Meng Jin, LITTLE GODS
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[1:22]I'm here today with Meng Jin, who is the debut author of Little Gods, a condiment fellow.
[1:27]She was a graduate of Harvard University and Hunter College. She currently lives in San Francisco.
[1:32]So welcome, Meng. Thanks so much for coming on mom's don't have time to read books.
[1:36]Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to discuss Little Gods, which was
[1:40]beautifully written. From the very first page, I just was drawn in immediately by your writing
[1:45]style and the things you were telling and the way that you told it. So I'm delighted to get to
[1:49]talk to you about it. Thank you so much for reading the book at all and also for those kind words.
[1:55]Oh, we were just talking about covers. I also happen to love your book cover, not that you
[1:58]judge a book by his cover, but it's a pretty awesome cover. I love it as well. Yeah, I was so thrilled
[2:04]when I saw it. So just to describe what I'm talking about, Little Gods, how do I even describe?
[2:07]This is like a red with a little dark purple and some scattered gold dots. So go Google it or
[2:14]something, but when you're buying it, you can see the title. Anyway, it's Little Gods. It's a great
[2:18]cover. So very captivating and very reflective of sort of the interest that the book will take you
[2:24]away with as you read it. Yeah, one of my friends said that the dots invoke mathematics, which I
[2:30]could kind of see and I like thinking about that. Interesting. Yeah. So first of all, tell us what
[2:37]Little Gods is about. Yeah. So Little Gods is a story about migrations, migrations through time,
[2:44]place, and class. And it is centered around a Chinese woman physicist named Sulan.
[2:51]She's, this is not a spoiler because it happens pretty early in the book, but she's dead when
[2:56]the book begins more or less. And so the story is told through the fragmented gazes of other people
[3:04]in her life. And they don't quite add up to a whole picture. So for me, the book is also about
[3:12]the ways in which we are known and unknown to others and to ourselves. And what inspired you to
[3:19]write this book? What inspired me to write this book? So many things. I mean, the seat of the idea
[3:25]which was in the opening scene came to me maybe six years ago. And that was the idea of a child being
[3:33]born on the night of June 4th, 1989 in Beijing and her father disappearing that night. And very
[3:40]much like the reader, I didn't know like, you know, what had happened to this child who she was
[3:46]and who her father was and why he had left. So I spent some years trying to figure that out
[3:52]through many abandoned drafts. And then the book really came together for me when I realized that
[3:58]Sulan was going to be like this intentional absence in the narrative and that the narrative would
[4:04]refolve around her. Very cool. I remember this whole Tiananmen Square incident being in school
[4:11]and stopping class the next day to all discuss the events. And I know you have a family
[4:17]connection to this event, right? I read that your father told you that you when you were five
[4:22]years old, you tell the story. Yeah, I've always been really interested in Chinese history. But
[4:27]the reason this event sort of, you know, stuck in my mind, right? And wouldn't leave me alone
[4:34]because I was born, you know, in the spring of 1989, not on June 4th, but I mean, what a lot
[4:44]of people don't know about these protests is that the massacre happened on that night, but the
[4:49]protest lasted for months, right? And so that was what was so remarkable about it was that
[4:54]Chairman Square was being occupied since late April. And so I was born in spring of that year. And
[5:02]you know, I remember as a child, my father telling me that if it hadn't been for me
[5:10]being an infant and requiring his care, he would have been invading, protesting with the students.
[5:16]And, you know, I must have always been slightly inclined to storytelling because that great
[5:23]story stuck in my mind. And I began to imagine, you know, that my birth had saved his life.
[5:31]And so, you know, this inciting incident in my book is sort of like a reimagining of that,
[5:38]you know, what if my father had been a different person? If he had gone, yeah, well, glad that he stayed
[5:45]home. We get to have this conversation and that the world is worked out. There was so much of
[5:50]math, science, physics, influence in this book, obviously. Right. Is this what you studied? Like,
[5:56]tell me your personal connection to this? Sure. Yeah, I studied physics when I started college.
[6:03]I wanted to be a physics major, but I abandoned it pretty quickly because I realized that I was
[6:09]more interested in the conceptual elements of physics than in doing problem sets every week
[6:16]for my classes. And also, like, the physics classes were really ugly classrooms. And the
[6:22]humanities classes were in beautiful classes. So I started gravitating towards humanities when
[6:29]I was in college. But I mean, I still love physics. And I love like while I was reading this book,
[6:36]or sorry, while I was writing this book, I was reading a lot of these like popular science books
[6:43]written by physicists, like, you know, brief history of time by Stephen Hawking and also Carlo
[6:48]Ravelli's to recent books on physics among others. But what I really loved about those books was
[6:55]how beautiful the language was actually and how beautiful the concepts were. I was so moved by
[7:04]things like relativity. And I knew that my character was a one scientist and it didn't really
[7:13]know what kind of scientist she was yet. But I decided to try making her a physicist because I was
[7:19]so interested by these ideas. And once I did that, you know, the physics ideas and like the sort
[7:26]of metaphorical potentials that they opened up just seemed to jive really well with the other
[7:33]themes in the book, like loss and grief and time, of course. And I love how much passion
[7:40]Ceylon had for physics. Right. The way you described it that she couldn't wait to get back to
[7:45]an even after she, well, I don't want to give anything but you that it was something sort of deep
[7:50]in her soul. And then really just set her soul a flame to just get back in it and do it some more.
