Writer Mother Monster: Jennifer Chen, "My greatest pieces have come out of places of vulnerability and shame and fear.”

CW: Miscarriage

(March 25, 2021) Jennifer Chen is a freelance journalist who has written for the New York Times, O: The Oprah Magazine, Real Simple, and Bust on subjects ranging from emotional labor and pro wrestling. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and twin 5-year-old daughters, and describes writer-motherhood in 3 words as: “longest shortest time.” In this episode, Jennifer shares how to bathe twin newborns, how she deals with internet trolls, and why she writes about miscarriage. And, Jennifer talks about using her platform to raise awareness for the Stop Asian Hate Movement. 

Writer Mother Monster is a conversation series devoted to dismantling the myth of "having it all" and offering writer-moms solidarity, support, and advice as we make space for creative endeavors.

Transcript

Writer Mother Monster: Jennifer Chen

March 25, 2021

Lara Ehrlich 

Hello, and welcome to Writer Mother Monster. I’m your host, Lara Ehrlich, and our guest tonight is Jennifer Chen. Before I introduce Jennifer, thank you all for tuning in. You can watch this interview as a video, listen to it as a podcast, and read the transcript on writermothermonster.com. And if you enjoyed the episode, please consider becoming a patron or patroness on Patreon, starting at just $3. I’ll send you a Writer Mother Monster pin.

With no further ado, I’m excited to introduce Jennifer. Jennifer Chen is a journalist who has written for the New York Times; O, the Oprah Magazine; Real Simple; and Bust on subjects ranging from emotional labor and pro-wrestling to miscarriage and the Stop Asian Hate movement. She has an MFA and BFA in dramatic writing from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and is an alumnus of Hedgebrook, a women’s writing residency. Jennifer lives in LA with her TV writer husband, twin 5-year-old daughters, and a pug named Chewbacca. She describes writer motherhood in three words as “longest, shortest time.” And as always, please chat with us in the comments section, and we’ll weave your comments and questions into the conversation. Please join me in welcoming Jennifer.

Jennifer Chen  

Hi.

Lara Ehrlich 

Thank you so much for joining me. Let’s just jump right into the early years of mothering twins!

Jennifer Chen 

Well, it was really just figuring out how to be a mom to two babies but also how to continue writing. My agent told me that she was leaving a month before I found out I was pregnant with them. So, I was like, oh, I have to find a new agent, but I’m also gonna have babies. It just totally threw me off. That was the curveball. Originally, I was like, okay, well, I’ll write a new book. And it took a really long time to write that new book. I probably finished it two and a half years later. 

I asked my writing teacher, “What do I do? How do I still write when I have these babies at home?” And he said, “Could you write for 15 minutes a day? Do you have 15 minutes?” And I realized when I was pumping, that was 15 minutes. I would wake up in the middle night to pump for the next day’s feeding, at four in the morning, and I’d be in my laptop, attached to my breast pump. I don’t think anything ever made it into the final book. It was terrible writing. But I was just exercising a muscle in the dark. I was like, I just need to have one, little space where my brain isn’t occupied by these two beings. And so that was what I did.

Lara Ehrlich 

I remember being afraid that I would never write again. I had that feeling of “If I can’t figure out the time to write, am I no longer a writer? Will I ever be a writer?” It sounds like when you were able to make that time and finish something, even if it wasn’t the piece that you hoped it would be, that it could sustain you and keep you moving and feeling like you were a writer.

Jennifer Chen 

Yes. I had a lot of fears when I was pregnant that I wouldn’t write after they were born. And then every mother writer that I asked was like, “You kind of just do it. You just figure it out in the midst of all that stuff.” I think that was really helpful to hear. I just got more creative with my time and got really more efficient. The writing self-doubt—I was like, I don’t have time for that. I just have time to write. That really helped, because I used to labor over my writing, but then it was like, I only had this small amount of time. Just write. Even if it’s garbage, just write.

Lara Ehrlich 

I’m sure it wasn’t garbage. Nothing’s wasted, right? I listed all the amazing places you’ve been published, and I want to talk about the journalism side, but first, how’s the fiction side going? What happened with the book that you wrote while you were pumping? 

