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What! The Heys
Welcome to the ‘What! The Heys’ podcast that tears the cover off the writing world! Whether you're a seasoned author, an aspiring novelist, or just a lover of great stories, I’m here to demystify the writing craft, explore the publishing industry, dive deep into the books we can't stop thinking about, and chat with amazing guests from across the literary universe. Get ready for a conversation that's as passionate and unpredictable as a plot twist. Let's get into it.
If you’re interested in my writing you can also check out my blog:
https://heyswolfenden.blogspot.com/?m=1
My Middle Grade/YA novel, ‘Jack Strong and the Red Giant’:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00M22USRE?*Version*=1&*entries*=0
My collection of poetry, ‘Made in China: 50 Sonnets on Modern China’:
What! The Heys
#14 How To Write A Memoir Absurdly Well: An Interview With Curtis Chin
Curtis Chin is the author of the coming of age/coming out memoir, 'Everything I learned, I learned In A Chinese Restaurant' about his upbringing in Detroit in the 1980s. He also writes screenplays for TV and is currently working on a new documentary about Chinese cuisine. I recently had the privilege to sit down with him and discuss a wide range of issues including the themes in his work and his love and admiration of Chinese food culture worldwide.
If you like this episode you can check out my novel:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00M22USRE?*Version*=1&*entries*=0
And my poetry collection, ‘Made in China’:
Hi everybody, welcome to another episode of What the Haze. I'm your host, Hayes Wolfenden, and here I've got the guest, Curtis Chen. Okay. Welcome, Curtis. Can you tell everybody a little bit about yourself first, please?
SPEAKER_00:Hey Hayes. Thank you so much for inviting me to be on your show. I'm really excited to be here. A little bit about myself. Well, my day job is I write TV and film, but for this particular podcast, because it's about writing, I actually would love to talk about my memoir that I wrote during COVID and which I was lucky enough to sell to one of the big five publishers. And it's a book called Everything I Learned. I learned in a Chinese restaurant. And to support the book, I've actually given over 330 book talks in nine countries. And so it's just been a really exciting adventure.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it sounds it. Yeah, those book talks, are there any book talks that has like stood out for you in the main? Like anything that's like being maybe well received, or or you found it very interesting, or the audience stood out for you anyway?
SPEAKER_00:Well, you know, so I so those 330 that I've done is spread over like two years. So I literally was doing an event every night. And inevitably you're gonna get a lot of the same questions, you know. But I will have to say that that there's a whole bunch of different ones for different reasons. Like, for instance, uh I did about 30 book talks actually in Chinese restaurants, right? Because the name of the book is Everything I Learned, I learned in a Chinese restaurant. I just thought it'd be fun to sort of do a reading in a book in a Chinese restaurant, where instead of me actually talking about my book, I actually just interviewed the owners and I talked to them about their journey. And it was just a really nice reparte between these people. And it was a chance for them to tell their stories. And we sold books, and uh actually we sold just as many books when I did those events as when I went to a bookstore. You know, I also did a bunch of things internationally, which was fun. I did Oxford University in the UK, the British Library, I did this uh conference in France in Saint-Étienne. They were doing a whole conference on the city of Detroit, which is where my book is set. So it's just been really, really fun. I do have to say though, that that the type of person that's been great has been seeing a lot of our former customers from our family's restaurant who've come in, but also young kids who's currently working in their family's restaurant or small business and sharing their stories with me too. So it's just been really an incredible journey.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I'll be honest, I started reading your book about a couple of days ago and still pretty early days, like 20 or 30 pages in, but you know, already I'm engrossed. I find actually the language as well, it's quite very smooth. It it tends to flow really well, and like, you know, as they say, a classic page turner, or I'm reading mine on a Kindle, so it kind of flows, and you got flow into the next page. I mean, I'll be honest, one of the things I learned, I mean, like I I, you know, obviously you grew up in Detroit. I had no idea that there was like, you know, a substantial Chinese minority in Detroit. You know, obviously I'm from the UK, I'm living in China. I I wouldn't know that. And even just that alone, I thought was really valuable.
SPEAKER_00:I wouldn't say that it was substantial. It was actually a very small community, but it's a long-term community. I mean, my family arrived there in the late 1800s. Uh, and part of that was because when the Chinese first arrived in America, there was a lot of anti-Chinese sentiment. And for those early immigrants, one of the strategies that they thought was to spread out, right? Like not to congregate in large communities. And because of that, you had people scattering to places in Colorado, Missouri, you know, Michigan, uh, very, very early on, because you're not seen as a threat when there's just a hand, a small handful, then people aren't threatened. It's it's once you start having large numbers that people start to this backlash starts to happen, I think. But to your point about the writing, I actually have a poetry writing degree, and I feel like I wrote the book as a poet, meaning I paid attention to every single word and line and sound. And one of the things I love sharing is the story about when um after we sold the book and we had to go through the editing process, the copy editor for my book, and you know, copy editors have this reputation, right, as being the crankiest, meanest people in in publishing, just because all they do is proofread. My copy editor actually wrote back and said, Please tell Mr. Chen this was a well-written, eye-opening, fascinating memoir. I really enjoyed reading it. And I told all my fellow writers this, right? And they are saying things like, What? My copy editor didn't say bullshit about my book. So it's like, okay, I feel like I did a good job, you know, writing a clean book, which is which is nice and important to me, you know. Because you you do want that flow, you want things to just be effortless.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. And again, what when I'm reading it, I find that like I have that there's that almost like a perfect sense of place. And again, it obviously helps. It's a memoir, you know, you remember, you recall, you know, the environment you grew up in, but especially the restaurants. Like I find myself when you're talking about like different customers, like different ethnicities, I find myself imagining and placing myself there more as an observer than as a guest, and just kind of looking at the different people and thinking, yeah, what what would white people at the time, how exotic would have, you know, this the Chinese food, how would it appeal to them? And especially when that's a positive experience. I was, yeah, just yeah, I was quite enthralled. I'm I'm really looking forward to reading more of it. It's actually giving me an idea as well. Like with these podcasts, I get you know, writing guests on every week. And one of the things I think I might do and start doing, especially when I've got like you know, birthdays and Christmas and stuff, I might start, you know, gifting, you know, buying books and stuff and giving it to other people for presents. And this is one like on my that's on my radar because like my mom, my mum and dad visited China a few times to visit me. But my mom, all she reads these days is second world war books. Okay. I don't think that's healthy. I don't think that's I and I've tried to you should read novels, you should you should read something a bit different because just reading about you know German tank commanders over and over again, I don't know. I doesn't I can do it a little bit, but not all the time.
