Poured Over: John Cho on Troublemaker

“The original impulse to write a book for this age was knowing that this is a time of identity formation for me, curiosity about the outside world. And I guess I wanted to make an offering in that space…I just wanted to write a book with an Asian American protagonist. And I thought, how cool it would have been for me at that age to see that at the library.” Actor John Cho (Searching, Better Luck Tomorrow, Star Trek, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle) steps into a new role, author, with the publication of Troublemaker, his first book for middle grade readers. John joins us on the show to talk about why he needed to write this book now (it wasn’t what he originally pitched to his editor); the legacy of 4/29 in the Korean American community and the murder of Latasha Harlins; his fondness for the Little House series; the elasticity of the English language (and not using italics to call out Korean words) and much more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer.

Featured Books:

Troublemaker by John Cho

The Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

IQ by Joe Ide

Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha

Poured Over is hosted and produced by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional bonus episodes on Saturdays) here, and on your favorite podcast app.

Full transcript for this episode of Poured Over:

Barnes & Noble: John Cho, thank you so much for joining us on Poured Over. This is not the project we were really expecting from you. You’ve written a middle reader book, which is very cool. It’s designed for the 8 to 12 set. Yeah. And it’s a really important book, I think, because you’re talking about a moment in American history that not everyone is totally familiar with. And you’re telling the story through the eyes of a 12-year-old who, we’re going to come back to Jordan in a second, but would you set this book up for listeners? And then would you let us know how it started for you?

John Cho: Okay, first of all, thanks for having me on. It’s really great. Now, finally, I’ve never written book before, obviously. So this is the moment where I start to share it with the world. All of these early interactions are really telling and I treasure them. So thank you so much. The book is about a boy in Glendale, California, April 29, 1992. He’s 12 years old, he comes home suspended from school, and something big is going on. And it’s the day that the verdict for the four officers who beat Rodney King is being read. They’ve been released, and he comes home, his parents are home from the store, they work at a liquor store in south central and the dad goes to board up the store in case there’s unrest, he becomes increasingly distraught as he’s watching the news. And then in an effort to maybe be a hero in his father’s eyes. He, without permission, takes the gun from his father’s closet, puts it in his backpack sneaks out of the house determined to deliver that gun to his father for protection that night. And it’s the story of a boy trying to get across LA on a very consequential evening. How did I arrive here? It was really two summers ago, when we were you know, in the house at the beginning of COVID, watching news and George Floyd had been murdered and anti-Asian violence was on the rise. And it was a time of forced reflection for me. And my thoughts kind of went to this other event that kind of rattled my world, the Los Angeles riots. And I started thinking about my parents lives, my life, and my children’s lives and kind of where the country was going. And so I kind of changed course, I was supposed to write a lighter book, a perhaps a mystery novel for kids, the same age range. So this idea arrived instead, thankfully, my editor at Little Brown was open to it. And we went forward with this.

B&N: You know, I really appreciated your author’s note, because I have to say, I was a little surprised when Jordan goes to the closet to pull out his father’s gun, I understand, absolutely, the premise of wanting to protect your dad and do the right thing. And we’re going to come to the family dynamics, because there’s a lot of ground that you cover in this one family, and I adore them. They’re great. This family so wonderful. But the gun was a really intense choice. I thought, and can you just bring listeners into your author’s note for a second?

JC: I think this project happened so fast. And I think I’m still understanding why I did this and what these decisions mean, I’m in a period of reflecting about these decisions. I went very impulsively into this, but I think it started with the image that most people associate with Koreans and the LA riots, which is the image of the shopkeepers on the roofs with their guns. And, and I think my instinct was to explore what that family was like. And so I placed a gun in the home of this family, and thought what would happen to it, and I thought of my friends who had fathers who own guns, specifically a friend who was about that age, and he was playing with his father’s gun, and with a friend after school, and it went off and hit the wall behind him, I confirmed that it was a very near miss from the placement of the hole in the wall, and thought about how when we were kids, we were so attracted to the energy of the gun. What does a gun mean? What does it represent in America today? And for my character, Jordan, I think it represented safety, it could represent filial piety, it could represent power, but you know, I think in America, the gun has an outsized importance of symbolic importance. And so I wanted to think about that. And as far as our hesitations, ultimately, I thought, with so many of the kind of mature issues in the book, the way I said it in the author’s note, as you alluded to, I thought it was an abdication of my duty as a parent to not talk about these things with my kids. My children are had gone through active shooter drills at their school, so it was in their lives. I spent the last year and a half or so or two years actually in New Zealand. When I put my kids in school, I think my boy went to school there and they all asked him have you been in a shooting at school? And so that is our reputation across the world that does kind of separate us from all the other countries. So it’s something that they’re dealing with. And I wanted to sort of provide an opportunity to discuss it. If they needed. I wasn’t going to push it. But if they wanted to, we could use the book.

