Ep. 309 Chasing Artificial Standards with Elise Hu

Written By Cherie Marquez
Ep. 309 Chasing Artificial Standards with Elise Hu

Author and TED Talks Daily host Elise Hu joins The Stacks to discuss her book Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital. Elise explains how Korea became a pop culture superpower, and how she approached writing about a culture outside of her own. We also discuss “cultural technology” and anti-Blackness in Korean beauty standards, and Elise slips into journalist mode to interview Traci.

The Stacks Book Club selection for March is Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu. We will discuss the book on March 27th with Elise Hu.

 
 

Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes and on Bookshop.org and Amazon
Flawless by Elise Hu

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TRANSCRIPT
*Due to the nature of podcast advertising, these timestamps are not 100% accurate and will vary.

Traci Thomas 0:08
Welcome to The Stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them. I’m your host Traci Thomas and today I am very excited to welcome journalist and author Elise Hu. Elise’s book is called Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-beauty Capital. And the book dissects the beauty industry, the influence and the technological gaze. It is a book that is chock full of the kinds of deep reporting about history, culture, and of course, beauty products that I love. Elise is also the host of the TED Talks Daily podcast and was a reporter at NPR for almost a decade. Today, Elise and I talk about Korean exports and soft power, the uptick of tweens in beauty culture, and the one book that Elise cannot stop talking about. Make sure to come back and listen to this show on Wednesday, March 27th, because Elise will be back to discuss our book club pick interior Chinatown by Charles Yu. Everything we talked about on each episode of the stacks can be found in the link in the show notes. All right. Now it is time for my conversation with Elise Hu.

All right, everybody. I am thrilled it is March. I am joined today by Elise Hu. She is the author of Flawless: lessons in looks and culture from the K-beauty capital. Elise is also the host of TED Talk Daily.

Elise Hu 2:28
Daily. Yep, TED Talks.

Traci Thomas 2:30
Talks Daily, plural! I always fuck it up.

Elise Hu 2:31
You made it singular. But there are more than one TED Talks.

Traci Thomas 2:35
There are many TED talks that I can’t believe I did that. Anyways, that voice you just heard as Elise, welcome to the Stacks.

Elise Hu 2:42
Thank you so much for having me. It’s a delight.

Traci Thomas 2:44
I’m so thrilled to have you. Okay, we’re going to start where we sort of always start, which is just generally, that’s not your book or your work. Tell the people a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? What are you able to what’s your what’s your shit?

Elise Hu 2:59
Yeah, I am. I claim Texas. I was born in St. Louis. But I really claim Texas because those are the roads that I know because I learned how to drive there. And the formative years of my life. I spent in Dallas, Texas. I am the daughter of immigrants. My father defected from China, he actually swam through a bay of sharks to freedom in Hong Kong, during the Cultural Revolution, which probably should be a book of its own. My mother is from Taiwan. I now live in Los Angeles, and I’m the mom to three girls in elementary school. So I spend a lot of my days doing a lot of hair.

Traci Thomas 3:37
Oh, my gosh, I have two boys. And I, my life is held because my kids are very young. And they’re boys. But I think you’re heading to a place that I would be very scared of, which is girls going to middle school. How do you feel about that?

Elise Hu 3:54
Yeah. Tweendom. It’s already rough. Because I wrote a book that sort of critiquing beauty culture, and yet I have a skincare girly in my home. Who wants a-

Traci Thomas 4:06
Well you just wrote about like tweens being into beauty.

Elise Hu 4:12
Yes, and my 11 year old is one of them.

Traci Thomas 4:14
Oh my god.

Elise Hu 4:15
Which is, you know, the ironies that show up in our lives.

Traci Thomas 4:19
Okay, before we get to the book, I want to backtrack a little bit in your life because I know the book came out of you being sent by NPR to be a bureau chief in Asia based in Korea, focusing on like Korea and Japan. Can you just tell me what a bureau chief is? Because I don’t actually know.

