Speaker 1: Hi there, It's Ruby Jones and welcome back to another
Speaker 1: episode of Read This, Schwartz Media's weekly books podcast, hosted
Speaker 1: by editor of the Monthly Michael Williams. It features conversations
Speaker 1: with some of the most talented writers from Australia and
Speaker 1: around the world. In this episode, we're going to hear
Speaker 1: from American author Rachel Kong, whose latest book is Real Americans.
Speaker 1: It follows the lives of three generations of Chinese Americans
Speaker 1: and explores themes of identity and what it means to
Speaker 1: belong to a family, to a culture, and to a nation.
Speaker 1: As always, I'm joined by Michael to tell me a
Speaker 1: little bit more about the episode. Hi Michael, how are.
Speaker 2: You, Ruby Jones? I am fine. Always a pleasure to
Speaker 2: talk to you. Bet I think you would agree as
Speaker 2: someone who hosts a daily news podcast, the world has
Speaker 2: gone to hell in a handbasket and it's a big grim.
Speaker 2: It feels a bit funny doing a weekly podcast that
Speaker 2: concerns itself with books, because you know, I don't see
Speaker 2: good books as escapism. They engage with the world we're in.
Speaker 2: But sometimes it's hard not to want to use a
Speaker 2: book to kind of freeze time and push the political
Speaker 2: situation to arm's length and not think about the various
Speaker 2: ways in which the world is a bit terrifying. But
Speaker 2: one of the ways in which it is bear with me,
Speaker 2: fritick I promise this connects to this week's episode is
Speaker 2: the way in which questions are belonging are being weaponized
Speaker 2: at the moment across the Western world, in particular, the
Speaker 2: ways in which citizenship, identity, these kind of elements become
Speaker 2: tools with which to kind of alienate people and to
Speaker 2: deny them basic rights. And it's in that context that
Speaker 2: a phrase like real American seems incredibly charged. So it's
Speaker 2: funny this week that we're talking about a book called
Speaker 2: Real Americans that both engages with those ideas about who belongs,
Speaker 2: about what a real American looks like, what it is,
Speaker 2: but at the same time goes into other elements that
Speaker 2: take it away from that kind of grounded context. There's
Speaker 2: elements of magic or realism, elements of science fiction. It's
Speaker 2: the latest book from American writer Rachel Kong, and growing
Speaker 2: up as a Malaysian born American with Chinese parents, she's
Speaker 2: acutely aware of how politically charged it is. It's a
Speaker 2: funny tension, but kind of one that I've really enjoyed reading.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, okay, Well tell me a bit more about
Speaker 1: real Americans. What happens in the novel and why did
Speaker 1: it resonate with you?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So, Kong's a wonderful writer, as anyone who's read
Speaker 2: her before would attest. But this new book looks at
Speaker 2: three generations of Chinese Americans. There's Lily, who's the daughter
Speaker 2: of parents who fled China during the Cultural Revolution, and
Speaker 2: she finds unexpected love in New York at the turn
Speaker 2: of the millennium. Then you have her son Nick, who
Speaker 2: grows up in the Pacific Northwest, wondering about a father
Speaker 2: he doesn't know. And finally May Lily's mother, a scientist
Speaker 2: whose choices on behalf of her family threatened to tear
Speaker 2: it apart. The whole thing spans five decades. It doesn't
Speaker 2: happen in a linear order, and it's this exploration of
Speaker 2: what makes us who we are, and you know, that's
Speaker 2: what resonated with me. It's a challenge to some of
Speaker 2: those really stubborn and corrosive myths that seem to underpin
Speaker 2: the modern nation state. It's about the gap between how
Speaker 2: we see ourselves and how others see us. And look, frankly,
Speaker 2: I'm a sucker for this kind of blending of genre too.
Speaker 2: It's not heavy handed, but you know, there's a little
Speaker 2: bit of what you could call science fiction, there's a
Speaker 2: hint of what could be magic realism, and a deeply
Speaker 2: romantic heart. It's lively, it's surprising, and it really embraces
Speaker 2: the contradictions of who we are and how well we
Speaker 2: know the people we love. I really love this one.
