Celeste Ng: Why You Feel Stuck (Best Of)

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Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things.

We are here with the incredible Celeste Ng.

I've been really, really psyched to have this conversation.

Celeste, welcome.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm thrilled to be here.

I have read all of your books, Little Fires Everywhere and your new book, Our Missing Hearts, which my son and I read together.

And I will tell you, Celeste, it just feels like All of the things that I'm working out in my life or on this podcast or wherever in my little heart,

All the things I'm wrestling with, whether it's in my family or in my personal life or in my public self or in activism or in motherhood, you're just always working it out in your latest book, which makes me know you're always wrestling with something like five years before I am, which

makes me so grateful to you.

And each of your books just feels like this.

It's not answers, but just beautiful explorations of these questions in the form of a character's life and love and struggles and decisions.

I saw this teacher say on Twitter the other day that she was so sick of

students saying that nonfiction was

real and that fiction is fake, that she now says that nonfiction is learning through information and fiction is learning through imagination.

Oh, I love that.

Isn't that great?

So your imagination has taught me so much, Celeste.

So thank you for your work in the world.

Oh, thank you.

That is maybe the nicest thing that a writer could hear.

I write my books always because, not because I have answers at all, but because I'm working through those same questions, like you said.

And so to hear that, you know, that the books reached you and like resonated with things that you're also wrestling with, that is really the nicest thing that a writer could hear.

Well, let me just introduce you formally for maybe the three people who are listening who don't know who you are.

Celeste Ng is the number one New York Times best-selling author of Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere.

Her third novel, Our Missing Hearts, is available now.

Ng is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and her work has been published in over 30 languages.

Celeste, what I really want to talk to you is about some of the themes that are throughout all of your books, because many of the themes that we're wrestling with on we can do hard things all the time.

So I thought we could start with a just easy easy peasy, non-flammable, simple topic, which is whiteness and whitening.

That's it.

Easy, you know, small, little, we'll be done in five minutes.

Right, we'll just start with a softball.

So maybe we could start by talking about Elena from Little Fires Everywhere.

Because in that book and then in the series that was on Hulu, Elena was a character that just sparked, so to speak, lots of conversation.

Can you talk to us about how you would describe Elena as a character?

I would say that Elena really

has good intentions.

I feel like that's sort of first and foremost her thing, that she does, she means well and she wants to do right.

And the problem that she runs into is that it's really difficult to know sort of what your own unseen spots are, what your own biases are.

And that's true for everyone.

But I think it becomes a real difficulty if you are in a position where you have a lot of power and authority and you don't know what those sort of unseen spots are.

And I should say up front that I, I really, I, I love Elena as I love Mia, you know, sort of her counterpart in Little Fires Everywhere.

They're both really parts of me.

And I feel, I feel that struggle as well, even though I'm not a white woman, I'm a Chinese American woman, but that idea of like, I want to do right and I know what's right.

And it's the moment when I say that where I go, wait, do I?

I need to to think carefully.

And that's, I think that's such a hard thing for anybody to do, right?

And in Little Fires Everywhere, I think Elena doesn't, she doesn't quite get all the way there.

She doesn't stop to go, wait, do I know what somebody else's life is like?

Do I know what's actually best for them?

And that's therein sort of lies part of the struggle for her.

And that's part of what I think gets her into trouble.

Yeah.

And I see myself in Elena.

So when I talk about white women, I'm talking talking about myself.

I once described myself as a dormant volcano with lipstick on.

And I feel like Elena has this mask and you're waiting for her to explode.

And there's just like this lava running inside.

And it feels like it's this bind of white womanhood, which is what you said is that anger is dangerous when you have power, but where the anger comes from is the place where you don't really have power.

You're pissed off at the people, the man who lives in your house, like Elena's husband, who gets to go out and do all the things.

Is that bind something that you are exploring in that character?

It absolutely is.

And I think that's so right.

I mean, one of the things that I think fiction can do if it's working well is it can make us aware of both of those things that feel like they're contradictions, but they're both true.

And both of those things exist, right?

Like there are super valid reasons for many people, including white women, to be angry.

There are a lot of things that they have to deal with.

But then there are also other things that I think that often many white women are not aware of, just as many other groups are not aware of them.

And those two things don't cancel each other out, right?

It's not like because you have one, you get a pass for the other, or because you are dealing with this thing, you should, you know, be absolved from another thing.

They're just both there.

And I guess sort of, you know, really what we're talking about is just sort of recognizing kind of the intersections of all of our different identities and the the ways that sometimes you have power, like you said, sometimes you have things that you're angry about and then in other places you don't.

And

sorting that out, I feel like is part of sort of the experience of being human.

Yeah.

And like who you take that anger out on.

Because what's so interesting about Elena and the white woman thing is we're pissed off.

We're not exactly sure why.

We're pissed off at white men, I think.

And we know our lack of power that way.

So instead of directing our anger in the right direction, we direct our anger at who?

At Mia.

Is this what

was going on between Mia and Elena?

I think that's part of it, is that she recognized that

Mia, in some ways, had certain freedoms that she, she, Elena, didn't have and wanted to have, but

had chosen not to have or that weren't available to her because of the kind of person that she was.

But at the same time, I think it's really easy to conflate those other feelings of jealousy or of longing or wishing that you had that or of, you know, regret of choices that you made that you might now make differently with what you know.

It's easy to conflate that, I think, with sort of other

aspects of people.

Like you said, I'm mad about these things.