Jennifer Chen 

I queried that, and I signed with an agent in December 2019. She gave me an edit letter, we worked on the revisions, and then we were psyched to get out on submission. I think we went on submission in June or July, in the middle of the pandemic. My book is a YA contemporary, but it’s pretty dark. There’s a school shooting in it. We can always kind of knew that it might not be for everybody. I think it was especially hard realizing that nobody wants to read anything dark right now. But there was nothing I could do about that. We just had to keep going. So that book’s out on a second round of submissions right now. 

This week, I’m just about to turn in a draft of a YA rom-com that I’m really excited about that I wrote last fall. I just wanted to work on something fun. It’s been really a heavy year, and I had written a lot of heavy stuff, so I was like, let me just do something for fun—for me. And then it just turned out really well. I got feedback, and I’m working on it to send to my agent, because I really want it to be a really good draft for my agent to critique. That’s where things are with fiction.

Lara Ehrlich 

That’s exciting. A lot of things happening. I think it ties into something you said you particularly wanted to talk about tonight, which is finding joy in difficult times. It sounds like one way you’re doing that is by writing something fun. Can you talk a little bit about that decision to work on a rom-com and that departure from really dark fiction? 

Jennifer Chen

When I was on submission, I wanted to work on something new and different, because I had been working on that book for a really long time. And also, that would get my mind off the submission process. I listed a few ideas and ran them by my agent, and she was like, “You sound the most excited about the rom-com.” And I’m like, “Yeah, I think it would be fun, and it’s an idea I’ve had for a while.” When I decided to start working on it, it was fun. I set it in Los Angeles, and it included a lot of things that I really love personally, so it felt really easy to write. I know that sounds weird to say, but it just felt like a relief. 

During the day, I was researching and reading statistics and seeing the awfulness of what was happening to the Asian-American community, so when I wasn’t doing that, I was in this other world, and it felt really light and fun. I just let my brain go somewhere else for a little bit. Now that I’m rewriting and revising it, I look at it, and I’m like, “You saved me.” It really saved my mental health. I think it was the one place I could go and have fun with these characters. No one else was reading it, so it was just me. It was very humorous and light, just two kids falling in love. That felt like a really nice place to escape to, versus the reality of where we were at physically.

Lara Ehrlich 

I’ve been reading a lot of romance for that reason: you just want something fun to escape to. I’m trying to write a romance, but it keeps veering into dark territory. Maybe I’m just not cut out for fun. I don’t know. I would be nice to have more fun with writing. Let’s veer into that darkness for a second, with the Stop Asian Hate movement and what has been happening. Even before last week’s shooting, you had been writing about the Stop Asian Hate Movement. Can you talk a little bit about that writing and also what it’s been like for the last week or so?

Jennifer Chen 

Sure. If I could circle all the way back to March 2020, my girls were at the time in preschool, and their preschool shut down March 13, so they came home. My editor at what was then called oprahmagazine.com—now oprahdaily.com—had emailed me and asked, “Do you want to write about why “Kung-Flu” and the “Chinese Virus” is racist?” And I said, “Yes. When is it due?” And she said, “Can you give it to me tomorrow?” 

If my kids weren’t home, I could easily pull that off, but this was maybe one week into quarantine, and my husband and I had to split up childcare, so my girls were with me when I was writing it. What I decided to do was write in the backyard while they played—just making sure they’re safe, while I’m going to get this draft on. I told them to pretend like I wasn’t there unless there was an emergency, and they just stared at me for a good 10 minutes, and then they were bored of just looking at me and started playing, and I wrote that piece. 

I started at noon, I think, and finished at 5 p.m., and I believe it went live the next day. That was a really new experience for me. That’s not what I had done pre-pandemic, but it taught me a lot about writing something that quickly, because I also had to contact sources, I had to look up statistics, and do it all pretty quickly. 

I feel like what it taught me was that all those 15-minute sessions I did when my girls were six weeks old gave me the muscle to write as fast as possible and not be thinking “I don’t know if this is good.” I just did it. I mention that because I think when people say 15 minutes a day, some people think it’s not going to make a difference. I thought that, too, but it’s made a huge difference in my life. Now an hour, to me, is very luxurious. 

