'Emergency Contact' explores love in the age of modern technology

Summary

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Episode Overview

Podcast: NPR's Book of the Day
Episode Title: 'Emergency Contact' explores love in the age of modern technology
Date: January 27, 2026
Host: Lulu Garcia Navarro (aired segment), Andrew Limbong (introduces segment)
Guest: Mary H.K. Choi, author of Emergency Contact

This episode spotlights Mary H.K. Choi’s debut YA novel, Emergency Contact, which delves into the complexities of love, trauma, and connection for teens in the digital age. Choi discusses with Lulu Garcia Navarro how technology enables new forms of intimacy but also intersects with deeper themes of identity, mental health, and the lasting effects of trauma.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Modern Love and Technology

• The novel centers on Penny and Sam, young adults who connect deeply, primarily through text messaging.
• [01:48] Lulu Garcia Navarro: “How do we find a real connection in a device reliant world?”
• Their relationship starts not with a classic 'meet cute' but with a 'meet anxiety', reflecting the realities of mental health and vulnerability among young people.

[02:48] Mary H.K. Choi:
“Yes. It's definitely sort of meet harrowing rather than meet cute. Sam sort of has this panic attack on the street and Penny... sees him and she reaches out to him and they become each other's emergency contact.”

The Concept of "Emergency Contact"

• Choi redefines what an "emergency contact" means—someone who may not be a family member or close friend, but who brings emotional safety in a disconnected world.
• Technology acts as both a shield and a bridge, letting young people connect meaningfully while managing social anxieties.

[03:11] Mary H.K. Choi:
“It's like the tether to the spaceship when you're kind of like free fall floating out in outer space. And I really liked the idea too of having that be someone who lives inside your phone because... it's unencumbered by all this pressure of how you look... And you know, I find texting to be kind of a safe space.”

Broader Themes: Race, Class, Friendship

• The book weaves in issues of race (Penny is Korean American), class (Sam’s housing instability), and the evolving definitions of peer support and friendship.
• Choi wanted a contemporary teen story that honored the enduring emotional experiences of teenagers, even as technology reshapes their world.

[04:28] Mary H.K. Choi:
“No matter how desperate we seem to be taxonomically othering them... a lot of the benchmarks and the experiences are... same for teens through time immemorial... But with a lot of the sort of like bigger themes that are very real.”

Mental Health, Hopelessness, and Adult Expectations

• Choi contrasts notions of precocious digital natives with the reality of adolescent anxiety, depression, and social pressures.
• She emphasizes recognizing the complexity and capability of teens rather than reducing them to stereotypes.

[04:28] Mary H.K. Choi:
“Because teens now, it's this dual thing where they're either like super precocious... or they're hopeless and they're depressed and like anxiety ridden and overmedicated. And I wanted to give them credit and I wanted to let them know that they're seen in some way.”

Trauma and Sexual Assault

• The novel addresses sexual assault and its long-lasting psychological impact. Choi highlights the challenge of defining and coping with trauma—especially when cultural narratives or internet discourse obscure individual experience.
• She draws on her own experiences, opening up about the ambiguity of consent and the immense pressure survivors feel to respond a certain way.

[06:55] Mary H.K. Choi:
“It was really, really painful because I just... There was just a discord. And I was thinking about how there's so much conversation about mutually affirmative consent, and we all know the language... but in each moment when it's just two people and you're wildly inexperienced... you don't know what that's supposed to feel like a lot of the time. And I wanted to introduce some of that ambiguity back in, like, a blameless way...”

Healing, Privacy & Wisdom for Young Readers

• Choi advocates for honoring individual choices in healing and sharing trauma, rejecting the idea that there’s a "right" way to respond or speak out.
• She sees her book as both a time capsule of her own growth and a means of offering hard-won wisdom to younger generations.

[07:50] Mary H.K. Choi:
“What I'm saying is that you don't have to be any type of person in that moment because you are absolutely blameless. And that's something that took me a really, really long time and also a lot of therapy to sort of get to.”

