Hello, my name is Dr. Sarah Park Dahlen, and I am an associate professor at the University of Illinois School of Information Sciences. Thank you so much for coming to our event. I want to take a moment to acknowledge that today is the beginning of both Native American Heritage Month and National Adoptee Awareness Month, so I hope those of us who want to learn more about these communities will look to Indigenous and adoptee created content. And I also want to observe a moment of silence for the victims and survivors of the Itaewon tragedy.

Thank you.

Starting this fall, Illinois became the first state in the country to require that all K-12 public school students learn a unit of Asian American community history. We at the University of Illinois and others around the state have been working hard to support our educators in these efforts. And to that end, the Center for Children’s Books and I have planned a series of events, and today we are thrilled to welcome you to A Conversation Between Award-Winning Writer Christina Soontornvat and me where we will talk about Asian American history and youth literature.

We are deeply grateful for the support and cosponsorship of the Humanities Research Institute; Educational Policy, Organization, and Leadership; the Department of Asian American Studies; and the Asian American Cultural Center. And without further ado, I’d like to introduce Christina.

Christina Soontornvat is an award-winning author, engineer, and STEM educator. Her many works for children include picture books and the Diary of an Ice Princess chapter book series. Her middle grade fantasy novel, A Wish in the Dark, and All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys’ Soccer Team were both named 2021 Newbery Honor Books. Her newest books are The Tryout, To Change a Planet, and The Last Mapmaker.

And on a personal note, I first met Christina at the Smithsonian’s Asian American Literature Festival in 2019, at which time I think she had published only a few of the Ice Princess and Changelings books. And now...look at this! Look at all these awards! We are so lucky to have you here, Christina.

12:06:55 Sarah Park Dahlen:		Christina, I just wanted to thank you for publishing these books in the way that my daughter is growing up. These came out right when she was reading at this level. And then you have A Wish in the Dark which she finished, and she's in a book club now with The Last Mapmaker. She loved The Tryout. So I like how your career is like parallel with my daughter's reading.

12:07:16 Christina Soontornvat:		It's all for her. I'm her personal author.

12:07:20 Sarah Park Dahlen:		Thank you so much for that. But yeah, welcome and thank you so much for being here. We are so lucky to have this conversation with you. So I just wanted to start by asking: since this is one of the events that we've planned in support of the TEAACH Act in Illinois, what are your memories of learning about Asian American cultures, communities, and histories in your K-12 education?

12:07:39 Christina Soontornvat:		Yeah. I mean it's going to be very familiar to a lot of you who are around my age, that I learned very little. So the things that I can remember are probably what a lot of you can remember. I can remember very briefly talking about how Chinese immigrants built the railroad. Like only that sentence, that was it.

12:08:12 Sarah Park Dahlen:		I don't think I even learned that, so that's more than what I learned 

12:08:25 Christina Soontornvat:		Yeah and we talked about the incarcerated Japanese during World War 2. We never in my K-12 years, I never read a book written by an Asian American author, and I don't think... You know, there was such an emphasis on, we learned a lot about about sources and direct source material, but we never read anything from any perspective other than than a white perspective that I can recall. So it was very, very minimal, and especially my family: my father is a Thai immigrant and it wasn't until just a few years ago, that I finally, you know, learned about the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which is what allowed him and all of his friends and siblings to immigrate to the U.S. It's like, it's the reason that I'm here, and I didn't [know] and so yeah, not a lot. So this is wonderful. It's so so great to be talking to you. Of course, always love talking to you, but especially to be, you know, to be commemorating, to be honoring the TEAACH Act, which is just such great news.

12:09:34 Sarah Park Dahlen:		Yeah, it's really exciting and I'm so glad that I moved to Illinois right when it was being implemented, so that I could be part of supporting it for our students statewide. But I had a similar upbringing as you: even though I grew up in Southern California in a city, a suburb that was heavily Asian American, I have no memory of learning anything about Asian American history, not even about incarcerated Japanese, even though we had many Japanese Americans in my community, and Little Tokyo was not too far away. But I did read a couple of children's books: In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson and the Babysitters Club Series, with Claudia Kishi. Though, you know, not written by an Asian American, but that's all I have as my memories, and so it's just so exciting to see our children have different options these days.

12:10:15 Christina Soontornvat:		Yes, oh my gosh, things are so different. So we just need more, and we need to expand on what we've got going

12:10:35 Sarah Park Dahlen:		And access! Yeah, okay so you mentioned that it was only a few years ago that you started learning more in terms of like the 1965 Immigration Act and the impact it had on growing our Asian American communities. But even before that, were there other times when you started learning other things about Asian American history?