[7:56]Do you feel like that a about physics be about writing? Yeah. I mean, see neither.
[8:02]Be both. The correct answer is B. The reason I didn't end up going into physics was because I
[8:08]didn't feel that way about physics. And I sort of as, you know, I loved it. And I thought certain
[8:13]concepts were beautiful. But I was like, I feel like I would be better at physics if I had this
[8:19]burning desire to finish my problem sets every week. Yeah. But I definitely feel that way about
[8:25]writing. And I do think, I mean, it's a very astute question because those parts where I write
[8:31]about Ceylon's passion for physics, I'm definitely translating some of my own experience as a writer.
[8:39]It's hard to capture that without feeling it about something, right? Yeah. It's hard to imagine
[8:43]that somebody feels that excited if you don't actually feel excited about something. Yeah.
[8:47]Unlike, so I actually rewrote a lot of that section in the beginning when she right after
[8:55]Tim and Square, when she's like sort of depressed and can't do anything and then gets back into
[9:00]physics after the 2016 election. Because I had an experience with my novel after the 2016 election
[9:10]in which I was just very disillusioned with art and wondered why we were making art at all,
[9:17]like why would someone read a book when we should all just be on the streets. And part of like
[9:23]finding and feeling like myself again was reminding myself why literature was important to me.
[9:30]So did you start writing? I know you had been working on this for quite some time,
[9:34]but after the election, did it renew the energy you had in this project? Did you clear the
[9:41]decks and tell me more about the process of when you were writing this? Did you just say, okay,
[9:46]I know I'm giving up on this. I've lost all hope. But now I've come back to it and now I'm in
[9:53]it with a vengeance because blah, blah, blah. Yeah, no, definitely. I definitely had a little bit
[9:58]of that kind of experience. I read-
[10:00]a lot of Audre Lorde and Lucille Clifton and James Baldwin to be, you know, for, like,
[10:06]spirit guides. And there's an Audre Lorde quote about self-care and how like survival is an
[10:14]active resistance. And that definitely was on my mind when I found my way back into the book.
[10:21]And give me a visual of how you wrote this book where you act for you and coffee chefs. Like,
[10:27]I'd like to just know how people write. And yeah, the visual is very disgusting. It's like me
[10:33]not without like brushing my teeth or washing my face, sitting at my desk, getting up and putting
[10:41]on whatever clothes I'm wearing or whatever clothes I nearby. And when I was deep in the book,
[10:47]I just woke up and sat at my desk and like wrote until my partner came home. And there's actually
[10:56]this Audrelee Moton poem that's called Love Poem with apologies for my appearance.
[11:02]She talks about like the same like forest green hoodie and like the pistachio shells and like the
[11:09]clementine peels. That's very much my process. I think the day I found that poem that I actually
[11:17]like had given up on eating proper food and was just eating a big bag of Costco pistachios.
[11:24]Any other go-to foods? I eat a lot of different foods. But while I'm deep in a writing project,
[11:31]I'm just like, oh, let me eat something that doesn't take any time. So a lot of snacks.
[11:37]Yeah. Awesome. I don't usually ask that question. I don't know.
[11:39]But thank you for the pistachios. That's interesting. I don't know why. I feel like when I can
[11:45]visualize an author and what they're doing somehow it forms a book and so why, but maybe not.
[11:50]I really liked the scene where the neighbor whose name is escaping me right now, what is the
[11:55]neighbor's zoo, zoo when? Yeah, zoo. Okay. She does not want to leave her apartment. The Chinese
[12:02]developers are banging down the door, increasing their offers to get her to move. Her husband has
[12:08]passed away a while ago and has had been blind and then died and is visiting her as a spirit.
[12:13]And she feels like if I move, how will the spirit ever find me? Which is such an interesting thing
[12:18]in and of itself? Yeah. Because the spirit, the idea of believing in the spirit to begin with is
[12:23]already a lot of leaps of the imagination. I don't know. Maybe spirits know when you move. Who knows?