SPEAKER_00:Some family trauma.
SPEAKER_02:Nostalgia. A lot of British people get it when they get beyond a certain age, maybe over 70, over 65. And you know, especially you know, white people, especially. My grandma had it as well, probably about the same age, started kicking in. Um it's not and it's not a universal thing. My dad's like he just wants to read about nature and stuff, so he doesn't care. Uh, but it's it's that's the kind of book I think if I got for my mum, I think it would be actually very good. So uh I've definitely got that in mind. So it's giving me a great idea. You're in the UK and you've got yeah, you mentioned doing the talking. Oh, I'm from near Manchester, it's a small town called Burnley. So yeah, and it makes me think about you mentioned Chinese restaurants and and and in America and dispersing it. It made me think when you said that like, yeah, in the UK, maybe maybe that was the same. I don't know. I mean, a a lot of the people came I'd have to think about the decades when the sixties, seventies, but a lot of them can be coming earlier, but like in every like town in the UK, even small town, very small towns, you'll have like a Chinese we say like a Chinese chip shop or Chinese, like you know, takeaway takeout. Uh it's it's so interesting. There's one near near where I live in the UK, in a very, very small town. Always busy.
SPEAKER_00:They're pretty universal. Um so because of this book, and this is something that may be useful to your nonfiction listeners, is that at the end of the day, you have to present yourself as an expert on a certain topic, right? And because I've written this book about growing up in a Chinese restaurant, I have suddenly become this expert in Chinese food. And I get so many requests to produce podcasts or write articles about you know the Chinese restaurant experience or get interviewed for it. And so one of the things that I'm working on now is I'm going to uh, you know, I'm working on a documentary on Chinese restaurants around the world because you're right, whether you go to the UK or the US or Canada or Thailand or the Philippines or even Africa, I mean, Chinese restaurants are everywhere, right? And that immigrant experience is very, very similar. You know, I know with the UK, I believe the first Chinatown was in Liverpool because it was more of a port town, you know, and then slowly spread. And you guys have up where you're from, the Manchester area, you guys have the curry chips, you know. So I'm learning all this stuff about regionalism amongst Chinese food too, which is really fun.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it it typically the the the British Chinese fruit, because it is British Chinese, it tends to be more like Hong Kong. I think it's like Hong Kong style, just like what when like in in where I live in Chengdu, there are a few Hong Kong restaurants. Yeah, it kind of tastes like that kind of.
SPEAKER_00:But then you've got like someone said This is what someone said to me was that a lot of the Chinese restaurants in the UK took over old fish and chip shops, right? Chippy shops, or chippies, what you call them. And because the customers were already expecting to buy their chips from that place and because the equipment was already there, that's why a lot of these Chinese restaurants just added that to the menu. I don't know, can you confirm that or not?
SPEAKER_02:Sounds sounds reasonable to me. When I was growing up, I mean, so I'm I'm how old am I? I'm 48, I gotta check. I'm 48. When I was like what, 10, 11 years old, that even then, like Chinese takeaways were well established. So this this would be like the 80s, already well established. I can believe I think they either took over existing ones, or if existing ones closed down, they moved into that niche. They do they're very, you know, they've they've got a very good way of making sure that they can satisfy a large amount of people. So typically they'll do what you consider typical British food, fish and chips. They'll do fish and chips, they'll do pies, peas, they they cover all that. And then, of course, you've got you know more kind of established Chinese fare, you know, fried rice, all that stuff. And it's kind of like the it's almost a bit of a joke in a good way, though. Like you go into a Chinese chip shop and you look up on the wall, and it's the numbers. I don't know if you have the same in America, and so you don't order the the dish per se, you or you say then I'll have 54. And one of the things that amazes me is I went into my local Chinese chippy last summer, and well, we ordered our food, and we're not being very expensive. I think they ordered like Chinese curry, and that's another thing. The Chinese curry thing, I I believe, I don't definitively know this, is like because we have a lot of you know substantial Indian or like Indian subcontinent population in the UK, and so I think that's where the curry comes from. I could be wrong, uh at least that's what I think. And so they've adapted that as well. And I love I love Chinese curry, it's so good on chips. Yeah, really good.
SPEAKER_00:I I grew up with Chinese curry, but I have to admit, when I got older, I I much prefer the Indian, Japanese, Thai curries, all a little bit better than the than the Chinese curriculum.
