Good Life Project - How to Live with Wonder and Write With Truth | Shobha Rao

Episode Date: March 26, 2019

At the age of seven, Shobha Rao (https://shobharaowrites.com/about/) moved from India to the United States and found herself in a world of wonder and discovery that's never left her.In fact, as we'd discover in today's conversation, she is so committed to presence and wonder, her cellphone has no internet, nor does she ever use her camera. And, when she teaches students, she invites them to have their heart's broken by leaving their phones at the door.Obsessed with books, Rao eventually became a writer, won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Fiction, and her story “Kavitha and Mustafa” was chosen by T.C. Boyle for inclusion in Best American Short Stories 2015. Her latest book, Girls Burn Brighter (https://amzn.to/2VFe0S1), is a heartbreaking and eye-opening exploration of friendship, sisterhood, patriarchy and the boxes society often seeks to put people in.Rao is currently the 2018 Grace Paley Teaching Fellow at The New School in New York City.-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So how does somebody who came to the United States at the age of seven from India, got an undergraduate degree in engineering, and then went to law school and practiced law, end up being a writer, a novelist, writing really powerful literary novels about deeply complex things? Well, that is exactly the journey of my guest today, Shobha Rao. It was a pleasure to really sort of explore this entire journey. Her latest book, Girls Burn Brighter, is a really powerful, provocative, raw look at the experience of women, in particular women of color, and the lives that they live in different countries and what sometimes happens when they come here.

While it is a novel, it speaks to a lot of very real things that happen out in the world. We spend most of our time tracing Shobha's journey from India through the early days here, her absolute love affair with literature and books and language, and how she then made the decision

to explore engineering and then law and become a strong advocate for women and how that has all informed her as a writer and actually why she then made the jump to become a full-time writer and a novelist and now a teacher as well. Really excited to share Shobha Rao and her really beautiful journey. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what's the difference between me and you? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. You are on the tail end or a couple months after. Gripping, upsetting, provocative book is out that we will talk about a little bit further into the conversation also. Okay. Career as a writer, teacher. I want to take a big step back in time and figure out, like, where'd you come from? Where does all of your explorations, your writing, all this interest come from?

You were born originally in India. That's right. Yeah. So I was born in India. I'm actually from South India, but I was born in North India where my dad was teaching. And I was in India until about the age of seven. And then we moved to the United States. Tell me about your family a little bit in the early days in India.

Well, you know, it was kind of an idyllic childhood. It was a college. It was a bigger town called Kanpur. And my dad worked at one of the premier engineering was run by the university for the children of the professors and staff. And I remember a very sort of earthy childhood. Right. So playing in the dirt and collecting little berries off the trees and, you know, upsetting the insects. So and making little clay figurines to play with. So it was kind of a very sort of of the earth and quite bucolic in some ways,

even though it was in a larger town. My existence felt really protected and insular and quite forested in a lot of ways. Yeah, that's beautiful. What happens when you're around seven that actually brings your family to the U.S. then? So my father got a fellowship at NASA. He's an engineer. Got it.

And so we moved for a one-year fellowship, and that became sort of extended into a longer and then a longer and longer stay. Okay. So you're seven years old. Yes. Your dad comes home from work one day and says, Shoba, I have some news. How does that land with you at that age?

You know, I don't recall the moment that, you know, it was announced to me or that, you know, I was made aware that we were moving to America. But I do remember the feeling of it, right? More than the moment of it. So I remember thinking that we were going to go on a grand adventure and I had no idea where America was. Like, you know, I must have looked at a map, but I don't recall. All I remember thinking is or understanding is that here was India and then there was a creek that kind of flowed between the two countries.

And then on the other side of the creek. Metaphorically kind of true, right? Well, indeed. And that holds for anywhere in the world, right? There's just a body of water between us, you know, any two places or maybe any two people as well. So that was my image that I carried into America, truly. And nobody sort of disabused me of it, which I'm thankful for, right? Because it just didn't feel as dramatic or that it didn't, I didn't realize I was leaving behind a life and a country.

You know, it just felt kind of seamless and, you know. Like it was just an adventure to a new place. Exactly. Exactly. So where did you actually, where was the first place that your family landed? In Hampton, Virginia, where Langley, NASA Langley is. Got it. Yeah.

What was that like for you? Did you speak English at that point? You know, not very well. In fact, I might have just known a few words, really, because we were taught in Hindi, which is the national language in India. And then my family, our mother tongue is Telugu, which is a South Indian language of Andhra Pradesh, which is where we're from. And so those were the dominant languages in my childhood. Certainly, English was ever present. And I did study it. And, you know, India was colonized by the British. So it's kind of the unofficial and was, I should say, the unofficial predominant language. But I don't remember really knowing that much. I feel like all of it I learned after arriving. What I do recall, we got here in January. So it was cold. So you were in Virginia in January?