[12:29]Right. Anyway, she didn't feel that way and she had a whole altar and she was set in her ways
[12:34]and refused to move in that moment for that reason. So tell me a little more about that. And
[12:39]if you've had experience yourself with those types of, I mean, you described it in such a
[12:43]a literal way. I feel like you almost like could have put a photograph of the altar in the book
[12:47]because I can see it so well in my mind. Yeah. Yeah. I unfortunately have not had any encounters
[12:53]with the spirit world myself. I mean, the actual altar even. I didn't think about this. I mean,
[12:58]I sure have asked that. That's actually more interesting. Okay. So you didn't have, I mean, like,
[13:02]have you seen people, have you seen altars with that in people's homes? Yeah. I mean, altars
[13:07]for the dead are very common in Chinese homes. So like in any of my family homes,
[13:13]it's very simple usually not as intense as the one that I described in the book. Yeah,
[13:18]it's usually a photograph of the deceased with some little pot for incense and like maybe some
[13:24]fruit or flowers and for flowers. Yeah. So they're very common in Chinese homes. I did
[13:30]see an altar that inspired the altar in my book, which was just so hodgepodge, right? There's
[13:37]there were political figures among Buddhas. And this was like some distant family members home.
[13:44]And they, I remember distinctly that they also had a picture of the Virgin Mary.
[13:49]And the reasoning was that they had family in America us and that they needed to sort of like,
[13:56]you know, pray to the American God so that they would bless their American family,
[14:00]which I thought was very sweet, but also kind of indicative of, you know,
[14:06]of very indicative of contemporary China because the Chinese Communist Party is officially
[14:12]atheist. And I do think that, you know, China, there's a real spiritual vacuum in contemporary
[14:19]China. A lot of it is being occupied by capitalism, but also that altar that I saw
[14:26]seemed like such a great representation of how individuals will, you know, make their own ways
[14:36]to fill that spiritual vacuum in creative and interesting and like sort of tender ways.
[14:43]Yeah. A lot of the back has to do with mother-daughter relationships,
[14:48]trying to re-conceptualize your mother as like a whole person. What is this person really like?
[14:52]And filling out sort of the blanks in a way. I was interested. Does this come from a need for
[14:58]you to learn more about your own mother? What's your relationship like with your mom? Sorry for
[15:01]crying? Yeah. But did it come from that or did it come from maybe a relationship between
[15:06]a mom and a grandmother or a relationship you'd seen or did you just make the whole thing out?
[15:09]Well, I've always just been fascinated by mother-daughter relationships. I think there's just such
[15:14]rich ground for fiction and for stories because women and girls are really interesting.
[15:22]I think that part of what drove me to write about mother-daughter relationships in this book
[15:27]was a desire to portray a more complex portrait of motherhood just because I think in our society,
[15:34]there's a very narrow vision of what proper motherhood should look like. And as a result,
[15:40]like a lot of mothers feel out of shame, right? Especially working moms or moms who don't fit
[15:47]that image of, you know, that nurturing, loving mom, who's packing lunches for her kids.
[15:54]And so uncertainty is not a mother like that, right? And I mentioned the Florida project because
[16:00]there's this beautiful mother-daughter portrait in that movie. It's a single mom raising a daughter
[16:07]in an Orlando motel. They're very poor. She on paper is a terrible mother, leaves her daughter
[16:14]alone for most of the day to her own, you know, whatever she wants to do in, you know,
[16:20]the hotel parking lot. At one point, you know, she's always like cursing in front of her child,
[16:24]like dressing very, you know, wearing very, really close, at one point, she even like does some
[16:30]sex work while her daughters in the bathroom. And so on paper, really, like such a good mom.
[16:37]Thank you for that. Well, but the thing is when you see that movie, the portrait of that relationship,
[16:42]you can also see how respectful and loving that relationship is and how, even though this child
[16:50]doesn't have, you know, the conditions that on paper seem like are necessary for a good childhood,
[16:56]she's, there's a lot of joy, you know, in her childhood, still a lot of joy and love and light.
[17:02]And so when the state intervenes to deem that the mother is not fit to take care of her child,
[17:08]as I as a viewer, you know, felt heartbroken for that family and that separation. And I think
[17:15]in my book, I wanted to also write about a relationship that on paper, my, you know, a mother who
[17:23]on paper might look like a bad mother, but to complicate that, right, and present another
[17:28]image of what motherhood might look like. I saw a movie somewhat similar to that a long time ago.
[17:33]I feel like it was Susan Surandon, and I want to say it was like a young Natalie Portman,
[17:38]and they looked in motels and kept getting evicted everywhere and anyway.
[17:42]Oh, I'm going to look at it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I tell it. That's another,
[17:45]just like the two of them, single mom, yeah, complicated situation, but I don't know,
[17:50]reminds me of that. We can like swap our movie recommendations. Yeah, I'll do my next like,
[17:55]cute, whatever. Yeah. And your mom though, do you want to talk about that?