When that piece came out, a lot of friends and family shared it, and friends of friends, and I got a lot of not nice comments back, like, “This isn’t real racism.” And it really struck me. For the first time, I realized people don’t get how serious this is. I wrote about it again, for the same editor in July, as attacks continued, and the numbers just kept going up. That was sort of a blip on the radar. 

The third piece I just turned in in February, and what was striking was that in the middle of it, I got really emotional, because I had to look at photos and look up headlines about Asian elders being hurt. That just felt really awful to look at—seniors being slashed up and bruised and beaten. I just started crying. Then I tweeted something about being sick of writing about this. This is my third story. Like, I’m mad. And that tweet went viral. I honestly didn’t think anybody would notice, because nobody had noticed the other pieces. 

From that, people started reaching out to me to talk about it. I honestly didn’t think people were reading and caring. I know that sounds harsh, but I had been writing about this for a year. Then last week’s shooting, to me was really just heartbreaking. Now I’m working on a new piece. I interviewed a Georgia senator who’s Asian American, and she and I talked about what we could do to help. 

What I go back to with these pieces that I’ve written is really using my platform to help raise awareness but also give people real tools to use, like these are some simple things that you can do to help. That has motivated me. It’s been really hard to write about, honestly. I can’t talk to everyone that wants to talk about it, because it’s too much. It’s really too much. It’s a passionate topic, but I also recognize I have to step away from it. That’s why I wrote the rom-com. I needed something with a really mild conflict.

Lara Ehrlich 

Thank you for talking about it here. It’s important to touch on these topics, but I also want to respect that you’ve been asked to speak on this a lot, and that you don’t need to be the spokesperson for the Asian community. We’re here to talk about writing and motherhood. As you’ve been writing these pieces, specifically the first one with your daughters in the space with you, how has the writing of those pieces made you reflect on motherhood?

Jennifer Chen 

That piece in particular, I had been writing in my head before my editor even asked me to write about it. I had been angry, and I think what has motivated a lot of what I’ve written about is my kids, because I want a better world for them, and why not use this opportunity? I needed to be able to feel like I was contributing to changing my daughters’ lives at some point. 

It also reminded me the first days of motherhood. It felt like you were running a marathon that you’d never signed up for, you never trained for, I didn’t have the right shoes. But I got there, and it turned out really well. Being a mother doesn’t give me skills to be a better writer, but it’s taught me how to write quickly. It’s taught me to write in my head. A lot of the stuff that I’ve written has been ideas I get while I’m doing dishes or walking the dog. I let my brain go. Then I’ll get an introduction or a sentence and I’m like, oh, that’s what it is.

Lara Ehrlich 

Yeah, dig into that a little bit more about the sentence or the moment when you realize this has legs.

Jennifer Chen 

As a writer, I really like taking classes. I took a class called The Fast Draft Method with Lindsay Eagar, a mom of three who has written 25 books in one year. Some of those are ghost written books, but I was like, how the hell did she do that? So, I took her class. It gave me so many great tools. One of the tools that I implemented in my writing was that you can be writing all the time. It doesn’t have to be on a computer, typing everything. She was like, “When can you write yourself an email? Can you audio message yourself if you can’t get to paper?” All this stuff. She gave these little tips and tricks. Ultimately, she said to get faster at it, you just have to exercise that muscle. 

That really helped me draft this book, where I ended up writing 2,000 words a day, in addition to my journalism work. I would block out something like 1 to 3 p.m., I’m gonna write 2,000 words. She had writing exercises where you would time yourself with a timer. She’d be like, “Okay, write 500 words in 10 minutes.” I feel like that kind of challenge pushed me to say I can do this. I don’t have to sit here and labor over every single word. 

The best tip that came from her class was if you hit something that you want to research—like where is this exactly in Los Angeles—put in a placeholder. I put brackets, like, “find the exact address.” She said do it later. Because once you go out on the internet, and you’re looking at the map, you’re on another track. That really helped me realize I can do all that stuff later on during a separate writing session. That freed me up. I wrote that first draft in October, and I finished before the holidays and Christmas.