Yes. Coming from southern India, which is the warmest part of the country. But still that kind of bitter cold, I was completely unaware of. I had no idea how to deal with it. But as a child, what sort of was just a revelation was snow. I remember the first time it started falling. It must have just been a few days after we got there. And I just ran out into it. I was in no way equipped to deal with the snow.

I had no mittens, not even proper socks, let alone like a hat and all that. And yet I just stood in the magnificence of this thing falling from the sky that was so perfect and just,. It's just as if it's just a sort of, I don't know, a miraculous sort of gift that's just floating down from the sky. I mean, how is it even possible? I still wonder. I love the sort of embrace of the childlike wonder around it. Yeah. I still kind of feel the same way, actually. And funny enough, I have a teenage daughter.

And when it snows out, like the minute it starts to legitimately snow in New York, she's like, Dad, we need to be outside. There's something about it. Yes. And do you? Oh, absolutely. And I'm not, if I feel like, if you are not just completely in awe of snow, then I'm suspicious of you. I mean, I just, I just don't understand how you can just take it for granted and be like, oh, it's snowing. You know, I feel like there's such a stillness and such a profound silence that takes over the world and then just

sort of just drifts down. And I was here when it snowed, I think a couple of days before Thanksgiving. And I just, I must have spent hours just sitting by the window and then running out and then running back in and sitting by the window and then just doing this constant sort of embrace of snow. It's amazing. Were you a kid who was in touch with wonder? That's a fine question. Yes, I do believe so. I don't think I've ever had much of a choice in the matter. Wonder seems something that's wired into me, like just a state of wonder. Walking here, after I came up out of the subway stop, I saw this tree along Central Park West that all its leaves had fallen off and the limbs were completely bare except it had these red berries studded along its limbs. I just stared at it. I'm like, how beautiful. Like you've lost all of your other clothing and then you, yet you retain this

beautiful little bulbs of, you know, a kind of a blistering red. It was just lovely. And I just stopped. It just stopped me in my tracks. And how can we be fully human? How can we fully be human if we don't have a deep, enduring appreciation of the everyday wonder? Then it's just a very sad way to live, a sad way to get through the day. I couldn't agree with you more. And yet, we live at a time where the pace of life seems to only get faster and our heads seem to be increasingly just buried in whatever devices in any given hand for whatever free time. It's funny. I catch myself waiting, you know, like on any given line in New York City.

And I am now trained. So like as soon as, you know, like there's a pause, you know, like I feel myself reaching for something. And I keep – I'm trying to be really mindful and intentional and say just put it back in your pocket. Let go of the impulse. Deep breathe through it, whatever I need to do. The urge will pass. The addiction is real, but I'll be okay. And just kind of like look around. Just take in the moment because there's something about it that's different than every other moment.

And if we don't actually just pause to observe it, it's gone. And it's not like, I think so many people go on journeys in search of wonder. Yeah. Only to discover it's all around us every moment of every day. Oh, absolutely. And one of the greatest decisions I ever made was not to get a smartphone. So to this day, I don't have a smartphone. Are you like the old school flip phone or something?

Well, actually, I ended up just walking into the AT&T store and saying, what is your free phone? What is the cheap one, the free one? And so they just handed me, it actually looks like it's a smartphone, but there's no data plan. That decision alone has been like a saving grace of sorts. And I do mean grace, you know, because I feel like I am more connected to what's going on around me. You know, if I'm sitting on a subway or at the subway stop, I'm looking.

You know, I'm looking like we used to look, you know? And not to romanticize a kind of past in which perhaps we were more disconnected with what was going on in the world or the sort of ways in which people were much more aware of how people are being treated and the traumas and the, you know, wars. And, you know, we have the visuals now, we have the Internet and, you know, there's a power in the knowing and the seeing. But on the other hand, there's also an incredible amount of engagement with ourselves and with the world that's lost if we're constantly

staring at the phone. And so the world's actually in a lovely, still in that lovely sort of slowness for me. And, you know, I don't, I don't, I think the only time I've wished for a phone is maybe one, a smartphone, I should say, is once when I was perhaps lost driving and I didn't have any directions. But once in, you know, what, 10 years is not enough. It's like you have to do that horrible, awful thing, which is ask somebody. Oh, my God, a stranger. And I do. I stop at gas stations and ask.

