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Koosha Navadar (Host) (2:07)

You're listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Koosha Navadar in for Alison Stewart. The latest novel from National Book Award finalist Lisa Koh takes readers from 1980s New York City up through the year 2040, and the vision she paints of the future of our city is not very bright. The novel is titled Memory Peace, and it centers on three friends trying to follow their dreams in the Big Apple. There's Gisele, who is willing to put her safety on the line in pursuit of radical performance art There's Jackie, a computer obsessed introvert who creates a popular online diary website that leads her into a world of corruption and greed. And then there's Ellen, an activist fighting gentrification on the Lower east side by squatting in an abandoned building. As these three friends drift in and out of each other's lives, we see how their goals and ambitions shift as their faced with the real life challenges of adulthood and as they grapple with the changing landscape of the city itself. The novel takes a turn into speculative fiction when it jumps ahead to the year 2040 and presents a pretty dystopian picture of the capitalist surveillance state that Lisa imagines might be the future of New York. Memory Piece was our selection for the May get lit with all of it book club. Lisa Ko joined Get lit producer Jordan Loff earlier this week for a conversation in front of a packed crowd at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library. Let's hear some of that conversation now.

Jordan Loft (Get Lit Producer / Interviewer) (3:45)

So you told Lit Hub, I never start a novel knowing where I'm going. Where did you think you were going with this novel at first? What was the first germ of the idea that would become Memory Peace?

Lisa Ko (Author) (3:57)

Well, I think the first germ was really wanting to write about the long arc of friendship. And I was just always very interested in writing about how a friendship changes over many decades, thinking a little bit about my own friendships where, you know, you might have met circumstantially through things like Chinese school because your parents happen to be, you know, immigrants from the same ethnic diaspora where these characters meant in Memory Piece. And your lives might diverge and really different ways, but there's still some sort of early bond or experience that ties you to one another and you end up influencing one another in ways you don't even realize. And I think that these three friends sort of push and pull, you know, even though they're not in contact sometimes for months or years, they're kind of always thinking, you know, what would Ellen think? Or would Jackie approve of this choice that I've made? So they're always sort of part of one another's lives, I think, and their work also is deeply impactful for one another.

Jordan Loft (Get Lit Producer / Interviewer) (4:58)

And what is it that you think keeps them in each other's lives for so long? Because I thought that was a realistic part too, that there are people who come in and out of your life. There are people who are there for just for a few years, and you lose touch. Why do they always stay in touch, even if the decades sort of stretch.

Lisa Ko (Author) (5:13)

Out I think in some ways, it's their personalities and their interests. Right. They are also all very invested and ambitious in doing their creative work. And that was also something I wanted to write about, to write about women who were very interested in ambitious and creative work, especially Asian American women. And they have this experience, I think, of feeling misunderstood, wanting belonging, and feeling like a little bit on the outside. Right. So there's a way that they all kind of understand one another and. And I think when you do have that early bonding experience, it just is something that ends up staying with you throughout the years.

Jordan Loft (Get Lit Producer / Interviewer) (5:53)

Of the three friends, who came to you the most easily and who was the hardest to figure out?

Lisa Ko (Author) (5:59)

That's interesting. I started with Giselle and Jackie, actually, and both of them sort of have some autobiographical commonalities with myself. I also grew up in 1980s New Jersey, like Giselle. I'm the child of Chinese Filipino immigrants. And like Jackie, A also worked tangentially in the early dot com business at the turn of the century in Y2K. So writing those two characters was also very fun, I think, because it allowed me to sort of look back on parts of my life and to sort of use that as emotional material. But I actually just realized about one or two years in to the writing process that Ellen was actually the third protagonist and arguably even the protagonist of the entire novel, that she was not just a friend that they had in common that was sort of horning in on the narrative, but somebody who played an actually really large part in the book. So figuring that out actually made me realize, like, how much her story tied together with other stories.

