Poured Over: Jean Kwok on The Leftover Woman

Jenna Seery

“I want people to read it with joy, just for the story. But I do hope that they’ll pick up something else along the way about … deeper things.”

The Leftover Woman by Jean Kwok finds two women on incredibly different paths in life in collision as they grapple with issues of culture, class and motherhood. Kwok joins us to talk about how she started a career in writing, the importance and language and cultural identity, how books open doors to learning and growth and more with Miwa Messer, host of Poured Over. We end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Madyson and Mary.  

This episode of Poured Over was hosted by Executive Producer Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang.    

New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.   

Featured Books (Episode):
The Leftover Woman by Jean Kwok
Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok
Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok
Mambo in Chinatown by Jean Kwok
Happiness Falls by Angie Kim
The Puzzle Master by Danielle Trussoni
Broadway Butterfly by Sara DiVello

Featured Books (TBR Topoff):
Greek Lessons by Han Kang
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

Full Episode Transcript

Miwa Messer

I’m Miwa Messer the producer and host of Poured Over and Jean Kwok. Where do I even start with you? So The Leftover Woman is out now, Searching For Sylvie Lee obviously, massive hit in hardcover continues to live in paperback. But Girl in Translation is the book that sort of put you out in the world. And we’re going to come back to Girl in Translationand the results of Mambo in Chinatown. And I don’t, it seems like lots of people have forgotten Mambo in Chinatown, and we’re gonna go back to that. But let’s talk about The Leftover Woman first, because we have to stay away from spoilers. We’re just I’m sorry, we have to stay away.

Jean Kwok

But Miwa thank you so much for having me on this podcast. I am thrilled and honored to be here.

Yes. Here’s the thing. We’re gonna gab about your book, and we’re gonna see where the conversation takes us. But you and I were talking about this book. Right, as Sylvie Lee was coming out, when did you start working on this?

I started thinking about it actually, probably even before Sylvie Lee came out. And I remember rolling this idea by you because of course, you’re a goddess, goddess of books and authors. And you’re like, oh, that sounds really intriguing.

I did like the idea. I still like the idea.

You did, you did. And that was kind of, you know, every writer, you need that little boost of faith. Sometimes it’s like the pebble that tips it over, you know, the, the I don’t talk to a lot of people about my books, I talk to almost no one before inception, because of course, it’s so delicate. But you’re one of the few people that I do run ideas by. And you were like, oh, that sounds awesome, can hit so many different layers of meaning and plans and issues. And so I was like, okay, I can write this. It’s got the Miwa seal of approval. I can write this one.

It’s not just me. I mean, you have a fabulous team at William Morrow. And there’s some other folks who now know you because of Sylvie Lee, there are a lot of us rooting for you. But we are going to talk sort of in a little bit of an elliptical conversation again, because we’re not. We’ve got, you know, a couple of women and child and some men, some of whom are good, and some of whom are not so good. But it is layers upon layers upon layers. It’s an immigrant story. It’s a story of marriage and family and what you get and what you can’t and where do we start without giving anything?

Well, I guess we could start with the pitch, which is that it is to mothers, two worlds and one impossible choice, right. So as you know, The Leftover Woman is about what happens when a young Chinese woman named Jasmine is told that her baby died shortly after birth and she grief stricken, she mourns. But then she finds out that her daughter had not died, but actually been given away for adoption to a wealthy American couple by her own husband, a casualty of China’s one child policy. And when the book opens, she has followed her daughter to New York City to get her back.

And we’re going to leave out some of the details of Jasmine’s experience in New York. Because the way you pull together these two storylines, is really, it’s very clever. But there’s a little bit of publishing send up. I mean, we’re not quite in Yellowface, RF Kuang territory. But there were some moments where I was laughing, maybe a little harder than you might expect. And I think you know exactly what I’m talking about. But when did you decide to pull in publishing the way you did?

