are imperfect in that way resonate and in that way we're rooting for them. - Yeah, that's the case. And it's what, you know, again, it's like if you gloss over stuff or you hold back, readers can sniff it out, right? - Yeah. - So it diminishes the read. People just consents that there's just not enough truth in there or just doesn't resonate as much as boring, right? - Yeah, and I feel like it's almost like you don't have to take it this way. This might be like workshop trauma, but it almost feels like you're insulting their humanity by excluding your humanity from the page you don't have to have that dynamic. But I always think like, you know, I don't wanna, I don't wanna do that either. You know, the memoir should not be, no one should do this, but memoir shouldn't be like some sort of, you know, aspirational space. I feel like it should be the opposite of that. I'm still working this idea out, but it should be the lives we live rather than the lives we aspire towards, yeah. - You studied under Philip Lopate at Columbia in their MFA program and you referred to your training. You know, you were sort of trained in this kind of like really candid personal nonfiction work. And I, this might be kind of a crude characterization, but I always characterize this kind of writing as like the nudists. Like, it's like literary nudists. - Nobody would love that, yeah. - Yeah, but I mean, Lopate, David Shields, who I've had on this show is another person where you're just like, okay, this is who this person is. Like I have no, or I have fewer like instances to think like there might be something hidden. You know what I'm saying? Almost none. And I only say that because I don't think anyone can ever be like 100% perfectly candid. There's always going to be something that isn't there, either intentionally or not. But like, is that how you view it? Is this the tradition that you're working in? Like, is that characterization resonate with you? - Definitely, I know, and Lopate at the start of his, is this great anthology? I think it's the art of the personal essay. I mean, he writes the forward to it. It's a beautiful forward for all the essays out there, really just as, it's his love letter. I mean, the whole book, the whole anthology, is his love letter to that essay. I would say, he's like the essay grandpa to me. (laughs) He's like the granddaddy. So, and that introduction is really so beautiful in the way that he turns over all different types of essay and all different aspects of it. But one thing that he says in there is like, it's this kind of constant, an essay is a constant process of unmasking and not to get to kind of like, some kind of like bare bones, not to get fully nude, but you're just like getting, I think he says something like getting to the final mask. Or you're, you know, it's like kind of a relentless or infinite experience of that, of like constantly, you know, processing, I'll go back to my word, like constantly finding a new blind spot and then trying to pierce it. And that's a journey. And I think, you know, learning from someone like him and also many of my other teachers in that program, Margot Jefferson, Meghan Dom, like there's something that's really playful about that too. All my teachers kind of double down on like, that one way of doing that work is to find, to endure in it, like it's to get truthful and to like be in the like long distance marathon of it is like find some play in it, find something to play with. Yeah, so those two things always go together for me. - And how would you say that like this idea of play factored into the writing of the way you make me feel? Like were there aspects of it? 'Cause like I'm thinking of how you integrate pop culture a lot in this book, like there are references and these are just a few of them, but like when Harry Metzali, Mississippi, Masala, The Walking Dead, The Grateful Dead, like there's all sorts of different cultural references and they're not just made for kicks. I think part of it is that, you know, pop culture for a first generation person can be a vehicle for assimilation. So that's part of why, but like it's also fun. And I think it maybe gives people a point of access to the book, it kind of brings people in and maybe is that part of the play? - Yeah, absolutely. I feel like that is the origin story of the book. I was talk about the title story of the book in particular when I think about play, which when I wrote it, I didn't think it was gonna be the title story of the book. I just, you know, I was the story that emerged out of me, but the way you make me feel the title story was like came about in many different ways. But one of the ways was I wrote the first, the opener to it, the first couple paragraphs in the middle of my MFA program. And it kind of just, but not like for a class, I was in a class of the time that I feel like kind of entranced me. I was in a James Baldwin seminar. All we did all semester was just read James Baldwin with another great teacher, Hilton Als. And I just remember coming back from that class and this was not for an assignment or anything, but just the scene came to my mind. And it just, I just could not get home fast enough. And I just got to