Elise Hu 4:42
Sure. So if there are more than one, if there is more than one reporter in the Bureau, the bureau chief is responsible for a lot of the administrative tasks of an outpost. This term actually comes from the CIA or the Foreign Service. I can’t remember which one, but the CIA has stations thief’s. And so when you are posted abroad and headquarters is in the United States, then that office is in charge of kind of securing visa is and making sure that the local staff is paid and considering security needs for all of the employees. I was bureau chief and correspondent in one there was really only one local producer who worked with me who was kind of my right arm and I had a different one each year and also served as a translator. So something I failed to mention in my intro, which I guess is pretty important is that I’m a journalist, I’m a working journalist and I have been for my entire adult life. And my posting in South Korea came at the beginning of 2015, when I had just had a toddler and then I had an elderly Beagle, two elderly cats and was five months pregnant and moved abroad. So at least I had never lived before because as I mentioned, my people are Chinese. There are some overlaps with Korean culture, but I basically had to learn it from scratch. And I was responsible for covering North Korea, South Korea and Japan.

Traci Thomas 6:08
And that was a time while you were there that North Korea and America were being very newsy. Like super newsy, you were there for like Donald Trump. And Kim Jong Hoon, like, are gonna be friends, but maybe they’re gonna start a war like it was both.

Elise Hu 6:25
It’s a rollercoaster, because these were the early years of the Trump administration. And Donald Trump originally came in saying things like my nuclear button is bigger than yours. Right. Kim Jong Un then had to respond. And both of them are kind of bloviating and autocratic. And so there were similarities as well. And Donald Trump actually was very in favor towards the end. And maybe this was just to burnish his image, but of being the first head of state to meet with the North Korean head of state. So towards the end of my stint in South Korea was the Kim Jong Un, Donald Trump summit in Singapore, which didn’t really achieve that much substantively. And since then, it’s been largely walked back. But it was a huge photo op for both those guys. And those guys were giant global brands. Yeah, say what you want about the desk bought Kim Jong Un. He has a huge global brand.

Traci Thomas 7:19
Yeah he does. He definitely does. Okay, so you’re there. You’re reporting. You’re not there to report on beauty. But you fall into beauty land. Do you right, like, are you reporting and thinking like, I’m going to turn this stuff into a book, or are you just like, I’m super curious. I want to go to a baby spa.

Elise Hu 7:42
I absolutely never wanted to write a book. I had no aspirations to write a book. In fact, there were so many other journalists that have written books that would come through South Korea, like Evan Osnos. And Anna fyfield was one of my colleagues. And they they’re both like big nonfiction. They’re writers of big nonfiction books. And they would be talking about kind of getting up at five in the morning and working on their pages and all these things. And I was like, I’m never gonna write a book. Yeah. Like, I don’t have the discipline, nor the interest, and nothing, that I am not curious about anything, enough to devote that much time, energy and research too. So I had no designs on writing it. It wasn’t until after I got back to the stage, that I really lamented the fact that there wasn’t a book that tied a lot of the elements of gender disparity and beauty culture and the rise of Korean pop culture around the world together into one book. And I only wrote it because it didn’t exist, and I wanted it to exist, and nobody else seemed to be doing it. So that’s how flawless came to be.

Traci Thomas 8:48
Did you have to go back then to do more research?

Elise Hu 8:50
I did. But COVID happened. So the deal that I so you know, I’m sure that you’ve talked to lots of authors about this process. And you Tracy are very familiar with it. But when you are shopping around a book proposal, you often meet in person with the prospective buyers, the prospective publishing houses that are interested in it. And so the day I was going around New York with my book agent to meet with various editors, was the last day New York was open, before Broadway shut down. It was like Wednesday, March 11, or something 2020. And my meeting with Dutton, who ended up acquiring the book was the very last in person meeting in the PRH headquarters. Before that office, everybody was sent home at 1pm. And our meeting was at 11am. And that was the last meeting and a PRH HQ until the building reopened after numerous rounds of virus. So it was rather dramatic how things happened, which meant the deal wasn’t done until we were all in a serious and uncertain lockdown. So I didn’t know when I could get back to Korea and Korea had lots of quarantine protocols. That meant if you were to go to Korea, somehow the government had to, okay you for a quarantine exemption, so that you wouldn’t have to wait 14 days in a hotel room or 21 days sometimes in a hotel room before you could be released into the streets.