Well, so indeed, the book is told in two points of view, right from the birth mother, Jasmine Yang’s point of view. And from the adoptive mother, Rebecca Whitney’s point of view, and Rebecca is indeed a high-level publishing executive. I have to say, from the very beginning, I knew she was in publishing because I just thought it’s so fun to talk about publishing. And, you know, it’s obviously something I’m obsessed with and know quite a bit about. Rebecca is, of course, extreme in that she is not only in publishing, but she’s also comes from a very wealthy family. And so, you know, not that people should think that all publishing executives have a house on Park Avenue, but Rebecca does, and, you know, it’s a kind of old school publisher that really did come from money. That was the kind of thing that you did, is one of the acceptable fields to go into. And so it was really fun to write Rebecca because she is, you know, she’s flawed, just like Jasmine is she is privileged in a lot of ways and doesn’t know her own privilege. But she’s also a good egg. Deep down, she really is, and she really loves her adopted child.

Yeah, and both of these women have very distinct very complex character arcs. And here I go dancing around stuff again. But the way they intersect is not something I’d actually seen before. So it was really kind of excited to see that you had thrown in a pretty big twist early on. So if you’re mapping out, right, because this is a really different book from Girl in Translation, right like that was based on your personal story, but also what you were doing with language there and contrasting how native Chinese speakers experienced the world versus, you know, learning English versus English speakers, etc. or native born English speakers, I should say. And here we’ve got kind of a straight up. What’s going to happen? I mean, do we call this a thriller? Do we have to put a label on it? Just call it a really fun propulsive read?

Well, you know, I don’t know about labels. What I thought was really fun about writing this book, is that it can be read, The Leftover Woman can be read as a propulsive, suspenseful family drama, just based on plot alone. But what I found interesting to do, is that that big plot twist, you know, there is a really big twist in it. It’s a genre plot twist, right? It’s one that you find in commercial fiction sometimes. But it’s used in this book in a really literary way, I think because it’s actually used to depict the white gaze like, it’s actually a way to represent how we see people from the inside and from the outside. And I think that readers who have finished the book will know what I mean, if they really think deeply about the twist is not a twist, just for the twist sake, it’s a twist, that is saying something about the way we perceive immigrants, women, people of color, and the way we don’t perceive them, you know, it’s about women and being seen and how women are seen sometimes, and sometimes not, and sometimes seen for the physical attributes or not seen it all because of class money, whatever.

And also how they see themselves. I mean, the women, it’s, it’s really, it’s refreshing to see the, you know, there’s a little bit of doubt in places where you wouldn’t necessarily expect it and some people’s moms are meaner than they might look on the outside and things like that. When you were sitting down, obviously, you know, you’ve got the two moms, you know, you’ve got the daughter, and you know, there are men who roll in and out a couple of husbands. One’s terrible, one’s not. There’s a very nice dude.

We’re not sure who’s who, right.

That’s why I’m leaving names off. But it’s a really tight cast. It’s a really, really tight cast.

I have to tell you, when I was writing this book, there were many versions of it. Yes, there were so many versions, because it’s an impossible dilemma, right? I’ve set it up with two moms that actually genuinely love one child and want the best for that child and are desperate to have that child and to keep that child in their lives. So how do you resolve that? Right? It’s my job as the author to try to find some kind of resolution that, you know, I think is resonant and meaningful and not to, let’s say, extreme black and white one way or another. And so in the manipulation of all the characters and the plot lines, and the themes of this book, I have to tell you, me what, at one point, everyone was, like, embedded with each other. Like, I think it killed off. And second version of the book. It wasn’t easy. That maybe he, we don’t think he’ll be evil. But let’s say he’s evil. So that is the fun thing about the book is that, believe me, if you don’t know, the reader doesn’t know, it’s because I did not enough, you know, in the final version, and it all works out. And in the way I really wanted to that were unit there were a lot of very extreme variations during the writing of this book.

Okay, so I want to get back to something you’ve said in earlier interviews where you’re like, you know, I’m not sure I would have been a working writer if I hadn’t gotten an MFA. And lots of writers have different journeys, where we’re just want to stay at the top of it and just say, not everyone needs an MFA. It’s just I love that. Now, this piece of Jean’s conversation, which is why we’re talking about MFA for a second, but I just I want to explore that for a second because there has been sort of a shift a little bit across the four books, right, like, Girl in Translation came out what 2010, that’s been a minute. Okay, so four books over 13 years, which is quick.

Well for a literary novelist.