B&N: And your kids, they fall into that 8 to 12. Age Group. Have they read Troublemaker?

JC: They have, yeah.

B&N: Thumbs up or Okay, Dad, this is nice for a first try?

JC: Thumbs up. Thumbs up. Thank God.

B&N: Well, I mean, you’re still dad. I don’t know about you. But I had moments with my parents where I was like, Yeah, you’re my parents. I mean, yeah, I have pretty great parents. But you know, when you’re 12, you don’t really know what planet you’re on. And which brings me to Jordan for a second because he’s 12. Yeah, he acts like a 12-year-old, which is kind of adorable, even though he makes some choices that you know, as adults, we’re going, Oh, what are you doing? But he has a very real relationship with his older sister, Sarah. And, you know, people don’t always get the sibling relationship. Right. So, I need to know, Are you the oldest sibling? Do you have younger sibling?

JC: I’m the older.

B&N: Okay, so you have been the Sarah to a smaller sibling?

JC: That’s right. Yeah.

B&N: I have a younger brother as well. So I felt.

JC: You felt that older sibling energy.

B&N: Oh, I can’t let you kill yourself. Mom is going to have a moment if anything happens.

JC: It’s funny, I grew up resenting being the older sibling, right? Because especially in Asian families, I feel like so much of the parenting duties are kind of shifted on to the older sibling and, and that relationship is very deep and profound. I mean, my oldest uncle, he didn’t go to college, and he worked to pay for his younger brother’s education. So they’re one organism, but as Americans growing up in America, rather, I didn’t quite get it. So there was a lot of conflict in our family, between me and my brother because of those mixed expectations. And I wanted to paint that in the book.

B&N: But one of the things I also appreciate about Jordan’s family is that grandpa lives with them. And grandpa is not interested in drama. Did not actually want the American Dream, dad made him come because dad is like I’m not leaving you behind in South Korea. You have to come with us and grandpa’s kind of nonplussed by everything. He’s really just kind of a great character sitting in the corner. Yeah, I would like to watch my shows, and be left alone. But did you know this had to be a multigenerational story?

JC: I think so. It was instinctual because I wanted different perspectives on what was happening generationally. They all viewed it a different way. And I think the grandfather saw it as one in a long line of injustice to the Korean people. He was the one that saw it in a historical context. And the parents saw it as something that was happening to them, to their store, perhaps, to their livelihood, it was a very immediate thing. And Jordan sees it as something that’s happening to my parents, not to him, but to his parents. And so, I kind of want a different generational perspectives on this event.

B&N: One of the things too, that you’ve decided as a stylistic choice, and I don’t know if this was you, or your editor, all of you in concert, but not putting Korean words into italics, which I think we need to do more of with any word of non English origin. In any kind of narrative. I’m just so tired of seeing things that metallics like just because you don’t know what it is, I can figure out from the context I don’t speak Spanish, I can still figure out the context.

JC: It’s bothered me for a long as long as I’ve been a reader, I’ve always it goes back to my father. I don’t remember what age I was. But I remember him saying something like, I don’t like how they call Korean towns villages, and small towns in America are towns, but towns in Korea are called villages. And that’s a kind of italic to that italics, but I disliked them and I wanted them to be normal. And you know, if I could have I would have just mixed in Korean words for bilingual audience because we do speak a mix of Korean and English at home. And I think that’s very common. And so the words go in and out. And I felt that the italics or bumps in that flow of speech. That was an important thing for me.

B&N: I just feel like modern American English. It’s a polyglot language. I mean, we pull from everywhere and to suddenly start saying that something with German origin has more standing. Yeah, you know, I slip between Japanese and English quite frequently and I don’t even notice I’m doing it.