Speaker 1: Rubit coming up in just a moment, the real Rachel Kong.
Speaker 2: One of the driving forces in Real Americans is the
Speaker 2: idea of luck. Who has it and what does it
Speaker 2: mean for a person's life. So I began my conversation
Speaker 2: with Rachel asking what luck means to her.
Speaker 3: That's an amazing question to start with. I mean, luck
Speaker 3: is I think really at the core of this book
Speaker 3: this question of what creates our lives? Essentially? Is it luck?
Speaker 3: Is it chance? Is it the actions that we take?
Speaker 3: Is it free will? Right? And that's just a question
Speaker 3: that I've thought about for all my life, I think,
Speaker 3: I think especially because I come from an immigrant family
Speaker 3: and I've always had this question in my head of
Speaker 3: what if my life were different. What if my parents
Speaker 3: had not come to America from Malaysia. What if I
Speaker 3: hadn't had the childhood that I had. What would my
Speaker 3: life be like? Would I be a writer? Would I
Speaker 3: be someone completely different? I think throughout all our lives,
Speaker 3: you know, we're sort of touched very differently by luck,
Speaker 3: and some people we sort of think of as luckier
Speaker 3: than others. But I don't know. I think I was
Speaker 3: just interested in in how different people sort of react
Speaker 3: to quote unquote luck and how that luck shapes them
Speaker 3: and shaps who they are.
Speaker 2: I think it's such a fascinating set of ideas and
Speaker 2: the ways in which it intersects. I think you're right.
Speaker 2: I think it's an essential part of immigrant stories and
Speaker 2: immigrant storytelling, but also the ways in which it intersects
Speaker 2: with ideas of entitlement and fairness and what we're owed
Speaker 2: and what we have to make for ourselves. So often
Speaker 2: in migrant stories, so often in the narrative around multiculturalism,
Speaker 2: around assimilation, around those things, is this idea that gratitude
Speaker 2: should play a past, that the good migrant is grateful
Speaker 2: for the opportunities that have been afforded them, rather than
Speaker 2: have worked for themselves, or that luck has played a part,
Speaker 2: and the intersection of all those things I think is fascinating.
Speaker 3: I think it's so interesting because the immigrant story and
Speaker 3: this sort of American story, those stories really interesting in
Speaker 3: a lot of ways. And that's something that I wanted
Speaker 3: to explore in the book. And I think one of
Speaker 3: the ways in which they intersect is sort of in
Speaker 3: this idea of like luck and agency. There is, of course,
Speaker 3: what you've said, you know, immigrants, we have to feel grateful, right,
Speaker 3: The grateful immigrant is sort of this trope, and for
Speaker 3: a good reason, you know. I think that that was
Speaker 3: a refrain that I sort of heard growing up to
Speaker 3: you know, my parents would say, we made so many
Speaker 3: sacrifices for you to be here. Therefore, like, you make
Speaker 3: something of your life, do better than we did, and
Speaker 3: and that's a lot of pressure. And I think in
Speaker 3: the American story, there's this sort of belief that, you know,
Speaker 3: despite your luck, you can make anything you want of
Speaker 3: your own life. You know, there's this very like pull
Speaker 3: yourself up by the bootstraps mentality in the sort of
Speaker 3: American narrative and probably just the Western narrative to be
Speaker 3: quite honest, but it's this idea that it doesn't matter
Speaker 3: who you were born, as you know, what your station
Speaker 3: in life is, you can get out of that, you
Speaker 3: can make something better of your circumstances. And I think
Speaker 3: that's of course something that that gives hope, right, And
Speaker 3: I'm glad that I was raised with like this sort
Speaker 3: of idea that I that I could be anything, and
Speaker 3: that I could, you know, even if I was unlucky
Speaker 3: in certain ways, I could still create my life in
Speaker 3: other ways. But I think also that sort of a
Speaker 3: belief in like, uh, this like do it your selfness
Speaker 3: to a degree that was a little bit I don't
Speaker 3: know if toxic is the right word, but it almost
Speaker 3: like dismisses the fact that we do come from different
Speaker 3: places and stations and with you know, on very unequal footing, right,
Speaker 3: and that we are not entirely responsible or to blame
Speaker 3: for what we have made of ourselves or not made
Speaker 3: of ourselves.