the computer and it just sort of slipped out of me, like I almost got out of my own way to get it out. And I was just, wow, this is the first time so many things emerge from me that I had trouble writing about. But the biggest one was writing about my nervous breakdown when I was 19 and it came out in that moment when it just, in this kind of like spooky, not trying way. And then I was like, well, what can I do with this? And every time I tried to go back to it though, it just felt like I could never match up to what I had done. And it was such a strange experience. Like my writerly tools that I thought I had could just never match what kind of like mysteriously came out of me that afternoon. And I, and I really kind of struggled with it. I, you know, like my husband's my first reader. I would show him attempts at trying to continue the story and he named it for me. He was like, it just feels like you're writing from a place of shame. And it felt like a really like painful place. It felt almost like physical pain. So I just stopped doing it. And then I finally decided to return to it my thesis semester with Marva Jefferson. And I mustered up the courage to tell her I'd been working on the story about my mental health. And I couldn't even get those words out right, but she caught it. She, you know, being the awesome teacher and writer and person she is, caught it. And she asked me simply, do I remember any experiencing any pleasure during that time period? And then I just remember this like wild scene of me in the midst of a manic episode pulling out like this hot couture fuchsia dress from a closet. And all of a sudden it's like charmed by this character. It was no longer just, it was me, but it was this character like who's this like awesome chick who's in the middle of a manic episode pulling out a dress, making some decisions I wanna write about her. And all of a sudden the rest of the essay came to be. And from that point on it became so important to me to center, you know, to keep Margot's question in mind. You know, do I remember pleasure seizing on that? Letting it be an anchor. Letting it be something that helps me tell the story from a space of rather than stigma and shame. What I say moving more towards accuracy and depth because then right, like I'm thinking about pulling in the senses, the sensory experiences of that moment, pulling in the color of the dress, the texture of the dress, the character now making choices of getting in the car with it. All of a sudden I was, the actual like details of the story started to come through more than they ever had. So that is not only a way of spiritually enduring but actually finding the pleasure, using it as an anchor to tell a story can help you tell it in the most truthful way. - Yeah, I mean, it's like tied to this trick that you, you know, you do to yourself where you distance yourself and think of yourself as a character on the page as you've been saying, but that's a really interesting and insightful instruction that she gave you that I have not heard before on the show or like I wouldn't have thought of it, but it's like if you're feeling a sense of deep shame or stigma or darkness even, 'cause sometimes when we're writing about the most painful stuff in our lives, the process of trying to write about it can feel so heavy. It's like, there's just dreading going to the keyboard or you just get inside of it and it becomes this kind of like pity party, right? And then people don't wanna read that and then it becomes like, like, why am I even trying to do this? Nobody wants to hear my bullshit, that kind of conversation. But it's like, no, think about like a moment where you actually weren't unhappy inside of that period of your life that was dark and start there. Like, it's not that you're trying to depict this period of difficulty in your life as like fun and like filled with fancy dresses and hood couture. It's just about a point of access, right? - Right, exactly, access point. Whatever you can do to get you to that kind of, that deeper accessing a, you know, more depth of experience, and use it. Yeah, and I often say, you know, the fun doesn't have to be like a traditional notion of fun. It can be weird, it can be uncommon. I often say that, you know, me and my husband always talk about this, the fun of the story is sometimes you've just survived the hard thing and lived to tell, you know? And you can, you can, that way, like no pressure finding like some, you know, fun TM, like type of thing either as you're, as you're, you know, just find whatever helps you access and get curious, get interested, get in the senses of your story in a new way, yeah. - Ah, yes, the magnificent trolley sour bright crawler, also known as trolica spritolus, the worms captivating neon color makes it an easy gummy prey. - Trolley! - It's a surprisingly sour, invitingly chewy, a staggeringly snackable species unlike anything else found on this planet. - Eat me! - Delicious. Visit trolley.com to shop now. - Trolley, eat me! - Have a question or need how to advice? Just ask MetaAI. Whether you need to summarize your class notes or want to create a recipe with the ingredients you already have in your fridge, MetaAI