But how amazing is it also that my mind is spinning on like all this or like, okay, where do you take this from here? Because it's like, okay, so not only do you come out of the subway and see this beautiful barren tree, but somehow like populated by all these beautiful red berries. But instead of if you had a smartphone in your pocket and it was something that you activated and interacted with all day, very likely that your next instinct would be, what filter will I use to capture this and then post it on Instagram? So instead of going into like that analytical, how do I capture and share this? How do I make it look good? You're just sitting there and saying, how beautiful. Jonathan, I didn't even think of taking out my phone and taking a picture. I love that you were speaking and it just didn't occur to me. I don't have Instagram. It just didn't occur to me. happening in our world is, you know, you wonder, what does it exist for? Does it exist to just be, you know, to just be gazed upon? Or does it exist to be sort of disseminated through social media

and get and accrue likes and, you know, whatever. And so I am of the former camp, you know, just gays. I am too, but I'm still fighting. I keep swearing to, I keep swearing, I am going to give up my smartphone, just go back to an old school flip phone. And in fact, I have increasing number of friends who are doing exactly that. And they have people around them who kind of know if there's something urgent where I really need to be reached. There are people who know how to get in touch with them or pass critical information to them. Of course. Yeah. But they just want to be there to observe the world and only the work that they want to do and do it at the highest possible level and feel fully expressed and present in that.

And they also know and are very aware of the fact that they cannot – they don't have the self-regulation to resist it if it's there with them. I'm the same way. I'm raising my hand right there. So they literally just – they change the environment. They just remove the device from their environment. That's right. And it's like a deep awareness that's required to say, you know what, I'm going to cut this umbilical cord. You know, it's not needed. which is really all it is, right? Fundamentally, when we remove that distraction from our sort of everyday life.

And, you know, there's also the sense that I get from friends or, you know, just observing in the world that the people think that things will be lost, right? If they don't sort of capture it in the moment, that rainbow or that, you know, dog doing that very cute thing. And I'm a firm believer that nothing is lost, that it enters our consciousness and it somehow will deeply sort of exist inside of us. And that it is nothing is lost right and certainly as a writer i've found that when i am writing i conjure up images from decades ago that i you know i haven't thought about or um i find that an event or a conversation will come back to me and shape the writing. And so I know, I know that nothing is lost. And I trust in that. I trust in it to inform my writing

and inform my journey as a human being. Yeah. Couldn't agree with you more. Yeah. My sense is that if something is, if something is powerful enough to move you, to change you, then it stays with you. But it only stays with you if you give it your present awareness on the level where you're moved emotionally. Because then it embeds itself, like it becomes embodied. Yes. And we know through science now that the more there's emotion in the context of a circumstance or an event, the more it's burned into your memory.

The more there's recall. If you're at a concert and you've got your cell phone up in the air and your main thing is like, let me record this for my friends, maybe now you're 50% emotionally present because now you're just focused on taping and doing all this stuff. It's almost like you're not allowing yourself the ability to emotionally invest in the experience on a level which will allow you to be moved and to be changed and for you to recall it.

Absolutely. more of your senses that are engaged, the better the chances and the better the level of observation and the level of internalization, right? So if I had actually reached out and touched the berries, I probably would have remembered it even more. If I had smelled them, if I had tasted them. I don't know about tasting them. In New York City, maybe somewhere else, but that's always a really dangerous move. Understood. Point well taken.

But, you know, I mean, the more of our senses that we can engage in any given moment, the more it'll penetrate our deepest self. Yeah. And I live by that. So now I'm really curious because we're going to talk about this and then jump back in time. But let's go there while it's sort of in my mind. One of the things you're doing right now is teaching freshmen in college who have come up basically attached to a device and largely detached from the world around them. So how do you as a teacher, where and part of your, you know, whether you're teaching writing or, you know, another subject area, your lens is clearly like, let's all get present. Let's get real. Let's be here now. How do you I'm so curious, how do you as a teacher in the classroom as a professor, how do you navigate that these days? So there's a couple of things that come to mind. So the first thing is on the first

day, I, you know, we all gathered in the class and I said, look, here's the deal. I, and this is true, I read a study that said, and I'm not sure I can't cite it right now, that said that when people had their cell phones taken away from them, the same sort of neurons were activated when a lover left the room or when, you know, they fell out of love or when a lover exited their life. And I found that shocking and I said, here's what we're going to do. We're going to leave our cell phones in our bag and we're going to come to this class with our hearts broken. And let's start there. And they all just looked at me. Right. And they were.