[08:31] Mary H.K. Choi:
“If I can at all share any wisdom that I've collected over my many, many years on planet Earth, and if I can tell it to someone who's younger than me that they can use, like, that's great.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the pressure of public responses to trauma:

  [07:47] Lulu Garcia Navarro: “There's a lot of pressure. To be public.”
  [07:50] Mary H.K. Choi: “There is a lot of pressure... What I'm saying is that you don't have to be any type of person in that moment because you are absolutely blameless.”

• On technology and safety:

  [03:11] Mary H.K. Choi: “I find texting to be kind of a safe space.”

• On intergenerational wisdom:

  [08:31] Mary H.K. Choi: “It’s like, you know, back to the future when Biff has, like, the almanac and makes all those bets... if I can enrich anyone before they get to where I'm at, like, I think that that is time well spent.”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:48] Introduction of Emergency Contact’s premise and characters
• [03:08] The meaning of "emergency contact" and the role of technology in connection
• [04:16] Addressing race, class, and friendship in YA literature
• [05:19] Handling of sexual assault and trauma in the story
• [06:53] Mary H.K. Choi’s personal experiences and thoughts on ambiguity in trauma narratives
• [07:47] Discussion on pressures to speak publicly about trauma and the importance of blamelessness
• [08:31] Choi reflects on imparting wisdom through fiction

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Tone and Takeaways

Choi’s conversation is empathetic, witty, and deeply honest. She challenges expectations around technology, trauma, and modern adolescence, offering both solidarity and hope to her young audience. Her message is clear: authentic connection and healing may look different for everyone, and literature can serve as both a mirror and a guide.

This episode offers rich takeaways for anyone interested in contemporary YA fiction, the realities of digital-era relationships, and nuanced, compassionate portrayals of trauma.

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Transcript

[Andrew Limbong]

Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. Mary H.K. choi's debut novel, Emergency Contact, came out in 2018. It's a novel about young lovers finding it hard to truly connect despite all the conveniences that modern technology affords them. Again, the book came out in 2018. And in a lot of ways, the things Choi addressed in the novel have only gotten more timely, more relatable. So I wanted to play this interview she did when the book came out, talking to then NPR host Lulu Garcia Navarro about how the Internet makes teens feel hopeless and depressed, but also how there's a way through that. That's coming up.

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[Lulu Garcia Navarro]

How do we find a real connection in a device reliant world? In Mary HK Choi's debut novel, Emergency Contact Penny and strike up a text based romance and soon become take your phone to the bathroom inseparable, but for different reasons, they have trouble making it real. Mary HK Choi joins me now from our studios in Culver City, California to talk about her book. Hi.

[Mary H.K. Choi]

Hi. How are you?

[Lulu Garcia Navarro]

I'm great. So I guess let's start with these two characters, Penny and Sam. Who are they at the start of this book?

[Mary H.K. Choi]

So at the start, Penny, who is a Korean American person, is going off to college and and Sam is in the throes of the worst breakup. He's kind of he's homeless adjacent and he's dealing with a lot of anxiety and panic.

[Lulu Garcia Navarro]

And they kind of have this not a meet cute, which is what they're normally Called when you have romantic leads meeting. It was a meet anxiety.

[Mary H.K. Choi]

Yes. It's definitely sort of meet harrowing rather than meet cute. Sam sort of has this panic attack on the street and Penny, who is the type of person who would normally sort of keep it moving and be like, o, someone else will deal with this. But she sees him and she reaches out to him and they become each other's emergency contact.

[Lulu Garcia Navarro]

What does that mean to you, emergency contact?

[Mary H.K. Choi]

It's that you have someone holding you down and it might not be the person that you thought it would be in terms of like, it might not be your parent, it might not be your caregiver, it might not even be the most. I guess orthodox definition of who you're like bestie is it could be just someone else who makes the world feel like a safer space. It's like the tether to the spaceship when you're kind of like free fall floating out in outer space. And I really liked the idea too of having that be someone who lives inside your phone because you have that person in your literal back pocket. But it's unencumbered by all this pressure of how you look, how they look. Is it romantic? Am I funny enough? Is that person? And thinking about how my hair is greasy, do I have a zit? Like, it doesn't have all of the stress of that. Especially if you're like cognitively a little bit atypical and you struggle with different visual cues or timing for who's speaking next. And you know, I find texting to be kind of a safe space.