has the answers. You can also research topics, explore interests, and so much more. It's the most advanced AI at your fingertips. Expand your world with MetaAI. Now on Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Messenger. - So this book I think at it's very core is a love story. It's the story of you and your husband Quincy. And it's the story of an interracial relationship that often, and you make note of this, does not get depicted in our popular culture. Like when we talk about interracial couples, I think the first thing that springs to mind for most people is like a black person and a white person in a relationship. And you and your husband, this is like an Asian and black or South Asian and black relationship, right? And that comes with its own challenges. And you write about them like within the context of your family. I think you write about them culturally just 'cause there's not a lot of touchstones. You write about the culture, like even our political culture, you write I think very movingly about Kamala Harris and like the meaning that she has for you and Quincy as a child of this very kind of interracial coupling. And you just talk a little bit about that part of things, of like writing into your most important relationship and the challenges of navigating all that comes with it when it comes to this other stuff. - Yeah, I think there's so many ways that I fell in love with writing about us. One of the ways, I realize I haven't talked about this as much as it came out of just, it was my material at the moment before I was in my MFA program, I moved to Philly, literally not even out of like love at that point, just literally out of straight up lust. Like I just moved to Philly to his apartment to close the long distance gap and to just be with this guy that I wanted to be in bed with, like jump on all the time, I just make less than sometimes like listen to it. And yeah, so I moved there and I did have like one or two friends there, but one of my closest friends actually moved right around the time that I moved there. So I didn't have much of anybody and I started taking a class, this great writer named Minter Kritzer at this bookstore, Big Blue Marble Bookstore, her class was called Life Writing and we just get readings and homework assignments around life writing. And at that time, like my life was me and Quincy, there's nobody else in Philly. I came from a very kind of lively New York City literary world. I was working at the Asian American Writers Workshop, I left all of that and it was just me and Quincy. And so I was like, "Hey, I guess I'll write about us." And it really came out of like me, writing about him came out of the, like that was my most immediate material. And I just also just found out that I just really enjoyed it. And at the time, we're also getting married and I found this life writing class coincided with a lot of the stress I was feeling, trying to navigate. First of all, just being a bride and this whole kind of wedding industrial complex, but more profoundly what it meant for all the stuff that I'd gone through with my family already before even the marriage and how it felt like it was presenting itself now to me as I was getting married, even though we had come to the other side of it. So it just writing around the time of my wedding and shortly after became a way of like processing all that had happened. And I guess that's processing, you know, through the act of processing, I felt also pulled towards history. When I began to work on this and share it in Minter's life writing class and I'd say, she was such, you know, she was such a great mentor. She and her husband, Hal Siroitz, also a great poet. They're both such great mentors. And I remember when I began the workshop, thought I was writing like a how-to book, like how to get married. And I just remember it, oh no, like, if anything, I was trying to like satirize like how to format or something. But I immediately in getting that response, I realized I was being pulled towards something else. I just pulled towards thinking about what Quincy and I went through how it, how those problems and issues, how those conflicts with my family, how they tied to like a greater history of Afro-Asian relations. And, you know, as personal as I got, the more I wanted to explore that history. To me, that's exploring like how the problem and model minority played off of each other. And also- - And just to slow down, the problem minority being like blacks, like this is the perception or whatever, and then that model minority being the Asians. - Yeah, the model minority being Asians, being these like docile, good citizens, quiet passive citizens, problem minorities being, you know, those that are loud or angry. And again, like think of this as rooted in coming up at the same time as the 1965 Immigration Act during the civil rights era. These two archetypes were created. And so like how those two things played off of each other, how we've absorbed them. And how the, both how they play out in my family's pushback against Quincy, how dating a black man could be a threat to their model minority status in that way. That's something that I wanted to explore in the