But I saw something flicker. You know, I saw them think, yeah, let's do that. Let's be here. Right. And that was my way of saying, come vulnerable, come without the phone. Right. The second thing is that, you know, certainly every now and then one of the kids would like sneak the little, you know, text to a friend or whatever. But mostly, I committed to conducting a class that was captivating enough, that was engaging enough, that was demanding

enough that they didn't have the time, they didn't think about the phone, right? That sort of conversation that's so, that's asking so much of them, that's asking for so much of their presence. And I, and I made, I tried to make sure of that every time we walked into class, you know, I said, let's, let's, you know, talk about this non-Western woman's life and let's get into it. Let's peel off the layers. I mean, be with me here, because you can't come on this journey with me if you're sort of here or kind of here, or some of you is here. All of you must be here because this is a human life. And the only way to understand life is to give of all of yours to it, you know, truly. And so I, I, you know, I don't know if I demanded it or if I, if I demanded of them or if I demanded it of

myself that we make class time so robust that there is no room for that cell phone. So that was the two sort of, you know, ways I approached it. And by and large, they were there. Yeah. San's cell phone. Right. I guess it kind of becomes self-selecting pretty quickly. Yeah, for sure. You're either in or you're going to drop.

Yeah. Exactly. But if you're in, you're in. Like, you know the rules. The rules of the game are clear. There's a reverence for the moment and the material, and that's how we roll're in, you're in. Like, you know, the rules, the rules of the game are clear. There's a reference for the moment and the material. And that's how we roll. Yes, that's right.

And in a lot of ways, I think maybe because they are so comfortable with the phone that perhaps they understand. This is this is conjecture on my part, but they understood that there's a time to put it away. Right. And there's a there is a time for it, but there's also a time to put it away. And I remember they were doing their final projects about a non-Western woman in their life. And so many of them chose to pull up this individual's Instagram account and show pictures that way. And I thought, well, here we are. We're now reentering this, you know, social media world. But that's great because

they're saying, here's this woman who lives in Saudi Arabia. Look at her Instagram. And that's how they're connecting. While at the same time, they're able to put it away when needed. So maybe they have a healthier relationship with it. That is my obviously insanely naive hope. But perhaps. But I mean, I wonder about that. I wonder if it really is naive. I wonder, I have this sense that we're walking around looking for somebody to not only give us permission, but demand. They create a space that requires us to put that thing down. Years ago, I ran a yoga studio, and we had a kid yoga program. We had tiny little kids in a yoga class. And at the end of every class, the teacher would have them all lie

on a little mini yoga mat in a circle with their feet in the middle and little beanbag sandbag things on their eyes. And they would just lie there, you know, for a solid five to seven minutes. And I remember, not infrequently, the parents would get there a little bit early to pick up the kid and they would look, peek into the room and they would look at us and they're like, what have you done to my child? Like, are you, are they drugged? What's, they're like, how, how is it possible that they're laying there just completely at peace, relaxed, without any stimuli?

And we're like, because we created the environment where we just said, this is what we do now. And it was almost like they were waiting for somebody to say, this is how, this is the moment. This is what you do. And I almost wonder if we're so jacked up on connectivity right now and we don't have the capacity to sort of create that space ourselves. So when somebody else says, okay, this is the moment, you're probably on the surface you're grumbly, but underneath it you're like, oh, cool.

Thank you. God, I wonder if we yearn for it. I think we might, certainly. I hope we do. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's such a human thing to want that connectedness, the actual physical, you know, feet in the middle, the beanbag on the eyes. I mean, all of that is so necessary. You know, staring at a screen is not necessary, right? And so when that necessary thing presents itself, offers itself, perhaps it's all we vaked for, you know? Yeah. here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether

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You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. So we kind of moved forward pretty quickly. Let's back up a little bit and we'll trace our way back to the current. When last we had visited, you had arrived in Virginia, you're seven years old, and you're making your way as a kid.

Having some sort of basic language, but also what's it like sort of like being thrown into a school surrounded by a whole bunch of new kids, completely different culture, too, because it sounds like there was no preparation on how sort of like American culture is different. It's just like, OK, here you go. Right. You know, I have to tell you, I don't I was in a public school. But what was extraordinary, certainly even at the time, but certainly in retrospect, is that they assigned, this public school assigned my sister and I a teacher who would pull us out of the English lesson, right, when the rest of the class was doing the English lesson. And she would teach us English. I mean, almost for me, my sister's older, so she knew more English. But certainly for me, it felt like the ground up with the alphabet and, you know. And I cannot imagine that without that teaching, without her commitment and I still remember her face, her smile and her encouragement.