Jordan Loft (Get Lit Producer / Interviewer) (7:06)

And is that why you wrote her piece in the first person and the other two in third, or how did that come about?

Lisa Ko (Author) (7:12)

I think it's because I wanted the book to sort of mimic the experience of moving through time. So it goes from the 80s to the 2000s, which is 60 years. Over 60 years and arguably the span of a lifetime. Right. And I wanted the feeling of reading the book to be similar to sort of moving from this mundane 80s childhood. And Giselle's section in the beginning is, like, different stylistically and tonally in the way that it tells her early development as an artist and then Jackie's. I chose to write in first person in present tense because there's a sort of highly dramatic stakes moment of, like, Y2K and will these dot com companies go public? And it felt. It's something that feels very absurd, I think, in retrospect. And then Ellen's section was sort of meant to portray this, you know, like, frog in boiling water effect of, you know, it's a very New York City novel of just sort of waking up in your city, and one day you realize, you know, you're. Everyone is a stranger around you. The city itself is a stranger. Maybe you're the stranger. And so it felt it made sense to have that section be written in first person, in past tense, and have that sort of nostalgic feel. She's looking backwards as well as forwards.

Jordan Loft (Get Lit Producer / Interviewer) (8:28)

And I thought something else interesting about the way you structured the book is because it's from three points of view. We get to see each character, how they see themselves, and then how their two friends see them. So you get to see Giselle from her point of view, and then, oh, here's what Ellen thinks about Giselle, and here's what Jackie thinks about Giselle. What did you most enjoy about getting to play around with perspective and impressions and ideas about people?

Lisa Ko (Author) (8:52)

Yeah, it's a really fun, strategic thing to use as a writer. Like you mentioned, it's also kind of like all our worst fears, kind of like knowing what our friends and frenemies might be thinking of each other, you know, and things that people never tell you. But I think as a dramatic device, it could be really useful because, for instance, you see Jackie and Giselle kind of projecting all these ideas onto Ellen. Ellen is very confident. Ellen is, you know, not afraid of anything. And then when you get to Ellen's section, you realize she's actually insecure and vulnerable and like, you know, just a regular person, like everybody else. Right. And so by kind of playing with all those different angles, you allow the reader to sort of see the way that they misinterpret one another, I think, and the choices they make based on that.

Jordan Loft (Get Lit Producer / Interviewer) (9:38)

And it's a cliche to say, you know, like, oh, New York City is sort of the fourth main character of this book. But it really is. It really is in this case. And even though it was only a few decades ago, the New York of the 90s that you present in this book feels really far away and different from the New York we're living in today. Did you live here in the 90s?

Lisa Ko (Author) (9:58)

I did, yeah. I first moved to New York in the late 90s.

Jordan Loft (Get Lit Producer / Interviewer) (10:01)

What about that experience did you want to make sure you captured on the.

Lisa Ko (Author) (10:04)

Page in this book? I mean, really everything, you know, And I think so much of the book is about how New York has changed and might continue to change, because the book also goes a little bit into the future as well, and it's sort of using New York City as a microcosm of the larger political economy of the US Right. All the ways that gentrification has changed choices that we can make. I think that's something that's deeply changed since the 90s. A lot of the choices that characters can make about selling out and making their art or even deciding to refurbish in an abandoned building in the East Village and become a squatter in a communal living situation, which Ellen does, that's not a possibility now, but that was maybe 30 years ago. Right. So I think all these things have really changed, like our concerns around the city. I think so many things are also the same. They've just become more intensified, and there's new technologies and ways to kind of expedite some of the changes that have been made.

Jordan Loft (Get Lit Producer / Interviewer) (11:03)

Yeah. It's interesting you bring up that idea of selling out, because that was something that really resonated with me reading this novel is that balance between you're a young person and you come into the world as an adult with all these ideas about who you want to be and the morals you want to stick to and the lines you want to draw in the sand. And then you sort of have to butt up against the realities of, oh, I have bills to pay and I want to live somewhere and eat food. I think all of the characters sort of grapple with that line in some way, that struggle.