book. And also I wanted to think about my own hesitations to delve into identity, to delve into my personal identity, for me to think about my relationship with white supremacy, which is a complicated one. If you play into the model minority stereotype, which I don't think I did, this is not a story of a girl that was once a model minority, and then stopped being that. Like that feels like too neat of a South Asian girl narrative. I don't think I was performing that, but I think there's some ways, even if you're not performing that, you absorb it, you profit it from it. And what did I need to do to be aware of my own racism, my own anti-blackness? What did I need to do in order to both be someone who's able to talk about myself? As you know, I often say like dating Quincy was this opportunity of realizing that I had trouble talking about, like he had a lot of comfortably talking about racism. We'd go out to dinner and we'd be the only two, like people of color in this like chocolate restaurants that's seen from the book and being like, look at them looking at us and being able to freely talk about our high visibility in this very white space and me feeling a lot more reticent. And then those moments being like, oh damn, I can't even, I wanna like, first of all, I'd be able to like flirt with this guy. It's so weird. It was like a lot of it was just motivated by lust. But like, I wanna be able to talk to this guy why when it comes to the issues of race and racism, do I all of a sudden feel like I can't, I don't have any words. And it feels like I've just, you know, I don't want the date to be over, but when I get that silent, it's almost like the date is over. So I just, you know, came up against like, I wanna talk about race, not only to, not, but not only to get to know this guy and have an intimate conversation with him more, but I was struck by how hesitant I was, you know, to talk about these issues of racism and identity with myself. - It's hard. - With myself. - It's hard. - Yeah, it's hard. But that's the most rewarding relationship, being able to, you know, wrap your head around your own identity and being able to have that ongoing life conversation with yourself that makes you a better, you know, partner to yourself. And then I think more broadly, I think about, you know, coming into like a critical consciousness as a way of being a better ally to my husband and then more broadly out of that, thinking about how our experience can be one way of thinking about Afro-Asian allyship, a journey into Afro-Asian allyship. - Well, that's one of the most like fascinating and rewarding parts of the read for me, is the fact that it brought to light how specific different kinds of interracial relationships are. And I think that along with this self-investigation, you know, you touched on earlier how kind of like as a natural reaction or a natural extension of this self-investigation and this confrontation with these difficult issues around race and identity, you found yourself exploring history as a way to sort of, I think, frame your own experiences and understand them better, right? - Yes. - It's a useful exercise. And I just wanna touch just so listeners can get kind of a sense of like some of the places that you go in this respect. You write about, we talked about Kamala Harris, her childhood, her upbringing in this kind of like, it's like this collection of mothers in Berkeley. Her father was kind of out of the picture, but she's the product of an inter-black and Asian relationship. You write about George Floyd, like one of the most harrowing passages in the book is about George Floyd's murder, the Asian spa shooting in Atlanta. Forgive me for forgetting the name, but there is a man murdered in Michigan, an Asian man murdered in Michigan. - Oh, the Vincent Chin. - Vincent Chin. - Yeah. - And then you're writing about the Walking Dead. And I watched some of that or like a couple of the early, you know, but I get too scared. (laughing) So I had to like tap out, 'cause I only watched this stuff at night before bed and I'm like, I can't watch this shit like right before I fall asleep. - That's a tough one before bed. - Yeah, yeah. So, but the Asian character, I'm forgetting his name 'cause that's what I do, but. - Oh, Glenn, yeah, Glenn, Steven Young's character. - Yeah, you're writing about Glenn's killing and the backlash that happened in connection with this murder in Michigan. You're writing about Trump and your father's membership at Trump's club and his sort of embrace of Trump, which is like, that's very fascinating, all of those dynamics. But you're looking into, and then did I say you write about the Lovings, which I think is a very kind of elemental relationship and historical precedent to examine in the context of interracial marriage, right? Because they're sort of the beginning. And the Lovings for people listening, there's a law, right? It's like the Lovings Act or whatever, right? Like legalized interracial marriage. - Yeah, they turned over the remaining miscegenation laws taking their case to the Supreme Court, yeah. - That's right. So, this is all part of the fabric of this book. And it has helped you to maybe draw yourself in your