I don't know if I would have fallen in love with the languages I have. And it was such a, it was just an amazing gesture to offer us, you know, my, you know, we were emigrated to the country and it was a public school. I can't imagine they would have that much funding. And yet they gave us that, that teacher. And, you know, she really dedicated that hour or two, whatever it was, to truly allowing space for me a, you know, universe unto itself for me. And I have not stopped since. I have a book with me at all times. There is not a single day I can recall when I haven't been reading at some point in some book, usually fiction.

So have there been books that you feel have been really pivotal in you and your life and your lens on the world? Certainly. So the first book I recall reading in the United States was The Lost on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Yeah. In that book, I saw a little bit of myself. Oddly, right? But here, I mean, I really, i can't remember exactly but i think laura was as well in the book about six or seven so about the same age as me and here she is you know sort of a new world yeah traveling in a wagon and i happened to arrive on a plane it made no difference we were just both on new land in a new country you know and so I recognize a lot of myself in her so I turned I've turned to that book many times in my life and I think I find it that it was quite formative

so that's the earliest book I can recall and then as an achievers yeah you have to just get through it get to the other side and then I am now I feel like I'm quite dedicated to reading a lot of translated work and a lot of non-American, non-Western literature just to see the breadth and diversity of how people tell stories, how they see the world, how they envision a better one or a worse one. I mean, all these things change dramatically when you change the lens from Western to non-Western, right? Or even non-English, you know, anything translated. So it's been a great, great journey. And I'm sure as I go on in my life, this, my reading tastes will evolve, hopefully, along with the years. Yeah. Do you have a sense for whether the fact that you come from India to the U.S. gives you the realization that, okay, so now I'm reading all the prescribed stuff that everybody reads, you know,

Steinbeck's and that many ways, like Canon of White Men, that because of your young upbringing and because of your family, that you, an ingrained deep awareness that, yes, but there's so much more out there. Like you just, you, you had the experience of knowing that this is not the way that like it is done, but this is just one representative sample of the way it can be done. Indeed. And I think, um, what I appreciated about the canon of white men was that, you know,

on a sentence level, you know, you'd hit a sentence and think, oh, this is what literature can do. This is what words can do. Right. So deep appreciation on the sentence level and what they were doing with language and all of that. But there existed in me a sense that they're not telling my story. I don't recognize myself in this guy sitting in a bullfight in Spain or this guy, you know, swimming through the suburban, you know, Westchester community through all the swimming pools, you know. I mean, I don't recognize myself in this. I appreciate it on the level of artistry and language, but not as speaking to my story, to my reality, even my imagination, right?

I wanted a story that spoke to my very unique flavor of loneliness. My growing up a girl in the world and a brown one at that. And what are the things I'm going to have to fight for that I am fighting for? And why don't I see it in these books? And that's, I think, the richness of literature is the discovery of that voice, finally, that speaks to you, to your story. When do you start to reach into that side of literature? When do you start to find those stories? Because it sounds like it was probably something that you had to then take on yourself. I think, you know, I can't name a book, but I do know that reading Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye, right? Certainly, you know, still very beautifully off the Western canon. But, you know, finally, here was a little girl that

I thought, oh, okay, now it's not a man, you know, middle aged man anymore, white man anymore. Here is a girl who's lost, speaking to another girl who's lost. And from that, and, you know, even sort of Harper Lee with To Kill a Mockingbird, you know, Scout, I mean, in some ways spoke to me about what it is to discover a world that's not quite right and not quite good to those that don't fit the ideal of the male white gaze, right? And so the more girls, the more women, the more melanin that entered my life, the more the world started becoming richer and more familiar and recognizable to me through literature. And that's, you know, I don't necessarily,

I should say, now I just read everything, right? So I read everything from Roberto Bolaño to Alfredo Jelinek to, you know, Kamala Markandeya. I mean, I just read whatever I can get my hands on. And I enjoy the pleasure of arriving into a book almost by chance. But I think that's our only kingdom is what we choose to read. And so I reach far and wide. Yeah, I love that sort of doing this dance between going narrow and deep

and then pulling out and going wide, you know, like going broad and getting this vast expanse of sort of like data and interaction and experience and story and then going narrow and deep and sort of like alternating, like moving. There's this ebb and flow between those two states and the ability to sort of, you know, like go. There's this ebb and flow between those two states and the ability to

sort of, you know, like go into, you know, one or the other is what makes everything okay. But if he gets stuck in one, everything stops working the way it needs to work. Absolutely. And you don't, you don't get the richness of it all. Right. And even like reading Richard Adams, you know, Watership Down, I'm like, why does a rabbit speak to me? You know, why is a rabbit named, you know, Hazel? Why is it, is this rabbit sort of able to access that fight in me, you know, in a way that a human character hasn't yet. So as you're growing up, developing this fierce love of books and literature and exploring different worlds, the obvious choice then is to go to college for engineering. So what happened there?