SPEAKER_02:It's amazing.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, yeah, just the curry alone, is it like the Asian curries, like how like I mean, people in Britain aren't that aware. They know of Indian curry, they'll know of Chinese curry from the chip shop, they've no idea about Japanese curry, no idea. And then you get things like Malaysian curry, Indonesian curry, and like maybe some people are aware of Malaysian curry, just a few. Indonesian curry, no, you know, no, you know probably no one's aware there's a substantial Indian population, say in Singapore, for example, either. But I I think with globalization, these kind of these these little hidden secrets do do become less, I think. Uh yeah, and I was gonna I was gonna say again, when when I was waiting in this this chip shop, and I forgot what we ordered now, which nothing really amazing. But there's a woman in front of me, white British, should be in her 40s or 50s, and she comes in, she orders one of the numbers, but it's a really like random, like speciality, you know, it's not like fried rice or anything, it's something like egg four yong or something, and I find myself thinking, how did you decide that you like that? I mean, so maybe someone bought it for her, I don't know. Or maybe she maybe they go in one day and go, you know what? I'll it's Saturday night, I'm watching a movie, I'll just try some stuff. But I I find that very interesting how people find these little niches, to be honest. Yeah, and you mentioned doing a documentary on Chinese restaurants. Uh I can only imagine that would be enthralling, to be honest. Are you gonna stay in America to do that or are you gonna travel?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I mean it would be funding, but we are currently approaching funders in the UK, France, Germany, a few different countries. So I'd travel around for it. But in terms of my relationship to the UK, I love London. I've been going there for a month or two every year for about a decade, over a decade. I just find it a really creative city. I get a lot of work done there, I have a lot of friends. It's just got this really good vibe that's for me. So uh actually with this book, I wrote a lot of it in the British Library. You know, I would just go find a nice little you have to fight for a table over there, but you know, uh a seat. But uh yeah, I just find it a really great place to write.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, just out of interest, when you're writing, do you write like in a notebook or like which is like more old school, or do you write on computers, do you write on phones, iPads?
SPEAKER_00:So when I first started writing, I I'm in my 50s. So when I first started writing poetry, definitely was notebooks. I would just carry them around with me everywhere and I just jot them down. When I switched over to longer format things, I I first made the transition to playwriting and screenwriting. And with that, it's a little bit harder to just have a notebook, and it just seemed easier to just do it on a laptop. And then, you know, the the next forum I did was you know memoir writing. Uh, and with memoir writing, again, I do do things mostly on the laptop, but where I where I am a little bit more portable is I have my phone, and on my phone they have notes programs, and so I will do that. I will also use Google Docs. So I upload my drafts onto Google Docs. So this way, if I'm just running around, if I'm you know on a bus or if I'm waiting for a movie to start, I can easily just pull it out and make edits there onto the documents. So I find that that it's very productive because I'm always thinking, right? Like, you know, you could just be walking, you'll be having a conversation with somebody, and then it'll be like, wow, that's the perfect line, right? Or that's something I was thinking of. And so I I do have to have that access to that portability and access to my writing at any time.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think I'm pretty similar. For notebooks, I tend to write poetry in notebooks and just it's scribble. It's scroll. Someone could steal it and they wouldn't be able to read it. So it is. But yeah, with novels.
SPEAKER_00:Do you do you do handwritten novels? I mean, I think that would be pretty impressive. But there is something about the tactile nature of writing the physical act and and how that connects you with it. Uh but I just think it's, you know, for me, it's too hard like with the memoirs. To be able to do that. So I yeah, I like I like using the phone and I like being able to just you know take notes on it.
SPEAKER_02:I think he's very, you know, the writing style is very personal. So it's like for me, if I'm writing a novel, it's very much like, you know, like speed of consciousness. Uh I I'm in the zone and I'm just trying to get it down as quick as I can. If I was writing in a in a a notebook, I wouldn't be able to write quickly enough. And I think I'd take too much care, if that makes sense. I my first draft, I'm just trying to get it down. Editing, I really slow down and look at it. That's what that's what I would say.
SPEAKER_00:Because you type much faster than you can handwrite.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, for sure.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I think as well for me, I think that I like to see when I'm typing on a obviously a screen, I feel like I'm seeing it as it goes onto a book. Like in a as I would read it in a book. And I'm doing a lot of I do a lot of reading as well. So it's kind of I feel like they they're both those, both those like pastimes, both those skills are kind of reinforcing each other there, to be honest.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I could see that. I mean, everybody's different, everybody's brain is wired differently. One of the things that I say is that I grew up in a Chinese restaurant. As a little kid, I used to do my homework at the back of the restaurant, and I never knew when a customer would come in or the phone would ring and I'd have to stop. So I trained myself at a very, very young age to be able to pick up work at a moment's notice. So I can actually write anywhere. I don't need to have a secluded one-hour time where there's no noise out in a cabin or anything like that. Like I literally can write anywhere and I can pick up anywhere. If you just stop me and drop me somewhere and said, start writing now, I can write. And I think it's, I mean, hopefully it's good writing, but you know, I can do that because again, that's how I learned to write, think, process, create. And so everybody's a little bit different, right? I don't know what your childhood was like. If you had to work or if you, you know, studied all the time. Did you have a tutor? You know, were you a quiet kid that read by yourself a lot? I mean, I think that that when you look back on your own childhood, I think you get a sense of, you know, what's what's the best setting for you to be creative, I think.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's a it's a good point. I I can't I'm trying to think as you talk about my childhood, what it was like. I I think I mostly when I was a kid, I just I did my homework when I had homework over a set time, and then I went to watch cartoons. But I'm very much like yourself now. I I tend to write I I tend to I listen, I do prefer certain times of the day to write and have that kind of routine. But I can I write in different ways. Like I I'm always trying to change it up. I've got to I have to change it to suit my life. Lifestyle. So I've got a very young family and my kid is really young. And so because of that, I've not been able to write at home, and I've been getting the bus to and from school, and I've been riding on the bus, which is about an hour a day. That's coming to it's that's tough. It's tough, I'll tell you now. I get car sick. Wow.