Speaker 2: You know, I think that's sort of try. I think
Speaker 2: it's something I thought about a lot writing this book,
Speaker 2: is the ways in which notions of luck or fortune
Speaker 2: are partly the imposition of a narrative on stuff that
Speaker 2: we can't account for, you know, that, and that seems
Speaker 2: to me particularly acute or one of the things about
Speaker 2: this book is it follows three generations of the one family,
Speaker 2: and one of the things you do so well in
Speaker 2: it is capture that kind of incomprehension between the different
Speaker 2: generations towards each other, that kind of failure to see
Speaker 2: clearly the nature of the story that your parents, your
Speaker 2: grandparents might have experienced for themselves. And we kind of
Speaker 2: put a narrative of luck or fortune on things. It's
Speaker 2: kind of retroactive thing that's imposed sometimes rather than organically
Speaker 2: springing out of the lived experience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think luck is so cultural also, right,
Speaker 3: you know, something that one culture might consider lucky another
Speaker 3: might not. I mean, certain things transcend that. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think in most it's a good thing to have
Speaker 3: more money than less money, or to have good health
Speaker 3: and things like that. But I think that, Yeah, I
Speaker 3: love what you just said there. The sort of disconnect
Speaker 3: between generations was something that I was so interested in
Speaker 3: that I'm still so interested in the fact that we
Speaker 3: can try our best to understand what it might be
Speaker 3: like to be a parent or our child, and yet
Speaker 3: it's almost impossible right to sort of fully immerse yourself
Speaker 3: into the perspective of another person. I think the novel
Speaker 3: form is how we get the closest to that, right,
Speaker 3: Like we're able to sort of place ourselves into these
Speaker 3: different perspectives, these different bodies. But short of that, it's
Speaker 3: you know, you could interview your parents for days and
Speaker 3: still probably not understand what it means to have their
Speaker 3: lived experience and what it means to have their exact perspective.
Speaker 2: And I would understand my father less after interviewing him
Speaker 2: for a couple of days before it. You know, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I've read interviews with you where you're main clear that
Speaker 2: you're not a big plan at going into your books,
Speaker 2: and so I'm interested in the moments at which those
Speaker 2: themes really started to come to the foreground. You began
Speaker 2: with Lily in her story.
Speaker 3: I did begin with Lily and her story, and I
Speaker 3: wrote each of these characters in the order that they
Speaker 3: appear in the book, which I think is a little
Speaker 3: bit counterintuitive because it's not chronological necessarily. You know, we
Speaker 3: get the oldest character story kind of in the very
Speaker 3: last section. Yeah, the question of realness is such an
Speaker 3: interesting one, and I think that it came from a
Speaker 3: very personal place for me. Yeah, yeah, that question of
Speaker 3: am I a real American? Has has come up, you know,
Speaker 3: at times in my past. And you know, I'm sort
Speaker 3: of as an immigrant between these two places, right, Like
Speaker 3: I feel more American than I feel like I'm anything else, honestly,
Speaker 3: because culturally it's who I am. When I go back
Speaker 3: to where my parents came from, which is Malaysia, I
Speaker 3: feel like a complete outsider, right. I don't really belong
Speaker 3: I don't speak the language. I can enjoy the food,
Speaker 3: but I stick out like a sore thumb. I'm not
Speaker 3: really like at home there, even if I enjoy it.
Speaker 3: And I think just this feeling of being in between
Speaker 3: these two places was really something that is very I
Speaker 3: think deep within this book, I think each of the
Speaker 3: characters struggles with belonging in one way or another and
Speaker 3: struggles with this question of am I am I real enough?
Speaker 3: Am I fitting into this category well enough? And it's
Speaker 3: not even about necessarily wanting to I don't know, like
Speaker 3: be part of a group necessarily, But it's more about
Speaker 3: wanting to be part of a story, right and wanting
Speaker 3: to be part of again, this sense of belonging a community.
Speaker 3: And I think that's what a lot of the characters
Speaker 3: are searching for.