Traci Thomas 10:19
Yeah like it’s such a crazy. I feel like maybe because I read, I’ve been reading a lot of books recently that have been set, sort of like in the present, but don’t deal with COVID that sometimes I like, forget about COVID. When I’m talking about books like that have come out recently. Like, I’m like, of course, yes. This is a nonfiction book. So you had to do all your research, and it couldn’t have been done that quickly. That’s insane, actually.

Elise Hu 10:40
Actually, I feel like we kind of memory-holed it or tried to block it out.

Traci Thomas 10:44
Yeah. I’m like, I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Like, for three years, like, like it was all we talked about, and it’s like, still going on. But I understand why everybody pretends like it’s not because it’s like, we don’t want to talk about this. But what I do want to talk about is Korean soft power. Yeah. I so so the book is about your exploration of beauty and beauty standards in Korea, but you sort of start the book in this place where you’re like, why is this happening here? And one of the reasons is this, like Korean soft power play, like through pop culture, I mean, you should explain it because I know that you know how better than I can.

Elise Hu 11:28
Okay, so South Korea’s economy has always had to be export driven because it is considered a shrimp between Wales. It is a country that are South Korea is one of the two Korean countries on the peninsula. But South Korea is sandwiched between China one of the world’s largest economies on the left, and then Japan, the world’s third largest economy on the right. And so being a small resource poor nation with a population that is dwarfed by its neighbors, it really had to export in order to grow to be one of the top economies of the world. Originally, that was in heavy manufacturing. So South Korea was super, super poor, following World War Two in the Korean War, which really just destroyed the nation and all its resources and an infrastructure. So it underwent under a dictator. It underwent this miracle on the Han as it’s called, which was massive manufacturing, development. And it all happened in the 60s or 70s. And it operationalized South Korea and it made it self into a manufacturing and export giant. So by the 90s, we were seeing a lot of Korean cars. We were a lot of seeing a lot of Korean Electronics, Samsung, LG, Hyundai, Kia. So you know, these brands, yeah, then the economy kind of dropped out again due to a banking crisis in 1997, called the Asian financial crisis, and South Korea had to get bailed out by the International Monetary Fund. And I know that sounds like a long way to go for a burger, but it’s very important.

Traci Thomas 13:02
I will drive for a burger. Don’t worry.

Elise Hu 13:05
Good. I’m really into those smash burgers lately. And I keep I had one last night. Okay, delicious. We really need to hang out because we do that. But I digress. So after this IMF bailout, South Korea needed to pay back its loans very quickly, and it needed to diversify its economy. And a government report in the late 90s found that if South Korea could make a blockbuster on the scale of Jurassic Park in the US that the impact the economic impact to South Korea’s economy would be on the scale of manufacturing 2 million cars. So they were like, oh, man, we really need to invest in culture and try to drive some sort of blockbuster or big music or big content exports in order to diversify our economy. So at first, it was like this economic Gambit, and the government would pour money into film festivals and theaters and support studios, fledgling studios at the time, in order to make Kdrama and que film. And all of that did get going around the turn of the century, such that Korean dramas started getting really popular in Japan, and then regionally in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, eventually Southeast Asia, then you saw Kpop really become more manufactured as what’s called cultural technology. So thinking of the exporting of culture, like we think about technological devices and tool, like really analyzing the data and the right shade of eyeshadow and the right triangle formations on stage and the right moment to introduce foreign producers and bring them into the music writing process. So all of that got really mechanized after the turn of the century, and we saw huge success and we’re continuing to See the success of that to this day with que film Kdrama Kpop largest musical acts in the world and BTS and Black Pink, we’re seeing Oscar winning films pericyte menari, six out of 10 Netflix subscribers in the world have consumed Korean content, probably squid game, but also likely to have included K dramas. So I was really interested in this big pop culture juggernaut that we have seen transmit images of beautiful Koreans across the world. And you don’t transmit all these images of beautiful Koreans without also transmitting their ideals, and what it means to be beautiful and popular in that region. And that meant Southeast Asia in particular, began really chasing Korean beauty standards. And then Korea as itself, domestically, really began to wear its beauty products and procedures and ideals. And surgery, as a matter of pride, like this is part of our business. This is part of selling the nation. And all of these things are tangled together and written about and falling.