SPEAKER_00:Is that moving traffic or slow traffic for an hour? Are you is the bus moving? Is it a long distance from you? Your work, or can you walk?
SPEAKER_02:It's like no, it's it's it's too far. It's like 25-30 minutes by by traffic by car, by bus.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. You know, but it's not maybe maybe because you are an educator, you're a teacher, you're more used to having a regimented schedule, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean it it's but then like the other day I went walking around this like ah, it's great, loved it, powerful, love nature. Got an idea coming. I'm like, oh write it down, I'll I'll I'll do it later. I was like, no, no, no. I'm gonna I'm gonna try and write it on my phone on the metro. Did it knock it out? I I typed it up yesterday. It's actually pretty good, it's better than you think, just writing on your phone. And so I do I do really like your your your way of doing it. I think you have to be adaptable. I'm always wary of like, you know, some writers can only write on this one computer they've used for 20 years at a certain time. And that's okay, but when you if there's a disruption to your life and you're suddenly not productive, I think that's quite dangerous. But yeah, I I find these things so interesting, to be honest, Curtis. Really, really interesting. I just want to go back a little bit. You mentioned about your day job, TV and film. That piqued my interest straight away. What kind of things do you do?
SPEAKER_00:So I just finished another my I started in sitcoms and com and kids' shows, but more recently I've been doing documentaries. I just finished another short film for PBS, the public broadcasting system here in the United States. It's equivalent, I guess, to your BBC in the UK. I don't know what the equivalent in China is. But I just it's a documentary that I made about a uh artist who works in cardboards, and he's a very, very fascinating story. And his stuff looks like terracotta warriors, but made with cardboard. But it's just his stuff is just gorgeous. And so we had the premiere in November, and it's gonna be on the broadcast schedule for the next TV season uh starting later this year. So uh until then, I have some promotion to do with that, going to film festivals and things like that.
SPEAKER_02:Um Yeah, it sounds so interesting. Just out of interest, then how is writing for TV and film or documentaries, how is that different from say writing your memoir, would you say?
SPEAKER_00:Well, it's really different because when I film other people, I'm telling their stories, right? And so I'm listening and I'm paying attention. For me, and the specific type of writing I'm doing, which is the memoir writing, it's focused on myself, right? And so I have to really dig inward and reflect a lot more, and so it's it is it's completely different. I would imagine that if I were like a novelist or fiction writer or wrote literary fiction, maybe it'd be a little bit less different, you know, because it's the same type of uh story construction. But with memoir, it it's you know, I do think I think differently between the two. I'm much more self-absorbed, you know, when when it comes to the memoir.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I can imagine. Uh and I have to say I'm looking forward to to continuing with it and finishing it, I've got to say. Um, just out of interest, what made you in in the first place like maybe it's in your book, don't get me wrong, when it when I get to that part, but why did you want to write in the first place?
SPEAKER_00:Or why why did you get into you know the the creative art should I say well, I mean, I have two answers for this usually. One is the more serious answer and one is the more flippant answer. Which one do you prefer?
SPEAKER_02:Both.
SPEAKER_00:Both. The more the merrier. So I like to say that I grew up in a Chinese restaurant, and so I was not surrounded by literature. I was not surrounded by books. People will often ask writers, what was the one book that really got you to start writing? And I don't I can't really pinpoint that because again, I only read for school assignments. I never had the joy of you know reading. But when I finally understood the importance of storytelling, that was because I was about to enter high school in the United States, which is about 14 years old, and a family friend had been murdered. It's a very famous case, if you haven't gone to it yet. It's called the Vincent Chin murder case. It was in Detroit during the height of the anti-Japanese sentiment because of the auto industry. There's a lot of anti-Asian sentiments going around there. And this young man was actually a family friend of ours. He'd gone out to the celebrate his upcoming wedding. He goes to the strip club, and he at some point these two white auto workers come in and they're overheard saying, it's because of you mother blanks that were out of work. And they're all thrown out of the bar, and these, you know, two guys get in their car and they literally drive around the streets of Detroit trying to find Vincent, and they sadly find him sitting outside of the McDonald's. They take a baseball bat out of their car and they bash his head in. And because their families were friends, we found out that very next morning that Vincent was in the hospital uh struggling for his life. And when you're a 14-year-old kid and you hear about such a horrendous crime, you're gonna check the newspaper, right? You're gonna check the TV radio to see how they're reporting it. Nobody covered it. I checked the next day, nobody covered it again. I checked the day after that, and the day after that. It took the mainstream media 12 whole days before they covered that story. In that time period, sadly, there was too much brain damage, and the family had to pull the plug, they had to cancel the wedding, it was all this stuff going on, and everybody was in in our community was coming into our restaurant trying to find out what happened, why was he there? And that contrast between what the mainstream media was interested in, the stories they were interested in, you know, compared to what our community cared about, really stuck out at me because several months later, when the judge came down with a sentence, he only fined these guys$3,000 and they never had to serve a single day in jail. And his rationale was that you don't put these kind of people in jail. And when he said that, I totally understood what he meant because for the last year or more, all the media in Detroit were telling all these stories about the white auto workers and how much their lives were struggling and how they were losing their homes and losing their jobs. And so there was so much built-in sympathies for these killers automatically, right? Meanwhile, there was never any stories about, you know, an Asian American or a Chinese American. And that contrast really stood out to me and thinking, like, wow, you know, you really have to tell your story