Lara Ehrlich 

I think that’s so smart. Putting things in brackets. I do that, too. Even if it’s a scene, like, “something interesting must happen here.” It’s, of course, painful to go back and be like, oh, I still have to write something interesting. But whatever you need to do to move forward, I think, is valid. I think there’s this misconception that we have to sit at a desk with pen and paper or laptop, and that’s writing. But writing in your head or jotting something down to yourself in your phone or dictating to yourself is all writing. Anything that gets words out is writing.

Jennifer Chen 

Yes, definitely. One of my friends has a great podcast with writers called 88 Cups of Tea, and she interviewed Tamora Pierce, a YA fantasy writer, and she said this. She shared this story about when she would cross the street, when she was waiting for the light to change, she would write in her little notebook. And I was like, oh my God, that’s genius. Just to take those little stolen moments. I should just carry a little notebook, or if I can’t get to something, I record myself saying it in a voice memo. All of that stuff has really added up to me realizing I have a lot more time than I thought I did. 

I felt very much like I couldn’t have written that whole story with my 4-year-olds staring at me. I remember when I said yes to it, and then she’s like, “Can you turn it in tomorrow?” My brain was like, I don’t know. But I’m gonna try to figure this out. I feel like that’s what motherhood is. 

I’m an only child. To have twins … I was like, I don’t know how to do this. I just remember being like, well, I would make mistakes. I mean, I fed one kid and forgot to feed the other. It was, like, 3 a.m., you know. Those things taught me that you’re gonna make mistakes, and then you have to do it over again tomorrow and figure out what you did wrong and not do it again. It taught me to be flexible. I think I was a lot more rigid about writing. My routine was I have to be at my desk with my laptop and the perfect music playlist. Now I’m like, I can do it while I’m walking. I think that’s a really great skill to have as, as a writer and a mother.

Lara Ehrlich 

Let’s go back to twins for a second. And expectations. At what point did you learn that you were pregnant with twins?

Jennifer Chen

It’s an interesting story, because previously, I had two miscarriages. I very quickly knew that I was pregnant, because I tracked my cycle. I knew. My OB-GYN did an ultrasound at six weeks, because we had trouble before and were trying to figure out if this one was viable or not. When she told me there were two, two fetuses in there, I looked at her and I’m like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I didn’t do any fertility drugs. I don’t have twins in my family. It just was a shock. The biggest shock in the world, really. But it was great to know it at six weeks, because that gave us a lot of time to get everything ready—even though nothing can prepare you, really, for becoming a mom to two babies. I took “how to raise twins” parenting classes and all that stuff, just because I thought I’d ask other twin parents how you do this.

Lara Ehrlich 

What were some of the things you imagine were particularly challenging with twins that might have been different with a solo child?

Jennifer Chen 

My husband was home for six weeks, and then he went back to work. My biggest fear was being alone with them. Because before that, they were in the hospital, I had my mother-in-law, I had other people. And then when he went back to work, I was like, how am I going to feed two babies at the same time? I was still learning how to breastfeed them. At that point, you’re feeding every three hours and changing diapers and all of that stuff. 

I asked other twin moms, and I would go on Facebook groups, I had a twin mom friend who I would text all the time—that was really helpful because they’d already been there, like “I propped up one baby on this Boppy while I did the other.” I never would’ve thought of that. I made a lot of mistakes, like, oh crap, I didn’t get this bottle warmed up in time, and now my babies are screaming. But there were other women who had done it and they were helping me figure it out and gave me so many great tips. Like, how do I bathe them if I’m by myself? Strap one into a little baby seat and swap them out. Asking other moms really, really helped me. Like, why reinvent the wheel when other people have done it before me?

Lara Ehrlich 

Yeah, totally. Community and support and Facebook groups, if we can find a really good one that’s non-judgmental—I think that’s so important. Do you mind if we talk a little bit about miscarriage? You’ve written a lot about that subject. Tell me why it’s important to you to write about miscarriage, about something that so many women feel shameful about and don’t talk about?

Jennifer Chen 

You know, my first miscarriage, I didn’t really know that much information. I didn’t know anybody else who had gone through it, and a lot of my friends already had kids or were pregnant. When I pitched the essay to an editor at BuzzFeed, and she said, “Oh, yeah, I’m interested in reading it.” I was like, “Oh. I have to write it.” So, then I wrote it. And she and I worked on editing it.