I'm mad about, you know, Elena is, I think, mad about a system in which because she chose to have children her career was forced to be put on halt or because she is a woman she is not taken as seriously as her male colleague or she's not afforded these different rights right she's angry about a lot of things that are completely valid

but she if she directs it towards those systems there's that sense of almost futility there's that sense of like i'm just going to run into that wall and stop And it starts to leak out into other places, at Mia, at her children, at other people's problems that maybe aren't about hers, but that suddenly becomes her representative.

And I do think that happens in life.

That happens to a lot of people.

It's funny, because I think like anger, at least for me and my own experience, like when I get mad about things, it is sort of like this opaque fog that comes in.

I don't know what I'm mad about.

Am I mad at my husband?

Am I not mad at my husband?

Am I mad at my sister?

Like, what am I mad at?

And then I'm like, oh, sometimes I am mad at them, right?

But sometimes I'm mad at something larger that is not necessarily their doing or their fault.

And it's hard to know what to do with that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That theme runs through all of your work, I feel.

Like in everything I never told you, something that was fascinating to me was the Betty Crocker cookbook that was handed down from mother to daughter.

It was actually based on your mother's Betty Crocker cookbook that, you know, she came, she came over when she was 22 from Hong Kong.

But in addition to the recipes that it had, it also had these quotes throughout that told women what to want.

These ideas of this is how you reach your peak fulfillment as a woman.

So one of them was, is there any satisfaction more intense than looking at a set of jellies and preserves you made yourself?

Oh,

fake.

So like these cookbooks are telling women what they should want.

And of course, women's inability to find their fulfillment in those things is what Ferdinand called the problem with no name.

And And just as you're saying, Celeste, with this moment that we're in right now, it does feel like so many women in this country

have this anger

that

they don't know exactly what it's about.

And still in this moment, the question,

what do you want?

to a woman might be the most terrifying question that can be posed.

And so we don't want Betty Crocker Crocker to tell us, but we're not real sure we can answer it.

And so in this moment where we have the ability to fulfill our potential ostensibly,

there is still this problem with no name that is different.

Do you know what it is?

What the are for our generation, please help us.

What is the problem with no name of right now?

Yeah, I think you're really onto something there.

I don't absolutely can't claim to have the answers, although I wish I did.

But I think you're right on in saying that part of it is that we know what we don't want.

We don't want that.

We don't want things the way they are.

We know there's a problem.

But because we haven't yet made it through to whatever is beyond that, we don't know what's there.

It's hard to know what we do want because we don't exactly know what's possible.

Like, I have a lot of sympathy for the women of Marilyn's generation.

That's the mother in my first novel, who's got the Betty Crocker cookbook, because in a way,

they knew enough to know that they didn't want what they had.

They didn't want just the jars of jams and jellies.

They didn't want the here's six ways to make an egg behave so you can make your husband happy.

Because obviously, you need to have a husband to be happy.

And then obviously, you need to make him happy by making him eggs the right way, right?

Like, there's so many layers in there.

Marilyn, in my mind, she had experienced enough to know that's not fulfilling me.

But at the time, there wasn't another possibility.

And so, in a way, what she was running up against was sort of this this gap where what

she wanted, as you said, there wasn't a space for it yet.

She hadn't even imagined that.

It's hard to imagine something that doesn't exist, right?

And maybe one of the things that we're talking about here is this sense that,

I guess, if we want to put a name to it, we can call it patriarchy and particularly white patriarchy.

We're starting to realize that system doesn't serve.

many of us.

It doesn't serve white women.

It doesn't serve women.

It doesn't serve queer people.

It doesn't serve anybody who's not white.

It basically only serves white men.

But we don't really know what system could replace that because we haven't done that.

And so I think we're in this hard period of trying to imagine a new space.

And

that's hard.

Coming up with new things is hard.

And especially when we've never seen that before, right?

We've got ideas of what it might look like.

But that's one of the reasons that I love fiction, both writing it, but also reading it, is that I feel like fiction is almost like a doorstop that kind of wedges the door open.

It doesn't necessarily give you an answer.

It might, but it might give you ideas, but it's just kind of holding open a space where new stuff could come in.

And it's kind of saying to you, yes, things can be different.

We don't know exactly what it is yet, but it could be different.

Maybe it would look like this, maybe it would look like that, but there's a possibility that the way things are now is not the way that things have to be.

Because I think that, you know, like, Glennon, what I hear you saying is like, that's, in a way, that's a position of powerlessness, of saying, we're in this system.

We don't know what to do about it.

And it feels like then there's nothing to do.

And I, you know, I certainly have felt that way myself.

And one of the reasons that I keep turning to, you know, to fiction, but also just art generally, music and poetry, is that I feel like it kind of reminds me, like, okay.

People have gone through something like this.

I'm not alone, which is also such a powerless feeling.

And then also it's reminding me like, oh, maybe

there could be something else.

It's just holding, it's like putting a little placeholder in for what we can imagine later.

It feels so important

to

enter that space of maybe what could be through art.

And then I think there's also a space of just at least knowing not this, like figuring out what is the sandbox that you're being put in.

Because when my kids were little and they were bugging me,

I would just put them in the space.

Like we have this little space like some plastic things and i'm like build a thing

and

to me it feels like as women or any marginalized group has to figure out like what's the sandbox you're being put in because that betty crocker was just a sandbox and that sounds ridiculous make a perfect egg to some of us that will bring fulfillment but like what's that version of ourselves now because all of the you know freaking

house obsession decorating every corner of our house perfectly and obsessing with that or body as project.

Yeah.

Beauty as project.

It's all just another Betty Crocker cookbook.