JC: It’s beautiful. I happen to think that English is an extremely elastic language and it does seem to just hold so much. It’s interesting like in a tonal language like Mandarin, you go away and if you pronounce it wrong, they don’t have the meaning. But I love going to Korea Town and watching, you know, Latino immigrants speaking to Korean immigrants, and they’re both speaking English in different accents, and yet they’re understanding one another. And it’s remarkable, really remarkable to me and it is, I don’t know if there’s something inherent to the language or our country, but it is an extremely democratic language. It can hold a lot.

B&N: Yeah. And I think in LA too, it’s wild to hear people slip between Spanish and English and Korean. And it’s just I happen to live in a neighborhood where those three languages just they flow into each other and flow out and you just follow along and it’s great.

JC: Even on the cover of the book. I was one of the early mockups and it was a very innocent mistake, because it’s Korea Town, but all the signage was in Korean initially. And I said no, it’s got to be at least three languages. You know, if you have space for some Thai or Armenian, that that too, but you gotta be minimum three languages on the cover on any mini mall.

B&N: And you taught English before your acting career took off, you taught high school English. And that’s not always the tact that comes along with being Asian American. I mean, oftentimes we go a different direction. But who are you as a teacher? And what were you thinking about as you were teaching because you were teaching older high school students, not tiny people.

JC: I taught for one year 7th and 10th grade English at a private school in Los Angeles when I first graduated from college. I had an English degree, didn’t know what to do. Frankly, I would have preferred a nighttime job like waiting tables, but I couldn’t get one. It would have been better for a guy who was trying to do plays at night. But yeah, it was really gratifying. I did walk away from that year going, this cannot be a second job. This has to be a first job. I did my best but it was so taxing because it’s such a huge job. Even teaching two classes was a huge consuming job. And every piece of paper, every piece of homework represented a child it was it was just so much, but it was very gratifying.

B&N: Were you teaching Steinbeck and Hemingway, or were you teaching more modern? I mean Catcher and the Rye?

JC: I remember Lord of the Flies as one I’m struggling to remember my reading list. If memory serves, it was provided for me. I was a first year teacher.

B&N: But it was stuff that you would have read to as a high school student. And Glendale, it sounds like I’m just really sort of classical modern. American lit, Hemingway Steinbeck, I mean, yeah, I can probably come up with the list. Working off of Lord of the Flies. I mean, you’ve always been a reader. Since you were small. This is the thing that you’d love. Do you remember the book that made you think of this? Is it like, was it Paddington, or Stuart Little like, Was it something like that?

JC: The most important book for me when I was younger, was the Little House on the Prairie series, I identified so much of the Ingalls family, we were immigrants, they were pioneers. And there was something also about them being alone. We were the only ones of our family who had made it to the United States. And there was a certain ambition to being the only Asians typically where we were living. It was the only one of our family that had come to the state. So there was a certain kind of loneliness but also togetherness that that book illustrated, I was just very curious about life back then, too. And there was just a great comfort in those books. I think they’re beautiful. I read them to my children, and it’s definitely a family heirloom for us.

B&N: I wanted a sod house so badly in the backyard, and my parents were like absolutely not. And I don’t know if it was because the neighbors would be horrified or if they were worried that the roof would collapse on my head but like they you are not going out in the backyard and digging a sod house little girl.

JC: I think I quoted Pa Ingalls very recently, we were in a rental house and Airbnb in New Zealand. And there was a, think it was a Norwegian man who would who would own the house and it was the cleanest house we’d ever seen. And I said, Well, Pa Ingalls said when he says the sod house, he said the Norwegians are very clean people. It’s in me, that book is in me.

B&N: I interviewed Kal Pen when his memoir came out, and he told me that you turned him on to Jhumpa Lahiri with Interpreter of Maladies, which is one of the most sublime collections of short stories ever. So as an adult, who are you as a reader?

JC: Oh, man, I’m afraid I’m not as much of a reader as I’d like to be because of the family and the reading I have to do for work. I like fiction. I’m reading a book that’s nonfiction right now called Tastes Like War by Grace M. Cho, which is really devastating and insightful and memoir. Everyone within the sound of my voice if you can, it’s really fascinating. But yeah, and and out of curiosity, I think I’m drifting towards Asian American authors more as I get older, and I guess I’m comparing experiences and expression and sometimes I’m like, I wonder if there’s a grammatical family relationship. Sometimes I just look for kinship in sentence structure sometimes, too.