This was January 2015. She was about to post it, and I freaked out. Maybe nobody else other than my best friends and my husband knew that this had happened, so I started freaking out, knowing now everyone’s gonna know. I was very purposeful in selling it to BuzzFeed, because they had a huge reach. It’s also men and women reading it. I really wanted to target outside of the women magazine market, because I thought more people need to talk about this than just women. But I remember contemplating pulling it. And then my husband actually said, “I think you’re going to help a lot of people. I think there are more women than you know who have gone through this and really need to hear that it’s not shameful.” 

At the time, my editor was like, “If you get any comments underneath, can you respond?” It got to 700 comments. I emailed her and was like, “I can’t respond to all of the comments. I could spend all day doing this.” She and I didn’t realize that it would kick off this big thing. It really taught me that the thing that I felt really scared about was actually the one of the things that people still write to me about, and that was 2015. People still share it, because it still happens, obviously. That was the first time I wrote something that I felt really scared to share. Writing about it really helped me really release that shame. 

The beautiful thing that came out of it was a lot of people emailed me. People shared their stories with me because they felt comfortable. I’m an actual stranger to them, but they wrote their stories. It was men, women, people in different countries, Scotland, India. It amazed me how many people responded and shared their stories. It made it really clear to me that everyone has a story around this and just need to talk about it. 

Some women were like, “You’re the only person I’ve told.” And I’m like, oh, gosh, can you talk to your mom or a best friend? I really encouraged them, because when I talked to my friends more openly, I realized a lot of people went through miscarriages, we just weren’t talking about it. No one ever publicizes that. It’s not like people put it up on a Facebook status. I only see pregnancy photos and newborn photos. I realized, if we could just show our vulnerability, and what’s the reality and the truth, then it’s not as scary as it felt.

Lara Ehrlich 

Can you talk a little bit more about that fear of publishing? And thank you for giving voice to those experiences and supporting other women in that way and advocating. You said that word shame and that you hadn’t told people, and I think, as you’ve said, that’s such a common feeling for women who have experienced a miscarriage. Why do you think you felt that sense of shame and fear surrounding it?

Jennifer Chen 

I remember thinking somebody is gonna think it’s my fault, that I made it happen, that I didn’t do the right things. I really didn’t know that much about miscarriage. In high school, they teach you all sex ed and pregnancy, but I didn’t know anything about the female body in terms of when a pregnancy doesn’t go to term or the different types of miscarriage, or if someone loses a baby at 20 weeks versus six weeks. I didn’t know any of that. I felt really ignorant about my own body. It wasn’t widely talked about. 

When I started opening up more, I realized there is no shame in it. But I think there’s shame when you don’t hear anybody talking about it, or when you think you’re alone and you think that you’re the only person who’s gone through this. As a writer, if something scares me, it usually means that there’s something good there. I just keep writing through it, even if it feels scary or hard. 

I knew that first piece about why “Kung-Flu” and the “Chinese Virus” is racist, people were going to push back and be angry about me calling it racist. But I also felt that I’m gonna say it because I think that’s what it sounds like to me, and what it feels like. I think sometimes, my greatest pieces have come out of these places of vulnerability and shame and fear, because I think we all have that feeling sometimes on different subjects.

Lara Ehrlich  

Yeah, definitely. It’s so scary to write from that place of vulnerability. But those are the pieces that touch people the most and connect with people. Can you talk a little bit more about putting yourself out there in such a public and vulnerable way and receiving feedback from people you don’t know in those comments sections? Whether they’re writing to tell you something heartbreaking, raw, angry or violent. How do you protect yourself against that?

Jennifer Chen 

That’s a really good question. Because 2015 and 2021 are very different. In 2015, I got some trolls on that miscarriage essay, some women who said it’s not a big deal and why is she crying about this, who cares. But as a public writer, as somebody who’s on social media, I do get weird comments and racist comments, and I block those people. And then, in particular, the BuzzFeed piece, and this most recent Stop Asian Hate movement piece, a lot of people reached out. 