Lisa Ko (Author) (11:35)

Absolutely.

Jordan Loft (Get Lit Producer / Interviewer) (11:35)

Is that a dilemma that you've faced in your life?

Lisa Ko (Author) (11:38)

Yeah, I think it's a very familiar thing to not only artists and writers, but probably to everybody, you know, and it's something that Giselle sort of plays with, too, in her performance art. I think all the characters are really making those choices. Right. Because they're all. They have their passion projects and their art, and that any kind of passion project or work you love is likely not necessarily going to be materially compensated. Right. So you have the dilemma of needing time to do your art or your creative projects, but needing money to buy time, but needing time to work to get money. And so how does that equation work out? And I think that's something that so many artists and writers are very familiar with. Like, how can you sort of game the system to buy time? How can you figure out a way to create your art?

Jordan Loft (Get Lit Producer / Interviewer) (12:25)

Which one of these characters struggles with that the most, do you think?

Lisa Ko (Author) (12:28)

I think definitely Giselle does in some. Some ways. And Giselle has this performance piece early in the book where she decides to solve that problem. The time, work, money, conundrum. By deciding to live in a mall in an abandoned room in the mall. She's a child of the 90s. She's responding in some ways to these performance art pieces of the 70s and 80s, but she's a Jersey girl, so her solution is to kind of squat into Paramus Park Mall, which is my home mall, and she doesn't have to pay rent for a year. And she's creating art, right? So she's sort of changing the definition of what art can be, right? By deciding to make a different kind of art.

Jordan Loft (Get Lit Producer / Interviewer) (13:06)

And you mentioned that mall piece. I mean, that's a high risk piece of art. That's no joke. She's living in a mall. I mean, as I think her mother mentions, like, you could have died in there. What were you doing?

Lisa Ko (Author) (13:16)

No one would know.

Jordan Loft (Get Lit Producer / Interviewer) (13:17)

Not everyone has it in them to make that kind of performance art. What do you think is driving Giselle to be making that art?

Lisa Ko (Author) (13:24)

I mean, I think she's just, you know, she's really incorporated performance as part of her life, right. In a way that I know for me, writing fictional characters was just something. A skill that I honed early in my childhood as a way to sort of, you know, fight the boredom. I don't know, growing up before the Internet. Right. And Giselle's kind of method of seeing life as a situation or life as a performance becomes a sort of mode of living, right. So I think that sort of drives her. She's also deeply ambitious, right? She wants to gain recognition, she wants to be taken seriously. And she's continually sort of coming up against all the expectations that are put on her.

Jordan Loft (Get Lit Producer / Interviewer) (14:07)

The next character that we get to in the book is Jackie, who grows up sort of disappearing into this world of the Internet. What is she finding in that online world, in that online community that she's not. Not finding in her everyday life?

Lisa Ko (Author) (14:22)

I think she's finding a sort of freedom, right? And when I look back on those early years of the Internet, before it was taken over by Meta and Elon Musk, there was such optimism in a moment of being able to publish for free online, disseminate information for free online, and also be whoever you want to be. So for Jackie, she finds a sense of freedom in being like, I can be boy or a girl, I can be any race. I don't even have to be a person, really. And there's such excitement and optimism, I think, in that moment, in a time when she's feeling very alone and isolated. She's an only child. She's one of the Only Asian kids in her school. And being able to do this gives her all this possibility for her future.

Jordan Loft (Get Lit Producer / Interviewer) (15:09)

And of the three, Jackie, for a little while is the one who has the most sort of stable job and she has an apartment. But then that falls through and she joins Ellen in this squatting community, which at first she's like, I don't know about all this. But then she seems to really enjoy her experience at Sola, the house that Ellen and her friends have created in this community. What is it that she finds there that she finds rewarding?