B&N: No, I get that. I totally get that. Can I give you a couple of recommendations? So there’s a guy called Joe Ide who has. Yes. Love that series. Love that guy. So for those of you who don’t know what we’re infusing about ridiculously but this guy is really good. IQ is like a Sherlock Holmes character only he lives in South Central LA. He’s great. And it’s a series and it’s really fun. And I really appreciate Joe’s style. I like the way he sets things up and he writes these beautiful sentences, but stuff happens. So it’s kind of like you get everything. And Steph Cha, Your House Will Pay, which is about the Latasha Harlins case it’s yeah, if you have a chance, it’s really spectacular. I mean, there are moments where it is very, very hard. And when I say it’s about Latasha Harlins it’s based roughly on her life. And it’s a similar setup to what happened to her and you address Latasha’s death as well, in Troublemaker which I very much appreciated. It is a big part of the story for 29. We can’t leave her out. But it also brings me to your process as a writer. How did you know what you needed to cover and what you wanted to cover? I mean, obviously Rodney King, and the verdict and Latasha are the big moments. But part of what makes Troublemaker really powerful is that you include all of these smaller moments, Jordan at church with his friend, Mike, Jordan’s conflict with his dad, all of these very intimate family moments, Sarah has a boyfriend that her parents might not approve of Sarah’s worried for her little brother, when Jordan does something goofy. We’re gonna let readers discover that. Jordan has a couple of moments where he makes some goofy choices. But he’s 12. Yeah, but let’s talk about your writing process and how we got the book that ultimately becomes Troublemaker?

JC: Well, it was really important to me, for some reason to not dwell on the images that we’d already seen, as I said, you know, kind of started with the image of the Koreans on the rooftops with the rifles, and I wanted to veer inward towards that family. And similarly, I didn’t want to wade into the protests, I didn’t want to have the characters happen upon any looting or breaking of windows. So, I wanted to offer a contrasting experience. And so the encounters that Jordan has are one-on-one, I wanted to offer a different look. And it was the sort of the barrage of news images that had whipped him up into a frenzy. And so I wanted, on that evening, for him to encounter individuals rather than a group or a collective and stuff that wasn’t going to make the news. So that was where that started from. And really Latasha Harlins’ incident, in a way is the original event. And it has particular importance, obviously to Jordan, because it was one Korean shop owner who murdered her and it was a kid and Jordan’s a kid. And so, I wanted that relationship to be on his mind as well.

B&N: I think kids pick up on much more than we often give them credit for, I think, as adults, we think we’re the smartest ones in the room, but they notice a lot. And that’s something that Jordan does with his parents. He knows his parents are having a rough go of it. And it’s because they want a better life for their children. They very specifically can’t like his dad used to love poetry and read them poetry. And now, dad’s a little stressed out running his store. And it’s not just because of 429, either his dad is just stressed out trying to make a living, and they’re in Glendale, and tiny apartment and dad’s dad is living with them too. And there’s all of this pressure and Jordan, he’s a sweet kid. He means well, he wants to be a good kid. He’s embarrassed that he’s not doing well in school. He’s comparing himself to his sister who did really well in school. And all of this is coming from a place of great love and respect. He’s 12, he makes bad decisions. He’s 12. I’ve never met a 12-year-old that makes consistently great decisions. I’m always surprised when my five year olds are like, Hey, I have a clue. This is great. You don’t have to worry about me, you know, running into traffic. But you knew Jordan had to be this age. There are a couple of high school students in this book, he needed to be on the cusp right of childhood and adolescence?

JC: Yes. The original impulse to write a book for this age was knowing that this is a time of identity formation for me, curiosity about the outside world. And I guess I wanted to make an offering in that space. And looking back at that time, originally, I just wanted to write a book with an Asian American protagonist. And I thought, how cool it would have been for me at that age to see that at the library, because I didn’t go to the bookstore. Sorry, Barnes and Noble. I had to go to the library.

B&N: Plenty of us started as library kids. One of my American uncle’s was the head of the library system where I grew up, and he let me have the run of the adult section before other kids. So I was reading totally inappropriate stuff. And he wouldn’t tell my parents, he was just like, go do it. Go do it. Which is I’m pretty sure how I ended up becoming a bookseller is because, yeah, it makes sense. I needed all props to librarians and libraries, because that’s how some of us ended up doing this for the rest of our lives.