[Lulu Garcia Navarro]

There are a lot of other themes in this book which I want to talk to you about. Race, class, friendship. Why did you want to tackle all of that in a YA novel?

[Mary H.K. Choi]

The thing that I find interesting about teens now is that no matter how desperate we seem to be taxonomically othering them for one reason or another, because the Internet, because whatever, you know, I feel like a lot of the benchmarks and the experiences are, you know, same for teens through time immemorial. And I wanted an old school teen story that still had technology and felt very, very contemporary, but with a lot of the sort of like bigger themes that are very real. Because teens now, it's this dual thing where they're either like super precocious because they're so good at the Internet and they're like YouTube billionaires or they're hopeless and they're depressed and like anxiety ridden and overmedicated. And I wanted to give them credit and I wanted to let them know that they're seen in some way.

[Lulu Garcia Navarro]

There's also another powerful theme in this book, and that is sexual assault. And Penny has an experience in her past.

[Mary H.K. Choi]

Right. It's funny. Well, not funny, but people have described emergency contact as funny. And while it is really, really funny in moments, I definitely always kind of want to throw an asterisk on that, because to your point, there should be a trigger warning to this book about the sexual assault in it. And Penny has an experience where, you know, and she's like me. She's an indoor cat. She's very into, like, climate conditioning. She loves compute. Like, she loves the Internet. And, you know, she has a lot of social issues outside. And so she befriends someone who is a trusted person, and basically he betrays that trust and sexually assaults her. And for a long, long time, her brain can't compute that. And I feel like if someone is exposed to the MeToo movement or Weinstein or Bill Cosby through the Internet, and if someone is in a position of seeing what they think, like, sexual trauma looks like or what the right type of victim is, it can be really confusing about how to define their own experiences. And I had a personal experience where for a long, long time I was gaslighting myself into thinking that one experience was not as big a deal as I thought it was. And I'm assuming you're saying that you.

[Lulu Garcia Navarro]

Had an experience with sexual assault.

[Mary H.K. Choi]

Sexual assault, yeah. And it was really, really painful because I just. There was just a discord. And I was thinking about how there's so much conversation about mutually affirmative consent, and we all know the language and we all know the con, but in each moment when it's just two people and you're wildly inexperienced, like, you don't know what that's supposed to feel like a lot of the time. And I wanted to introduce some of that ambiguity back in, like, a blameless way where I wanted it to be okay for Penny to admit that she was sexually assaulted, and I wanted her to be okay with the fact that she did not want to tell anyone. Because I do think that there are situations in which you feel pressure to do one thing or another.

[Lulu Garcia Navarro]

Yeah. That to speak out. There's a lot of pressure. To be public.

[Mary H.K. Choi]

There is a lot of pressure. What's happening to you? And the thing I'm not saying. I'm not saying that you shouldn't say anything, but what I'm saying is that you don't have to be any type of person in that moment because you are absolutely blameless. And that's something that took me a really, really long time and also a lot of therapy to sort of get to. I say that it's kind of a time capsule in terms of me writing. Ya, it kind of does go both ways. It's more like a portal, which is that, like, if I can at all share any wisdom that I've collected over my many, many years on planet Earth, and if I can tell it to someone who's younger than me that they can use, like, that's great. It's like, you know, back to the future when Biff has like the almanac and makes all those bets and is like suddenly really, really rich in the future. It's like kind of that if I can enrich anyone before they get to where I'm at, like, I think that that is time well spent and I I would love to keep putting my weight behind it.

[Lulu Garcia Navarro]

Mary HK Choi's new novel is Emergency Contact. Thank you very.

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