Speaker 2: What's the relationship for you between that kind of personal
Speaker 2: exploration and becoming a writer, that kind of anxiety about
Speaker 2: belonging and that desire to capture and articulate the world.
Speaker 3: I have been thinking about this recently a lot. I
Speaker 3: think I have been wondering why I write at all.
Speaker 3: And I think there's a lot of reasons, but one
Speaker 3: of the big ones I think is that writing is
Speaker 3: where I get to have the deepest conversations I ever
Speaker 3: get to have, you know. And I think I was
Speaker 3: realizing this just the other day, because you know, when
Speaker 3: you really love a book, it's it's a transformative experience.
Speaker 3: It's it's this experience that has no language that you
Speaker 3: could really say to express how much you know a
Speaker 3: book means to you. So if I if I were
Speaker 3: to love a book and then meet the author and
Speaker 3: tell them I loved your book, like that would not
Speaker 3: even begin to capture what it meant, right Like, it's
Speaker 3: there's there's something that's just it's lost in the words themselves,
Speaker 3: right Like, I feel like, yeah, the reading experience itself,
Speaker 3: and the experience both for the writer and then for
Speaker 3: the reader, Like that's where this really deep communication happens,
Speaker 3: and that's where it's possible to, you know, say this
Speaker 3: is what it's like for me, Is it like is
Speaker 3: it like this for you? I think I actually became
Speaker 3: a writer because I felt sort of afraid to like speak. Honestly,
Speaker 3: I was a very shy kid, and because I had
Speaker 3: learned English from my Malaysian parents, I had sort of
Speaker 3: Malaysian uh you know, in flights and Malaysian ways of speaking.
Speaker 3: And in America, I was just all the kids, you know,
Speaker 3: didn't know what I was saying necessarily or wanted to
Speaker 3: make fun of me for the ways that I said
Speaker 3: certain things. And so I think I found in writing
Speaker 3: a way to communicate like the most perfectly, you know,
Speaker 3: and sort of the most unassailably and you know, the
Speaker 3: most perfectly. And I think that, of course that's not
Speaker 3: totally true, right, there's still like miscommunication within writing itself.
Speaker 3: But I think that that's where it began for me,
Speaker 3: just this desire to like craft something and say, Okay,
Speaker 3: this is what I mean to say, and here please
Speaker 3: receive it. I mean, I find it so interesting that
Speaker 3: you know, I've written the one book that I've written,
Speaker 3: but when a reader reads it, they're creating a completely
Speaker 3: different book, you know. I'm sort of enlisting their imagination,
Speaker 3: enlisting their backgrounds, their perspectives, their questions, and it sort
Speaker 3: of fuses into this like hybrid thing, and then it
Speaker 3: becomes its own like creation. And I think that's so
Speaker 3: interesting that it's not that I just have one book
Speaker 3: that is out there, but there are so many books
Speaker 3: that become created every time somebody reads the book that
Speaker 3: I've written.
Speaker 2: So then, how different was that experience of doing it
Speaker 2: a second time around? You know, but with an actual
Speaker 2: pre existing idea about who that Rada might be, that
Speaker 2: platonic ideal of the rada, you admit them, You'd rapturous
Speaker 2: reviews and awards and I'm sure endless fan mail from raders.
Speaker 2: How does book two then feel different to sit down
Speaker 2: and write.
Speaker 3: I think that does make it a little bit scary,
Speaker 3: because with the first book, it was very much a secret.
Speaker 3: I didn't tell most of the people in my life
Speaker 3: because I felt a sort of shame around it, around
Speaker 3: the fact that I was writing a novel at all.
Speaker 3: With the With the second novel, there is a bit
Speaker 3: more of an expectation. People know that you're a writer.