Traci Thomas 16:15
Right. I don’t know if you’ve talked about this. And I don’t know if this is real, but a lot of the book, you know, because it’s so focused on women, there are sections later on to talk about children and men. But so much of the book is focused on the female beauty standard. And you know, it’s the skincare, it’s the legs, it’s like all of these things. And because, you know, we know that South Korea is focused on exporting these beauty products and this beauty standard. We know that they’re investing time and money and like brain power and thinking about women and their faces and their bodies and their skin. So I’m wondering if you’ve seen anything in like, a pro feminist lens about this stuff, because I feel like in America, when I think about the industries that were like the most gung ho behind they’re really geared towards men, right? Like even Hollywood, like the blockbuster films are the like superhero movies for men and like, yes, there’s women and like, yes, the data is in Dune, but like it’s geared towards men, and like we are so anti woman here. So I’m wondering, with the with one of their biggest exports being geared towards women, is there any sort of like, Yay, woman because some of it is really ik, like the body like the diet culture, which is also very clear. But like some of it is like very upsetting, but I’m just wondering if there’s any like, they’ve tapped into a yeah, overall vibe.

Elise Hu 17:50
One thing that I think about in particular is the way that Kpop tends to be engineered toward the female gaze. So instead of playing or assuming that the audience is male, most of the Kpop audience is woman or women identifying and as a result, you have men who are considered soft boys, or Flower Boys, as I write about in the chapter about men and so they kind of subvert traditional tropes of masculinity as being super macho, and Harry. In fact, I mean, look at any of these Kpop boy groups that have like waxed faces, they wax their facial hair, instead of shave it in order to make sure that they do not have stubble, Korean KPop idol, men pay a lot of attention to their hair and their brows and their grooming in general their skin. And so I like the subversion of traditional tropes of masculinity. I like the idea of playing to a female gaze instead of a male gaze, since we’re all so tired of that. And I do think it’s exciting as an Asian American to see Asian ideals be emulated here in the West, I think it’s cool, because growing up, I always felt like I didn’t fit in. And then I had to try to earn my status among my white peers, being in St. Louis, and then suburban Texas. And here, my kids are growing up, obviously, in Los Angeles, which is a lot more diverse. But my kids are growing up chasing a lot of Korean beauty standards, which I and I like that sort of flip flopping of ideals, which is cool. But at the same time, what is it all in service of, you know, and should we be buying all this stuff? And should 11 year olds really need skincare routines? Those are deeper, high level questions.

Traci Thomas 19:40
Right. I want to talk about because some of some of the criticism, I’ve heard of the book, which I can’t really speak to because I’m not Asian, but it’s come from Korean and Korean American readers who have been like, well, she’s not Korean. Like she doesn’t know the culture. She doesn’t know the language. And I know also like in America, we are really good. Uh, at lumping people together through like arbitrary like Asian America, Asian American contains from Japan to Korea to Thailand to Myanmar with so many different people in so many different cultures. And so I know that you’re being an American going to Korea, there’s gotta be some like, disconnect or difficulty of like feeling like you are representing this entire like America but also being chosen or like being a representative as a person who’s Asian, but not being Korean, and like writing this book. So I’m just wondering how you grapple with sort of all of those different intersections and like sort of the delicacies around all of that.

Elise Hu 20:40
Yeah I tried to be really sensitive about that. And I wrote a little bit in the intro about this idea of writing near because it isn’t a culture of my own. And it is Korean culture is really distinct from Taiwanese American or Chinese American and American culture as well. So even a Korean American would face similar criticisms, because there is such a distinction between Korean Americans and then native Koreans. And so I was fully expecting that and tried my best to just really center the voices of the people that I was talking to the hundreds of Korean women in the book itself. And we should also remember that it is impossible, I think, to do any sort of journalism without a certain perspective. And so the best that I can do is sort of just be very transparent about the perspective that I’m coming from. In some ways, it’s advantageous, I think, in some ways, it’s helpful to not be Korean, and to write a book as an outsider, because I do really have an outsider perspective, in other ways. And then, and then as somebody who sort of doesn’t understand things, I can, I can let my curiosities drive me in a way that if I could understand what was in between the lines, you know, then I think that I would have this assumed knowledge that might be difficult to translate onto the page. And so I tried to do my best a, just acknowledging this is where I’m coming from, and then be centering the voices of the women themselves. And then finally, I think with all of journalism, it’s better if there is more representation. So. So it would be great if there were more books on this topic, and more in the discourse period, because I shouldn’t be the only one having to represent a book on like a nonfiction take on global beauty standards coming out of Korea. It should be many of us, and then paint and all of these books, kind of in conversation with one another. So I’m still hopeful for hopeful about that.