beforehand. People need to get to know each other, they have to see each other, and they have to hear about each other's experiences so that we can connect with each other. So you don't wait for these terrible crimes to happen, right? And so that that's that was my first, I my sense of that storytelling was important. I don't know if that necessarily meant that I was going to be a writer myself. It was only when I went off to college, I wasn't planning on going to college, but my mom, you know, my mom didn't really like the restaurant and that restaurant life. So she was like, you guys need to get an education, you guys need to get out of here. And I didn't necessarily know if I wanted to go to college because, you know, I'm a gay man at that time, AIDS, people were dying at a very young age. One of our customers, or one of my favorite customers, was actually brutally murdered during my senior year in high school. But I rationalized that, like, you know, what would be four years of my life versus, you know, my mom who's given up her whole life for me, right? She sacrificed her whole life to work for me and my siblings. And so I made a deal with my mom. I said, okay, mom, I will apply to college, but I'll only apply to one school. And if I don't get in, I'm not going. And she said, okay, fine, apply to Michigan. And so I applied to school, and sadly, I got in. And so I went off to college. I was one of those kids that actually worked full-time and went to school at night. And I didn't know what I was going to study, right? Because I'm just there to, you know, because my mom. But there are a lot of creative writing classes at night for some reason, right? At six o'clock. And so I just started signing up for them. And I I did the math and I said, okay, if I studied poetry writing and if I only wrote haikus, I could graduate in fewer than 500 words. And that's uh how I got into the creative writing program. And it's a very exclusive program at Michigan. They only took 20 students, and I've just never looked back. I've just that's how I became a writer, you know. So I I didn't know what I was gonna do with myself and you know, writing just sort of there. And I do like to say this though, because and and this is a very important point for me, is I like to encourage people that come from non-traditional writing background backgrounds to pursue writing, because writing and telling stories shouldn't just be for the rich people in in society. We need to hear stories from working class people too. And so, even though I grew up without, you know, this surrounded by books or whatever, I was still being groomed to be a writer. And the reason I say that is because I was sitting in that dining room all that time, listening to the stories of all of our customers, you know, people coming in and telling me about their lives and what they were going through. And, you know, there was a very diverse group of people, black, white, Jewish, you know, gay, straight. I mean, so those stories need to be told too. And so, you know, that's sort of how I find myself in that way. And that's sort of my mission is to continue telling these stories that I think that maybe most people don't get a chance to hear.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, great, powerful stories. And you know, one thing I'm getting from you, yeah, that that that sense of personal experience, especially where it's traumatic, and I'm I'm I'm listening to you, and I'm just like I mean, it's horrendous. I I couldn't believe those guys got off. Yeah, so it's$3,000. It it seems to me just completely crazy. But then I I mean I'm roughly following on the news at the moment. I know there's been a shooting in America with an ice agent, and I'm I'm not really completely aware of it. I'm on it's only like on like on the periphery of what I'm following. But it's like these things do seem to happen. It's not it's not just America, it happens in a lot of countries as well.
SPEAKER_00:And but I think sometimes it's a very terrible time period right now. And it what's really interesting to me is how both sides are really trying to control the narrative right now, right? Uh Donald Trump and J.D. Vance and all those people are trying to say, you know, that this woman was trying to run them over, that she's a leftist, and they use all these really vitriolic words. Meanwhile, the other side, the the woman who died, her wife has released a statement saying that she was a Christian, she was kind, she sparkled. You know what I mean? I mean, both sides are really trying to set the narrative right now of how how this case will be processed, you know, not just in the courts, but also in the courts of public opinion, right? Like, you know, and we're so polarized right now that I think that people are automatically just falling in line with their camps and pushing aside any reason or thought, you know, because it's so we're so polarized in our country right now. It's it's just really sad that even when someone dies, you know, you can't take us, you can't take a moment to just reflect and give that person's life some meaning, right? It's just really, really quite sad.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, completely. Yeah, you're mentioning as well about like creative writing and how you got into it. Yeah, my my road was reasonably similar. When I was at school, I wasn't into reading. I was into writing when I was a primary when I, you know, what's it? I'm not sure what's called now in America, like primary school, when you were a young kid. I love writing. And then I go to secondary school, and it just knocked it out of me. Like it was very academic, very rigid. It wasn't about creativity, it wasn't. It was just about passing exams. You do it like like this. There's no creativity. Stop reading books, all the books you do in school. I think it's difficult. I think they're not bad books, they're not, they're the kind of books like I mean a good example would be like To Kill a Mockingbird, which is a great book, and you can appreciate it as an adult. It's hard for a 13-year-old, 14-year-old kid to relate to that and to then enjoy it. And so I got in I got into reading, first of all, with Stephen King. I read a book of his called Salem's Law, and I was 18, and I I was just about to go to university college, and I read that book in the summer holiday before when I just couldn't stop reading. I read a bunch of itself. That's how I got into reading, and I went to university, I did history, and I could do history like I always wanted to do, like lots of exploration of the kind of things that maybe I couldn't do in school. Because in the UK, history is very British and European-centric. So it usually means, and it's a bit of a joke, it usually means Nazis. It's like the joke, it's like you do Nazis. What are you doing next year? You're doing the rise of Nazism. It's it's all that and listen, and it listen, don't get me wrong, it's great. But it's why your mom do start to yearn for something else.