[17:58]Oh, you prefer that too. Well, I don't really have permission from her. I feel like it's like her
[18:04]life. Right. Yeah. And what if she hears this and is upset about the way of the refrigerator?
[18:11]Totally. I mean, my mom would probably be upset. So yeah. So we'll leave her mom's out of this,
[18:16]but okay, good to know. What is coming next for you after this beautiful book?
[18:22]I'm working on a second novel. Okay. I feel like a lot of, I don't like to talk about it too much
[18:28]because I feel like a lot of the, it can dissipate the energy and desire to write when you talk
[18:35]about it. So like, if I bottle in all my feelings about my second book, you'll come out on the page
[18:42]better. So I'm writing a second book, but I'm also working on short stories.
[18:48]There's a short story that's very close to my heart and heart to write that I'm spinning around
[18:54]in the back of my head. Can't wait for that one. Yeah. Do you outline what's your process? Like
[19:01]when you have a, it sounds like you don't. I'm going to take a guess, but it sounds like all of
[19:04]this lives in your, in your head and you mix it all up. It's all of this energy and it comes out
[19:09]beautifully. Do you do any outlining? Do you have a general sense when you start of where you're
[19:13]going or the ending or are you more character driven? How did you craft it? Yeah. Well, I mean,
[19:19]this book, this book was about the absences. Anyway, no, no, I mean, this book, I did so many
[19:26]different things because I started writing it before I knew how to write anything. Right. So I
[19:31]part of writing this book was also figuring out how, who I was as a writer and how I wrote.
[19:37]And by the end, I did a lot of outlining and like drafting in the beginning. But by the end,
[19:43]I figured out that I was more of an intuitive writer. And so like by the last drafts,
[19:49]I actually started the drafts on a blank page and would just write without feeling beholden
[19:56]to the former drafts because I felt like the story would come out.
[20:00]More organically that way and elegantly I hope how did you did you learn at all trial and error?
[20:06]Did you take classes? Did you have people reading your book? Did you?
[20:10]Everything all of yeah, whatever works
[20:12]Whatever works
[20:14]But now I definitely I think part of writing this book was figuring out that
[20:19]If you have a sense of or if I have a sense of where a story is going and where it's starting and especially for me
[20:25]It's important to like have a sense of how it's going to feel like the the way the words move on the page or like the way the sentence is
[20:33]Move if I can like hear if I can start hearing that in my head, then I know it's like, okay
[20:39]Now I can start writing
[20:41]Interesting. Yeah, cuz there's something I must
[20:44]Musical about it, right? The way that you the way your sentences are I'm not gonna describe it well, but I don't know
[20:50]It's very like lyrical. Yeah, thank you. Maybe I'll throw that word out there. Thank you
[20:56]It's very kind
[20:57]Do you have any advice to aspiring authors? I think read anything you can get your hands on like one of the I
[21:04]Didn't mf a but and I've taken a bunch of creative writing workshops
[21:08]But definitely I've learned most from other books
[21:11]You know books that I love and go back to and try to figure out how they're working and doing something trying to copy that
[21:20]Yeah, so read anything you can get your hands on find out what you love and
[21:26]Find out, you know what and also don't be afraid to do the thing that's failing because if it's failing
[21:34]It's probably because it's harder to do and more interesting
[21:38]How do you pull yourself off the ground after you finish a draft and then you just said you know what?
[21:42]I'm throwing this out and starting again like what is it that gives you?
[21:46]The drives to just try again. Is it the passion for the writing?
[21:51]Like how like what made you not give up on this book and maybe 10,000 other people who started a book like this and
[21:57]Then didn't finish it. I always wonder that. Yeah, I mean
[22:00]I think that the story you didn't let me go until I figured out how to tell it right
[22:04]Hmm if that makes sense like by the end of the draft like by the lot final drafts I
[22:12]Did feel like I'd been released
[22:14]Like it's a problem you were trying to solve right like you kept trying to figure out the answer
[22:18]Yeah, or like untie a knot or like get rid of some like cloud in my head
[22:24]So it's less drive into termination and more just like getting an annoying knot out of the way
[22:29]Yeah, but it's also I mean for me when I'm writing well
[22:33]It's so pleasurable like there's nothing better. So also that
[22:37]That's next
[22:39]Like you think the right job then we have
[22:42]Well, thank you so much for coming on mom's home time to read books and for sharing your story and for writing this beautiful
[22:47]Novel, thank you so much for having you. It's been a pleasure
[22:51]You've been listening to moms don't have time to read books with zibi Owens
[22:54]Please make sure to sign up for my newsletter at zibi Owens.com to get more updates about episodes like these and also lots of live events
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