Traci Thomas 22:38
Yeah, I mean, I, I think what I appreciated about your voice with this book is that you and I are both from what I understand from the book, not like super into beauty stuff. No. And I actually like didn’t really have a lot of interest in your book, like I saw it a few times. And then Britney, loose was like, Oh, I loved it, you have to read it. And she’s the reason I picked it up. Because I was like, Okay, I don’t care about beauty. Like, I’m not gonna care about this. But it’s a, it’s a lot more. I mean, the parts that I love the most were the parts about, like, soft power and like, like, things that were a little bit outside, like the business aspects of all that I really liked that because I don’t know the difference between a serum and cream.

Elise Hu 23:18
Yeah, in fact, you know, I would, the thing is, I consider editing to be a love language. And I would have gone back and forth like 70 more rounds, to have this book be like 20% shorter, because if I were to more rigorous, rigorously edit, or had that luxury, then I like you get kind of bored with various intricacies of serums and foundation. And that’s, that’s as a journalist who covers beauty as a topic, right. And I think it’s just, you know, a product of the way that the way, the way that we-

Traci Thomas 23:56
I was glad it was in there. I was glad that stuff was in there because it actually helped me to understand better but going into it, I was like, Oh, I’m not gonna care about this, but because you were curious, and you didn’t know, I felt like there was a space for me in this book. Whereas if you had been like, deep inside or on beauty stuff I like if you had bred like a worker at Sephora, I would have been like, I can’t do this. Like it’s they’re giving me way too many details about the creamy and the powder. And I just I don’t care. Yeah. But okay, this is something that I really was curious about. And this was a part of the book that I really loved, which was about this question of like, the white gaze, and like, you know, there’s a lot of Korean and I think has trickled through a lot of Asia beauty standards that have to do with like, fair skin. And in the book, you talk about how that predates colonialization and like that is that there’s like this American obsession with like putting ourselves at the center of things. But my question is less about the white gaze and more about the anti blackness that does show up. That is not a necessarily tied to wanting to be white or American or Western, but this hatred of like darkness. And I’m curious what that is about.

Elise Hu 25:09
I think that that kind of I wish I knew, I wish I knew some sort of historical route to it. But across East Asia, sadly, I did see a lot of anti blackness. And in some parts of Asia, of course, there is the history of colonization. I’m thinking Southeast Asia in particular, some South Koreans would argue that they were occupied by Americans and American troops following the Korean War. So a few things tied to whiteness, I think that we cannot ignore or the sort of whiteness standard is that most of the whiteness standard in the world is as a result of oppressive forces like colonization. So the whiteness standard in India, the whiteness standard in Africa, all tied to colonization. And in Northeast Asia, it’s a little bit different. It’s remixed, so there are still, you know, forces that occupied Asia, that probably did influence beauty standards and some of the whiteness standards. But what I get into is how they’re far more ancient, in some cases, they’re 1000s and 1000s of years old, these whiteness standards that came out of class and wanting to be more aristocratic. But yeah, that something that was really dismaying in my experience in South Korea was racism, you know, like the, the, just the, the names of certain clubs. For example, the friends of mine that were black that ended up being American expats, for the most part, and what they described experiencing in South Korea, I also faced some bias, you know, as being a foreigner. But it was very, it was a different flavor than the anti blackness.