JC: I remember I read one of my first adult books was First Blood by David Morrell, which I read in a Seattle store called Fred Meyer, which is like this, kind of like a grocery store. Yeah, I just read while my parents would shop, I’d read a chapter and then put it down, make get back to it next week. And I made it through. And that was one of my first adult books. But anyway, when I was thinking, you know, in 2020, about all the events going on around us, I and then I thought about the LA riots. And I thought of this story. And I thought, what would it be like for a kid who was at that age who was sort of on the cusp of adulthood and trying to comprehend an event that was beyond him. And it felt like what I was trying to think about in the moment with my children and the events of 2020.

B&N: It’s really something to be able to look at what’s happening around you and say I’m living through a historic moment. And to notice that there’s a shift, for instance, you’re writing about a time in America where we didn’t have cell phones, where we were not immediately connected to the internet. I mean, Jordan actually has to think about where the streets go, because he doesn’t know exactly where he’s going. He can’t just pull out his phone and say, Okay, I’m going to map this right now. And I’ll know exactly where I’m going. And in some cases, that’s really serendipitous for storytelling. And in other cases, it’s a reminder of how different the world was. And we’re not talking 50 years ago, we’re talking about the early 90s. Yeah, it really wasn’t that long ago.

JC: I did a movie called Searching, a few years ago, which was a movie that took place on screen. And it really caused me to think about computers and devices and storytelling, because there’s so many things that were in cinema that were scenes, the detective going to the locations going Have you seen her? and showing a picture and then you see him hoofing it to another location, going in and whipping out the Polaroid again, and I go, Wait, that’s actually taps on the computer. Now that scene is gone. So it was fun to go back and eliminate those devices. For the sake of storytelling, it also made it trickier to get a kid across those great distances, trying to figure that out was, especially if you’re recalling the gardener truck sequence, and all of that, trying to figure out how to get him eventually there. I’m trying not to give away too much. But it became it became very tricky. And I was riding with a co writer Sarah Sue, who’s wonderful, but young. So there was a lot of No, no, no, back then.

B&N: Right. And I will say Mike had a very good idea at the end of that particular setup with the set piece with the gardener’s truck. Mike had a very good idea, he totally came through and not expecting that from like, because Mike’s a little bit of a cut up. Why we expect children to be perfect, and this whole model minority myth is revolting anyway, and I’ve always felt that way. I mean, being on the cover of Time magazine with the headline saying, Oh, look, is this no, we’re not. We’re children. We’re messy. We’re weird. We’re difficult. We’re tiny human beings. And we’re not the Herald of new anything. And please don’t use me as a wedge. Thank you very much, Ronald Reagan. Because yes, like what was that?

JC: Well I think that’s why, in a way, I had to make Jordan a quote troublemaker. And it went back to kind of my youth and me and my Korean friends, we like to be mad at the fictional Peter Kim, who lived in Cerritos and got a 1600 on his SAT, because not only was the model minority myth used by the larger white population, but it was also we bought into it, and our parents bought into it. And so then they would say, well, so and so did this, and so and so’s going to Harvard, and so on. So it’s gonna, and we all felt small and felt like we weren’t doing anything. I definitely wanted Jordan to not be perfect. And he had to be a troublemaker. And I guess that’s the journey of the book is him considering those labels and who he is.

B&N: But that’s the kind of representation that we actually need more of. We don’t need to always be the hero. We certainly don’t need to be Long Duck Dong, or that Mickey Rooney character in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. But to have that kind of reality? I mean, it’s not unfamiliar to you. You’ve done it and Better Luck Tomorrow. That’s a wonderful movie where everyone’s kind of an antihero, including you. Yeah. But to see these kids be kids. And you know, Mike makes some decisions to like, Oh, my God, when your parents find out what you’ve done, little man, you are doomed. When we talk about representation. I’d like to see us broaden that, like not everyone is middle class, but also not everyone is absolutely struggling. Like we just need to show the variety of who we are. I think growing up Asian American on the West Coast, in many ways is very different from growing up Asian American on the East Coast. Yeah, I grew up in a community were hi, my brother and my mom and I were it. And later, like a Korean American family moved in. And I had classmates in high school who, it was like, Oh, yay, hi, nice to meet you. I mean, there’s a relation, you know?