SPEAKER_00:What sorry? It's why your mom is so hooked on those books.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, exactly. Yeah, she would have got the same thing over and over again.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, she's just held in the interesting the narratives that each of the countries sort of follow, right? In Europe, that's probably the most recent trauma, right? The Nazis.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah. I think it's the warners. Yeah, maybe it's just easier to do. I like so when I was like getting towards the end of school time, I wanted to know more about, for example, the history of America or the history of China. So when I go to to university and do history, well, you can do. And I that's when I first learned about China. And don't get me wrong, it was modern history, it was like like the communist, the civil war, and all that stuff. But still, I that to a certain extent, that's still with me, you know. And so, yeah, very interesting. And I got into like reading like classic literature. I was like, you know what? I I it was more of a project than anything else. I'm gonna I'm gonna read One Piece, I'm gonna read 20 pages a day until it's finished, I'm gonna read great expectations, and that got me into reading, and then I started like fooling around with like poetry, love poems, not good, you know. These are the kind of poems, they're not good, they're not good, you know. I love you, but you know, it was fun, it was it was a way in, and I was doing that for some time, reading a lot of like pseudo-romantic poetry, you know, the the flower, you know, the flower. Yeah, and then I decided that probably a bit like yourself, I I wanted to do take it a bit more seriously. And by that time, I'd I I was living in Korea, and I knew I was gonna go and move to China and live here and teach here. And so I'd got onto a master's degree, like yourself, in poetry. So that's what I did. And I just got into it, just I just made the poems, you know, more serious, better, I would say, more modern, more contemporary, especially with themes. And and then I just yeah, it's it's interesting. When you start writing about anything, I think, I think you just become more creative, and it's like the fire. And it's like it's not that I want to write more poems, it then became I've got an idea for a butt. You have to write it. I can't wait for four or five years. And even now, I'm like the moment I'm doing like poems, I'm doing some blog posts, I'm doing podcasts. I'm now thinking about podcasts like this. I've got a blog, and I tend to write very like how-to-y, you know, kind of blogs, kind of generic. I I I learned from the don't give me wrong, but I'm thinking, I might write type these interviews up, you know, not as a transcript, but like like an embedded interview, and just see what happens, just another, it's not whatever happens, another outlet for my creativity. And if there's anybody out there like thinking about doing, like, say, courses in writing, I think that's one of the best things you get. It does make you more creative, I think.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, a couple of things. Transcription services are pretty cheap. I would just do it that way instead of spending all that time typing. But there might be some use in transcribing interviews. But I was gonna ask you, because I'm curious about your own writing. Where did you get your masters and how do you feel? Because you're in China now. How do you feel as a person writing in English? Are you writing in English, I'm assuming? Or are you writing in China? Okay, you know, do you find that there's a there's a writing community for you there? Like how are you getting feedback on your work and how does that affect you? Because maybe at your work you're speaking English, or or or how does that how does that affect you? Because you're surrounded by all these the Chinese language instead, uh, you know.
SPEAKER_02:I think for the the the first part I would say that when I first came here, it was a big shock. I mean, culture shock. Even now, China's changed a lot since when I first came. I came here in 2010, I went to Beijing, and even then, Beijing was very much industrializing. It was an industrial city. It wasn't like you know, the the movie showed or the the the website showed, the the news companies showed. It wasn't you you know Shanghai, like Pudong. It wasn't like that, you know, and it was very industrial, the traffic was horrendous, and you you you meet a lot of working, very working class people. In fact, you may even say laboring people, because that might be a better description, and I just started writing about them and trying to like tell their lives. Well, it's hard because I don't speak Chinese, so I don't know them, but you kind of have to follow body language a lot of the time, and you know, and I still do write like this, and so that that's got me into that really affected me for the first probably two, three, four years here. I'm probably writing two or three poems a week about all the different people I meet, and I've carried on doing that as I've traveled around China and lived in different places in China as well. Yeah, I write in English here. What was it? Oh, it's all you asked about the the university. It was Manchester Metropolitan University created. Creative writing, which is, I think, is one of the best or one of the most notable universities for creative writing, I believe. But creative writing is quite popular, so more and more universities are doing it. I did it by distance learning. In the UK, there's a quite a big culture of doing master's degrees online. I know it's not as common in America, but in the UK, it's very much accepted that you're working. So but it was UK time. So I'm waking up at 2 a.m. for uh I can't remember now. I think it was one or two hour sessions. I can't remember. I think it might have been two hours. Yeah. Like a poetry workshop.
SPEAKER_00:A zoom session with everybody. Oh wow. That's incredible. Well, congratulations on being able to do that. You know.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's interesting you say it. One of the fellows, I've just got in touch with one of the fellow poets that I was on the course with, and she said to me recently, yeah, that was amazing what you're doing. And I said, I didn't think about it at the time. But I look back and I was like, Yeah, I suppose it was. I couldn't do it now with a young family, but I was single. I could, it was at two o'clock in the morning, I can go to bed early, wake up, sleep for five hours, wake up literally just before it starts, wake up, do the course. And then the idea is to go back to bed. But this is the thing, Curtis. You're so pumped. If you're doing a workshop, there's a lot you're you're looking at maybe six or seven poems from the other people that are there. You're talking about it. Your poem is being talked about. There was one time my one of my poems got absolutely slated by this. The guy was a bit crazy, and he he it was his first session and last session, and he he launched into this tirade against me, and then left, and then left the session. Wow.
SPEAKER_00:You know, he was a bit crazy. Maybe you triggered something in your writing. Maybe you said something.