Speaker 3: You've announced that to everybody, and so I think I
Speaker 3: felt I wouldn't say stuck, but it just felt like
Speaker 3: I often had the I don't know, I had these
Speaker 3: like voices in my head that would I have these
Speaker 3: voices already, right, the voices that tell you like, oh,
Speaker 3: you're not good enough, that you're not that this book
Speaker 3: is not up to par or whatever it is. And
Speaker 3: I think that once, once you release writing into the world,
Speaker 3: those voices become just like multiplied by a lot, and
Speaker 3: it's a great effort to sort of come back to
Speaker 3: yourself and to shut them out a little bit, to
Speaker 3: go back to your question of realness. Actually, and something
Speaker 3: that you've said reminded me that you know, I write
Speaker 3: in part because I'm trying to figure out what I
Speaker 3: actually care about, what I'm thinking about, what questions I
Speaker 3: have I've said, and to sort of get to this
Speaker 3: like genuine version of myself. But I think it's really
Speaker 3: difficult to get there just living as we do, like
Speaker 3: in the Internet age, right when we have emails constantly,
Speaker 3: we have social media and the Internet and just lots
Speaker 3: of people and companies vuying for our attention, telling us
Speaker 3: what to buy, what to look at, what you read next,
Speaker 3: whatever it is, right, there's just so many forces that
Speaker 3: are sort of pulling at our attention, and it's a
Speaker 3: real challenge to actually just sit with yourself and to
Speaker 3: sort of be in that silence and to think, Okay,
Speaker 3: what do I actually care about? What do I want
Speaker 3: to spend my hours doing? And it's deeply uncomfortable, honestly,
Speaker 3: like I think writing people find it hard because it's
Speaker 3: kind of unpleasant to sit with yourself. We find all
Speaker 3: these ways to not have to do that, you know.
Speaker 3: But I think that if you can move past the discomfort,
Speaker 3: it's so rewarding and that's what I want to do
Speaker 3: with my life.
Speaker 2: When we return, Rachel reveals why magic and science might
Speaker 2: just be one and the same, not just in a narrative,
Speaker 2: but in the creation of a narrative. We'll be right back.
Speaker 2: Each of the three characters in real Americans share a
Speaker 2: common experience. Throughout the novel, Time stops freezes at different points,
Speaker 2: and yet our three protagonists are able to move through
Speaker 2: the stillness. It's an element of the narrative that raises
Speaker 2: many many questions. Can these pauses be explained by science,
Speaker 2: or is there something more mysterious at work here? As
Speaker 2: a kind of extension of that question about luck and
Speaker 2: fortune versus circumstance, endeavor, whatever's another perhaps unhelpful binary, I
Speaker 2: want you to help me unpick. And that's between science
Speaker 2: and magic and the relationship between those two ideas.
Speaker 3: So this book for many years was just about science.
Speaker 3: There was a scientist character, and at the same time,
Speaker 3: there was a strange thing that happened was happening with
Speaker 3: all three of the characters, where they experienced time in
Speaker 3: a strange way. And I didn't know why that was
Speaker 3: happening to all of the characters, but I knew that
Speaker 3: it was. I mean, that was the very first page
Speaker 3: that I that I wrote, was Lily wakes up and
Speaker 3: for some reason, the time on the clock isn't changing.
Speaker 3: And so I tried for many years to figure out
Speaker 3: a scientific explanation for that, to figure out why this
Speaker 3: thing was happening to all of these characters. And and
Speaker 3: I think writing is a little bit like magic too, right,
Speaker 3: It's a very scientific thing, and that it comes from
Speaker 3: your brain, and it's this like solid thing. We're not
Speaker 3: solid but squishy, I guess it's a physical thing. There's
Speaker 3: things that are actually happening. There's you know, electricity happening
Speaker 3: in there. But writing can often feel like magic when
Speaker 3: when you're doing it and you know, maybe our idea
Speaker 3: comes out of somewhere, or you start with this thought
Speaker 3: that maybe the characters have this time issue, and then
Speaker 3: years later you realize it's because of something more magical
Speaker 3: and not necessarily something scientific. For me, the scientific worldview
Speaker 3: has so much to do with this Western worldview that
Speaker 3: we can understand everything and that we can just given
Speaker 3: enough time and resources and money or whatever, we can
Speaker 3: figure everything out. I mean, there's a sort of hubrisk
Speaker 3: to science today and to and to technology, right, Like
Speaker 3: there's that that slogan like move fast and break things.