JC: Yeah, absolutely. I completely had the same experience. And I think also, I guess it’s important, in my eyes, to understand that being Asian is not a monolith. There’s no Asian culture as such. They’re Asian, there’s similarities between Asian cultures, but there is no such thing really. So to show all colors, and I also have been struggling all my life with the construct of shame and, and what role it plays in my life and my decisions and my expectations for myself. And in a way, I kind of wanted to rip that right off and show Jordan struggles as plainly as I could.

B&N: And Sarah’s not perfect, either. I mean, she has she gets very good grades. But she’s, she’s a real kid, as well. And I should say, real teenager, she’s older than Jordan, but she has a slightly more developed sense of self. But again, she’s a teenager, she’s not making perfect decisions, either. And the thing that I really want to make clear is everyone in this family loves each other. They don’t always have the right tools to communicate, but like do any of us? I mean, honestly, there are times where I look at my brother, and I’m like, I love you. But what? Yeah, you can’t be the only one who’s having that response. And, you know, Sarah has those moments with Jordan and mom and dad have those moments with Sarah and with Jordan. And sometimes with both of them going, what. But But everyone’s really well intentioned. And I don’t want that to get lost, just because there’s a lot that happens in this chapter book.

JC: I think, the moniker troublemaker could possibly fit every character in the book in some way. So everyone is somewhere in the in the gray zone. But going back again, to, you know, what I wanted to include in the book because it is set on the first day of the LA riots, I wanted to focus on a family. And as much as the events are swirling around them, the spine of the story is a love story, primarily between father and son, but they’re these connections of love, all throughout the book. And, and I think they, you know, come out loving each other even more, if that’s possible, at the end of the book. And so that’s another thing that I think that was on my mind, which is that often Asian American stories are represented in terms of conflict between generations. And certainly there is some conflict here. But I wanted the real push of the book to be about love between the two generations, or the three generations.

B&N: And I think you definitely succeed in that. Did anything surprise you? While you were writing Troublemaker? Did Jordan do anything where you were like, Hmm, I wasn’t expecting that. Or dad or mom or Sarah?

JC: You know, when we started, I wasn’t sure where Sarah was going to go whether we could take it deeper. And I’m just delighted by Sarah and where she goes in the book. And I was sort of second guessing myself, too. I was like, I don’t know if I can write a female character well enough. And can we do this? And I just really like, like her. I think I’m most surprised by how much I want to be with those people. Is that weird?

B&N: No, it means you’re a reader. I mean, seriously, it means you’re a reader. There have been times where I’ve finished books, and I’ve been like, I can’t believe how did I get to the end? And I mean, it can be a crazy long book, or it can be a very short novel like Julie Otsuka’s, The Swimmers, which is 159 pages of perfect, but I get very sucked in to, which is why I do what I do. But no, it’s not. It’s not weird at all. I mean, do you think there’s another book about this family, I sort of feel like you’ve written a standalone. I mean, I like Jordan as a character, but I think he’s gonna fly straight and figure out his stuff and do whatever Jordan does. I mean, he could end up being a game designer. Who knows?

JC: I’ve thought about it. I’m not sure. But something tells me that this is good. I think it may be it. But don’t hold me at my word. I wouldn’t have thought about a second book with these characters. But the only thing that would make me want to do it is to spend more time with them, which is bizarre, but I think it’d be fun to hang out with them.

B&N: I think it just means you’re a reader and a writer, but would you consider a different book for a similar age group? Or would you consider writing for adults?

JC: Yeah. I think it’s, this has been a very gratifying process. For me. I was very scared to do it. And I didn’t know whether I had the goods, but I’m in a place where I’m thinking about a lot of different things now because just having, you know, the taking it from an idea to a finished product is it just feels so good, and it gives me more confidence that maybe I could do something more. So we’ll see, I’m thinking about a lot of things. Yeah.

B&N: Is it a different set of muscles from acting? Is it a different kind of creative process, when you’re putting words on the page, and working with images and characters, this script obviously is written very differently. Just to begin with, you have to just give the bare bones of the thing and then hand it over to other people to breathe their interpretations into it. So for you as the creator, what’s that like?

JC: I guess there’s both, I mean, it is very different in the sense that you’re thinking of the whole thing all the time, rather than as an actor, I try very actively to not think about the whole thing, that I’m trying to be very subjective, you know, and be inside the person I’m supposed to be and reject everything else. But then I also found that being an actor came in very handy. You know, in my mind, I would be kind of improvising a scene, it felt very similar. What would he say then? What would they say that after that? And I definitely, I think acting got me to have this BS meter that feels authentic, that doesn’t feel authentic. And that came into play a lot. And I’m glad I started with a Korean family for my first outing, because for both of us, me and Sarah, my co-writer, we really relied on our own family memories a lot and contributed our own experiences. And so hopefully, the finished product feels authentic. Because as we were going, we definitely leaned on our own experiences.