Traci Thomas 26:49
Interesting. Okay, in the book, we get to talk about men, and we get to talk about the youth, and you took your eight month old to a spa. Oh, she was like two months, or sorry, to my eight weeks is what I meant to say, eight weeks to get a baby facial, which is one of the wildest things I’ve ever heard. But I do know that there are lots of baby spots here in LA are like kids boss, because a girlfriend of mine took her kid to a birthday party, and it was a spa birthday party. And they did a full spa thing and like cucumbers and the whole thing, which is just blows my mind. But you just wrote a piece also about like tweens and beauty and how they’re taking it in more. And I’m wondering if there’s like anything, if we think there’s anything good about this obsession with like, beauty culture, it’s not new, but like the fact that it’s trickling down younger and younger? Like, is there anything that we should be excited about this? Or is this like sort of a warning? Or is it neutral to you?

Elise Hu 27:48
Know, I think chasing algorithmically derived standards is a warning. It’s something that could be very dangerous. Because if we’re trying to look like our filters, then we’re allowing digital standards or AI generated standards to dictate what we do to our physical bodies. And chasing artificial standards can only get more and more cyborg Ian, because by definition, they’re artificial. So I do think that’s worrying. I also think that chasing a certain internet driven sameness is what’s distinct about this generation and its skincare routines, and then our generation and our skincare routines, because as I wrote in that piece for The Atlantic that you’re talking about, it’s not as if we were spared being marketed personal care products that were largely meaningless. I mentioned Bath and Bodyworks and sun ripened raspberries. Like country Apple girlies, I think there was a book pear Berry was oh, yes, it was that yours? No, I

Traci Thomas 28:46
No, I like the vanilla. There was a vanilla that came out only at the holiday season.

Elise Hu 28:50
These are in our core memories clearly. So it’s not as if we weren’t also beauty or skincare girlies in our middle school years, it’s just that the preponderance and the speed of the products being consumed and sold to our tweens of today is on a scale that we did not see in our use, and what I’m excited about, so you asked if there’s something good about it. I’m very happy to see the uptake of sunscreen. Okay, I think dermatologists all agree that if you’re going to have one product that you put on your face, it should be sunscreen. They would probably vote for sunscreen before moisturizer in some cases. And so I love the fact that my daughter without prompting will put on sunscreen before she walks to school in the morning. That’s pretty cool. I think if girls are wanting to take care of themselves in a way that means brushing your teeth twice a day and flossing and just general grooming and you know, there’s plenty of kids who don’t like to shower and if this if this whole self care trend means that you have clean kids. That’s Good, you know? Yeah. And then I already mentioned the dark side of it, of course, right?

Traci Thomas 30:04
Well, because like I think just about, we grew, I mean, I think you and I are on the same age, we grew up in a time where like, women’s bodies were talked about, just horribly, like when we go back, and like we internalized all of that, and it was probably not great for our generation of young girls and women. And I think about like, how, you know, you’re talking about this, like consumption of these products and the sameness and this desire for that, and I’m just like, I thought we were getting better, and maybe we’re not. And so it is, like, a little bit scary. But I also wonder if it’s just like, that’s what misogyny will do to you. Like, that’s just like, what capitalism will do to you is, like, forced you to feel like you could look better be better consume more.

Elise Hu 30:45
Yeah it problematizes things about our bodies so that we can buy things to fix them. Right?

Traci Thomas 30:50
Because like, definitely, babies need facials for sure. Like they have babies famously have terrible skin. Like I don’t know why nobody thought of that.

Elise Hu 30:58
But let’s count on for facials and one What if you get them in a pack? I’m just kidding.