own relationship into sharper focus. - Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's incredible. Let's say I think the joy of the essay is realizing those things deeply fill out your character too. - So, I have to ask, because it's on your mind in the book and it's in the air right now. But you write, I think, very pointed, you write very critically of Trump and his racial politics and the dangers that he poses to people of color and disadvantaged communities. Having written this book and having grown up in Jersey, like within kind of spitting distance of like Trump and his world, like how are you feeling right now as we sit in July of 2024, like heading towards this election in November? - Oh, just peachy. (laughing) - But like what's your, what's your read of-- - Great saying myself. Yeah, you know, we're in it together. Don't vote for Trump. Don't vote for Trump. Talk to your family members. You know, something I talk about in the book is that's also that the imperative to do that is complicated. I just wanted to flag that saying, I think this is a time like any other time where we will have those hard conversations, but those hard conversations dovetail into many other hardships that we experience with our families. I'm particularly probably talking about other South Asian people right now who have Trump voting family members. That's who I'm specifically talking, looking into camera and talking to you right now. You know, but I want to say that like those hard conversations dovetail into other hard conversations, other hard experiences we have with our family that we don't necessarily realize are connected to Trump, to authoritarianism, to all the threats that are ahead of a, but are. You might think whatever family stuff you have going on is petty, like in comparison, like that, but that thing that has kind of haunted you is as important and as part of having that conversation as anything else. So it's just, you know, I wanted to say that as I'm saying, this is the time we're gonna have hard conversations. But, you know, I, we're, we're living in an extraordinary time. And I think maybe just the thing that I think about right now is a lot parallels, what it means to write into extraordinary and hard and vulnerable experiences is like, what do we need to do to endure? 'Cause we have a long fight ahead of us. Like, what are the practices that we need in place to keep us going, to, you know, to use that word, define pleasure, define fun, define uncommon notions of fun, define a protest fun. Protests are fun. Protests are full of fun. - Well, they can be. - Yeah, yeah, they can be, you know, it can surprise you. So they're, it's, I think that something that the last, you know, from the pandemic and, you know, prior to has taught, has taught me anything as a person that also likes a lot of control in their, in their life, is that life is so unpredictable and is so full of interruption, so full of things that you did not expect to happen to happen. And so what can, what can we do to show up for these moments in a way that is, I think like really showing up, really showing up, really showing up and having hard conversations, having, building community. I think this is a time where we build community with each other as we go forward. How can we do that in a way that's like really real? And I think that in what I mean to say that, that kind of drops, kind of notions of control 'cause if we're doing that, then we're just as bad as them. - Yeah. - I'm thinking about, yeah. - Yeah, I mean, it's on your mind in the book for sure. I, you know, one of the political and cultural touchstones that I failed to mention was the pandemic and the way that there was so much anti-Asian racism that resulted from it, particularly due to Trump's rhetoric and the rhetoric from the GOP about the virus being the China virus and all this stuff. I mean, there was this wave of hate crimes that resulted that you could draw a line from and like, it's one of those things like there's been so much chaos and darkness emanating from Trump and from the American political right when it comes to racial politics in this country and otherwise, that like, it's sad to say but it's easy to forget like really awful stuff. You know what I'm saying? - Yeah. - I was reading that section of the book and I was like, oh yeah, like there was the whole China virus thing and then, you know, Asian women just getting beaten on the street by crazy people who were responding, no doubt to that sort of like racist rhetoric and, you know. - Some of the things that we're asking for now, it just, we have to remember are so obvious. It's so wild and I think that just like helps me realize, you know, it's a, to keep the not-normalness of this time in mind is so important. Like, you know, I'm a teacher, I'm at, you know, to, I'm at Columbia right now. There's a lot of cops on campus. One of my, there's a lot of people striking specifically to say like, no cops on campus. And one of my friends was like, that, actually that phrase, no cops on campus, isn't very incendiary when you think about it. It's not incendiary to say, no cops on campus in any other, you know, time period. So I think that's when