I can’t respond to every single person, so I told myself I’ll respond to the people that I can. You know what feels feasible. I think people don’t realize how many people will reach out after something’s been published. It’s been really sweet, but I can’t answer everyone. I think everybody wants to talk about it. I got very clear with myself on what I can do and what I can’t do. I still have to write, I still have to be a mom, I still have to have my own boundary of what feels good for me. 

With social media, they always say don’t read the comments, but it’s part of my job to respond to people. I try to remember what my greater good is in writing the piece, especially that piece where people really push back with “this isn’t racism” or “you don’t like this because Trump said it”—all that stuff. I would respond to them and say, “If you actually read the piece, this is what I’ve laid out.” It just actually helped me write the other pieces, because that viral tweet was a response to those first comments. I think it touched a nerve and a lot of people, and a lot of people responded to me from that. 

I think there is something, even if it sounds weird, in the negative comments. I can get something out of it—like this is clearly what people are talking about or what they’re fixated on, or maybe this is the next piece that I write.

Lara Ehrlich 

We have a question here from Kennedy Miller: “What tips do you have for people trying to maintain that space between the public reality of being a writer on social media with the private life of your own family?”

Jennifer Chen 

I’m glad for that question, because up until this point, my Instagram did include my family. After the Oprah piece, when a lot of people started following me who I didn’t know, I realized quite quickly I have to archive my posts and take my kids out of these photos. They’re super cute. And I have a million of them. But I don’t know a lot of my followers now, and I don’t feel like it’s safe. I don’t ever put them up on Twitter. I reserve that for Facebook, where the public can’t interact with me. 

But I do write about my children. They’ve been in newsletters of mine; they’ve been in stories of mine. I recognize now that because of being on a platform where people want to interact with me, I don’t really want them to have access to my children, particularly because when I’m talking about racism, it’s unnerving for some people, and I don’t want them to ever use my children negatively. 

On Twitter, back when We Need Diverse Books was first starting out, I tweeted about it, saying it’s great, and these trolls were attacking me and saying that promoting diversity is white genocide. They took photos of mine that I had up on Twitter and would just say really mean comments about how ugly I was, all this stuff. I decided I’m not gonna post anything personal on Twitter ever again. 

And obviously, my writing is personal, but I’m not posting my photos. I don’t share my daughters’ names on Twitter. That gave me the lesson of “there’s only so much I want to give to people.” I left my Instagram with my kids on it until just maybe last week. It felt a little scarier with people I didn’t know following me and also because I’m talking about something that pushes buttons. I thought maybe I’ll just create a personal account where my friends can see photos of the girls.

Lara Ehrlich 

It’s unfortunate that that has to be the case. I feel that, too, and I don’t have many followers on social media! I’m not sure I’ve ever named my daughter or shared a picture of her where her face is visible and just for those same reasons and respecting her autonomy and her privacy. And yeah, it can be a scary place, a very powerful place, but a very scary place to be on social media. 

Tell me a little bit more about writing about your girls and about whether you’ve had to draw boundaries yet. I’m hearing from other writer moms who have said that when the kids were younger, it was easier to write about them, and as they got older and more willful, it becomes harder because their stories diverge from our own. Are you there yet with 5-year-olds?

Jennifer Chen 

It’s interesting, because I have written a personal essay that I’m working on editing, and it’s about something very personal that happened to my kids. I really debated whether I was going to publish it or not. I didn’t intend to. I’ve been working with an editor on it, and it has been really wonderful. I went to a parenting journalist conference, and there was a panel about personal essays. They had said they usually ask their kids if it’s okay to write about them, but their kids were, like, 9, 14, 11. When I talked to my daughters and said, “I’d like to write about this—are you okay with it?” They said okay, but I also recognize they’re 5. They don’t know what Facebook and Twitter are. 

So, I’ve been really hesitant, like, let me think about this. I think it’s an important story to share, but I felt like maybe I’m not honoring their wishes. But my husband said, “I think you’ll shed light on something that happens to young women and girls.” It’s been a debate I’ve been having with myself. I don’t have an answer to it. I do think, as my girls get older, I will ask them. I feel like they are obviously going to eventually read some of this stuff and be part of the world. 