Lisa Ko (Author) (15:33)

I mean, I think she finds other people, right? So it's really about the analog world versus the digital world. And she's finding a group of people that's having really different concerns and ambitions than the world that she's encountering during her day job, which is at a tech company, which is sort of like a prototypical Uber eats seamless about delivering goods within an hour to your apartment. And in Ellen's squat, there's this sort of idealistic communal living where people are like, what is the Internet? You know, we're just going to grow our own vegetables, we're going to like feed each other. And I think for Jackie, it surprises her how much she's missed having that sort of energy.

Jordan Loft (Get Lit Producer / Interviewer) (16:20)

Of all the three characters, why is Ellen the one who stays? Because Giselle and Jackie eventually leave New York, but Ellen is the one who remains. Why is, why is she the one who stays?

Lisa Ko (Author) (16:31)

I think Ellen is really deeply tied to New York and I think she has created this home. She's part of the squatters movement that ends up being able to purchase her home. You know, and it's through a very little known program in the early 2000s where the last remaining squats in the East Village in the Lower east side, the residents were given the ability to have a mortgage and to owe that money to a co op, a non profit, and own their own home. So she's put so many years into building this house, her identity is wrapped up in her community and also in her city, in her neighborhood. So that sense of attachment and meeting, I think is what drives her to stay, makes it hard for her to leave.

Jordan Loft (Get Lit Producer / Interviewer) (17:19)

And one thing I thought was interesting about Ellen's section because we get her in the future when she's older and you have this sort of intergenerational play with Ellen, who meets this young woman named Hunter, who's the daughter of a friend. And Hunter and her friends are organizing in the Bronx. They're doing sort of the kind of activism that, that Ellen and her friends used to do. And Ellen now is feeling a little, a little more cautious than she might have in the past. And her friends especially that she lived with are like, don't encourage this young girl to, to be doing this. It's not safe. What did you want to explore in that sort of intergenerational play? Because I think that's a familiar concept to people that, oh, you know, when I was younger, I was radical and then I got old and I realized, you know, this is the way the world works or I become disillusioned or, or what have you. What did you want to play with in that dynamic?

Lisa Ko (Author) (18:08)

I think I really want to look at just the way that memory, memory functions in a way that, you know, for Ellen, she's living in. We can, it's a separate conversation. Whether it's dystopia are actually just a continuation of the status quo today, I tend to think the latter. But she's living in a time when, you know, memory becomes a liability. And that's something that is not dissimilar from now when we're sort of being ushered into having a sort of collective amnesia about the recent past or even the present, you know. And so because of that, I feel like there's such a power and a struggle to also remember and to not forget. Right. So it's sort of these two forces where she as, you know, kind of a movement elder has been forced to forget some of the work of her past just for her own survival, I think. And she's now working with these young people who haven't experienced that because they haven't experienced periods of repression that she's lived through. Right. So it's forcing her, I think, to confront, you know, not only her own memory, but to confront her past in order to figure out what the future is.

Koosha Navadar (Host) (19:23)

You're listening to get lit producer Jordan Loft's conversation with author Lisa Ko. We spent the month reading her new novel Memory piece. There will be more of that interview plus some questions from the in person audience. That's after a quick break. This is all of it. You're listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Kusha Navadar in for Alison Stewart. We continue airing highlights from our May get lit with all of it book club event with author Lisa Koh. We spent the month reading her novel. It's called Memory Peace. It's the story of three friends and their lives in New York from the 1980s all the way to the year 2040. Thanks to our partners at the New York Public Library, 2,783 of you were able to check out a copy of the book and read along with us this month. And as always, our audience had some great questions for our author. You'll hear some of those in a minute. But first, here is more of get lit producer Jordan Loft's conversation with author Lisa Kobe.

Jordan Loft (Get Lit Producer / Interviewer) (20:37)

We get to Ellen in this future section in the 2000 and 40s. When did you know you wanted to go that far in the future?