It’s quick. But what do you mean when you say you don’t think you would have been a working writer if you hadn’t gotten an MFA?

I definitely don’t mean that everyone should get an MFA or that you need to get an MFA to be a working writer, because I think that it’s really a lot of money. And, you know, I came out, I have no family support, you know, as you know, I was incredibly poor as a child, really working-class immigrant family. And so you know, that had to be paid off and it’s a real huge burden. So that’s not something to be underestimated. I mean, you’re not getting like an MBA, like where you’re going to come out and earn like a ton of money, you’re going into a very uncertain field, wanting to be an artist and wanting to be a writer. So it’s not for everyone, I definitely don’t think it’s necessary for everyone. But for me, because I come from a background where we really were working class and I worked in a factory as a child, I lived in an unheated apartment in Brooklyn for most of my childhood, my main goal in life was actually to have a job and have a heated apartment in New York City. That’s really all I wanted. That was like my only dream. It wasn’t really until I miraculously found myself at Harvard that I realized, okay, maybe I won’t be sent back to the clothing factory in Chinatown to work for the rest of my life, maybe I can do what I really want to do, which is to be a writer. And so I, of course, was really passionate and dedicated about being a writer. But I did not know how I did not know how, and I didn’t know how to carve out the time for it. You have to make ends meet. It’s working like all the time. And going to the MFA program at Columbia, it just gave me those two years to write. And to think about writing and to be among writers and to recognize that writing is a real thing that a person could do, it’s a real life that you can pursue. And for me, that was what was so important. I mean, as in terms of, you know, my development over four books from Girl in Translation to The Leftover Women. I think that you know, definitely my structures have become more complex, as you can see from the intricate structure of The Leftover Women, which I hope still read seamlessly but in order for me to make it work, there was a lot of plotting of time and you know, I’ve timelines and graphs and everything, day by day, so that I make sure that actually it all does work in the real world. But I think that my obsessions have remained the same. You know, I think from Girl in Translation to Mambo in Chinatown, to Searching for Sylvie Lee to The Leftover Woman, I’m talking about race, women, language. And you mentioned in Girl in Translation, I play with language as I do in Searching for Sylvie Lee, where, when one person is thinking in Chinese, and they don’t speak English, the reader doesn’t speak English as well, you know, the words are like in italics. And I mean, I’m still playing with language and The Leftover Women because we see Jasmine and in Jasmine’s narration, she’s thinking in Chinese. And yet, in the parts of the book, where we see her from the outside, she is a completely different person, and her English is far from perfect. So we are still shuttling back and forth in language in that way.

Yeah, I have to say the few times that I really noticed that she was speaking, I was taken aback because I was so used to being in her head, knowing full well that she’s speaking in Chinese mind you, but at the same time, the fluidity of her thinking and her expression and everything else. And then, you know, she’s speaking to someone in English. And it’s like, Oh, right. Right, because I also tend not to hear people’s accents. I mean, I just I grew up around a lot of nonnative English speakers. And I remember people saying to me, when I was younger, they’re like, your mom has an accent. I’m like, what are you talking about? And I grew up in a place where people rarely had accents. And I’m like, What? No, and yeah, she probably did, if I think about it hard enough, but like, I just don’t hear it at all. And it’s wild to suddenly have that moment where you can see someone living and it’s something I love in books, right? Like, this whole idea of living in translation. What does that mean? And how do you belong? And where do you fit and everything else? And how do you translate yourself? Right? It’s not just the language and we see this both in Jasmine, and Rebecca, whether or not we agree with what they’re doing, we understand why they’re doing it. But how much fun did you have mapping this? I mean, I understand that you’ve also got to like, do the work and make sure all the plotlines work but you got to hang out with some pretty interesting, folks.

Yeah,it was a blast. And I love what you just said about language and translating ourselves. Because one of the big themes and all of my books is indeed how our interior self is so different from our exterior self, and how, you know, a person like Jasmine, I’m like, Ma, in Searching for Sylvie Lee, who, when we’re in their chapters, and they’re thinking, and Chinese has such a complex, deep, profound, you know, way of looking at the world that we’re totally absorbed by, and then you switch out of their POV. And you see them from that, and you realize, oh, my god, she looks and seems completely sound completely different. And I think, I think it’s great that you don’t hear accents, but people do. As a person who used to have an accent, you know, as a first generation immigrant, I really struggled with that accent, and family, my entire family has accents. And you see people judge you and you know, it’s not conscious, it’s not conscious, but it’s just a kind of, you know, they peg you kind of on the education, you know, material hierarchy. And you know, you drop a couple of rounds, if you’ve got that every accent.