At that panel, they pointed out that you don’t know how your kid is going to react. You just don’t know if they’re like, cool, this is great, or they don’t want it to be out there. So that was helpful for me to remember. But they’re 5 and their permission doesn’t feel quite like they understand what they’re giving permission to write.

Lara Ehrlich  

My daughter’s almost 5, and I think about that, too, particularly right now during the pandemic, where I feel compelled to write about some experiences of motherhood, when you have a child who’s home and not socializing with other children and the questions and fears I have around that. But, just like yours, my daughter’s too young, and she thinks it’s cool that I’m writing things, but she has no idea what exactly that means. It’ll be interesting as they get older to have that conversation, the evolving conversation. And they might not care at all. 

It sounds like your husband’s very supportive and encourages you, and maybe sometimes gives you that little extra push. Could you talk a little bit about that? He’s a writer as well. I remember one essay that you wrote, another very personal piece about what it’s like to be in a marriage with two writers and some tension that existed there. But it also sounds very supportive.

Jennifer Chen 

My husband’s a TV writer, and he writes right now predominantly in animation, so we do very different things. Since living in Los Angeles, I do journalism and books, which is not what a lot of people are here to do. If you say that you’re a magazine editor, they’re like, what’s that? So initially, it was hard. What he’s done is very well-known. He worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, he wrote an episode of The Simpsons, he’s just more recognizable. Early in my career, I didn’t have Oprah Magazine and all that stuff yet, so it was hard. I felt like no one cares what I do. 

What switched for me was me realizing that I really like what I do. I love what I do. I don’t want to do what he does. I just settled into knowing these are the things I’m passionate and excited about, we can do totally different things, and it’s okay. That’s when things changed and my career started taking off more because I focused on the things I want to do and the places I want to be published. 

I think now it’s really evolved into a relationship where we can help each other through some of the story stuff. He always wanted to be with a writer. He was like, “I always wanted to get married to a writer, because we’d have all these conversations.” I didn’t. I was like, I don’t want to deal with it. I don’t want to have to deal with somebody’s neuroses. But now it’s really great because I have somebody who understands when I’m like, “Oh, my God, I have to write this down.” He’s like, “Okay, go.” Or if he’s got to do something for work, it’s been really beneficial and supportive. And in particular, I think he can see the things that I can’t, and I can see the things that he can’t in his work. I think he’s always pushing me to do stuff that scares me. 

Even when interviews started rolling in, I was like, I don’t want to be on them. I’m a writer, I want to be behind the computer. And he’s like, “Well, I think it helps for people to see you and to know that this is happening to a real person.” So, you know, I’m grateful. And initially, I think, my professional jealousy was over what people thought of my writing. People would say, like, “Oh, who do you write for? What do you write for?” And I always felt sort of like, oh, I’m not as good as him. But in reality, it’s just different. We do different things. It’s okay. So yeah, I am grateful to be with a writer. It’s been such a blessing in my writing life, to have someone who understands the intricacies of the creative, but also business, life of being a professional writer.

Lara Ehrlich

I love that you said that you realized what brought you joy in your career and what you wanted to be working on, and that allowed you to stop comparing what you did to what he did. I think that’s a lesson that a lot of people never learn, or it takes a long time. I think I’m still reminding myself of that every day when I meet somebody who is a writer who’s doing something really impressive. So, thank you for articulating that. Have you noticed that your daughters are picking up on the fact that you’re both writers?

Jennifer Chen 

Yeah. It’s cute because before the pandemic, they were able to visit my husband’s office. Since he works in animation, there’s a lot of art up because the artists are doing storyboards, and he has a lot of toys, and they just think it’s really fun. I think they just think that’s what we do. I’m like, actually, our work is fun. I have a home office that I’m in right now and they come in, and they want to write at the desk, so we’ll write together sometimes. I think they get to see all the stuff that we do. And we talk about our careers and stuff. I think it’s important to share that with them because I love how they see the world so fresh. 

I’m laughing because there was one weekend where Brendan took the girls to the playground, and I said I want two hours to just work on this book, and they’re like, “Come to the playground.” I’m like, I just need two hours to write, and when you’re done, we’ll have lunch and all that stuff. And Claire, at the time, I think was 3. She came back and she said, “Mom, where’s your book?” And I said, “I need more than two hours!” And she was like, “What?” She just was so confused. It made me laugh, because of course you don’t know that it takes a long time to write a book. 