Traci Thomas 31:04
So crazy. Okay, I did not prep you for this part. This is you have to just fucking figure it out. This is called Ask the stacks, people email, ask the stacks of the stacks. podcast.com for a book recommendation, or two or three. So I’m going to read you what this person said. And then we are going to give them recommendation. Fun. Yeah. Okay, this comes from Yolanda. And I have to say, because I know Yolanda is listening. I edited this down because she did a lot in the email, but she knew she did. And she was like I did a lot. And so I’ve made choices. So this is edited. It says, I want to try one final time to get into audiobooks. I’m a huge fan of podcasts and don’t know why I struggle with audiobooks, could you recommend a few titles? Instead of asking for one genre, I’d like to try a few. Oh my gosh, in the original she had given me four genres. I’ve narrowed it down to two, because maybe certain genres work for me in audiobook format. So here’s a sample of the two genres she’s interested in. One is I loved your episode with Ricardo new ILA about his book The People’s Hospital, and like learning more about systemic issues, racism, misogyny, capitalism and imperialism, etc. And the other is memoirs, after listening to your episode with Chelsea Devonta says I almost bought my first celebrity memoir. It doesn’t have to be a celebrity memoir. It could be something like Andrew Leland is country of the blind, but please, no political memoirs, no to the Obamas I think as memoir is not as humans, they say, Tracy and guest please help me get out of my reading rut with some great audio book recommendations. I put together a little list but I will let you go first in case anything popped into your head or I will give you time to think while I go.

Elise Hu 32:56
I don’t have one for I don’t think I’ve listened to nonfiction as an audiobook. I always almost always exclusively listen to fiction contemporary fiction in audiobook format. So you go first on the nonfiction.

Traci Thomas 33:11
Okay, I almost exclusively listen to nonfiction on perfect where? So here’s what I will say. So for the first one, which is like episodes are like audiobooks about systemic issues. I loved Tessa Miller’s audio book, what doesn’t kill you. It’s about chronic illness. She has Crohn’s disease, and she talks about her experiences. But she also talks about like, what it was like going through the medical system before they figured out that she had Crohn’s disease, she had to have two fecal transplants. So she talks about like that whole process. It’s funny, it’s very touching. She just does a really great job reading the book. It feels like podcast, she feels like a person just talking and not like reading by rote. The other one, this is sort of a stretch, but I really liked it. And if you’re struggling with audiobooks, I’m recommending it because it’s essays and it has multiple narrators. It’s called the fight of the century. It was edited by Ayelet Waldman and Michael Che Bong, and they’re married in real life. Oh, I didn’t know. And yeah, they are like crazy. And it is. It’s an 800 year anniversary of the ACLU. And so each essay is written by like an amazing writer like Jasmine Ward, or like Britt Bennett, or Yod, Jesse or whatever. And it’s about a different Supreme Court case. And they write about it in their own way. So like, there’s like one on Brown versus Board of Education, and there’s one on the Miranda rights, but there’s also some on things you’ve never heard of, and it’s narrated by the authors, but also like Samuel L. Jackson does one and like so it’s just like a really enjoyable audio experience. Do you have any recommendations in that in that sort of systemic issues? area?

Elise Hu 34:50
Yes. And it’s a little bit it kind of overlaps with the topics that I’m interested in. It’s called plucked by Rebecca Hertzog. Do you know this book I don’t know. But I’ve heard a lot is about the history of body hair, oh, my body hair removal and just hair on our heads in general. And you would think that it would be kind of superficial, but it is tied into so many systems of power. It’s tied into climate, and really surprising ways and the use of resources. It’s tied into not just gender and sexism, but also xenophobia and sort of religious intolerance. Because if you think about the what we did to the detainees at Guantanamo, in terms of making them shave their beards, and I remember thinking about this book, as like, it’s super fun to so there is research, but it’s like written in a way that moves very quickly. And I remember thinking about this book is like, Oh, my God, I don’t think I can go, yeah, 250 pages on body hair, but I could not put this down. I read it in a day. Oh, my God. And it is exactly that kind of nonfiction book that is tied into so many bigger forces, in the economy in society and culture history. You’ll love it.