12:10:54 Christina Soontornvat:		Umm, I think I had an interest in learning more, and started to read more Asian American authors, and I mean there was nothing. It was all self-driven,  you know? I didn't take anything in college. I studied mechanical engineering in college so I didn't have even a ton of humanities classes. And so I know--I hope I'm not skipping ahead! I'm in a group, an Asian American authors Facebook group, and the author Tracy Chi (who is a National Award finalist and a wonderful author) she had posted in there once: "I've read this amazing book, and does anyone want to have a book club about it?" And it's called The Making of Asian America. Really it just like changed changed my life and I was like, "Oh yeah, I wanna read that!" but I couldn't keep up. Like there was no way--I was very slow, so they they sped ahead, and they had the book club and the discussion, but it took me a much longer time to read it. And this is the book that just changed so much for me. I can't remember, I feel like it was before the pandemic that I read this. Which I must have read an earlier version because she's updated it since then.

12:12:17 Sarah Park Dahlen:		Yeah, it came out in 2015, the paperback in 2016, and then pandemic Anti-Asian racism. A new edition was published.

12:12:27 Christina Soontornvat:		That's right. I had read it before then. Yeah and that was eye-opening. It was just, my first reaction was, you know, delight, surprise. I'm putting all of these things together, and then second reaction was just frustration, and anger that I had never... How did I not know all this stuff? Kind of like feeling ashamed, a little embarrassed, like I was embarrassed that I didn't know about Wong Kim Ark, and that's the reason I'm a citizen is because I was born here, you know, as a daughter of someone who's an immigrant, and had no idea. Why did I even have rights? [It] was because of this person, and I had never even heard his name before. So just a lot of emotions reading the book for sure.

12:13:18 Sarah Park Dahlen:		Yeah. So I was going to ramp up to talking about The Making of Asian America, but I can totally adjust. Yeah, I feel the same way about when I learned...so I learned more of our history in college because I was an undergraduate Asian American Studies major and I became an Asian American Studies major, because when I started learning about these histories that I had never been taught earlier, I was really motivated to learn everything that I could. And so I also went on, and got my Master's degree in Asian American Studies as well. But what, you know, one of the things I was gonna ask you. So I read, Sucheng Chan and Ron Takaki and Helen Zia when I was in college. Those were like the major history books that we had as college students. So when Dr. Erica Lee, who, you know, was a professor here at the University of Minnesota, she published The Making of Asian America: A History in 2015, and I went to one of her book readings and I was really excited about this book. It's like 500 bazillion pages long, and so it is really dense. But it's such a comprehensive and rich history of Asian America, and we have long needed you know, sort of like this book that is a little bit more, you know, accessible to the public. And I really wanted her to adapt it for young readers, and at that time it was sort of the time period when more books were being adapted for young readers, and I asked her, "Are you thinking of adapting this?" and she said, "Well, right now, not really... I think it would be a great idea." And then fast forward a few years later, and you are adapting her book for young readers, and this to me, is one of the most exciting pieces of news I have ever heard in my 20 years of studying Asian American children's literature! So could you please share a little bit about how did you get hooked up with Dr. Erica Lee to write this book. And why did you say yes to the whole thing?

12:15:11 Christina Soontornvat:		Yeah. Well, your excitement is also the excitement that I felt. So I had read her book before. So this must have been 2019, and then got a notification through my agent that an editor at Harper Collins, Jennifer Ung, was working with Dr. Lee on adapting this for young readers and would I be interested in working on it? You know, just very exploratory, like having the conversation, and I think that my personal reaction was like a muppet, going around my office like "I can't believe this!" because it had been so meaningful to me. And I, you know, I was very busy coming off of the award season, after All Thirteen and A Wish in the Dark, but just knew that I would, of course, say yes, right away. This just seemed like a once in a lifetime opportunity to collaborate with someone like Dr. Lee, and also just to develop something that was so needed for our young readers, so needed for our kids. My own kids: I have a fourth grader and a seventh grader. So you know, just right in the time where they're starting to, you know, form narratives about this country. I just feel like that's the time period where you get some ideas set in your head, and it's really hard to let go of them. And so the ideas that I want to be set in their head were about, you know, Asian Americans are a part of this country, and Asian American heroes are a part of our history. And so I just jumped at the chance, and had no idea at that time that you had been part of the push; part of what made Erica think about, "Okay I'm gonna do this." Because it's daunting! It's a very daunting thing to take such...I mean this is such a work of scholarship, so well done. You can't imagine how she could cut out one single page of this because it's so comprehensive and so well woven together. And then think about, "Okay, now we're gonna cut it down, make it manageable for a sixth grader."

12:17:37 Sarah Park Dahlen:		Yeah, good luck to you. And in the interest of transparency for the audience: so I did ask Dr. Lee if she would be adapting this book for young readers when I went to one of her book launches, and then when she and Christina agreed that Christina was gonna be the person to adapt it, Dr. Erica Lee called me and was like, "Can we have a conversation about what you think should go into this adaptation? Because you know you were one of the first people to suggest it to me." And so I had this long Evernote document of things that I thought should go into the book, and you don't have to abide by that, because you are your own award-winning writer in your own right and I'm sure you have lots of ideas, too. But I'm glad that I could play a tiny role in any part of this process.

12:18:25 Sarah Park Dahlen:		So you mentioned earlier that when you read her book you were kind of angry about some of the things that you had not known before. And so I was wondering: could you share more about what were some of the like, "I can't believe I never learned about this. I can't believe we treated people this way. I wish more people would know about XYZ, or this person, or whatever?" So Wong Kim Ark: now we also have a picture book. I Am an American: The Wong Kim Ark Story by Martha Brockenbrough and Grace Lin and Julia Quo. What were some of the other things that you learned in Dr. Lee's book that you're like, "I am going to make sure every child in America knows this?"

12:19:01 Christina Soontornvat:		Yeah. Oh I mean, there were so many individual stories, just like the fight for citizenship, which would, you know, enfranchise you, allow you to vote. And you the Chinese Exclusion Act, and just so much more about Japanese Americans during World War 2. It's not like oh, Pearl Harbor was bombed and then all of a sudden the Japanese Americans were incarcerated. It was a long ongoing campaign to isolate and exclude this group of people. So things like that. But also I think what I really like, what was really clicking to me when I was reading the book was just how she talks about these really bigger forces that were global. About Empire building, and just how like we can't talk about Asian Americans without talking about the Western empires and colonialism. And these, you know, hugely destructive events that changed the entire world and changed our people, and made them need to move, forced them to move, or, you know, just like the labor pressures that came about because of this. And recruiting people to come and work in really horrible conditions for really low wages. I mean all of these things--these global patterns that she put together that really put in perspective of like, "Oh okay, that's why all of these things happened." It's not just like isolated incidents. So in that way that has been one of the biggest challenges of of adapting the book for young people, because you know you really can't talk about... Like if I want to talk about my family history, about why my dad came here and talk about the Immigration Act, I have to talk about pressures of immigration and so we have to talk about Western Imperialism on the Asian continent. So it's not just like talking about Asian American history; we have to talk about Asian history as well. I mean you have to talk about everything. But I'm really hoping that you know... I want a child to read this and feel like, "Oh, things are falling together. Pieces are falling into place" in a way that, you know, sometimes it doesn't feel like in history. So a lot of times when we learn history, we're learning just like these isolated [incidents]. This happened, then this happened, then this happened and that's really not the way time and people work.

12:21:56 Sarah Park Dahlen:		No. Yeah, I remember when I began studying Asian American and Korean history in college, and my parents were like, "You know, if you want to study Korean Americans and you want to study Korean history, then you also have to study Chinese history and Japanese history," and they were like, "Yeah good luck." It's so complicated. Thousands of years of inter-country relationships and violence and just the way culture moves across, you know the different countries. It's really really complicated. And then, as you said, the violence that happens in our home countries, whether it originated there or if it's because of the American military, which is often one of the reasons why so many Asians immigrate out to other countries. It's just, it's so much. Yeah I do want to encourage you to post your comments and your questions in the chat, and we'll also have a period at the end where people can ask questions and have an ongoing conversation.

12:23:05 Christina Soontornvat:		I think it feels like a lot for me, because the way that I was taught history was just so America-centric and so European-centric, that kind of shifting my way of thinking about world history, it feels like a paradigm shift for me. So that's another reason why I think that things like the TEAACH Act are so important. I think that if we lay the foundation early, it won't feel difficult for these kids as they're growing older to grasp these things because they'll have been introduced to it earlier. 

12:23:46 Sarah Park Dahlen:		Yeah absolutely and I feel like it's not an event for me if I don't talk about Viet Nguyen and some of his work. Viet Nguyen is the Pulitzer winning author of The Sympathizer, and he also has a book Nothing Ever Dies which I quote all the time in my events and in my work. And he writes about, narrative plentitude and narrative scarcity, and how we don't have enough stories yet of all the different stories of Asian America, and the way that they connect to Asia. And one of the other things he also says is that (which I should have learned, but I don't think I did even as an Asian American Studies major) is that a lot of Vietnamese people call it the American War in Vietnam. They don't call it the Vietnam War and by putting the word American in there, it doesn't necessarily center America, but it really calls out the role that Americans played in this hugely violent, disruptive civil war. And similarly for the Korean War, you know, where we have long been having conversations about the violent role of the American military in disrupting the Peninsula. And Ji Ann Nuh has a great article (Christina, I can send it to you later) called "Moved by War" where she basically traces all of the post-1950 immigration from Korea back to the 1950 beginning of the Korean War. So we're talking about military warbrides and transracial Korean adoptees, and also you know 1965 immigration, obviously. And so we cannot understand the history of Asian America without understanding American violence in our home countries. And that's something important for our young people to know : that we're not like this great empire, you know, Ameri-centric and American exceptionalism, and all of that. There's a lot that we need to be responsible for.

12:25:44 Christina Soontornvat:		And there's such a reluctance for people to face that. There is such a myth, a hero myth about America and who we are and there's a lot of people, as you know, who really don't want to combat that at all, to have any kind of contrast, even if it's the truth.

12:26:03 Sarah Park Dahlen:		Yeah, and we need more and multiple truths. We need to get to a state of narrative plentitude where the stories abound so far and wide that we cannot ban them, we cannot challenge them. They're just like, all the stories are out there. So those of you here who are writers, thank you very much for contributing to that! Christina, I wanted to ask you, going back to The Making of Asian America, and your process of adapting: just in general, how is it going? What are the joys and challenges you're discovering as you're adapting? So scale is one. And what else is...how's it going?

12:26:34 Christina Soontornvat:		Yeah well, I think one of the wonderful things has been just learning more about Asian American heroes. And just like I was talking about about the American myth and the hero myths, and what a lot of Americans are, I think, reluctant to face when it comes to our history. I think there's this fear that if we talk about racism, if we talk about history of discrimination, about systemic discrimination, that that's going to tear down our ideas of what America is. It's going to make us love our country less. It's going to make us, you know, ashamed of who we are. But for me working on this book, you know to learn about about Mamie and Mary Tate, who fought against Mamie Tate being excluded from schools, being not allowed to go to school with white children (and years and years before Brown versus Board of Education, decades before that). You know it doesn't tear down my idea of what America is. I'm learning about people who are holding America's feet to the fire and saying, "Okay, you say that you're this nation...if we say we're going to be this nation of equality and justice, well I'm gonna make you do that and you're gonna have to do it for me too." And so it's, you know, it's reading about people who are holding America to its highest ideals. So that's one of the things that I think that kids are gonna get out of this book. We really want them to feel a sense of pride, a sense of, you know, I'm a part of America too. I'm a part of the story too, and I just think that the people who are afraid of that, who are trying to censor books like that, they don't understand that confronting these truths, it's not about tearing anything down, it's about building it up.

12:28:48 Sarah Park Dahlen:		Absolutely. And for those of you have read The 1619 Project edited by Nicole Hannah Jones, one of the things she says in the opening chapters, is that actually, it is very patriotic to speak out against racism, because in speaking out, it means that we believe that we're going to bring it to light and then make it better, right? We're gonna fight back against racism. And so black people, she says, are actually the most patriotic. Given what what this country has done to them, They are the most patriotic because of their persistence in believing in this country, and having hope that this country can be better. And so I feel like there's a similar dialogue happening with you, and what you hope young people get out of this book. Not that we hate this country, but that we actually, we want it to be better for everybody, right? Not just the original founders and their descendants.

12:29:37 Christina Soontornvat:		Yeah, exactly.

12:29:39 Sarah Park Dahlen:		So we do have a couple of questions in the text already; I'm sorry, in the chat already and they kind of allude to something I was also gonna ask you about how obviously this is a very instructional text, right? Because you're teaching about Asian American history, but being educational and telling a good story are not mutually exclusive, right? And so I was hoping you would talk a little bit about craft and the decisions you're making. My colleague Liz Hoiem is asking: "I'm curious about how you think about writing such a comprehensive work for young readers. It's difficult to include many different perspectives and details without cutting everything, and just having it be like facts, facts, facts, right? And so how do you write something that connects with young readers, [with] the age that you're writing for?" And then Sarah Schwebel is asking, "How intentional are you in tying the story you're telling to the heritage-based Nation State narrative most children know from textbooks, either by directly writing against it, or inserting historical actors into it?" So as these questions inspire you. 

12:30:54 Christina Soontornvat:		That's a great question about craft, cause that's definitely something we thought about a lot. And so we made the decision that wherever possible, we would focus on explaining historical events through the life and the story in the voice of a person, of a real person and their life. And if possible, choose people who were very young, so either kids or teenagers, because that's the audience that we're writing for. So for example, when we're talking about the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Angel Island immigration center, which you know rejected so many Asian immigrants and held them there for so long with all these really terrible interrogations and questioning and horrible living conditions. So instead of just talking about those things and presenting them, the way that you encounter that is you are on the ship with Tyrus Wong, a young boy who is coming to the United States with his father and he is furiously studying the answers to questions about an identity that he doesn't have because he is trying to learn this false identity, so that he can match the paperwork for his father, for them to get in past the Angel Island immigration officials. So you kind of feel the emotion of his anxiety, and then that kind of gives us a gateway to talk about, well, why is he so scared? Well, there are these laws that would rip families apart, that would send you back, that would deport you if you couldn't answer these really detailed questions about like how many windows are on your neighbor's house back in your village in China? And things like that. So wherever possible, we tried to do that, so talking about the incarceration of Japanese Americans--we're going through like with one family, and seeing it through their eyes, and bringing in all of the historical events that would have contributed to their situation. So that was very intentional. So hopefully you could pick it up, and you could choose any chapter, and you're reading someone's story. And then you're learning about the events that's impacting their life during that time period. I can't remember the other question!

12:33:13 Sarah Park Dahlen:		How intentional are you in tying the story you're telling to the heritage-based Nation State narrative most children know from textbooks?

12:33:32 Christina Soontornvat:		I'm not sure. I guess I might not entirely be aware of what you're talking about. But I mean, I tried to think about this separate, like just trying not to think about what what you might have learned, that is right or wrong already in school. Just making it a completely standalone work that you could read outside of school too. Like I really hope that families would read this, that kids might pick it up and they might take it home and read it, even if their school's not covering it. I think we've been really conscious of trying to make it interesting and fun. You know, there's mystery, there's things that you want to read, there's cliffhangers, there's even in places there's humor. You know you have to look at things with joy and with humor as well. So I'm not sure if that answers the question. But I really wasn't thinking about how does this fit into a curriculum, especially because, I live in Texas, and I don't know when...are we gonna get our TEAACH Act? I really hope that we do.

12:34:49 Sarah Park Dahlen:		Yeah, I know people in Texas working on it. Yeah I'm sure you do, too!

12:34:53 Christina Soontornvat:		I would love that. And I also know that this is gonna be, you know maybe supplemental for those schools that don't have that.

12:35:02 Sarah Park Dahlen:		Dr. Schwebel? Did you mean like, "Here's the section on Korean immigration. Here's the section on Chinese immigration." Is that kind of what you were getting at in your question? Or do you want to say more? She can't unmute.

12:35:20 Christina Soontornvat:		That makes sense to me. Yeah, like we're gonna talk about all these little isolated pieces.

12:35:26 Sara Schwebel:		Okay hi, sorry about that. We got the tech fixed. So I think I guess what I meant is in part, you know, if you ask children to tell the history of the United States, even the start...many children would start at 1620: the arrival of the pilgrims as their starting point. And then have a narrative arc that sort of marches through wars, for example. And so I'm wondering if, in structuring the narrative, you know, are you conscious of thinking of a starting place and then telling a continuous story? So from point A to point B because what textbooks do often is, you talk about a population at a certain point in time, and then they disappear for 70 years, 100 years, and then they pop back up for a section, and then they disappear, right? And so in a comprehensive story of course, you can include Asian Americans through an entire narrative, and I just wondered if you were trying to sort of remind readers where you are in time in a way that might be recognizable from like a textbook narrative structure? So here, where Asian Americans were at the Civil War, right? During the colonial period, sort of like these benchmarks that people know, to illustrate a continuous narrative that is actually transforming sort of the more heritage-based Nation State narrative that most of us are accustomed to from K-12 education.

12:37:11 Christina Soontornvat:		Okay yes, thank you, yes that makes sense. We're definitely...that whole idea of, "This is the chapter on Filipino Americans. And then we don't talk about them anywhere else in the book." Yeah, we're trying definitely not to do that. We are going in a linear order. We thought of, in the beginning, like we don't have to go in chronological order! We can do whatever we want. And we can, you know, be creative. And it's like, Oh no, for a history, that was just way confusing. So we are going in order. I would say that I'm trying a lot to pull...so you do, for instance, like reading about South Asians, there is a chapter about some notable South Asian families who, we can use their personal story to talk about the driving factors that brought South Asian immigrants to the United States, and what were their communities like, and what was reality like for them? And then later, those threads of that story are going to come back up when we have a chapter that takes place in 2000, in 2020. Some events where the ancestors of those same immigrants are going to be doing some wonderful work and it's going to translate that. So I think it's more about showing you know, Asian were here in America, a part of American history before America was a country, before we were a nation. And still here and still doing remarkable and incredible things in all fields. So I hope that answers it. I think that it's hard. It is kind of hard not to do that somewhat, because I also have a real feeling that, I want to talk about everyone. Like we don't want to leave anyone out. Because especially being Thai American, I'm always like, you don't hear a lot about Thai Americans because they're a very small percentage of the Asian American population. So thinking about like, "Okay, where can we make sure that we're giving everyone a piece of this book?" So yeah, I mean there's some of that that I think is unavoidable.

12:39:37 Sarah Park Dahlen:		I think that is a great segue to talk more about Thai and Thai Americans. So I'm gonna ask you: we're gonna continue talking about non-fiction. But last week my students and I read All Thirteen and as people may know, this is the excellent award-winning non-fiction book about the cave rescue of the Thai Soccer Team. We were probably all watching the news. We probably all know how this story ended. They all made it out safely, right? But in reading this book I could not put it down. I was on the edge of my seat. I was sobbing through the book. I mean, I was ugly crying because I was just getting so emotional. And so when Ken Fong the Asian American Podcaster posted about like Ron Howard's movie, and he wanted to interview someone about the rescue, I was like, "You have to interview my friend Christina because she just wrote an award-winning book about it." And so you had the interview, and it was great. But one of the things you said in the interview is the moment that you heard Director Jon Chu, of Crazy Rich Asians say that he hopes Asian Americans will be involved in telling the story when it becomes movies and other things, and you were like DING! And so can you talk about why you decided to write this story? Why you were the best person to write it? And then about also your research in your writing process.

12:40:58 Christina Soontornvat:		Yes, I remember when he tweeted, John Chu tweeted about, "It's not going to be only White Hollywood: The Story. And you know people were saying like, "And Scarlett Johanson will play the Thai coach." And you know, we're gonna be telling our own stories, and I was like, "Oh, my gosh, he's talking about movies!" But of course there's gonna be books, there's gonna be books about this too, and you know I had never written non-fiction before. This was completely out of my wheelhouse, but just knew I have to write this story. For one thing, we were in the country when the rescue was taking place, so I had this really surreal eye-opening experience of consuming media about this event in Thai, which of course had to be translated for me. My relatives were translating what's happening, or even just watching English language media in Thailand. They have that too, where everything's really focused on the Thai people. And then we came back to the United States right as the rescue was ending. And that's kind of when it became a really huge media circus, became the news story of the year. And so then, watching the media coverage in the U.S. and it was just so focused on Elon Musk. He was a huge part of the coverage, even though he did nothing! Maybe less than nothing because he was actually just a distraction about the whole mission. But if you were Googling, if you were in the United States and you were Googling about the Thai Cave rescue, Elon Musk's name would come up all the time because we're just so focused on celebrity and American exceptionalism. How are we a part of this story? We have to be a part of this story, right? So just really wanting to, you know, with that book to shift the...you have this camera. Where are you gonna point your camera? And to point it at Thailand and the Thai people and just having seen in the media a lot of misconceptions about things like Buddhism and Thai spirituality, and jokes made, offensive things that I felt like... Okay, if you understand, if you actually knew what they were doing, what is happening there, would touch you even more. You would be even more emotionally involved in this if you understood that, instead of making a joke about the spirituality of the Thai people. Just things like that. So that's what I really really tried to do with the book, and I'm so so glad that it touched people and so glad that they felt like they were on the edge of their seat. Like you said, even though you know how the story ends. That's really how I felt when I was researching it, when I was talking to people, doing the interviews that made it into the book. They still felt like they couldn't believe what had happened, and that everything had ended well, and so that's just what I wanted to communicate with the story. 

12:44:25 Sarah Park Dahlen:		Thank you. It's just an incredible book, and you know of course, it won a Newbery honor. And you know how you said you've never written non-fiction before? But now you have this award-winning book. And then also now you're adapting Erica's book, and I just feel like you're doing fine, writing on fiction.

12:44:38 Christina Soontornvat:		Yeah, I mean I think that just that thought of, "Oh my gosh! I've never done nonfiction before. I'm nervous about it." That just comes from my own hangups and my own imposter syndrome (which I see Mike Jung has joined us). And so you know if you're an author and you're on here, you know about impostor [syndrome]. Mike and I have talked about impostor syndrome: it's so real. Like if I was outside of myself and giving myself advice I would say, "Well, nonfiction and fiction and history and narrative, like all of these things are, they are all tied together. It's all story that's how we learn anything, whether it's learning an emotional, fictionalized story, or a true event from history. We learn through storytelling." So if you're a storyteller you don't need to put yourself in a box of like, you're nonfiction, or you're a fiction storyteller. That's what I would tell myself, but on the inside I'm feeling like, "What am I doing? I can't do this!"

12:45:46 Sarah Park Dahlen:		So we totally did not set it up this way, but that is the perfect segue to my next question. So pretty much all of your books include Asian or Asian American characters, and you write in a variety of genres and formats, and for a different audiences. So can you talk about writing in these different ways? What's your favorite genre to write in? And why? And then I have a follow-up question about fantasy that I want to ask you. But I also want to invite our audience members, if you have questions to please get them ready or put them in the chat.

12:46:10 Christina Soontornvat:		Great, yes. I write lots of different things. And I think my favorite, my favorite genre to write is fantasy and the easy answer (probably the true answer) is that it's just really fun. It's just really fun to make stuff up and come up with magical foods and magical creatures and magical anything! I just think, you know, that's what I loved to read the most when I was a kid. It took me to a special place just outside of my body. I'm just escaping into this other world and that's kind of the experience that I love to create the most. And I would also say that the thing that I really love about fantasy is: you really can't write it without thinking...you can't write about a fantasy world and create a fantasy world (because that's what really sets it apart, is the world-building); you can't do that without thinking deeply about this world that we live in. And thinking about what what you would change, what bothers you? How you would make it better. Because all fantasy is just, it's really a deep examination of our own lives, even though you know it's magical life. You have magic powers, but you're really still human being in the story, even if you're an alien, or whatever. And so I just think, I just think I really enjoy that process. It's just very very challenging for me and I think it's good work.

12:47:55 Sarah Park Dahlen:		Excellent! So you sort of started answering this question, but my question about fantasy was going to be, "How do you think about world building while including Asian and Asian American characters? In what ways does fantasy, the genre fantasy, open up what you can do with Asian characters and settings? So do you want to say any more about that? 

12:48:10 Christina Soontornvat:		Yeah, I mean a lot of my books (except for my first book, except for The Changelings), they have Asian American characters, and very Asian-inspired settings, so like A Wish in the Dark, is very much inspired by Thailand in the 1950s if there was magic instead of electricity. And The Last Mapmaker is very Southeast Asian-influenced. I have a new series coming soon, it's called The Legends of Lotus Island and it's also very Asian-flavored, Asian-inspired. And so I think sometimes I'm drawing from specific places that I've been, and moments that I've had, and memories that I've had, and other times I just want my characters to have fun and be magical and be heroes in their own right without having to explain. You know, without having to explain who they are, or make excuses, or compare themselves to anyone else. They just are wonderful heroes and heroines on their own. So I mean that's super fun. There's nothing better.

12:49:36 Sarah Park Dahlen:		Yeah, we have another question: "From my perspective. It feels like part of the appeal to young readers is that All Thirteen was such a recent event that we all heard about in the media cycle. But the index story holds so much more. Can you speak to your [thoughts of the role] of children's literature, and teaching recent history and current events.

12:49:57 Christina Soontornvat:		Oh yeah, well, you know what was so interesting about that? So when I decided I wanted to write All Thirteen I was really worried because there were, YES there were white authors who got their book deals very quickly and came out with books very fast, And my editor for that book, Andrea Tampa, is on this call so she's gonna recall these conversations we had where I was like, "Our book is going to come out late. No one's going to...the kids aren't gonna...it will have been passed. Like, its moment in history will have been passed because this was such a big current event. And then I did some focus groups with children, like my age demographic, some focus groups with fifth graders. And it was about 3 months after the Thai Cave rescue happened, and I went into their classrooms, and I was like, "Ok who remembers this event?" And they were all like, "Huh? When? What?" And they're like, "Oh yeah, I think I kind of remember that." Only 3 months later they had totally forgotten. Like they were into their own world. 3 months in the life of a fifth grader is like 30 years. So it's like "Okay, I don't have to worry about it being super current. You know, it can be the book that it wants to be." But I do think, yeah I do think that it's an appeal that it feels relatable. Like the kids were on a soccer team and people have cell phones and the technology... Everything that happens is really similar to what they could have have right now. So I think that it's easy for them to, for kids who read it to imagine themselves in those boys' positions. But I think, I think if you're doing everything right as a storyteller, no matter where you are in history... So like I really hope with the narratives that we're creating for Made in Asian America that the reader will be able to put themselves in that person's shoes. No matter what. That's like your number one goal is you're creating this empathetic thread, fiber optic between your character and the reader.

12:52:11 Sarah Park Dahlen:		And this would have been a stunning book. I got mine before you won all your awards. So mine doesn't have any of the stickers on the cover. But you know, if you Google search the image, you're gonna see the book with all the different stickers on the computer and that is going to give it a solid place in Asian American children's literature history, and just children's literature history in general. And so hopefully this book will just continue to be read, and then they'll go and find the other things that you've written, and so that's kind of a segue to my other question: So how have you seen your books used in a library or a classroom where you were like, "Oh, that is really neat. I'm really glad that my book is being programmed that way or taught that way" or something like that? Do you have any examples you'd like to share, or what are some of the most interesting reactions you've gotten from readers specifically about the Asian American aspect of your books, the Asian/Asian American aspect of your books?

12:53:08 Christina Soontornvat:		Well, I mean I've just been floored. I'm just so honored and completely floored whenever teachers use my books in their classrooms, because your time is so precious. You have such little instructional time that to introduce a book and to incorporate it into your curriculum and all of the work that takes. That's just amazing. So I've had people use All Thirteen for a comprehensive, problem-solving, critical-thinking lesson where they're going from doing research, planning out a device... Like they're going to design something mechanical to save people from a dangerous situation. They're going to build it, and present it, and make a movie about it. Total multimedia, using lots of different skills. So I love stuff like that, because I'm a STEM person. So, seeing literature and STEM come together has really been amazing. The author, Erin Entrada Kelly, she did a book club, one of her book club meetings on A Wish in the Dark, and she had everybody make lights so that they could all have lights and turn off the lights and turn them on at the end. And one funny thing is she said that everyone's worked but hers. I mean I always...I think because I grew up in a school...like the school that I went to and the town where I grew up, I was one of the only Asian American kids in the whole town, in the whole county! So you know it felt...not that it felt natural but I didn't know when I was a kid and not reading books by Asian American authors, or having any Asian American characters in the books that I read. It didn't strike me as weird. Like I thought "Well, that's just how it is." You know it wasn't until I grew up and went out into the wider world and saw books like Debbi Michiko Florence's books, or Lisa Yee's books and was like, "That's what I was missing." I didn't even know what I was missing. So actually, when I see classes from my hometown (where it's still predominantly white) reading my books, reading them out loud and I'm thinking, you know, because we talk so much about representation, and how how important it is as Asian Americans that we see ourselves represented in books. But then to also see that my books are used in classes where there's not a high Asian American demographic, but they're seeing Asian American heroes. And getting into, you know, having that empathetic fiber optic to those characters. I'm just thinking that that would have been life-changing for me too, if my classmates had done that as well. So that's also something that's so meaningful.

12:56:00 Sarah Park Dahlen:		Yeah, thank you so much for that. It reminds me of when Gene Luen Yang made that comic that came out of The New York Times, The Glare of Disdain, how there was a South Asian kid in his classroom, but they were not really friends. And he later wondered as a grownup if that kid had a chance to read Mike Jung (who just left), Mike Jung's Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities and learned a little bit more about East Asian Americans and if Jean had had a chance to read like Uma Krishnaswami, you know, which is about a spunky little Indian American girl, would they have seen each other in like a more human light, you know? And that just goes for everybody right? Like you said your Texas hometown is still predominantly white, and yet they're reading your books and learning more about Asian Americans. And because you have so many...one book can lead to so many more. And then you're connected in this network of Asian American writers and illustrators, and so the potential for exposure, the ripple effect, is just tremendous, right? So that's very exciting. So if anybody has questions, please put them in the chat; otherwise I'm gonna go to this other question that I've begun to ask anytime I interview an Asian American author or illustrator, and that is: If you could mash up one of your books with any other book written or illustrated by an Asian American, which books would it be? And why? 

12:57:24 Christina Soontornvat:		Okay, I thought about this. I have a very thoughtful answer to this. So I have a graphic novel out that is about my experience growing up in that small town, small Texas town. And it's called The Tryout. It is about when I tried out for cheerleader in middle school. So this character, the main character of the book, is me. It's like actually Christina. And so what I would do is I would mash up The Tryout with Debbi Michiko Florence's books...I mean, like it could have been anything like Sweet and Sour, or Keep It Together, Keiko Carter. I think maybe I would choose Keep It Together, Keiko Carter because then Keiko and Christina would interact, and they would be in part of the same story. They would, of course, be friends. So that would mean that in real life I would have had Keiko Carter as my friend, because this is really me. So it will be like a time travel thing, too. Okay? Do you see how meta that got? That got very meta.

12:58:34 Sarah Park Dahlen:		I have read those books carefully, and I still was, you know...everything was churning in my head. But I think that could also work for The Diary of an Ice Princess and the Jasmine Toguchi books right? She loves desserts and Jasmine Toguchi loves mochi. She now knows how to make mochi, right? And so, yeah, I think there are multiple ways that your books and Debbi's books could like... Is someone out there writing fiction right now? Because, I wanna read this!

12:59:04 Christina Soontornvat:		I think Debbi and I need to, we need to make a book together. That's why I'm putting that...I'm manifesting to the universe.

12:59:12 Sarah Park Dahlen:		Is Andrea still here?

12:59:14 Christina Soontornvat:		Yes, let's do it Andrea!

12:59:16 Sarah Park Dahlen:		I think it's just so great that we have this abundance of stories, and you know, and something that we were talking about before we started, is: we do have an increasing abundance of Asian American stories. We still don't have enough, you know, Viet Nguyen said that we still need to get to a place of narrative plentitude. We don't have enough and right now the books are, a lot of our books, and a lot of books by BIPOC and LGBTQ and other writers are under attack. So a lot of it right now is an issue of access. So I just want to encourage all of you who came today, whatever you do in your lives professionally or personally, to make sure that we are opening up access to all of these stories, Christinas and other Asian Americans and other BIPPOC writers, so that more young people have opportunities to learn about the great diversity of our country and our world. I wanna thank Christina for just a wonderful conversation and all of your amazing books. They're so inspiring. I love assigning them in my classes. My colleague, Dr. Liz Hoiem said that she assigns A Wish in the Dark in her fantasy class. So certainly at the iSchool our students are having an opportunity to to read your books. I also want to thank all of you audience members for coming to our event and for your enthusiasm and questions as well. I hope you're leaving with ideas of how you can implement Asian American youth literature in your personal and professional lives. Please join us next year. We have more TEAACH Act-related events including our Gryphon lecture with Dr. Sohyun An on March 20, 2023. So thank you so much, thank you Christina, thank you to The Center for Children's Books and all of you.