SPEAKER_02:I I think I don't think it was just me. I'm trying to remember, I think his his poem was up before mine to be discussed. And it wasn't a bad point, it was a good poem. It was, I think if I remember, it's called coming back to me now. I think he was in a car walking down a field at night and doing something. And it was it was okay, it was it was fine. But I think there was just you know, it was there was constructive criticism coming his way. And maybe this was his first session, it was kind of strange. We'd had a we'd had about four or five sessions before this, and he wasn't in the community, so I don't think he was really ready to kind of for this kind of community from writers who know each other for four or five weeks but know how it works, shall we say. And so I think a few people had said things to him first. I'd probably said something, but it wasn't like you know, it was constructive and it wasn't like overly critical. But sometimes it's like that, sometimes it's like that. But then mine came up, and listen, he wasn't wrong. He wasn't wrong. It was it was a very, it was very, you know, at that stage I was still writing quite romantic-esque poems, and I was in a a transition phase, and it was actually about Arlington, Arlington Cemetery in uh DC. And I'd visited there maybe maybe a year or so previously, and I'd seen a funeral taking place. This would be when you know America is still in the Iraq war. And I went to visit there and was walking around, and there was there was a military funeral. And I I I wrote about that, it's quite romantic, rhyme, that kind of thing. And he slated it. Like I said, he wasn't wrong. It's just this is the thing about constructive criticism. If you if you don't construct as well, obviously it's harsh, it's not good, but it's um it's uh you don't really take it on board, you don't really listen.
SPEAKER_00:There is an art for contributing to the workshop. Yeah, you know, both as uh someone who submits their work and someone who also gives critiques, right? I mean, you do have to be practiced and skilled at it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I I think like like anything, I try to live by this. You should only give the type of advice, especially if it's like tone, the kind of thing that you would like to receive. So if you're being too harsh, how would you feel if you were being too, you know, if you were receiving that harsh treatment? I think it's getting that balance. I think if you know someone and you genuinely want to, you want them to improve their writing or improve their poem or whatever it is, you have to give something. But I think you have to be willing to find positives. Because there's positives in everything that we write. As soon as you write, you put pen to page and you write one word. Great, you you're starting to write, even that is a positive, you know. And then yeah, so like the the guy left, and then I was left, I was fuming, of course. Hit and run. Yeah, so it's four, yeah, it's four o'clock in the morning. I'm trying to get to sleep. The heart's a trap.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no. Um, so I don't have a master's, uh I just have a bachelor's, which I guess is, you know, yeah. And I never I never did the uh advanced program, but the way I learned how to write a memoir was I signed up for all these Zoom sessions during COVID because they were really popular, right? And I signed up for workshops a lot in Europe because actually it's it's perfect for me because seven o'clock in Europe, which is when a lot of these workshops would start, is 11 or 12 in the afternoon for me in America. So I it was a nice lunch break for me. So I'd wake up in the morning, I'd write, and then I'd take a break and I'd do these workshops. And then the afternoon I would either read or do more revision, you know, and then around seven o'clock, I'd do an American group, you know. So I just went whole hog. It was sort of like in some ways my MFA program, right? But I met so many wonderful people that I stayed in contact with, including some people, someone from Korea who, like you, would wake up at some ungodly hour to participate with everybody. But because he was writing in English, uh, he just felt like he, you know, needed to you know work with a group you know in the United States. So yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's the thing about workshops.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so the thing I would say about that is that, you know, if you have the funds and you can go to MFA program, that's great. But if not, there are free ways to sort of learn and become a better writer. You know. Um money should not be prohibitive, hopefully, is not a prohibitive factor as to whether or not you decide to pursue writing and uh telling your story.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, no, I totally agree. Uh when I did my MA, I think it was the price was quite reasonable. Uh how much would it have been depends? Was it was like maybe like six thousand pounds, but I've heard it's double that now, and it used to be very good for American students, it it wasn't that expensive for international students. That's gone. And so a friend of mine was was looking at doing it in the UK, but I think he was quoted like£20,000 or something, and I said, you know, I'm not sure it's completely worth it. I think I I like doing my MA, but there is that kind of value to it that you have to like it it's it's nice to think you can do it and improve your writing and get published, but I bet not even 50% of writers would do it get published, to be honest, at least not straight away. And I think you have to do it for like I I did it because I knew I was I what was I was like 32 at the time. I knew that it was going to help my career. So it didn't matter if I didn't get published or not, and it did help my career. I'd get teaching jobs, and the literary the boss would say I hired you because of your this MA in creative writing. And then it would literally pay itself back just with the the the pay increase alone.
SPEAKER_00:So you're primarily teaching creative writing in China?
SPEAKER_02:No, no, I I teach English, like English is a second language. Oh English second language. It's just it it's yeah, it's one of those things. It it's it's if you've got let's say an MA or a degree in creative writing or any kind of English, say English literature, it's just more prestigious. So it makes you more likely to get a better English job at a better school, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00:The the uh British accent is good enough.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. Also, here I I also teach like a first language course where there is a bit of literature, so there's a bit of like literary analysis where you you analyze language, not so much like themes or what it's about. You analyze like similar, you know, flyer language, figurative language. My my MA does help me with that. Oh, nice. But like I say, if if you're older, like my friend, I think I think he's in his mid-50s. I could be wrong, could be low, low 50s. And I was like, Well, I don't if that kind of money, I I don't know. And uh what I'll do is I won't when I speak to him next week, I'll actually mention some free workshops to him, and that might be like you know, a route that he wants to go down. He does like travel writing, you see. Um yeah, he lived a lot of his life in Spain, uh, his wife's Spanish. And so I should actually, I haven't I haven't read any of his writing, though. I I should ask to see some. I I can just imagine it's just just full of so many interesting things, to be honest. Yeah, uh okay. I'm gonna ask like one more thing, like just before we we finish this, is like I like what about like themes? What would you say when you're writing like your memoir? What are the main themes that you like discuss, would you say?