we're gonna be kind of, you know, bombarded by this really hateful rhetoric and having to challenge it is gonna be, I mean, in some ways it's a, this is the time as writers and creative people, like this is their time to step out. But I think it's also this time to, you know, it's incredible to kind of seize on this rhetoric and the things that we're challenging, realize like it's, we're asking for basic human rights, basic human decency, you know, the challenges to it right now are so extraordinary. And I think it's important to keep, keep, keep, again, like keep in community, keep, keep being with each other as a way of, you know, taking action, remembering, remembering that there's a center that we can hold each other's, you know, center rather than theirs. Yeah. - Well said. Well, before I let you go, I don't think we're gonna solve the American political situation in one conversation. It's a hard nut to crack. - Oh, man. - But yeah, we tried. But you know, like I could play, I wanna end on a bit of a lighter note. You talked earlier about how you love adrenaline activities and you touched earlier on the fact that you are someone who does improv. I've heard that a little bit from guests on this show, like once or twice, but it's not a common thing for writers to do. A, adrenaline activities, like bungee jumping or B, like improv, which I think is its own kind of adrenaline activity. I'd like to hear you talk about that, especially the improv, but also if you could just like, if there are any other adrenaline activities that you regularly engage in, I'd be curious to know what they are. - I feel we could have a whole different podcast on improv and Jerry Garcia. (laughing) Those could possibly go together. I think they do go together in my head. But yeah, I mean, I just kind of, there's an old improv phrase, follow the fear. I think that's always been me. Why am I afraid of doing this thing? Let me just try it. And so that was my end with improv and it's not disappointed in that way. Again, like I guess as an essayist, I'm always thinking about like what's in, my thrill is like figuring out something in my blind spot and challenging it and growing through the process. In this case, this book really thinking about like delving deeper and deeper and deeper into how I think and feel and understand racism, anti-blackness, you know, how Asian American, African American experiences come together and are pulled apart. But I experienced that on stage two in a very specific way. I think about like my hesitations there, where they come from, how to push past them. And I see myself like changed through the process, being, you know, you start to walk about the world in a new way through the process. So I just, you know, that's something that I get from improv. - Do you think that it makes you a better writer? - A hundred percent. I think it keeps me like being an honest writer 'cause improv is so, you know, you just have to come from an honest place. It keeps me also like in the silly pocket. A lot of my like, grateful dead years was also like taking a bunch of acid. I've never talked about this with anybody. - So this is the place to do it right here. - And like, I like, you know, there's something I try to explain this to my husband. Like it changed my life for the better. Like there's something about acid. - Me too. - Yeah, okay. So we should, this is a conversation I have. Like, but there's something about it that for me, it wasn't like having like a mystical experience because, you know, kudos to everyone it does, but it just like everything about life that is absurd and silly that I already felt was there just like really came to the fore. Like was really honored in the acid trip experience. And I feel like I just want to live there forever. Like I just want to live there forever once you've experienced that. And you don't often get spaces where you can live there forever, but improv is. So improv always feels like a home, a silly home for me. If I could just be silly all the time and observe all the time, I could, I just want to be, I think I am. But improv is like, that's where it's deadly important to do that. And I bring that like, you know, they say the first rule of comedy. I mean, are they, you know, comedy as core is, you know, truthful or as this like, you know, people who do it, there's like a deadly seriousness about it. You know, it sounds like too serious. But the important of honoring silly and how important it to me, like I always like pull it back to the page after doing improv. It's always there as much as much as anything else is. So that's what I get from improv. It's. - It's like, just so I'm hearing you correctly, it's like from improv, you get the critical importance of truth, the critical importance of a sense of play. - Yeah, and making space for that whenever you're engaged creatively. - Yeah, like, you know, I'm sorry, go ahead. - And I was just going to say, it's like truth, a sense of play and silliness. Maybe bringing some humor to the work, even if the work isn't like explicitly like comedic. - Totally. - And I think. - Maybe not taking yourself too seriously. - Yeah, a hundred percent, not taking yourself too