Jean Kwok, DOMINION
[0:00]Welcome to Totally Booked.
[0:02]I'm Zibi Owens.
[0:03]I've interviewed more than 2,000 authors on this show and learned endless amounts about
[0:09]storytelling, reinvention and life itself because when you talk about books, you're really
[0:13]talking about life.
[0:15]So get ready to hear from today's best authors, the best-selling and the not yet discovered.
[0:20]Come find your next great read and the story behind it.
[0:24]Enjoy!
[0:27]Gene Kwok is back on the podcast to talk about Dominion, the Silk and Iron Trilogy Book
[0:32]One.
[0:33]Gene Kwok is The New York Times, an internationally best-selling author of The Left Over
[0:38]Woman, Searching for Silly Lee, Girl and Translation, and Mambo in Chinatown.
[0:44]Her books have been chosen by Reed with Jenna, Good Morning America, the CBS New York, Book
[0:49]of the Month, and many others.
[0:51]She has been selected for numerous honors, including the American Library Services Association,
[0:56]Alex Award, the Chinese American Librarians Association Best Book Award, and many
[1:01]others.
[1:02]She received her bachelor's degree from Harvard University and earned an MFA from Columbia.
[1:07]She reviews for The New York Times Book Review, and has served as a judge for international
[1:11]thriller writers, Tucson Festival of Books, and many others.
[1:15]She lives in the New York area.
[1:17]Welcome, Gene.
[1:18]Thank you for coming back on Totally Booked to talk about Dominion, congratulations.
[1:23]Silly, thank you so much for having me.
[1:25]It's such a joy to talk with you.
[1:27]Uh-oh.
[1:28]So, Gene, this book is a huge departure from the things you have written so far.
[1:34]You explain why in a little author's note at the beginning, but why don't you tell
[1:38]listeners a little bit about what Dominion is and how you decided to write a romanticie
[1:45]book after some of your other books?
[1:49]Yeah, I know.
[1:50]It seems like it's the partnership, but actually it isn't, but you are absolutely right.
[1:55]I'm known for writing literary fiction and kind of suspenseful literary family dramas, and
[2:02]Dominion is the first book of my romanticie trilogy coming in July, on July 14th.
[2:09]So people are like, oh my God, what are you doing?
[2:12]But Sibi, you know, this is really something where it's a matter of like, wherever you
[2:16]go, there you are, because, you know, as you know, I got divorced, it was a surprise
[2:24]to me, although not to everybody in that situation.
[2:28]And when I, that happened, my life kind of exploded and I had to reevaluate my past,
[2:36]my future, what I was doing.
[2:38]And I turned to romanticie for solace as I always do because I've always read it for fun.
[2:45]And so it finally occurred to me, you know, maybe I should write something like that
[2:49]as well.
[2:50]And Sibi, I have to say you were such a friend and wonderful support to me in that difficult
[2:55]time.
[2:56]I mean, you are just so amazing for us authors in every way, like as a support, but also
[3:04]as a friend.
[3:05]And so yeah, I kind of pulled my life back together.
[3:08]I thought I'd like to do something really, really fun and hopefully give hope and
[3:13]and solace to other people, but, you know, dominion still is about a fish out of water.
[3:20]It follows all of the themes that I actually normally hit in my books.
[3:25]That is true.
[3:27]Talk a little bit about your upbringing and how books have saved you throughout your life.
[3:33]And then I want to hear more about this book.
[3:35]Well, as you know, I was really, really poor.
[3:39]I'm a first generation immigrant and we lived in a not good area in Brooklyn when we moved
[3:47]to New York when I was five years old and we lived in an apartment that was actually so
[3:52]run down and overrun with roaches and rats that it didn't have a working heating system.
[4:00]So I lived in New York for a number of years without heat, which as we know is like
[4:07]bitterly cold and the window pains on the inside of my apartment where there were window
[4:14]pains and hadn't been shattered by people throwing bricks to them.
[4:18]They were covered with a layer of ice on the inside and my family started working in a
[4:25]clothing factory in Chinatown at the same time.
[4:28]And even though I was very young, I went along to help like many other immigrant children
[4:33]did.