Yeah. Which is always kind of fascinating to me, because you think about it, a monolingual person has a different experience of the world than someone who may speak more than one language. It’s yeah, that that particular piece of judgment is always a little eyebrow raising for me, because I’m like, you know, as someone who does not actually speak Chinese, well, when I’ve tried to navigate in Chinese, I’m like, wow, wow, I don’t even sound like a toddler. I sound like an American who really is just completely out of her league, there are other places where I’m fine. Don’t misunderstand. But like, I specifically think about that, because I have a cousin who likes to tease me he’s like, seriously, can we just stick to English, please? I’m like, yeah.

At least you’re trying right. And I think one of the things that happens to us Americans is that we have the great good fortune to speak the international language. And so everywhere we go, if we travel abroad, everyone bends over backwards to speak English to us. And it’s very easy to get into this mindset of thinking, Oh, my gosh, you know, I’m so much better than everyone else, because I can travel and my language is perfect, and theirs isn’t. And indeed is not till you think well, how good is my Russian actually, that you realize? They’re actually doing an amazing job, and I am judging them. You know, maybe unfairly.

What I’m hoping happens to with this book, though, because I think you do some unexpected things with translation and belonging and identity and all that, I think it might be a surprise, like, no one’s asking to be fed their cultural vegetables, right? Like, it’s not like you’re, you’ve written a polemic or anything like that. But this is stuff we should be thinking about, and talking about. And that’s right. And you did it a lot, obviously, in Sylvie Lee, which was a huge, huge hit. And delighted that was a huge hit. But there has to be a tiny bit of pressure. I’m sorry to put you on the hot seat about this. But there has to be a tiny bit of pressure following up a book that was that big?

Well, yeah, I mean, there’s always pressure right, as any writer, it’s like, if the book is big, there’s pressure. If the book tanks, there’s pressure, there’s always there’s always pressure, you know, and with the creative work, you never know how it’s going to be received. You don’t know you know, kind of my fear about The Leftover Woman is that because it’s such a propulsive story. And it’s built like a thriller. And it’s, you know, it’s very calm, really got that storyline, ticking from the beginning to end that people will not see the things that you have just spoken about. That is actually really is a book about the fetishization of Asian women. It’s about international adoption. It’s about immigration and race and perception. And that’s really the heart of the book for me. And of course, I love I love the story. I love the characters. I really did fall in love with all the characters. And I think, you know, I want people to read it with joy, just with a story. But I do hope that they’ll pick up something else along the way. About those deeper things,

You know, Girl in Translation, can I just say none of this is auto fiction. Like, I feel like I have to say that quite frequently. When an author borrows details from their own lives. I’m like this is not auto fiction. Okay, maybe there’s some stuff but it’s not everything. Certainly Girl in Translation. Also Mambo in Chinatown. I mean, you were a dance instructor while you were also going to get your MFA or you quit being a dance instructor to get your MFA.

I quit being a professional ballroom dancer to go get my MFA? That was my day job for writing. And then I actually, I saw Helen Vendler, who was a professor at Harvard at the Seamus Heaney reading. Yeah, she was like, Jean, what are you doing now? And she’d been a mentor of mine when I was at Harvard. And I told her and she was like, Jean, you must return to the flock. And I thought I do, I do. I need to not be dancing with most of my life and writing for an hour every day, I need to actually be writing for most of my life.

But you got a pretty groovy novel out of it. I did, excuse me for stating the obvious, but you did get a pretty groovy novel on it. And then we’ve got Searching for Sylvie Lee, obviously, your third book, huge hit. Also, though, based on a family tragedy, I mean, there is that one piece and you did have to flip Sylvie’s gender in order. I mean, originally, Sylvie had been a man, your brother, your brother had died.