It was just a very pragmatic. And I think this is a, you know, a huge impulse in immigrant families is to do the pragmatic thing. Right. You've got like a handful of like, okay, career paths. Exactly. Absolutely. Yeah. And understandably so, right? and you want to have all the resources possible to succeed within it because you don't have the sort of infrastructure you would back home, the support of relatives or the culture or whatever. So a little bit unmoored here. And so certainly financial security is a good way of building, of setting down roots and building a life.

And then, of course, from there, the next logical move is law school. You know, I want to say that was driven by really two impulses. One was to, you know, help people, you know. And I thought, what better way to help people than to help them navigate the system that can be quite cruel and quite draconian. And then the other was, I thought they would have a lot more writing in it. And certainly, you know, the law is in some ways a love affair with words. Every law is written, except for perhaps moral law.

Intentionally, ambiguously. Exactly. Certainly. And it does have a lot of writing, but it was obviously not creative writing, which is what my heart had wanted and sort of thought, oh, it'll be fine. It still has writing in it, but it didn't quite meet the mark. So you and I actually share, I went to law school and practiced law for- Oh, did you? What kind of law? Five years, securities law.

Oh, the easy stuff. Oh, yeah, real easy. But it was interesting to me, and I'm a writer now also. So it was interesting for me to experience writing in school because I had no early, I wasn't much of a reader when I was young. I wasn't a writer. I had no – I knew that upon reflection, anytime I could take a course in college where my grade was based on writing, I would do that and I would pretty much always do exceptionally well. But it never clicked in me that, oh, maybe this is something to explore.

Like maybe there's some affinity or ability there. So when I went to law school and I was exposed to, it's very formulaic, you know, like the, yes, you're right. But, you know, I still remember, you know, like the, you know, like issue rule application, application conclusion. It's like, here's the formula. Do this on everything you write and all will be right in the world. That's right. Yes. Yes. And I remember I said, okay, I get it. It's a game. I'll memorize a formula. I'll master the formula.

I did that. I did well. And then I got out and I started practicing and the writing was all still the same. And I was like, oh my God, can I just split an infinitive? You know, can I, can I, it was, it felt so stifling. I said, I was so, I was grateful for, you know, the education. I was grateful for learning how to deconstruct and construct rational arguments and understand these things and for understanding how to put together words in a way that was logical

and progressive. And precise. And precise. Yeah. Or sometimes very like intentionally not precise. You're right. But always with purpose. And as soon as I could stop doing that,

I was the happiest person in the world. That's great. No, I had a similar experience. You know, one moment I remember is when I was writing, I don't know, memoranda of some sort. And I was like, wait, and I had a sentence. And the managing attorney was like, you have to cite the case law to support the sentence. And I'm like, oh, I do? I'm like, but it's such a pretty sentence. Like, can't we just leave it? You know, and it's, and it was like, no.

But you say it out loud. The rhythm is perfect. And I was like, oh, you know, maybe this is not this is not going to fulfill that writing bug in me. So, yeah, it it dawned on me. But at the same time, like you said, that that wasn't you had your two reasons. One was the writing, but the other was it seemed like there was a very strong activist cause that was really sort of rising up in you and saying, I need to be of service to a particular population of people in a particular way. Yeah. And I, and I, you know, sort of sought that out in my work and eventually ended up being a legal advocate for victims of domestic violence. And that was, I mean, I can't even begin to tell you how fulfilling and traumatic that was. But it, in fact, was also the most life-affirming, absolutely humbling, exhilarating job of my life. I would meet women, and they were most often women,

who were being abused by their intimate partners, husbands, and just to witness their resilience, their generosity, the warmth that they managed to retain in the face of, you know, daily unpredictable violence perpetrated by those who are supposed to love them. You know, I knew immediately what I needed to write and for whom I was writing it, every single word. Tell me more. You know, I thought so much of literature, it seemed that I had read and certainly written the one books written by men, you know, either the woman was a sexual object or she was not. She was fetishized or she was not. So many seem to fit into this binary, right? the just superhuman strength that women display on a daily basis, whether in the middle of New York City or in a refugee camp in Yemen.