Speaker 3: I don't remember which company, but you know that's a
Speaker 3: tech slogan that we have because there's just this desire
Speaker 3: to innovate and this perspective that these men in power
Speaker 3: can solve everything, right, And I was really interested in
Speaker 3: a different kind of perspective. There's this fundamental mystery to
Speaker 3: the world itself, and I think that's something that I
Speaker 3: was interested in just exploring. I guess, like the fundamental
Speaker 3: mystery to what it means to be a human being,
Speaker 3: and why are we all here? I have no idea,
Speaker 3: to be quite honest. And that's that's a question that
Speaker 3: I think I keep asking.
Speaker 2: It's a question you ask in really wonderful and interesting
Speaker 2: ways in real Americans, but also in ways it seemed
Speaker 2: to me to mirror the creative process, the process of
Speaker 2: writing a novel, you know, the questions about predeterminism, about
Speaker 2: how much kind of control we have over our own lives,
Speaker 2: of the choices we make and the ripple effects that
Speaker 2: come out of them, And when dealing with science or
Speaker 2: magic in a book. They're both different ways of doing
Speaker 2: the same thing, which is coming up with an explanation
Speaker 2: for the circumstances that you've been able to weave through
Speaker 2: the book. They're another form of imposing a narrative on
Speaker 2: the inexplicable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that. I don't think anyone has ever
Speaker 3: said that to me, but I love that framing of it.
Speaker 3: And I think something that you've said earlier too has
Speaker 3: stuck with me, just about the fact that a lot
Speaker 3: of these narratives in the book are sort of imposed
Speaker 3: after the fact, right. I think I think of that
Speaker 3: for May in particular she's less I would say, like
Speaker 3: in the muck of life. When she's recounting the story,
Speaker 3: she's able to sort of shape the way that she
Speaker 3: is sharing her particular story. And it's an impulse that
Speaker 3: I have always resisted, which I think is a little
Speaker 3: bit weird for a writer to say. You know, writers
Speaker 3: are often the people that sit around the campfire and
Speaker 3: they're good at spinning long yarns and like making you know,
Speaker 3: just like sort of engaging you. And I have never
Speaker 3: felt like that kind of personality, And to me, I
Speaker 3: think I've always just felt a little bit at a remove,
Speaker 3: you know, when it comes to narratives, which is so
Speaker 3: strange I think for a writer to say. And yet
Speaker 3: I think that's why I have written the books that
Speaker 3: I've written, you know. I think there's a little bit
Speaker 3: of this mistrust of narratives and wanting to poke at
Speaker 3: them a little bit and wanting to when they're employed,
Speaker 3: to sort of turn around and say, well, yeah, are
Speaker 3: we going to keep going with this?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: Like I think I was interested in the introduction but
Speaker 3: also disruption of these narratives that we.
Speaker 2: All know part of the thing that so defines that
Speaker 2: constructive narrative that is the concept of americanness is about
Speaker 2: the nature of want and the expression of wants. You know,
Speaker 2: the things that you can aspire to, the things that
Speaker 2: you can reasonably expect for yourself, the things you strive for.
Speaker 2: And it's a kind of fact that it's really acutely
Speaker 2: illustrated through the cross generational thing and the ways in
Speaker 2: which three generations in the one family might want different
Speaker 2: things for themselves. Or I have different ideas about what
Speaker 2: belonging and satisfaction might look like.
Speaker 3: I love what you've said there that the characters they
Speaker 3: want different things. I think depending on who they are,
Speaker 3: they feel permitted to want different things. Right, they're sort
Speaker 3: of a self well not necessarily self imposed, but there
Speaker 3: are limits on what these characters desire for themselves. And
Speaker 3: I'm reminded of what we were talking about in terms
Speaker 3: of the immigrant and the American story intersecting. And I
Speaker 3: think May is a character in the book who has
Speaker 3: almost like boundless one. She has really deep ambitions. She
Speaker 3: wants a lot of things, and it's almost out of place,
Speaker 3: you know, in the country that she grew up in.