seriously. I think there's, I once heard an actor talk about this, the actress and Barry who played the, I'm just forgetting her name, she's just a wonderful actress who played the lead in Barry. - This is the, this is the Bill Hader show on HBO. - Yeah, the Bill Hader show. And she said like acting school for her was just getting comfortable with the embarrassment of acting and the acting is like deeply embarrassing. And I love that. I think that's something similar going on and improv with me. Sometimes I'm like, why am I embarrassed being a cat on stage? And what are the shitty things, like the shitty imperatives of life and being an adult that keep you from being uninhibitably a cat on stage? And I so admire my, you know, improvisers I'm on stage which that are like, you know, are uninhibitedly a cat or I don't know what, like a, like a space cat, something like just making up things on stage. And they're not only just being silly, but when you watch them, you are watching like some truth, truth play out, something like really feels like really meaningful just from committing, just from yes ending. And so I just, you know, wanna bring that back to the page. It really does change, like now that I've done it for a couple of years, when I don't do it, I feel kind of weird. I feel like I can't write without doing it now. - That's really interesting. - And I'm still wrapping my head around it, yeah. - Did any of the way you make me feel happen under the influence of improv? You said the last two years. - Almost all of it. Yeah, I would say, except for two essays. And a lot of the material I've just had and I'm, but like actually comprising it almost like a three quarters of it happened during my improv career. And there's something about being in your body. And then that's so meaningful and reminds me of like being in my full body when I write. - Well, this is a very, like I said at the top, this is a very embodied, like it's very much about the body. And I feel like, I feel like you're leaning into that because it's about black and brown bodies. It's about just like refusing to hide anything. I felt that there's a real courage in that. And it also just like makes like a very cool creative sense that you would be benefiting from improv in writing a book that's as candid as this one. And that has as much lateral movement as it does, you know, among subject matters and drawing these kinds of disparate connections. Like that feels improvisational in a way. Like you're discovering it in the act of writing as opposed to perceiving it. You know what I'm saying? - I think that's the kind of, that's exactly what it is. I think it really improv opens you up to discovery that all of it is discovery. And I think the more I just approach my writing life that way, the more something like that has a real heat signature, more instantly will come on the page. - Yeah. - But it's also where the fun is. - Yeah. - Like it's where the fun is creatively as the writer, but it's also the fun of it for the reader. And like, I mean, I know like improvisation can get sloppy, right? It's gotta be like, it's sort of like, but that's kind of like the thing about it is that, you know, if we're gonna stick to writing, like if you're feeling improvisational on the page and you're letting yourself sort of go in different directions and kind of follow your nose, not every day at the keyboard is gonna be your greatest day. And they're gonna be, they're gonna be greater and lesser degrees of presence and connectivity and momentum, just like there is musically when musicians are improvising. Like sometimes it works and then other times it's like, wow, this sounds kind of weird. But when it really works, it really is awesome. - Yeah. - And I think that if you work in that mode and you get that hit, it's probably hard to not do it that way. - Yeah, I think so, I think improv helps me like not fake, right? You know, like an idea of what this essay should sound like, an idea of what talking about X, Y, and Z should sound like. And it helps you just like, just stop thinking. You know, they always stay on stage, like stop thinking, just do, it's like terrifying to a writer or thinker. But I really feel like it's true. It just helps you like tell the story in the most honest way using all the muscles that are available to you, really using them rather than the idea that has to rather than sort of like a front of the house, kind of version of the story. - And you formed your own improv troupe, is that right? - Yeah, yeah, and not your bevy. It's like all South Asian women improv troupe. Yeah, really just that was like my home base while I was working on this book. It was like middle of the pandemic, we, you know, met every Sunday, we were doing it before the pandemic, but we continued on just ourselves doing it through it. And I just feel like I would have just gone bonkers, creatively bonkers, you know, everyone needed their something. But I think it very much creatively paid forward in the book, you know. - So a question I have for you is, is this improv troupe of South Asian women that you've put together comprised of South Asian women writers who are doing improv on the side, or are you just