Lisa Ko (Author) (20:44)

I think I realized at some point when Ellen became a main character that I was really writing not only a friendship novel, but a novel about what's changed and might continue to change over my lifetime as a New Yorker. And part of that just meant, you know, as I was writing about the past, it felt inevitable to also be thinking about the future. And I realized, too, that something I've been bringing about at events is that 2041, where Ellen's section takes place, is actually not that far away. It's 17 years away. It's the same amount of time that we are from 2007. It just seems a little sci fi. It seems like a future time. But part of it also came out of my own anxieties, just sort of writing to my own anxieties about staying in New York, growing older in New York. What will the city look like? What might the city look like? And something that I don't know, I often turn to is a quote from the author Samuel Delaney, where he talks about how speculative fiction is not really about the future, but it's actually just in dialogue with the present. It's a way to open up possibilities about how we might respond to and contest the current reality. And that felt like a really interesting thing to do, especially in this moment.

Jordan Loft (Get Lit Producer / Interviewer) (22:02)

And you pushed back against that word dystopian. But it's definitely not a pleasant version of the future that you present. How did you decide how far you wanted to push things in that section?

Lisa Ko (Author) (22:12)

You know, I both felt like it just felt like taking what was going on now, whether it's surveillance, militarization, displacement, gentrification, all the things that we're seeing, you know, in New York every day outside our windows and just dialing it up a little bit and just thinking, what might this look like if it continued for another 15 years? Right. And also we have other escalating things like climate that are happening and new technologies that we might not even be dreaming of. Right. So in a way, I felt like it was turning the dial up on that. And you know, and otherwise, I feel like it doesn't quite go too far. Right. There's possibly even more violence that I didn't necessarily want to incorporate in the narrative.

Jordan Loft (Get Lit Producer / Interviewer) (22:54)

And was this your first time writing speculative fiction?

Lisa Ko (Author) (22:58)

I think it's, yeah. In a novel, absolutely.

Jordan Loft (Get Lit Producer / Interviewer) (23:01)

What was something that you read or learned or advice that you got that sort of helped you tackle that section? Because I can imagine it's a different sort of creative exercise to go that far in the future.

Lisa Ko (Author) (23:10)

It definitely is. And it's, you know, it's sort of like you have to find the balance between saying enough and not saying too much. And of course, we don't know until the future happens how accurate it is. You know, there's no, like, fact check for it. There's no resources you can turn to to figure out what the future will be. But, you know, it's like you want to sort of explain what has changed in this fictional world, but you also don't want to be that detailed because I think sometimes having too much detail can turn the reader off a little bit or, you know, give the reader reasons why they might want to prove the writer wrong.

Jordan Loft (Get Lit Producer / Interviewer) (23:50)

Makes sense.

Lisa Ko (Author) (23:51)

All right.

Jordan Loft (Get Lit Producer / Interviewer) (23:52)

Do we have any questions from our audience? Hello. I had a quick question about your research process.

Lisa Ko (Author) (24:01)

Sure.

Jordan Loft (Get Lit Producer / Interviewer) (24:01)

In terms of integrating, I would imagine, interviews that you did over the seven years as well as research you did on the lived experiences of certain people, I was wondering if you could talk a bit to that and highlight certain instances of where that kind of was maybe difficult for you or was just very defining in terms of your writing of the book.

Lisa Ko (Author) (24:25)

Sure, yeah. You know, I feel like research is like a tricky line, especially for me as a writer. It's something that is very seductive and necessary. It can also be a very easy way to procrastinate because we get to read about things that we're obsessed with and call that work. What could be more fun? Right. But at some point, you know, I feel like I'm always having to strike the line where I'm not. You know, research always becomes necessary in order to imagine your way into something. Like, I always kind of write until I hit a roadblock, you know, and then I'm like, okay, it's time to sort of fact check this. I should read some books or some interviews. I should talk to some people who worked in tech to make sure I'm getting it right, you know, or, you know, talk to somebody who lived in a squat and make sure I get that right. But I always find that there's a danger in doing too much. And then I become kind of concerned where I'm like, I don't want to waste all that labor and I want to put all those details in the book. And then the book becomes weighed down, I think, with research that might not necessarily be necessary to the narrative. Right. So, yeah, I feel like that's always a challenge to me. Try to figure out the right amount, but not too much and how to sort of incorporate it and then dial it back.