I see how creative they are in their art, and they’re reading and noticing things. It’s helped me become more joyful in my own writing. I don’t know if you have this with your kids, but we have to read the same book over and over and over and over again. I think a lot of people think children’s picture books are really easy to write, and now that I’ve had to read some of them over and over again, I’m like, no, if it’s really good, I don’t mind hearing it five times in a week. If it’s really not good, then it’s like torture. 

It’s taught me that when they’re laughing, what they think is funny and what they notice on the page—and not that I aspire to be a picture book writer—but it lets me see stories in a different way. Like, that visual joke came across to you? That sort of stuff. It’s really changed my creativity, because they have such a fresh way of looking at things.

Lara Ehrlich 

How do you carry that into your own work?

Jennifer Chen 

Writing the book that I wrote when I was pregnant and didn’t have kids yet, I didn’t know what it was like to be a mother. I think when I was revising it and working on the mother character, who was very two-dimensional, I was able to write that in a where I now understood what it’s like. If my kid is in danger, what that might feel like. I think it gave me a depth to my writing that I wouldn’t be able to write as a non-mother. But it was more that I had an awareness that I don’t think I had before of what it’s like to be a parent. 

There’s a school shooting in my book, so I was researching a lot of school shootings and reading about the parents and how they reacted. I was like, oh, I totally understand now why this would feel super terrifying to not be able to reach your kid on the phone—all of that. It just infused more reality into my piece. And I think the book came out stronger because I had that empathetic feeling of what that might feel like for parents.

Lara Ehrlich 

Tell me just a little bit more about the sense of joy and play and creativity that you’re learning from your girls and watching them approach life with a fresh perspective. Can you talk about how their joy weaves into your joy and writing or how your joyfulness might impact your mothering and of your girls?

Jennifer Chen 

Yes, I’d love to share just one cute story. The day that I found out about the Atlanta shooting, I had, that afternoon, spoken to college students in Texas, and they were asking me really important questions about racism, and it was a really great but tough conversation. And then I got that news, and I just felt so down and hopeless. 

I like to read before I go to sleep, I think it helps my brain go somewhere else. When I went to bed, and I pulled out my book, Claire had tucked a little note underneath. And it was like, “I really like Hello Kitty” and she put Hello Kitty stickers on it. And I was like, oh my god. She had no idea, but I was having such a bad day, and I felt like this little note she left made me smile and made me remember there’s good in the world. The next day, I said, “Did you leave me that?” She’s like, “Yeah, I left it as a surprise.” And I was like, “Well, thank you, because it really made my day.” 

And that, to me, is a reminder of how much they bring back to me—especially when I feel like today felt really hard. And then I come home, and we’re just being silly. It feels really nice to not always feel so serious and dark and deal with such sad things. Their silliness and their joy just make me laugh and feel hopeful.

Lara Ehrlich  

Thank you. Let’s end on a note of hope and joy. Thank you for sharing that. That’s a great story. And thank you so much for joining me tonight and for talking about some really difficult subjects in such an eloquent and insightful way. It’s been such a pleasure.


FROM THE EPISODE: READING LIST & REFERENCES

Where to Find Jennifer Chen
Jennifer Chen's website
"What Pro Wrestling Taught Me and My Immigrant Grandmother," New York Times
"Why I Don't Want My Miscarriage to Stay Secret," Buzzfeed

Stop Asian Hate Movement
About the movement
Atlanta shooting
Jennifer's writing on the Stop Asian Hate Movement:
"How You Can Join the Stop Asian Hate Movement", Jennifer's website
"Yes, Calling Coronavirus 'the Chinese Virus' or Kung-Flu is Racist," Oprah Daily
"Racist Attacks Against Asian Americans Are Still on The Rise During COVID-19," Oprah Daily
"How You Can Join the Stop Asian Hate Movement," Oprah Daily

Organizations
Tisch School of the Arts
Hedgebrook
We Need Diverse Books

Authors, TV Shows, Podcasts
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
The Simpsons
Lindsay Eagar's The First Draft Method
88 Cups of Tea podcast
Tamora Pierce