B&N: Well, and the dialogue feels really spot on, it doesn’t feel like I’m reading something where it’s like, well, I need to make a point. Now, it’s more like, this is what this kid would do. This is what his sister would do. This is what his little friend would do. This is what his parents would say. And I do appreciate that. Because there are times to when you’re wrestling with big ideas out of history, as you are doing with this middle leader book that you can slip a little bit. And the dialogue suddenly becomes a little sort of everyone’s sitting up a little straighter, as they say, thanks. Instead of just being like, well, this is what this character would do. It’s really kind of refreshing to just fly through the story. And I think for the 8 to 12 set, it is going to be a little bit of a longer read. But there’s a lot in here. I read somewhere that when you told your dad that you’re getting an English degree, he was like, well, at least you can write a history of the Korean American people, but in a way you have. I mean, this is a big moment for the community, and you’ve been able to distill it down into the experience of this really special kid.

JC: Thanks. And I hope it’s received by Korean Americans as what we intended, a Valentine. You know, sometimes I worry that being too truthful, can hurt feelings. If you recall the way Mike’s family, Dad was treating Mr. Gary’s family and things like that. I wanted to be honest about it. And I hope that the Korean American community can, I think it’s been long enough to be okay with it, and to accept it as a loving gesture to explore something that was very impactful for this community. But yeah, I guess it did kind of turn out to be a history of sorts, going back to your other thing, with the dialogue, the real fear was, you know, nobody’s BS meter is sharper than a middle aged kid.

B&N: True. It’s true. They know when the adults are trying to pull the wool over their eyes. Yeah. I dare you to lie to my face. And it’s like, well.

JC: You can’t preach to a 12-year-old. So and you can’t lie. They know it. They sniff it. So that was our biggest fear was having a 12 year old go hmm. I smell something, something smells rotten. So that was the other thing that was motivating us because it’s worthless if it’s not communicating to them.

B&N: And that’s exactly it. I mean, we have to trust kids to be able to understand their experience. But we have to show up and give them context. And we have to give them genuine context. And, you know, we do have to talk about the anti Blackness that has run through multiple Asian American communities. And it’s certainly not limited to Korean Americans, in any way. But we have got to have this conversation. And if this opens up a chance for a 12 year old to say, hey, wait a minute. I need one of my adults to help fill in the gaps. Yeah, yeah. Then I’m hoping that there’s a grownup within arm’s reach, who says, oh, wait a minute, I have the book for you. Yeah. And start here. And it’s a way for kids to start to process information that isn’t a series of really intense images. I mean, I remember seeing footage and photographs of what was happening. I was living on the east coast at the time, and I can only imagine what it was like to be in the middle of that.

JC: The other thing that I that I was really reflecting on was how often they replayed Latasha Harlins murder on the TV and she was a kid. She was a kid. And Du Soon Ja, also, I recall looking at her wondering about her because she didn’t even look vicious. And my take on her back then, I know nothing about her, was it she looked broken at that moment, she looked like she was absent from her body. And I also remember thinking, what has happened to this woman that she thinks this is the appropriate response? She seems like a broken broken person prior to the shooting, you know, but that event, as I say, was sort of Ground Zero.

B&N: Yeah, there’s a lot to think about in the span of this book. And I do think it’s a really great moment for adults to read with their smalls, whether it’s parents, teachers, librarians, whatever we can do, it is a real moment for all of us to sit down with our small people, regardless of their background and say, Hey, listen, let’s learn about this moment and figure out where we go from here. So I hope readers will give Jordan Park and his family a really good chunk of their time.

JC: I do too. I will say, I wanted this book to be read aloud. And I was conscious of making it kind of an exciting book for a young reader and I was always a fan of at that age. You know, kids alone out there as complicated as this book is, but The Adventures of Huck Finn was a favorite of mine. I just, sort of a boy and his friend out there alone, you know, that adventure always was very attractive. And so I hope young readers enjoy it on that level.

B&N: I think they’re going to, I really do. John Cho thank you so much. Troublemaker is out now.

JC: Thank you so much.