Speaker 3: It's only in America that she gets to really pursue
Speaker 3: those dreams, although you know she comes against limitations. You know,
Speaker 3: in this place that alleges to be about opportunities for
Speaker 3: everybody and a place where you can do anything. I
Speaker 3: think her ambition is well placed there, and yet she
Speaker 3: comes up against these limits that are imposed on her.
Speaker 2: Lastly, from the way you describe it, the strange familial
Speaker 2: trait of being able to stop time is an idea
Speaker 2: that came to you before the reasons why or the
Speaker 2: reason and is of it became clear to you. And
Speaker 2: I'm curious is that you know, like I'm a parent
Speaker 2: of smallish children who like nothing more than like, which
Speaker 2: super power would you want? How would you know? What magic?
Speaker 2: Would you? Why?
Speaker 3: Time? Why?
Speaker 2: Is there something beguiling and interesting to you about the
Speaker 2: idea of being able to manipulate it or play with time?
Speaker 3: Time is something that I also think of, something that's
Speaker 3: so like the sort of time scarcity is such an
Speaker 3: American belief that I've been raised in. Or maybe it's
Speaker 3: just capitalist, I guess like this like sort of capitalist
Speaker 3: belief in this need to make good use of your time,
Speaker 3: not to waste time, to spend it wisely, things like that,
Speaker 3: I mean, we even talk about it in these terms.
Speaker 3: And I think time is one of those American narratives
Speaker 3: that I was raised with, right that there's a correct
Speaker 3: usage of time and that you shouldn't you shouldn't be
Speaker 3: wasting it. And I think it was a pressure that
Speaker 3: I felt as I was writing the book itself, right like, oh,
Speaker 3: that should be going faster. I need to be writing faster.
Speaker 3: And I think that that's why that emerged for me,
Speaker 3: as this this thing that kept happening to the characters.
Speaker 3: It was something sort of, you know, that was beyond
Speaker 3: my own like conscious understanding, but it was something that
Speaker 3: was there because it's been there sort of throughout my upbringing.
Speaker 3: And I think in writing this book, I realized that, yeah,
Speaker 3: writing isn't about speed, you know, Like the point isn't
Speaker 3: to write a book as fast as I can possibly
Speaker 3: write it. The point is deepening thoughts and coming back
Speaker 3: to a text day over day, in part because you
Speaker 3: come to it as a different person each time. You know,
Speaker 3: you're slightly changed. And the person that I am, you
Speaker 3: know now sitting here with you, is so different from
Speaker 3: the person that I was when I began the book.
Speaker 3: And I think a novel, especially for me as a writer.
Speaker 3: It helps me sort of work through thoughts that I have,
Speaker 3: questions that I have, and then it sort of documents
Speaker 3: my evolving views. It helps me figure out what I'm
Speaker 3: even thinking or what my answers to certain questions are,
Speaker 3: even though they might shift. I guess writing a novel
Speaker 3: is a deeply inefficient use of one's time. You know,
Speaker 3: often I would I would write a page out and
Speaker 3: then the next day I would sit down and realize, oh,
Speaker 3: this is all actually terrible and I need to delete
Speaker 3: it all. It's one of the most inefficient things you
Speaker 3: could do with your time, and within capitalism, it's not
Speaker 3: something that you know is logical or productive or any
Speaker 3: of those things. And so I think because of that,
Speaker 3: I think it's it's a good thing to do. Like
Speaker 3: we should all, you know, find ways to sort of
Speaker 3: resist that that sort of imposition on us that we
Speaker 3: just need to be cogs in this capitalist machine. I
Speaker 3: think it matters that we waste time and we think
Speaker 3: about things for a long time.
Speaker 2: Well, I for one, am colossally grateful that you've given
Speaker 2: over to those inefficiencies and the logical ways to spend
Speaker 2: your time, and look forward to you continuing to do
Speaker 2: so for many years to come. Many thanks for joining us.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. This is such a pleasure.
Speaker 2: Rachel Kong's Real Americans is available at all Good bookstores.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to another special episode
Speaker 1: of Read This. As always, if you want to dive
Speaker 1: further into Read This, you can search for it wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to podcasts. There are more than seventy episodes
Speaker 1: in the archive for you to enjoy. See you next week.