It's just putting us in a sandbox.

So we're not concentrating on the real stuff.

It's fake power.

Yeah.

I think that's a really interesting way of looking at it.

And that's right.

It's sort of this sense that, in a sense, it's almost like saying, here are the rules of being a woman or being a person of color, whatever your situations, here's the rules.

So if you just do all these things, work within these parameters, or as you said, sort of be in that little sandbox and you do all those things right, you follow the recipe, you will find fulfillment, right?

And in a sense, I feel like maybe what we are questioning is the whole idea that there is a series of rules that can universally be applied and provide everybody fulfillment, right?

Whether it's make your eggs right or, you know, decorate your house perfectly or get the perfect skin, whatever it is that you're doing, right?

That says

all.

Exactly.

Have it all.

I was like, we didn't even talk about you know, the whole things about parenting and the ways that you're supposed to be, you know,

everything should be perfect all the time for your child, and we want that, but we're also human, and I feel like that's not possible, right?

All those ideas, in a way, is sort of saying like this, this might not be possible.

It's not that there can be one set of rules that is going to make everyone happy, and I think that could be kind of a scary thing because, in a sense, if there's no formula that you can follow to do it,

what do you do right there's no there's no guideline for you in a way and you have to figure out what it's going to be for yourself and that that's scary I think

what do you want

yes the terrifying question and that's but that's why Elena is so pissed to me Celeste let me tell you why Elena's so pissed okay

she's so pissed because she did the sandbox She went in there.

She followed all the rules that they told her.

She won.

She has the perfect kids.

She has the huge house.

She has the husband.

And her rage comes from the discovery that it was all a lie and that none of that was going to make her happy.

But her

reluctance to give it up is because that's the bind of white womanhood.

It's like, I'm pissed because it's not what they promised me, but I don't want to give up my safety and protection.

Yeah, I think that's, that's dead on it.

And I think that's real too, because in a sense, like you're like,

I'm realizing that all of the stuff that I was told I was supposed to be doing, actually not a lie, not bringing me fulfillment.

But then what?

Right.

It's that almost, it's almost the feeling of like, is that all there is?

Right.

You're just like,

well, then, then what?

And, you know, then you're like, do I just go off into the unknown?

I think that's part of why Mia is so threatening to Elena, because in a way, Mia has thrown all these conventions out.

She's like, fine, I'm not going to play by uniview rules.

I'm going to live out of my car.

I'm going to go off.

I'm going to be a single mother.

I'm going to do these things.

I'm going to embrace art and weirdness and all this things that Elena has held at a distance because she thought that was the way.

And in a sense, you know, to Elena to say, well, I can't do that.

So then what am I left with?

I'm stuck here, right?

I'm stuck in the sandbox.

And that's a huge vine, and that's real.

And it's a question that so many women are asking themselves right now.

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Maybe some people are smarter or work faster than I do, but it feels like a question of like the late 40s and 50s because you already tried whatever your sandbox was.

Yeah.

And it didn't work.

Yeah.

And so you're, you're what nexting?

You're on the abyss of the time.

And it's also, because we all deserve more grace than we give ourselves, probably.

To a certain extent, it wasn't wrong to try the sandbox, right?

Like you don't know what doesn't work for you in a sense until you've tried that.

And you're like, oh, and then maybe there's some parts of the sandbox that I really like.

There are some parts of it that are great, other parts not so much.

But like, it takes time, I think, to figure that out.

And

it is that question of like, well, what do we do next?

And especially if you are reaching a stage where your children are older or your career has been somewhat established, to think about letting go of that is a real, it's a real risk.

And I think, you know, this is your, your stereotypical like midlife crisis kind of time, which in the movies, it's like man quits his job, decides to become a surfer, and buys a sports car.

It's that sense of like, it wasn't that, so I'm going to scrap it and start again.

And I think, again,

for many people and especially maybe for women and women who are raising children you don't feel like you can let go of that

and because we're not men we don't have in some ways the power to do that

right they they can kind of get away with doing that not to say there's not fallout

but that like

we don't have all the same ability to chuck it all out the window and pull a dawn draper and get in the car and drive to California kind of situation.

For whatever reason it is, there'd be a hell of a lot more sports cars because it isn't because everyone isn't feeling it.

Right.

Yeah.

It's because there are barriers to entry to the sports car surfer life.

That's exactly right.

And

part of that, I think, is that as women, we're often told like your job is to take care of people.

And so again, that idea of like, well, what you want isn't important.

It's all about what other people want, what other people need.

And then you get to a point in your life where, as you were saying, what do you want is a really terrifying, terrifying question to be asked because you don't always know how to answer it.

And if you do know how to answer it, sometimes you can't have that.

That's, that's

why it's terrifying.

Why would you even want to entertain it?

If I know it's never going to happen, that would make it worse.

Exactly.

And I think, you know, to go back to Alina, I think that's part of her.

Her way of coping with this is to say,

oh, that is not an option or that's bad.

I don't want that because if I admitted that I wanted that, it would in a way be admitting that I can't have it.

And that's sort of, it's just easier to be.

It's, it's like the old like Aesop's fable of like the sour grapes, like, oh, well, I can't reach those grapes, but I didn't want them anyway.

They were going to be sour.

It is a self-protection thing.

And so, I do feel, you know, I feel a lot of sympathy for Elena and, you know, for all the characters who feel stuck in that bind.

It's a hard place to be in.

And And it's a place that I think many of us find ourselves in in one way or another.

I think something that is so powerful about those sour grapes and about what do I want, I feel like a lot of this generation of

women with any amount of privilege that have grown up, the myth has been, you can have all the things that you want.