Jordan Loft (Get Lit Producer / Interviewer) (25:51)

All right, I think we've got time for one more.

Bix Soleil Brand Representative (25:54)

Hi. First, I wanted to congratulate you on your book. I found it very interesting and I.

Lisa Ko (Author) (26:01)

Wanted to ask you about the inspiration.

Bix Soleil Brand Representative (26:04)

Of this artist that I read at the end.

Lisa Ko (Author) (26:07)

I'm probably going to pronounce the name wrong, but. Te Ching Xie. Why did you decide to use him as an inspiration? Tei Ching Shae is a Taiwanese American performance artist who is best known for doing a series of very long, year long endurance performance artworks in the late 70s and 80s. In one of them, he decides to live in a cage for a year on purpose. And another one, he decides to live completely outdoors for a year. He's also known for one where he's tied to another artist with a rope for a year. So I think when I first heard about his work in my 20s, I was just very intrigued because the work is a little wacky and very weird. And I think my first reaction was like, how could you spend a year of your life doing this? But I realized that I was always very taken with it because he tends to use that dilemma of time and labor and art and incorporating that into the art itself. So he makes the passage of time sort of the art itself, the labor of the art itself. And that felt like just like a very intriguing place to work with some of the characters dilemmas about art making and to also use Giselle's character as sort of taking his work as inspiration but putting her own spin on it. You know, how do differences in gender and national origin and like time and place affect the art that she can make as well?

Jordan Loft (Get Lit Producer / Interviewer) (27:49)

Before we get to our musical portion of the evening, I wanted to point out that you recently tweeted oh no. Created a playlist for a new novel. I guess it's really happening. So first of all, can you tell us what role music plays in your writing process? And then can you give us any hints as to what we might expect with the next one?

Lisa Ko (Author) (28:10)

I can't give you a hint of what to expect because I haven't figured it out yet. But I feel like the playlist part of it is it's always very interesting because I want to create a playlist that both include songs individually and as a structural, as like an arc throughout the playlist that will mimic them out of the same kind of emotional response that I hope to produce in the writing. So I'm sort of creating a sort of like, you know, aesthetic collage for what I hope the novel will be.

Jordan Loft (Get Lit Producer / Interviewer) (28:43)

So the playlist sort of helps you feel the emotions that the novel will hopefully make the reader feel.

Lisa Ko (Author) (28:48)

Yes, exactly. Or. Yeah, yeah. And putting them together sort of allows me to feel the emotions or like map out the arc and the structure of the book.

Jordan Loft (Get Lit Producer / Interviewer) (28:57)

Any one song or artist that you can give us a hint that's on that playlist.

Lisa Ko (Author) (29:02)

I just put, you know, here Comes yous Man by the Pixies on it, which felt like nostalgic and cheery and a little depressing. So. All right, that's my vibe. Yeah.

Jordan Loft (Get Lit Producer / Interviewer) (29:10)

Well, that's what we can expect from the next one, maybe. Lisa Ko, thank you so much for joining us.

Lisa Ko (Author) (29:15)

Thank you for having me.

Koosha Navadar (Host) (29:23)

That was get lit producer Jordan Loft's conversation with author Lisa Koh. We spent the month reading her new novel Memory Piece. Up next, just like the protagonists in the novel, the band Lightning Bug consists of three friends chasing a dream in New York City. We hear a live stream, special performance and interview with the indie band's lead singer, Audrey Kang. Stay with us.

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Lisa Ko (Author) (30:27)

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