[4:34]So it was a real surprise later on in my life when I actually wound up going to Harvard
[4:40]and becoming a New York Times bestselling author with the help of wonderful advocates
[4:46]like you.
[4:48]So I really couldn't have done it without all of the help that I've found in my life.
[4:53]And so how did the need to escape into magical different worlds?
[4:59]How did it help you then and how did you use that information to write dominion?
[5:04]That is such an astute question and it's true.
[5:07]It's like my life was not easy when I was growing up and, you know, like of course the poverty
[5:14]was difficult, but as we all know like trauma and difficulty isn't limited to how much
[5:19]money you have.
[5:20]You know, it's also being a girl in a very male dominated society having a lot of expectations
[5:27]laid on me like being able to cook that I was not able to fulfill.
[5:32]So there were a lot of things like that that I struggled with as I was growing up.
[5:37]And I was really, even though I did get good grades and did end up going to Harvard,
[5:42]I was not, I was like the black sheep of the family.
[5:47]And I got yelled at a lot, they loved me a lot, they did their best, but I was really,
[5:54]really in trouble.
[5:55]It wasn't like people were like, oh my gosh, you're so brilliant, like those were not words
[5:59]I ever heard.
[6:00]Growing up.
[6:01]So I, the need to escape was a real one and I started with my mom who was lovely and
[6:10]after working the whole day in the factory.
[6:12]She would read to me from these fables of Chinese mythology about goddesses and demons.
[6:19]And so that was kind of the beginning of my love for that type of fantasy.
[6:23]I read it all the time when I was growing up and through when I went to college, which
[6:28]is where I finally thought, okay, maybe I won't be sucked back into the factory, maybe
[6:34]I can do what I really love to do, which is to become a writer.
[6:38]But I do believe that, you know, we want to enlighten and we want to entertain as authors.
[6:44]And the entertainment can take form, you know, in different ways.
[6:48]It can be realistically based or it can be a scapist.
[6:52]And I think there's escape is something that we need and can thrive on and it can
[6:58]replenish us and then bring us to a place of new hope and energy.
[7:03]I love that.
[7:04]Okay.
[7:05]So how did you figure out what this novel is going to be about?
[7:09]Where did the idea come from and tell listeners a little bit more about it?
[7:13]Well, you know, so just to start, dominion is an Asian mythology inspired cross between
[7:19]hunger games and fourth wing.
[7:21]And it's about a really poor ribbon dancer named Ruby, who is a refugee.
[7:27]And she has escaped from one of the other dominions that was being overrun by demons.
[7:33]And she finds herself living in another dominion.
[7:36]And she is thrown into this deadly tiger bonding trial by a fierce warrior.
[7:42]And of course, you know, she winds up surviving the trial and on his elite team to stop
[7:48]demon invasion.
[7:50]And I know on the surface that might sound quite different from the other work I have done.
[7:54]But really, thematically, it's about not being understood.
[7:59]It's about being seen as powerless and less.
[8:02]It's one navigating a society as a woman and finding your own power and your own voice.
[8:09]And hopefully finding your own happy ending as well.
[8:13]So it's funny because it wasn't like I thought, okay, I'm going to write this fantasy
[8:20]story that's got all these themes that obsessed me, but it was what I wrote.
[8:26]You know, it was what I was drawn to, it was automatically what I love.
[8:30]And you know, people talk about an id list, you know, a list of the obsessions that you
[8:35]have.
[8:36]And sometimes they're deeper, sometimes they're more shallow, you know, they can be things
[8:40]like purple eyes, they can be things like, you know, immigrant story, they can be thematic.
[8:47]And we all have these kind of things that we love on a visceral level and are drawn to.
[8:53]And if we look at my kind of less serious id list, it's things like I do love amnesia
[9:00]stories.
[9:01]I love stories where people, young women like are have a hidden identity and they have
[9:06]a secret that might be hidden from themselves.
[9:10]And I like really powerful, strong women who are still, you know, feminine in, they're
[9:16]not like incredible assassins that are incredibly strong, but are powerful and strong
[9:23]in their real way.
[9:26]And you know, I like that surprise when we realize what they're actually capable of.
[9:31]And it's so often so much more than they thought they were capable of themselves.