the only, are you the only like literary person in the bunch? - I think there's a, they, some of them, they write, but I guess I'm the only one who's like professionally like writing books and things like that. Yeah, one of my teammates, she runs a great Mac and cheese restaurant in New York City called Smack. There's a teacher, the other person, you know, works at ConEd. Yeah, so we all kind of different walks of life and, you know, build something very creative together. I think us together give back to my writing practice in a pretty profound way. There's something, you know, to be doing it with us, we can pull a very specific type of comedy from each other. - Yeah. - I was gonna say, yeah, I think you write about how you had trouble really finding your footing in improv until you were with other South Asian women kind of feeding off of each other. You have kind of, I think you have to have like a lingua franca, right, or some like intuitive, some intuitive sense of the world that is similar and that you can just kind of like easily access or more easily access. But it's a different playful space, yeah. - Yeah, and I just think too, like as I'm talking to you, it's like, man, I feel like maybe, like as an unorthodox, but like effective, like sort of hybridized writing workshop, if there are people who are working on books and doing some sort of workshop together to like put that in tandem with an improv situation. - Yeah. - Might not be the worst thing in the world. Like to pair those two things I think is sort of genius and like, I haven't seen it. So like maybe there's like going to be a trend where like writing workshops start to incorporate improv. - Sure, I mean, I have met a lot of people who do go through the course of tour or do some kind of version of it so that there should be, yeah. - Just to like, 'cause like sitting down to write, it's like getting through that shame space, getting to that honest place, getting through the self doubt, getting through the fear. Like the thing about improv is that it's embodied and it's interpersonal, you're with other people, there's people watching you maybe, and it forces your hand way more than like sitting at the keyboard does. - It does and you begin to enjoy the pleasure of your hand being forced. - Right. - And that's just like such a wonderful gift to your writing life, 'cause that is really like, that's where the title story, when I talk about that moment where the initial thing just slipped out of me, the opener, you know, that was an improv moment, I would say, in the best way. Like I got out of my own, you know, I got out of my own way, the story was, you know, my scene partner in that moment. It wasn't just me steering the ship, you know. - I'm afraid. - Yeah. - All right, well, it's a joy to talk with you. This is a wonderful book. I'm glad we got to spotlight it in the book club. Congratulations to you on seeing it through for a decade and living this life of yours and putting it down on the page. I think it's gonna be a real benefit to people who read it for a variety of reasons. - Thank you. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me. - All right, folks, there we have it. That is my conversation, or that was my conversation with Nina Sharma. Her memoir in essays is called The Way You Make Me Feel. It is available from Penguin Press. It is the official July pick of the other people book club. To sign up for the book club, just visit otherppl.com. Once again, that was Nina Sharma. The book is called The Way You Make Me Feel. Go get your copy right away. If you wanna know more about Nina Sharma, you can find her on the internet at nina-sharma.com. Follow her on the socials, Instagram, Twitter. She's got a sub-stack. Check it out. Nina Sharma, The Way You Make Me Feel. Don't forget to subscribe to this show. Hit the subscribe button wherever you listen. You can also subscribe on YouTube. Follow me on social media. TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and Blue Sky. Sign up for my newsletter at sub-stack. Join the other people Patreon community over at patreon.com/otherpplpod. Help keep this show going into the future. If you have two minutes and you wanna help me out, rate this show and review this show. Wherever you listen to this show, it helps this show find new listeners. To get another people t-shirt and once again, to join my book club, go to otherppl.com. And if you wanna read my latest book, it's a novel called Be Brief and tell them everything available in trade paperback, ebook, and audiobook editions. I narrate the audiobook. So if that sounds good, you can read my book. It's a novel called Be Brief and tell them everything. All right, so coming up on Thursday, I think we will at long last knock on wood, witness the return of Mira Gonzalez, Brad and Mira, for the culture. Mira has been down with COVID, so it's been a rough couple of weeks for her. I think she's on the rebound. Hopefully, I've been checking in with her, and it seems like she's on an upward trajectory, but you never know with this stuff. So hopefully, fingers crossed, me and Mira back at it on Thursday. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (dog barking) (dog barking)