It just seemed to me that women almost casually carry around courage and bravery in the face of just horrific violence and trauma, and yet managed to keep houses together, managed to raise children, managed to bring love forth into the world. And that is what I wanted to document almost. And I didn't want to flinch in writing about what I see is the truth of many women's lives. When you write that kind of book, who are you writing to? Foremost to myself, to give myself the courage, right? And then I think in the hope that as literature did for me, that sort of one turns to, right, time and time again and thinks, I'm not alone. I'm not alone in this. And that seems to be the greatest task of literature

is to make us feel less alone in the world. And literature did that for me. And if one of my books can do that for one person, that's a life well lived for myself as a writer. Yeah. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot.

Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. It's interesting. I'm thinking of your newest book girls burn brighter and um you know what's i mean beyond the beauty of the craft that goes into it and the depth um you know beautiful storytelling there is you know this is this is very raw this is very real and you know it's whole no punches it's like this is the reality of certain people, especially of certain color skin in certain parts of the world, certain genders. And it's interesting also because you navigate two different worlds.

You start in one world and then navigate to the Western world. When you're writing a book like this, how do you know how far to go? There's a whole Tibetan saying. I don't know an actual Tibetan, but I think it translates something like this far and no further. And it's an internal sense, right, that I will go this far and no further. And it's not just my journey through the book and into the lives of the characters, but a sort of keen awareness of how far I can take the reader into a moment of incredible violence or incredible distress. And when I lose them, right, if I go further, then I'll lose them. And so it's, you know, a very sensitive sort of trigger inside. And it's individual to each writer, right? But it's a very delicate trigger, which tells me, okay, this is good, because you're not, you know,

the violence isn't being fetishized, it's not being exploited. But I have to know that I'm not, that I am honoring the story, that I'm honoring what's happening to these girls, and that I'm not going to look away because it's getting a little difficult or because it's getting a little dark. Because as you say, this is the reality for many, many women and girls in the world. And yet I'm writing to readers who I want to give agency to imagine the rest. And I think that's how we engage the reader, right, is to leave just enough out so that they're prompted, their imaginations are fired up by the writing. So again, I think every writer walks that line. And arguably, I've shifted into a darker kind of territory in some ways, but that is where we're truly revealed. I think that's how characters become human. And yeah, I think it's during

the moments when we're cornered that we show our true selves. And so I want to corner my characters. Hmm. And yourself? Um, you know, that's certainly, yeah. Em. Yeah, I don't put myself into dangerous physical situations, but I do take great chances emotionally, I think, and thereby spiritually. And I don't shy away from a kind of vulnerability that could be dangerous, I find it to be necessary. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. I think it feels like it also, you know, it depends upon how any person who is in the creative domain, what they see the role is. You know, I know people who see their role purely as the provocateur and shatterer. I need to break the glass.

My job is to allow you to see as clearly as possible the reality of the world around you. Even if it's horrendous, even if it's horrifying. And then let you figure out from there. My job is not to to, is just to remove the illusion.

And I think everybody feels like my job as a writer, yes, I care about language, I care about the craft, I care about story. But, you know, one of the things that I've experienced in having so many amazing conversations over the years is even in a conversation like this, if I'm having a conversation and somebody way where the listener can fully understand it and yet still feel safe in the conversation, still feel safe in the listening experience, the work has been done. But there's a line where you cross where the listener no longer feels safe. And at that point,

they shut down. And I wonder if you feel like there's a similar line in writing in the written work. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, the line is constantly shifting, right? Like the borders between countries are constantly shifting. And I think part of the writer's task is to keep pushing against that border and keep and constant, you know, perhaps just the borders of the heart. I mean, then just say, let me in a little bit deeper into it. Let me, let me access the dangerous places. Right. And ultimately, that's what a good story does, right? It swells our hearts. It allows more blood to gush through it, you know?

And thereby, more feeling for ourselves and our fellow man, right? And that is a good story. And every great story, novel, short story, that poem I've read has enriched me in ways that makes me just shiver with incredible gratitude and pleasure. And sentences have done that. Words have done that, right? The right word in the right place can be ennobling. So yeah, I want to honor the border by pushing against it

and saying we can be greater. We can be more vast, right? We can open ourselves up to more of the world. I think, I mean, you mentioned earlier that, you know, one of the great things that literature does is it sort of, it reconnects us to our own humanity. That's what I heard, not necessarily your words. No, that's exactly right, though, yeah.

And what I hear you saying also is that it also, you know, like it reconnects us to the humanity in others, allows us to see ourselves in others, too, which, man, do we need at this moment in our history. Absolutely. And, you know, we've certainly always needed it. It's just become much more. It's gone into crisis mode, right? This need to not demonize the other, to see ourselves. If you look into the eyes of another, you cannot but recognize something of yourself. And it's not enough to read it about others in a tweet or to see them on a screen or to, you know, have them all lumped into this desperate, you know, flow of humanity just trying to destroy our country or something. We are all deeply connected.