[9:36]By the way, why was there, why was Tigers spelled the why, that's a quick why?
[9:42]What was that about?
[9:45]Because so, you know, in the book, there are these battle tigers and they're spelled
[9:50]with a why instead of an eye because they are much, much bigger than normal tigers
[9:57]that the size of a horse, they.
[10:00]are telepathic.
[10:01]Some are telepathic.
[10:02]They're varying degrees of telepathy,
[10:04]but they can bond a mind to mind with their writers.
[10:09]I mean, they're still savage.
[10:10]And they're also like metallic colors.
[10:13]So they're not like normal, tiger-y colors.
[10:16]And I just didn't want to get letters from readers.
[10:20]I'm sure you know what this is like,
[10:22]Zibi as an author yourself.
[10:24]Where they're like, you know what,
[10:25]a real tiger would never do that.
[10:27]Like the meaning behavior of a tiger
[10:29]is like this and then.
[10:30]And a tiger is also not as big as a horse,
[10:33]and you also can't bond with them telepathically.
[10:35]So I thought, let's just make it very clear
[10:38]that this is a different species of tigers
[10:41]than the ones that we have seen.
[10:43]Although, as you can tell, I am obsessed with tiger.
[10:45]I see that.
[10:46]I see that.
[10:47]Yes.
[10:47]All cats of every type.
[10:50]I thought, I thought it might be a virtual background,
[10:52]but no, there's giant stuffed animal tiger right behind gene.
[10:56]giant tiger, yes.
[10:58]Yes, but you know, the great thing about this romantic
[11:00]Zibi was that it was really a chance for me to have fun.
[11:04]And you know, it was like such a hard time in my life.
[11:08]You were one of the people I saw and talked to
[11:11]about this out of your incredible generosity of heart.
[11:15]And you know, it really was like, oh my God,
[11:19]what have I been doing?
[11:20]It really, it kind of shook my sense of destiny.
[11:23]Do you know, I always kind of had this optimistic feeling
[11:26]that I was following the path I was supposed to follow.
[11:30]And then suddenly you're like, okay, I have no idea what I'm doing.
[11:33]No idea.
[11:34]I don't know how life works.
[11:36]I clearly was also responsible for the failure of my marriage.
[11:41]Maybe not as responsible as other people,
[11:43]but I was responsible and I take, you know,
[11:47]and I made this choice that was really good in some ways,
[11:51]but clearly did not work out the way I had hoped it would.
[11:55]And you wrestle as a woman, you wrestle with those questions.
[11:58]You know, what did I do?
[12:00]Am I going to do it again?
[12:02]How do I move forward?
[12:03]What do I do with my children?
[12:05]You know, what is the right decision to make?
[12:08]How much do I choose for myself?
[12:10]How much do I choose for my family?
[12:11]So all of these things were going through my mind.
[12:14]And I really just had so much fun writing this romantic,
[12:20]spicy, exciting, magical book called Dominion.
[12:25]Amazing, Gene.
[12:26]Thank you so much for talking about Dominion,
[12:29]for coming on the show again,
[12:31]for a brief update on your life and work,
[12:34]and for trying something new.
[12:37]I mean, I think that's one of the most inspiring parts,
[12:39]is like, why not just do it?
[12:42]And now, you know, book one of three, right?
[12:44]You're just like gonna crank these out
[12:47]and take over a new genre.
[12:49]It's really inspiring and quite amazing.
[12:52]So I am gonna be rooting for you at every step,
[12:54]per usual.
[12:56]So the you are just the absolute best,
[12:59]and I cannot thank you enough for all the many, many ways
[13:03]that you support all of us,
[13:05]while doing your own work as a creative.
[13:07]Thank you.
[13:08]All right, oh, thank you, Gene.
[13:10]Thank you.
[13:11]Thank you so much.
[13:11]It's so good to see you, too.
[13:12]So good to see you, too.
[13:13]You too, okay?
[13:15]Okay, you too.
[13:16]Okay, bye bye.
[13:18]Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibi,
[13:21]formerly mom's don't have time to read books.
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[13:31]Thanks so much.
[13:32]Oh, and bye the books.