SPEAKER_00:Well, it's interesting. You know, the first question I always ask people, like when they approach me and they say they want to write their memoir, I ask them, are you writing it for yourself or you're writing it for an audience? Because you want to sell it, right? You want to get published. Those are two really critically different things. If you're just writing for yourself, you can do whatever, right? You don't have to impress anybody. But if you are trying to sell it as a book, you do have to ask yourself, well, what does the audience want, right? Because they have to decide that they're gonna shell over$30, which isn't cheap, right? To pay for your hardback. And so you do have to take into account a little bit more. If it had just been my own opinion of what I would have written about, I would have been completely happy talking about Chinese food and my family. Do you know what I mean? But because I was trying to sell the book, I had to talk about some more serious issues. Because at that time in the country, uh, in the United States, we had the murder of George Floyd, we had a lot of the gay book bands going on. And because of that, I had to make my book a little bit more sociological, as you say, like a little bit more, I won't say political, but just I had to talk about racial identity a little bit more. Like, well, what did it mean to be Asian in a very black and white world? What did it mean to what was the coming out process like for you at that time period when AIDS was around? Some of these things that are a little bit heavier, I had to start talking about, you know, and I I felt like I could do it because I had those experiences, but you know, I actually just prefer writing fun stuff, comedy stuff. Like I'm I'm I'm a I like I like to be a little bit more lighthearted, but in order to sell the book, I had to, I had to add a little bit more gravitas, if that made sense. And so in terms of the themes, it's you know, you know, I start off the book by saying the the opening line from the book is welcome to Chung's. This is for here to go. That was the line my dad would say to any customer that came into the restaurant. And so that theme of for here to go, you know, this idea of do I stay in Detroit, the city that you know is really struggling, or or do I go off to college? You know, when I graduate college, you know, do I go off? It's like, you know, where where, you know, because I come from a family of immigrants. I start off the opening image is about my great-great great great great great grandfather leaving China in the late 1800s for America. You know what I mean? So there's this whole idea of fluidity of finding your space. And so I think that's probably something that you know I think about. I'm also the idea of you know, family, you know, you have your bio family versus your chosen family. Um, so those are I think those are kind of the themes that I that I sort of uh look at.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, family comes through very very strongly. I I do get like even like the undercurrent of like like race and heritage, and like obviously we're talking about your family and how your family fits in within this wider community in in Detroit, and you you drop in a line or a sentence very early on about your mum says to you, you you want to go outside, you're not allowed to go outside. There's a serial killer. I forgot the name of this this Bigfoot. That was it, Bigfoot. And it it it it the way you write it, it's it's almost comic. But that and I mean this in a good way, and it's com what's called comic treachery, comic treachery. And I'm like, what?
SPEAKER_00:Like it's a humor book, it's a humor book, but yet five people get murdered by the time I'm 18 years old. But I like to say that's Detroit. It was a very, very violent city growing up, like drugs, alcohol, prostitutes. I mean, all these characters appear in my book. That was that's how I survived it, right? Being able to laugh at it and just look at the positivity and to move forward in it. And so the one thing I say to anybody out there interested writing your memoir, your memoir should sound and feel like you're just having a conversation with the reader. You want to be as authentic and true to your own voice. So I feel like I wrote it with the voices as if I was just having dinner with you, Hayes. I mean, that's why it's really interesting to me when people come up to me and who I've never met before said, you know, I read your book and you sound just like that person. You you know what I mean? I I totally pictured it like it's like we were having dinner, you know what I mean? Like they come up to me after I do the reading, and it's like I read your book previously. I, you know, I heard it on books on tape or whatever. So that's it's you know, I think that's the most thing a most important thing about writing a memoir is that the voice has to be true to yourself. You know what I mean? It has to be like you're actually having a live conversation with that, with that reader. And and that's what I would say. That that's the advice I would give to memoir writers. Don't affect a certain voice, don't affect a certain quality or personality. Be genuine.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I totally get that. Like I said, I I feel like I'm I'm very much I'm placed there. I find it very easy. It's like I feel like I'm I'm a diner that's not eating, or maybe I've eaten and I'm finished, and I'm just especially when you're talking about your restaurant, you know, and and I feel like you're just following it like there's a camera. I think that it's very, very, very as like I said before, it's very, very, very well written.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, Curtis, I think we can end it there. Obviously, best of luck for the rest of your buck. It is, I'll be honest, it's my dad's birthday coming up, and I'll uh I'll I'll buy the buck for him as we can. My dad will love it. My dad loves Chinese food. In fact, you know, whilst we're talking about fat, he was the one that got me into Chinese food because he was the one that said, Oh, yeah, the the chip shop, it was called Chan's Chan's Chippy, yeah, and it's in this small village called Cross Shore Booth, which is really small, and maybe most people just go through it, and I think it's still there. I think it's still there. Um readings sorry, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Go ahead. I interrupted you.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, no, no, just that's it. It's just uh yeah, I I think so. It's just my dad that he got me into it, and my brother as well, and from there we get into Indian food as well. So I I think that maybe that's quite beautiful. I think I can give a little bit back to him as well, just like you've given to me and and to the rest of the world. So again, Curtis, thank you very much. I'd love to have you on the show again. I've got, as you know, I've got a list of topics to talk to you about. We did three out of 11, and that's a good thing. And that's a good thing, I think.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, yeah, I'm happy to be back, you know, and I I want to learn more about Chengdu because not only is it the gay capital of China here, but it's also the panda capital. So I I want your take on all that kind of stuff. But we're we're free. Yeah. So let's keep the conversation going. And yeah, good luck with your own.
SPEAKER_02:Fantastic practice. Okay. Yeah, thank you very much, and uh you too, okay? Okay, bye-bye. Okay, bye-bye.