And to not know that is to deny the greatest truth, right? And I can't imagine what it is that allows us to look away from a piece of news like a seven-year-old dying in one of the, you know, migrant camps, cages along the U.S. border. If we look away, we've lost ourselves utterly. That's just today's news. But I think part of the answer is in exactly that. The cycle has become so rapid that the risk is that we become, as Pink Floyd famously said, comfortably numb. Because of the exposure therapy.

Exposure therapy, when you're trying to move through something which is causing you anxiety and pain, which should not be, is a good thing. But exposure therapy in the context of something which should continue to cause great distress and slowly removes the experience of distress is not a good thing because then you don't respond. Then you feel like you either just become so, you know, like you give up because you feel like nothing can be done or, I mean, in the context of zooming the lens back out and the idea of like you as a writer and the role of literature in moments like this. It's interesting, too, because it feels like I wonder if, you know, when I think of great writing of great books of great literature, I also think, you know, of longer than 140 characters or 280 characters now vastly expanded, right? And I sometimes wonder, you know, like, is, am I just like a stuffy old dude who is like, well, you know, to really have the richness of the storytelling, be moved to the point where I can see myself in letters and all the yada yada, you know, I need a long, deep,

you know, beautifully conveyed piece. Or like, can you, is there a way to accommodate, you know, dramatically shortened attention spans these days and learn how to craft language to tell stories? Can you actually create legitimate, can you create words that do the job of true literature in sort of like the moments, the short windows that we have now or that we choose to have now

to consume whatever is put in front of us? Well, you know, I have two thoughts. The one is why must we, right? I mean, why shouldn't we demand looking away from the phone and, you know, reading a book or reading a poem? And, you know, why should we ever relinquish that demand, but also that, you know, asking of another, like just saying, look, this is a true story cannot be encompassed in whatever

you're staring at on the screen. The true story exists between the pages of this book or, you know, between this grove of trees that I ask you to walk through, right? There's that first thought, right? The impulse. But then the second thought is that famous six-word short story, right? The first sale, baby shoes never worn. It's been done. It's got everything in those six words.

Exactly. So it's been done. It will continue to be done. It's just harder to put an arc and a plot and, you know, all the elements of good storytelling into a shorter piece, which is why, you know, writing short stories is a uniquely difficult journey versus a novel, which is difficult in different ways. But the shortened base forces the language to be more precise. And the shorter and shorter it gets, the more weight, the more gravity each word has to embody and encompass. So certainly it can be done. But why must we? Why can't we just, again, the naivete, right? Why can't we read? Is it naivete or is it clear thinking?

I'm going to vote for the latter. I would too. I would too. As you sort of, you know, you've taught over the years different things. As we sit here today, this is the first time you're actually teaching in a sort of semester-long structured college format. So moving from spending like a tremendous number of hours in your mind, in your own world, writing and creating to this very structured academic environment where you've got, you know, like a room full of wide-eyed freshmen sitting there. Do you have a hope for how your students will be changed during your time with them? And if so, what might it be?

Funny that you ask, because one of my students came to office hours, about like mid-semester, and I'm not aware of any of the students in my class being creative writing majors, right? They're freshmen. Most of them don't know what they're going to major in. This is a required class, right? And they're taking it. That's all great. But this one student came to me somewhere in the middle and she said, you know, it's not what necessarily, you know, each of the books that we're reading or the articles. And it's just the way your face lights up when you're talking about literature. And she said, you just become luminous. And, you know, of course, I'm just giddy because, you know, like, of course, literature.

I mean, the minute I start talking about it, I'm just so just so thrilled. And I think I realized after that talk with her that that is what I want to convey to them, right? That you can be passionately engaged with an art form. That it can provide meaning and shape to your life. That that is a life well lived. And that it doesn't matter what it is, that passion, as long as it's feeding you, as long as it's, you know, you're living a life filled with inspiration and awe. That is what passion, that is what art can do. You don't have to pick mine, right? You don't have to pick literature, but pick something because you

can light up a room. You can light up a life with that kind of engagement, passionate engagement with something outside of yourself, with something that you can create. And if that's all I've quote unquote taught them, if all they get out of this is this memory of this woman sitting there lighting up the room with her love of literature, that that is possible in 2018, you know, then I consider myself having succeeded. It's funny because I was just going to come full circle and ask you what it means to you to live a good life. But I think you just answered the question. I think I might have. I hope I have. Yeah. Thank you so much. It's been my pleasure. Thank you so much for listening.

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getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary.