Krista Bremer. Bremer is the associate publisher of The Sun and the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation award. Her essays have been published in O, The Oprah Magazine, More magazine and The Sun, and she is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize. Her memoir is "My Accidental Jihad."
Reyna Grande. Grande is an award-winning author and creative writing instructor. Her works include "Across a Hundred Mountains," "Dancing with Butterflies" and "The Distance Between Us." In 2007 she received an American Book Award, and in 2013 she was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She teaches fiction at UCLA Extension and is currently at work on her fourth book.
Anchee Min. Min was born in Shanghai and grew up during Mao's Cultural Revolution. Her memoir "Red Azalea" was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book in 1994. Min has written several best-selling historical novels, including "Pearl of China." Her latest memoir is "The Cooked Seed."
The following is my attempt to portray the conversation (hopefully, as honestly as possible):
Krista Bremer: Bi-cultural marriage. Her husband is from Libya. In marriage, you arrive at a place where your mate is totally foreign to you. She had to leave behind much of what made her comfortable. She doesn't use the word tolerance in marriage as that seems to imply a power imbalance. Real acceptance requires standing on equal footing. Marriage is where you see your intolerance.
If writing is worth anything, there will be consequences. We have to characterize. There is no way to get the complexity of an individual in a book.
What really got to her was when her daughter started to experiment with a head scarf. She became enamored with the head scarf. Bremer didn't know how to think about it. Baffled. Also, her daughter chose to hide it from her. One time, Bremer took her daughter to school. She didn't drive away immediately and saw her daughter take the head scarf out of her backpack and put it on as she entered the school. When she wrote this in an article, she was attacked by feminist who said she was exposing her daughter to misogyny. Now daughter identifies with punk music. Her daughter's identity is fluid.
Reyna Grande. She came to the U.S. illegally. She now teaches ESL to students. She can identify with them. She understands how scary it is for a student who has immigrated to the U.S. It was hard in school, but what was harder was what was outside of school. Her father was a complete stranger to her as they'd been separated for years.
She included her siblings in the writing process. She interviewed them. They helped fact check. She wanted to celebrate her parents, especially her father who came to America with nothing.
She wanted to show the experience of immigration. Her father left for America when she was 2. Her mother left soon after. Both were out of her life for years. When she came to America, her parents were divorced. As she grew up, she had a distance from her father in other areas. Her father had a 3rd grade education. She had a college degree. She was becoming more American.
Anchee Min. She had two difference experiences. She was driven to write. She wrote because she feared what happened in the labor camps would be wiped out. She wanted to write about how she came to America and was immediately in the underclass.
Her sister was not supportive of her latest novel: "The Cooked Seed." You will embarrass the family, the sister said. Father was worried that China would denounce her. She feels personal stories connect. Her sister is turning around as friends are reading the book. One needs to look at their own human flaws.
You must contribute to this country. Her daughter was brought up the same way.
Her daughter's birthday gift was once a trip to Home Depot.
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