That’s right, my brother disappeared. So just for those who might not know, Searching for Sylvie Lee is about these two sisters. And what happens when the dazzling, brilliant, beautiful older sister Sylvie disappears while on a trip to the Netherlands and her shy, stuttering younger sister, Amy has to pull herself together and figure out what happened to her beloved older sister. And that searching facility was inspired by the real life disappearance of my brilliant older brother Quan. And I was, you know, the loser sister who had to kind of pull myself together and try to, you know, that happened to me.

I mean, okay, so you are not, I get it, like you’re not the perfect Chinese daughter, like these things happen. I know for a fact you can’t cook. I love it. When you hear the stories of when you try to cook. And I’m like, please, just stop. Please, just I love you. You do not need to do this, please.

Can we go out? We don’t need to eat in. Can we go?

Seriously? We have a reservation, are you kidding me? But it’s wild. Like there are these expectations, right? Like you went to Harvard to study physics. And every time I think of that, I’m just like, huh, we really do. Like there are some of us who buy into that whole, we’ve got to do, you know, the consulting, the accounting, the sciences stuff, and some of us aren’t built for that. Like some of us are not built— There’s a reason I’m a bookseller.

Well, I mean, you are brilliant. But I mean, I have to say that in I had kind of the opposite of tiger parents. And that’s one of the reasons that’s one of the inspirations for The Leftover Woman. Because I grew up in a family where there was a lot of love there. Definitely, I was cherished and loved. But girls did not need to go to college. I mean, girls were kind of meant to grow up and get married, and it was unspoken, but you know, basically, my choices were a life at the factory, you know, at the sweatshop in Chinatown. But it was very, very lucky, they were hoping to find a man willing to marry me, which they despaired of, due to my like dreamy habits and horrible cooking and disastrous, like, taking apart machines when I was bored. So, you know, they despaired of that. But that was the hope was to maybe find somebody and then the unspoken, you know, check was then you give up your career, you bear sons, for him only sons, and you take care of him and the family. And I saw this choice very clearly. And I was like, well, I think I’m gonna go to Harvard instead. And that’s what I wound up doing. You know, it was a decision I made when I was seven years old. And I had my whole life planned out to go there, because I knew it was the only school my parents had ever heard of. And I knew they would give you a full ride. If I got in, and I could not afford to go to any place that wouldn’t cover basically, almost everything. So yeah, but that was my decision.

When you went to Hunter, okay. I mean, education is the thing that helped you change everything.

It was, it absolutely was, and I mean, I struggled in school, don’t get me wrong, like when I didn’t speak English. And it was not like a Disney fairy tale with the kind teacher when I did not speak English, and was nobody and was poor, and had weird clothes and weird hair, and didn’t know how to get along with the other kids. I mean, there were teachers that just gave me big red X’s and zeros on all my tests didn’t matter that it was because I couldn’t understand the directions. And I remember, you know, being in school and like looking at the higher-level readers and be like, Oh, I wish I could be like in a better reading group than the lowest one and just not being able to do it. But indeed, I mean, I was really lucky that I started doing better once I started learning English. And I tested into Hunter College High School, which is a public school for gifted kids on par with Stuyvesant and Bronx Science. And then they’ve been wonderful to me Hunter, also the Alumni Association, etc. but I’ve really started finding myself at Hunter and then later on.

Do you remember being a young reader? And finally, sort of, I mean, we all have those books, right, that we walk around with that have sort of imprinted themselves on our DNA. And I have some that are great. And somewhere I’m like, Yeah, I was 18 when I read that, but there’s no going back. I mean, it’s, it’s now part of the ecosystem, right? And some stuff does not age well, a while some stuff does not age well, but like, what are some of those books for you, especially coming to English a little later. I mean, it’s, it’s a really different except like, I can’t read in Japanese. I mean, I, I know, if I’m watching a film that’s dubbed into English, it my brain can’t process it. Because I’m watching mouths move. And I know the mouths are not seeing the things that are coming out. And so I actually can only watch Japanese movies that or subtitled because I get a headache. Like I write my head can’t do it. But I certainly can’t read a novel in Japanese.

it’s incredible how fluency works, you know, because of course, I didn’t move to the Netherlands as an adult. And I know one of the things in my life, but I do speak Dutch, which is a part of searching muscle relief. Thinking in Dutch in that’s

26:18

not an easy language to learn. No. particularly hard.

It was so hard. It was so hard. I used to call it like a monster talk because it was like, I have no idea what they just said. But I hear you, I hear you because my Dutch is good. You know, it’s fluent. And not I mean, it’s fluent. But I’m still not a native speaker. And things like novels are hard because the language the structure of the sentences, is just much more difficult. And I can follow like a news show really easily, but wants to get into real colloquialisms, and drama. And like, dirty joke. I didn’t know what said something about St. Peter. Like, what’s that religious authority? What are what are we doing here? You know, it’s hard. And that, you know, kind of makes me appreciate language and culture in in my own writing.

Okay, but let’s go back to books for a second. Let’s talk about some of the touchstones.

I didn’t speak English. And I desperately wanted to speak English and then I discovered my local public library. And that was life changing. I mean, it was life changing. Because, you know, the library for me was not only, of course, a mental refuge, but it was also a physical refuge. Because I was living in this rundown, roach infested apartment that wasn’t even heated in New York City, so the library was clean, it was warm, it was filled with kind of librarians who came to you with books, and I read every single book in the children’s section of my public library from A to Z. And I started of course, not in such a methodical way. But by the time you know, I was a little bit older, I had read literally every single book, but the books that I remember, the best, and I love the most word, you know, things like Anne of Green Gables, you know, it’s like, I mean, those types of books, it’s like, even though I’m not redheaded girl in the country, I felt isolated and alone and not connected. And those themes are universal. And I think it’s true, some books don’t age as well as we might like them to. But I do believe in all books, I think that if they give you something, you can actually almost just let the rest go.

I genuinely believe that there is a book for every reader. And you know, when I hear people say, I don’t like to read, my first thought is your grownups failed you. And my second thought is you just haven’t met the book that is gonna break your heart open or your mind open or whatever, whatever thing you need to have shift in you. You just haven’t met that book yet. There’s some stuff that I read that some people would consider canon, other people would not. Yeah, you just right. We evolve as people, right? Like reading is an act of connection.

Right? And the thing about us is that as you know, women of color, there were no books about people like us, like there just were not I mean, the publishing world has opened up. Actually, very recently, you know, when I was writing Girl in Translation, there was an agent who told me there is no market for this book. And the reason unspoken, I am really pretty sure is that it’s about a girl of color. It’s about an Asian American immigrant. And it was not it published in 2010. I mean, it’s not that long ago. It’s a pretty recent phenomenon that people are realizing there is a huge thirst and market for books about people from other countries, you know, with other identities. That’s why we read, right to live another life. That’s why we become enriched by reading.

Yeah. And you play with class in all of your books. And is there anything more American than class? I’m not sure there is that we need to have those conversations, right? Like, I mean, especially in Leftover Woman, there is access, here’s a Nepo baby, which makes me laugh. And I really just like saying that phrase, it makes me giggle. And that’s terrible. But there’s a Nepo baby, and people will figure out who it is, and it’s fine. But to be able to move between those spaces, right, like to be able to capture what you need to and how you need to do it, and how the interactions happen. Were you able to surprise yourself at all while you were writing The Leftover Woman?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, absolutely. I write, normally, I really have a very clear idea of the ending when I start up. But this one, I kept changing what I thought the ending was going to be. Because of course, there are a lot of different ways it can work out with, you know, two moms, two worlds and one impossible choice, right? It’s like, there it can, there are a lot of ways that can go. So yeah, it was really surprising. And I think I was I’ve been lucky in that I have both had that working class immigrant experience, but have also have had access to more privileged friends lives to see how someone like Rebecca might live and the thing she might be obsessed with and the things that mean you no matter to her. And so it’s fun being able to take the reader along to all these different worlds. So you’re in, you know, working class Chinatown one day, and then you’re this penthouse, the next and then you’re in the publishing world, and the Frankfurt Book Fair, where all kinds of things can happen. You know, and you’re fighting for a top author, and yet your personal life with your beautiful, gorgeous husband is falling apart. You understood that that was really, really fun to write.

On behalf of all of the tiny girls who were made to take ballet when it was really not their thing. Thank you so much for including, because Oh, my mom wanted. My mom wanted to take she’s like, I’m not sending you so you can learn how to dance. I would just like you to be able to. I was three. I was three. I didn’t have any opinions about anything other than why am I doing this? Like I was the kid dancing to the left when everyone went there. I got nothing here.

You had your own mind. You knew where you wanted to go.

Yeah, I just also pink not my, like so many things were like, Why are you making even asking questions that three guys? Yeah, this item. Picked it? Oh, yeah. There’s a whole pack. I’ve seen the photos. I have no memory of this. Obviously. I’ve seen the photos. Like yeah, that doesn’t seem like a good idea. And of course, we’re bumping up against time. But hey, what have you been reading lately? What have you been recommending to people? What do you love? Who do you love? Let’s talk about some other books for a second. Angie Kim has a new novel coming out. I think alafair books working on some stuff.

Yeah, you will. I mean, Angie Kim’s novel, Happiness Falls is a beautiful book. And the funny thing is that Angie, and I actually wrote our books almost together so The Leftover Woman, I was working on The Leftover Woman while she was working on Happiness Falls. And we actually we texted each other or spoke on the phone daily. And we exchanged pages weekly, while writing are two books. So it’s really exciting, that our books are coming out kind of so close to each other. And you know, I mean, we’re both fast readers. So we get the pages we’d read them and then we talk about them immediately. And it was you know, it was really a great experience. I mean, there are other books that have just come out in the summer like Danielle Trussoni’s The Puzzlemaster is a book I absolutely love it’s working on different levels. You know, being really a thriller, but also doing very interesting things with history etc. Sara DiVello’s Broadway Butterflycame out this past summer beautiful, true crime novels set in the 20s. And when they walk out what remains a book that I really love really wonderful book about a woman who a female detective who saves a man’s life and then he starts talking her and it’s like, oh my God, what do you do that so yeah, a lot I love that there’s so many books that are coming out that I love with a, you know that have that wonderful storyline, that’s repulsive storyline, and yet are so much more than that.

Well, that’s the thing. It sounds like character driven. I mean, I know from reading your work that obviously the characters of the thing that come first, but it sounds like character is the thing that really drives the reading experience for you.

Oh, absolutely. I mean it is it’s all about these characters and all about Jasmine and her desire to have her baby back and then struggling as a young, beautiful woman in New York City kind of cast adrift and trying to survive. And trying to find love at the same time. And then Rebecca, who is privileged and married, but has this perfect life that is falling apart, and then the beautiful little child who’s kind of caught in between them. And you know, what happens to that child? And who does she belong with ultimately?

Yeah, it’s fun. I mean, I can’t believe I just described a complex story as fun but it is, as far as a reading experience goes. I cared about the characters. The kid is great. I don’t really like necessarily children in books. Unless, like, you know, little kids who sound like adults. This kid does not sound like an adult. This kid sounds like a tiny little child. It’s just like, what is happening? The creepy doll? I thought the creepy doll was a nice time. What do you want to make sure that people know about Jasmine or Rebecca or any part of The Leftover Women? What are you hoping readers will bring?

Well, I would say that you know something I’ve heard from some people who, let’s say, have adopted a Chinese daughter themselves is that they are afraid to read the book, like they want to read it, but they’re a little bit scared that maybe it would devastate them. I want to tell you, it will not devastate you, whichever side of the argument you may want to be on. I think that it’s really The leftover woman is really a story more about the things we have in common than the issues that drive us apart. So it does touch upon many themes for book clubs, like, you know, fetishization, and who, who has the right to and adopt a child and race and class. But ultimately, I think the answer that the book gives is that you know, we are more than the things that divide us we have, you know, we are actually the things that unite us and we can learn, you know, we can be flawed, dig deeply, deeply flawed, and yet we can grow beyond our mistakes and become better people.

And that seems like a perfect place to wrap this episode. Jean Kwok, thank you so much. The Leftover Woman is out. Now if you haven’t read Searching for Sylvie Lee or Mambo in Chinatown or Girl in Translation. They’re all available in paperback. Thanks so much.

Thank you so much.

Poured Over