And so

that no one will say out loud that that is a lie.

And I think, Celeste, one of the beautiful things I heard you say is you're talking about your son, you love your son, you would never trade that for anything.

And

yet,

there are things that you cannot have.

There are things that you cannot do.

There are choices.

And I think that's even part of it.

We have to, in our heads, kind of vilify the alternative.

We're more comfortable with that.

as like the Mia situation.

We're more comfortable vilifying or shaming that other thing instead of just admitting to ourselves, yeah, I would actually like to have that too, but I can't have that because I have this.

Yeah,

I think that's so true.

I have a good friend of mine from like grade school on, his father used to irritate him throughout our entire like adolescence and

into adulthood and still now by saying, life is choices.

Anytime he ran up to something, his father would say to him, life is choices.

And it became a joke.

And now I say that to my kid because of like, you know, your uncle so-and-so.

And he says, life is choices.

But it's true.

I mean, in a way, it's, it's sort of what you're talking about, which is not just saying, like, oh, well, that's bad.

You can't have it or you didn't, but just to say, you can't have it all.

And that is so counter to what I was hearing when I was a teenager.

For the best of reasons, I grew up in the age of girl power, right?

Where they're like, yes, you can be sexy, but you can also be super tough.

And you could be in a rock band, but also you could be, you know, like all of the things.

You can have a career and also have as many children as you want and

i get why that was the message and it was i don't think it was a bad thing in and of itself because you do want people to feel that these are options to them but it is also that idea of like you might just might have to choose some of them yeah you can't always have them and it doesn't mean that one is better than the other or wrong but just that taking one path will mean that you cannot walk down the other path And important to acknowledge that, because you have a theme also that I love so much, which is this whole idea of like the road not taken.

And when we haven't examined that and

embraced the and both of that, we can totally put it on our kids.

Again, with Elena, she gave up her career, she gave up her ambition, and then she drove Lexi crazy by pushing her towards perfectionism.

So

that road not taken in motherhood feels like an important theme with your work.

Yeah, I feel like what it comes down to for me is almost just sort of acknowledging that we are humans and we're finite and we're flawed and limited and those aren't bad things, that that is just part of, again, sort of what

being human is.

It means you cannot do everything and you cannot do everything perfectly and you're not even going to want to do everything and that that that has to be okay, right?

In a sense, it's like saying that you are not this abstract superhero who can do all the things, but that you're going to make choices and that is natural and normal and okay.

And you might have some regrets, but you'll also get some good things, right?

In a way, it's, it's like you said, it's making it instead of an either or, it's sort of making it a, a, you know, a yes and or a but and you're, I don't know if that's a thing.

We could be.

But and it is now.

It is now.

Celeste says it is.

It is.

It's, it's sort of like normalizing the idea that

you, again, I just keep coming back to like, you're a human being.

You can't do all those things.

And I feel like there's been a very long time in which we've asked people and particularly women to be superhuman and we've held that up as the goal and if you are not packing a perfect bento lunch for your kid and also chairing all of the school committees and also you know making partner at your law firm and also caring for your aging parents and have a beautiful house then you've somehow failed right and i feel like normalizing that is sort of part of the work we're doing of just saying like let's give ourselves some grace because

would you actually want to be that superhuman person?

I don't know.

It not only does it sound tiring, but it sounds like you're not a person anymore.

Yeah.

You're just this kind of entity

who's

your humanity.

Your humanity is stripped from you.

And I feel like that's what happens when women are asked to take on myriad roles is because you are rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling, and you're not humaning at all.

So, when you say you're a human being, you can't have everything, that can feel terribly depressing or it can feel incredibly liberating.

Yes, you don't have to.

You are a human being.

Yeah.

You can't do everything.

So stop.

It's not possible.

Congratulations.

Sit down.

Right.

Yeah.

And I like that idea of thinking about it as empowering.

And I should say that even as I say this, I struggle to think about it that way myself because I am still like, I need to do this and I need to do that.

And then, oops, I forgot to put this form in my kid's backpack when he went off to school this morning.

And I also didn't do this.

And my husband had to cook dinner last night because I was too tired and I could not get it done.

And I felt like a failure.

You know, all these things that we feel like we need to live up to.

In a way, like you say, if you just accept like, okay, I cannot do all those things.

I should stop trying to do all those things because it is physically not possible.

The next step for me is also saying, and that's okay because I'm not alone in this.

And I I feel like that's running under a lot of what we were talking about.

Like when I think about Elena in Little Fires Everywhere, I think about Marilyn and Everything I Never Told You.

I think both of them feel very isolated.

They feel like they are the lone safety net that's there to catch everybody.

And I think that's really destructive and it's also really hard.

And if instead you say, okay, but I am part of a team.

I have a partner who can pitch in when I am stretched thin, Hopefully that's true.

Or I have friends who can do this.

Or it's okay because the teacher at school makes sure my kid does not go hungry even though I forgot to put his lunch in his backpack or whatever it is.

The sense in a way of being like, I'm not alone.

I am in a community and that we, there is a we first of all, and that we're in it together.

I feel like then can become incredibly bolstering and can be a way of being stronger and of recognizing like the strength does not have to come on an individual basis.

It can come as as a collective.

I think as a society, like we Americans are bad at thinking about collectives.

We are good at thinking about individuals.

We are bad at thinking about a team and a group.

But I think maybe shifting from that kind of thinking can be one way of lifting some of that burden off of each individual person's shoulders of recognizing the world will not end.

Because I cannot do all these things because as you said, you know, Amanda, I'm a human and I can only do so much.

It's other people are also there and we will help each other.

For me, that's what I'm trying to change my mindset to, because I think it's, it's ultimately a more sustainable way of being.

And it's better parenting.

It's better parenting because that's exactly what we want our kids to know and believe and live as, right?

Like

we want them.

to not have to feel like they have to be perfect.

We want them to live without shame and burden and martyrdom.

So then why are we doing it and calling that good mother it?

Yeah, that's so right.

Cause Cause I feel like what are the things we're trying to teach our kids in school and in life, trying to teach them get along with other people, work as a team, ask for help when you need it.

If you're going to win a game, great, win graciously.

If you're going to lose a game, be a good sport, lose graciously.

In a sense, what you're trying to teach them do is to

be with other people and to be part of a society, right?

Whether it's the society of their team or their school or just the largest society.

And so one of the things that I'm, you know, I'm trying to walk the walk as well as talk the talk and and it's, it's hard, but I'm trying to sort of normalize for my kid that I am fallible and that I make mistakes.

And so he's delighted when he catches me in a mistake.

He's also, he's like kind of a tween.

So we're getting into some tween things.

You know, he's like, why did you do that thing?

How come you didn't?

And I'm like, oh, you're totally right.

You're like, because I forgot.

And he's like.

He gives me this look like, I didn't know you could forget.

I'm like, yep, because my brain is tired.

Yes.

Because I got a lot of stuff going on.

But thank you for reminding me.

In a way, I am trying to think of it as also empowering him to be part of this group and not just to be like, you got to hold it all together.

And if anyone ever sees any sign of weakness, you failed.

That's right.

Because that is, that's a really hard way to be.

You can't hide your weaknesses forever.

And feeling like you have to, in a way, is what gives us.

you know, the kind of strongman figure that pretends that he's infallible and knows everything.

And without him, everything will crash.

I'm the only one, right?

It's not always a man.

It's often a man.

It's often a man.

I read that.

It's not always, but yeah.

Just usually.

When you said that about your son pointing out your

mistakes, I had this really powerful moment the other night because you're saying we're teaching them to be in a society.

Part of that is calling those societies and groups to a higher standard and seeing what is wrong and not just just conforming to that society, but saying,

but why?

And why not this?

I was laying in bed with my son the other night and he

asked

a very pointed question about how our family was doing something and said basically like, why,

why are we doing it this way?

That doesn't seem right.

And I almost started crying because I was like,

A, he's exactly right.

That is not the best our family can do.

And B, he is deciding that he is safe enough in this family to call it out.

Yeah.

And

that he cares enough about this family to want us to do better and to call us to that higher standard.

And I was just like,

thank you.

It's like, isn't it a James Baldwin quote?

Like, I love my country.

And because I love my country, I will criticize it relentlessly.

Like, that's love.

That's bringing your

trust to make it better.

I think that's exactly right.

It's sort of like you've internalized those principles so much that you can then say, hey, we're not, we're not doing what we're supposed to be doing.

And that's one of those like parenting moments where you feel like this, the clouds open up and it says, oh, like, you know, you feel like you're like, oh,

this is the moment that I've been trying to get to, right?

Right.

But to be clear, it wasn't the first, my first reaction was like, fragility.

How dare you criticize me?

I've I've been working my ass off all day like I get one thing wrong oh my god like go to sleep you know

and then

it was the next moment that's all of our first reaction that's like white fragility that's all of it that's the knee-jerk control control control if we could get past that we get to the fact that the criticism was a gift

of trust and of the belief that that what is most important to us is not control but doing our best and not looking like a certain thing but actually being it yes

yeah that's such a good point i mean and it is it's that's your natural first reaction you're like stop telling me that i made a mistake i know i made a mistake and you're like okay but i did my husband and i have this joke that i'm like we should have a course like in high school or college or maybe just every year where you just you practice apologizing you practice just owning your mistakes and you just practice going oh sorry i did not mean to do that I won't do it again.

And then you move on because I feel like that is a thing again that like we don't really know how to do.

There's the sense that if you make a mistake or if you apologize or you admit that in any way you were wrong, that you've ceded some kind of important territory.

And I feel like that that prevents everything that could come after, that it prevents all of the learning that we could do, right?

Prevents you from actually addressing the problem that this person pointed out.

And then it also prevents you from not doing this again in the future.

And it's hard.

Like, I really hate being wrong, really hate it.

I don't think anybody is like, oh, I love being wrong.

But in a way, sort of like, when my son was younger, he wouldn't want to ever admit that he was wrong.

And I'm like, just say sorry and move on.

Just say sorry and just move on.

Right.

You know, like that, it works when they're five and you get older.

You have to do a little bit more.

Yeah.

But in a sense, it's like, this is not a huge injury to yourself.

I'm not saying you're a bad person.

It just means you didn't mean to do that and that you're sorry.

Just move on.

And I feel like if we had to do that for like one, you know, like one semester every month for our, every year we went to school, maybe it would feel, maybe maybe it would feel less hard, but it is, it's hard.

And I taught college from doing that.

In my third grade class last, I thought I taught college.

Sure did.

That, that's like, I wish, I wish that were taught like everywhere and every year too, because I feel like you just need to know how to do that.

I mean, half the arguments that I have with my husband, they are not important arguments, but they're one or the other of us.

just needs to apologize and move on and it's like no but i was right to do that because you didn't turn over the laundry at the you know

All we really need to do is, you're right.

I totally should have done that.

I'm sorry.

Yeah.

Try not to do it again.

Yes.

And then we could move on, but we get stuck on the little bump of the apology.

Yeah.

I love that you taught that to your class.

Did they get it?

Like, yeah.

So I was using this beautiful way of teaching.

I think it was called like responsive classroom or something, but they did, they taught us that we should teach the kids how to do apologies of action, which I think about all the time.

So it's like not enough to apologize.

You have to do something or make it right.

Because if something's broken, you have to fix it.

So there was a bunch of different ways we would do it.

But yeah, we, I mean, it's amazing what we don't teach kids.

Like I've had to spend a million years teaching my kids about hieroglyphics, which are great.

But they also might want to learn how to, you know, deal with their emotions

or have relationships.

One of the things that I'm really happy that my son is learning in his school is they have a, they have a health class and a large part of that is sort of socio-emotional learning.

Basically, they like literally sit down and talk about like self-esteem and how to deal with what happens if someone says something to you that hurts your feelings.

On the one hand, I'm kind of tickled by the fact that like there is a curriculum about this.

But then on the other hand, I'm like, no, that's really important.

Like you need to know what to do if somebody hurts your feelings.

You need to talk about things like consent, right?

You need to, you know, in all kinds of ways.

Like if someone wants to play with you and you don't want to play with them, you don't have to do it.

You can be nice about it, but you, right?

I mean, even that level of consent,

it does.

It feels like these are the sorts of things that, in a way, they allow us to do all those other larger conversations.

That's right.

If we don't have those, it's really hard to,

you just, you get caught up in the feelings of it and you can't get to the part where you can actually sort of learn and learn and grow from it.

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I'm dying to talk to ask you about Our Missing Hearts.

I freaking love this book, Celeste.

I love it so much.

I cannot believe that you're releasing it at this moment.

It's just like you always know exactly what we're going to need two years from now.

You know, I could summarize it and tell you exactly what it's about, Celeste, but maybe i should let you

um

in case you have differing opinions in case i'm not possibly wrong can you just now for the listener

tell us what it's about and why it's so important right now because it is so important right now

um so our missing hearts is this story of a 12-year-old boy named bird it's his nickname in the family and he's living in uh an america that's really governed by fear and in particular there's a lot of anti-Chinese sentiment.

There's been a lot of social and economic turmoil and the Chinese are the scapegoat of this.

And as a result of this, there are new laws in place that say that anyone who's seen to be acting un-American can have their children taken away from them.

And in particular, this is often applied to East Asian families or anybody who's sort of speaking out on their behalf.

And when the novel opens, Bird's mother, Margaret, who is a Chinese-American woman, his father is white, she's left the family some years before, kind of in the wake of all of these laws.

And he doesn't know a lot about her, but he gets a letter from her.

And it kind of leads him to want to try and find her again.

And he kind of goes on this quest.

to find her and to understand what happened to her and why she left the family.

And then also sort of how he can keep going in this world that is is really kind of frightening and dark, how he can hold on to hope.

So for me, it's really a story about parents and children and how you can still give hope to the next generation and whether or not the actions of one person can actually make a difference, even when it feels like the world is a very dark place.

And it just asks such beautiful questions about what is a mother's responsibility.

Like in a crumbling democracy,

in a hurting world,

what is a mother's responsibility?

Is it just to stay home and make things as perfect as possible as the world crumbles?

Is it just to prepare the child for the world?

Is it to go out in the world and change the world for the child?

Is it just the responsibility of the child in your home?

Or is a mother someone who nurtures and heals all children?

I mean, it's big.

And these are the questions that I've been asking myself over, you know, the past few years, and particularly during the pandemic, I'm thinking about these questions, like, what should I be doing?

I mean, as a writer, especially when the pandemic first hit and everything was closed down, I was thinking, like, I feel really useless.

I'm here in my office.

I'm really lucky, really privileged.

I get to make up stories about people that don't exist and tinker with words.

And if I were a doctor, you know, had I gone to med school, I could be out there, you know, trying to save people's lives.

And instead, here I am in my little office with my computer.

And I felt very helpless and also useless.

And I started asking myself these questions.

Is there any role that art can play

in

trying to make the world into a better place, especially in the face of these really huge kind of abstract global problems like a pandemic or like global warming or bigotry, right?

They feel so massive that as one person, it feels very difficult to

do anything about it.

And I was thinking about this, of course, as a parent too, like you're saying, Glennon, how do I prepare him for this?

What is my job?

Should I just make a safe space for him here?

Which feels important.

And I don't think that's wrong to say, this is a place where you will be safe.

Is it important for me to try and make you aware of what is probably going to be out there for you in the world?

Maybe also yes, right?

Is it important for me to try to change that?

Yeah, maybe also yes, maybe all of these things.

And how do you reconcile all that?

And so that's very much one of the questions that Margaret Bird's mother in the book is trying to figure out:

what is her job?

What does she need to be doing?

And what can she do?

It's a dramatic response, or it's in conversation with, or it's to the other women in your books.

She's so far out of the sandbox.

Like maybe we can't do all the things because we're doing the wrong things, But maybe if we reject all the sandboxes of white supremacy and patriarchy, we find those three things that you just said.

Maybe that's what's next is

changing the world.

One thing that I found so amazing in this book is that even your frontliners are librarians.

Like, that's so wild right now.

I mean, I know they kind of always are, but right now, the librarians are the ones who are protecting the written word, protecting marginalized communities who write.

That's so amazing.

Yeah, I wish that, you know, reality were not bending closer to the novel, but it's, I mean, part of that comes out of the fact that I feel like librarians have always been unsung heroes.

I grew up going to public libraries with my parents.

And I even, as an adult, I...

I will take my laptop to the library and work and I hear and see sort of what the librarians are doing.

And their job is really if you want information I will help you try to get it.

It doesn't really matter what it is.

You need to do your taxes.

I will help you figure out which form to use and help you find the right books to fill it out and I'll help you figure out where to send it.

If you need to get on the internet, if you're questioning your sexuality and you want to read more, I'll help you find some books that maybe will help you sort that out.

And I'm not going to tell anybody because this is your information.

There was one time that I was at the library and I sat near the reference desk and I heard the reference librarian coaching someone on the phone to get directions from where they were to someplace, which turned out to be actually quite close by on Google Maps and spent 20 minutes walking them through how to do this.

And in the end, finally was like, would it be easier for you if I just told you the directions and you could just write them down?

This is a sort of small silly story, but the sense in which they're like, if you want to know,

That's enough for me.

I'm going to try and help you.

It makes sense in a way that in this world, the librarians would be the ones who are like, there's information that you need.

You are trying to find out, you know, what's going on in this world, how to fix it.

I'll help you with that.

And it makes sense that in our real world, the librarians are the ones who are like, no, I think it is important that children or people, not always even children, but just, you know, public libraries are under attack too.

They're like, it is important that people be able to access this information.

That's right.

And so in a way, it's sort of like, well, of course they're the ones who are going to be the front line.

We just don't think of them as heroes like that.

My husband works for the trucking industry and it's always, it's always fascinating because they are a leading indicator of the economy.

Because when people buy less, companies ship less, the economy is turning down.

That's how

banning books is.

You know, like banning books is a leading indicator of a really dangerous, powerful ideology that's coming.

If you're not paying attention to the banning of the books, you are not taking care of your future self because that's just the leading indicator.

Like it is coming.

They are the people protecting people's desire for information, which is power.

So they're removing the power and the librarians are the warriors trying to keep our ability to have power through information.

So scary.

Celeste, how do you talk to your little boy about surviving and thriving in America?

How do you, because it's three, you said it's three parts.

You're making a safe space for him.

Your art is out in the world.

This book is going to open hearts and minds 100%.

So you've done that.

Check, check.

So

the middle one.

The middle one.

How do you prepare your son for all of the macro and microaggressions he will experience in America?

It's really hard.

I think that many families and black families in particular have wrestled with this for a long time.

with the idea that you have to have a talk at some point and you have to kind of lay out for your child,

here's how the world tends to work.

And here are the things you have to be careful of.

And there's sort of warring impulses, at least in me, of feeling like, I don't want to tell you these things.

I want to keep you protected as long as I can, right?

Because you don't want to tell your child, hey, so there's some people out there who are going to want to hurt you.

Nobody ever wants to tell their child that.

But at the same time, I also worry, if I don't tell you this, I don't want you to learn it out there.

I don't want you to learn this when something happens, right?

And so it's a sort of delicate balance.

And

I feel really lucky that I have a kid who is pretty millet, but he does think about these things.

And so when we've talked about this, so for example, when the Black Lives Matter movement started taking off and we were talking about what happened to George Floyd, I try to explain it in sort of age-appropriate terms.

And also yet to give him a sense of like, hey, these are things that happen.

They've been happening for a long time and we're trying to fix them, but this is kind of the ongoing work that we need to do.

Even though you're not black, this is something that affects all of us, right?

And then to talk to him a little bit about experiences that I had with racism so that he has a sense of what's out there and not to scare him, but just to

slowly kind of paint in the context around the world that he's got.

Like I think when you're a young child, you've got like a small world.

And then as you get older, you zoom out.

like your aperture gets wider and your picture gets bigger and it fills in more around the outside.

And if you zoom out too fast, sometimes, you know, you get kind of whiplash, but if you kind of gently paint in more and more of the picture,

I don't know that I'm doing it right for sure.

But, you know, I think that's sort of the

struggle that many parents have is how do you kind of balance what they can handle with what they need to know?

And it's very slowly kind of talking about it as it comes up, but also

talking about it.

It would be way easier to just be like, well, it's just talk about the movie that we watched and not talk about this over dinner.

But sometimes we do.

And I'm fortunate that my partner at dinner, sometimes if we start talking about this, he will join in and he'll say, you know what, like these are things that I had not had to think about for a while because I'm a tall white man, but it's still important to me.

And here's why.

Here's why this kind of system is bad for all of us.

And it's always unclear with kids.

You're not always sure how much of this is sinking in.

Totally.

But I feel like in some ways, creating the space for that conversation to happen and making it so that he's aware that these are things that exist, then he will be ready to have those conversations when we do really need to have them.

At least that's my hope.

Do you think that writing fiction makes you a more compassionate person?

Because I was listening to you say at one point a while back that if you have a character, like you were in a workshop or something, I think it was about Elena.

It all comes back to Elena for some reason, but today, your workshop people were like, you need to.

We need to understand why Elena's like this because we're not feeling very sympathetic.

So you said when people can't understand why someone is a certain way, you as a fiction writer go back, work your way back and put a breadcrumb in the beginning so that they can see why they turned out that way.

So, I just had to tell you the story, Celeste, is that I am in the middle of adapting Untamed into a TV show.

I was sitting in a meeting recently with a producer, a wonderful producer.

And we had just pitched this whole thing about, you know, the divorce and the bulinia and the mental health and the

coming out and the whatever.

And the producer sat there quietly and then he said, This,

I just have one question, and I just think it's going to be what a lot of people have.

And so I'm just going to say it, and I mean it with all due respect.

My question is:

what is Glennon's problem?

And I was like,

huh, I'm going to go back and add some breadcrumbs to that.

Celeste, I just,

I can't add any breadcrumbs.

I don't know what it is.

Yeah, I think that it is true that when I'm writing, I always think I know the characters and I always think I'm being really compassionate to them.

And then other people will sometimes read and go, you know, it really seems like you are not portraying her in a nice light at all.

She just seems awful.

And I do firmly believe that you can understand people.

It doesn't mean that you excuse anything.

It doesn't mean you agree, but that in a way you can be like, okay, I understand how from your point of view, that sounded really different or this looks really different.

And I feel like that's the point that I'm always trying to get to as a writer with all of my characters.

And

in life as well, although it is, it's hard in real life to go, okay, you're really, really, really bothering me right now.

Let me try and see it from your point of view.

Still not going to agree with you, but at least I can understand.

And maybe

we can reach some kind of an understanding if I can get into your mind frame somehow.

And hopefully vice versa, you'll try and get into my mind frame.

So I do think there is something to that of saying like, if you can connect with somebody on a, and it's usually in a very, very human level,

then you can start to understand

what their problem is.

Right.

But in a sense, that's, I mean, there's all kinds of ways that I think that gets said where you're just like,

I don't know.

I just, I don't get her.

There's lots of reasons we have to not connect with each other or understand each other or try to sit in someone else's position.

It's, it's protective, right?

That's this, it can be a scary thing to do.

But I, I do feel like, again, it goes back to that question of humanity.

Like if you can connect with someone on a very small level.

Oftentimes what it means is like, oh, you are also a person like me.

And we have this one very small point of resonance.

doesn't have to be the same but just oh i also know what that feels like in some level

it seems really small but in a way it's a way of saying like okay so you're also a person yeah and that means that you also matter to me which sounds so basic again it goes back to the things that you know we're trying to teach our third graders and our young children but it is that sense of being like oh what happens to you is also relevant to me.

That sense of like, what happens to you is not completely divorced from what happens to me.

And that there is a point of connection.

And I feel like whatever the form of art is, whether it's a novel, whether it's a TV show, whatever it is, it's, you know, a memoir, it's always about trying to find those moments of resonance.

Yeah.

Not necessarily the same.

It might not always be exactly the same because everyone's experience is going to be different, but that feeling like, oh.

I hear what you're saying.

I felt something like that.

Yeah.

It's like they say it's not the same, but it rhymes.

Or like, exactly.

I think it was Dr.

Maya Angelou who said, I'm human, so nothing human can be foreign to me.

Right.

There's something that connects.

Well, I always think of it as being like, if you, if you've got like a tuning for it, like one of those like old school, like in cartoons, tuning for it, and you ring it hard enough, other things that would be at that same frequency will also resonate a little bit.

So this is like the science behind why like opera singers can sing.

And if they sing at just the right note, the wine glass will break break because it's shaking so much but that idea that if you hit one note other notes that would be in harmony with it or the same note but a different octave will also shake just a little bit that feeling of being like oh we're it's not the same but like you say it rhymes it's it's some kind of resonant frequency that happens I feel like that's

if we can get more of that in the world, there may be a little bit more space for understanding what other people are going through without it having to be exactly exactly who they are.

There's just a little bit more grace for everybody.

And if there are people who don't rhyme with us at all, we can just plant a fake seed.

We can just be like, you know what?

I'm just going to make up some crap that happened to that guy so I can make it through the day and be the breadth of it.

I'm going to make sense of your life through a detail completely friendly that you'll never know I believe about you.

And there goes the things and in a way, that's sort of what fiction does, right?

It's sort of like, I mean, you're saying, okay, so these people don't exist.

They, this, this has not happened.

They are not you and they are not me.

But I'm going to ask you, what if, if they happened, if they were real and this happened to them,

does that open up anything for you?

And that idea that maybe it's an opportunity again, as we were saying at the beginning, to kind of prop the door open and be like, huh, so I've never had that experience.

I've never met anyone who had that experience.

But now I'm thinking about it and I know that that is a thing that could happen, right?

In a way, way it's this kind of gentle prying open of what had seemed to be a really sort of closed box now you're like if I've planted that seed in your mind that maybe

a person could be like this or maybe this is an experience someone could have it's in there and my hope is that eventually it'll start to kind of widen up and and let some light in Well, our missing hearts is going to shake people in that opera singer way.

I find it to be an un

truly powerful act, not just of art, but of motherhood.

Like you have just mothered the hell out of your kid through this book.

You have mothered the hell out of the world through this book.

I think it's going to ask questions that change how people are looking at mothering and their responsibilities in the world.

It's really special.

And that's going to be our next great thing.

Everybody, go get Our Missing Hearts.

It's just a really important book for this moment.

And Celeste, thank you for teaching us through your imagination.

Thank you, Lennon, so much for having me on.

Thank you, Amanda, for this amazing conversation.

And thank you also for those kind words about my book.

It means a lot coming from you.

And I hope you're right.

I hope it just gets people thinking and feeling.

It will.

I'm about to read it again.

So, okay, pod squad, we love you.

We will see you here very soon.

Bye.

If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us if you'd be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things.

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We Can Do Hard Things is created and hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wombach, and Amanda Doyle in partnership with Odyssey.

Our executive producer is Jenna Wise-Berman, and the show is produced by Lauren Lograsso, Allison Schott, Dina Kleiner, and Bill Schultz.