Traci Thomas 36:05
That’s amazing. I am a huge fan of like, micro histories is what I call those books, where it’s like a deep dive into like one little thing. Like there’s a book about parking that came out last year. Yeah, I know. Right? Yeah. It’s great. Like, I’m just like, tiny, you know, I care but it’s great. Okay. And then for the memoirs, I went with two celebrity memoirs for you. One is finding me by Viola Davis. She could read me anything. Her voice is perfect. It is. It’s pretty dark. She had a pretty tough, tough childhood, but it’s really good. She’s amazing. And then the other one, I’m cheating. This is my next audio book read. I haven’t read it yet. But my sister in law, just read it. She texted me and she was like, it’s amazing. And she does not read celebrity memoirs. But she said rememberings by Sinead O’Connor, she’s really antastic. She said she learned so much about her. She didn’t know a lot about her. And it was really engaging. I think she said she listened to the whole thing and like a day or two for us. So I’m really excited about that. And then this is the third one. It’s sort of a mix of the first of both kinds of books you want. And that is His name is George Floyd. i You guys have heard me talk about the book and won the Pulitzer. I love the book. I didn’t want to like it. I thought it was gonna be like a money grab. It’s so fantastic. It is like half biography half sold social cultural history, I say that they gave George Floyd what I like to call the Presidential treatment, which is where they went deep into his history. They treated him like he was, you know, you know, Alexander Hamilton, famously not a president who got a presidential treatment, but it’s like that. So that would be my Do you have any celebrity memoirs that you think are great?

Elise Hu 37:37
Does the founder of Patagonia count as a celebrity? Then I’m gonna recommend the memoir by Yvon Chouinard, who is the founder of Patagonia, and it’s called Let My People Go Surfing. I was in this book club with a good friend of mine in which we could not veto each other’s choices. And he decided to it was going on for years. And he decided to choose this book for us, as well as one that another one that really stands out to me as something I would never choose was like a history of Mongolia, but it ended up being very good. Anyway, so let my people go surfing is the story of Vientiane, arts life, it turns out, he’s like a big climber, a big outdoorsman, and then the founding of Patagonia and all the values that are imbued in the founding of this company. And even though I am not some big CEO, or anything, some of the real cultural business practices that he talked about, and just the way that he considers himself kind of a steward of the earth, and then treats his people like the people around him and the people that work for him as people who like with a certain part humanity and deserving of care. I really love that. And it was just surprising to me as a great memoir. The other celebrity memoir that’s obvious that I’ve been listening to because of the audio experience alone is Britney’s amazing. It’s so good, it didn’t seem like it took a lot of time-

Traci Thomas 39:08
It’s amazing. It’s one of the best summary memoirs I’ve ever read. Right. Okay, so Yolanda, let us know if you read any of those if we made it so that you can read audiobooks, or if we failed, you let us know either way, and everyone else email ask the stacks at the stacks podcast.com To get your recommendation on the air. I’m always in need of these so don’t be shy. We’ll help you. Okay, Elise, two books you love one book you hate.

Elise Hu 39:33
Two books that I love. One book that I can never stop talking about is 4000 weeks by Oliver Berkman. It is called time inch or 4000 weeks time management for mortals, okay, and it bills itself as a time management book, kind of but it really isn’t. It ends up getting into union philosophy and Buddhism. And it really underlines why it’s important to be selective about how we spend our time. and it really helped me with my hedonistic tendencies because I tend to want to do everything and eat everything and try everything. And reading this book really changed the way I think, in a lot of ways and my personal philosophy so 4000 weeks time management for mortals, one book that is really on my mind that I want to recommend to everybody which most Stax listeners probably already listen or listen to or read is girlhood by Melissa Phobos. I’ve never read it. i Oh, it’s a collection of essays. And it’s not Her most recent book, but it’s beautifully written. And it considers a lot of the questions that we have about womanhood, and then our bodies and what sort of belongs to us, and how sort of, we end up divorcing kind of ourselves from our bodies as we get older and go through adolescence and kind of have to find ourselves again. And that’s a lot of things a lot of the stuff that I reckon with as somebody who is now 40 And so um, girlhood by Melissa Phobos is another one that I love, one that I did not love, okay, that I read in the last few years. And I just remember, this really standing out in my mind was the modern take on Anna Karenina called Hausfrau. Oh, I don’t know that one. Yeah, you don’t need to know. You don’t need to. I was really excited about it. Because I was like, Ooh, a modern twist. Because usually I like adaptations. There’s so many adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, for example, and I’m just there for it. I’m always like, Oh, great, but houseproud was not it.

Traci Thomas 41:29
Did you read Anna K? Okay, that’s an adaptation of Anna Karenina that I fucking love. Okay, it is so good. Actually, it ties into flawless because it goes to Korea to send her as a Korean American girl as Anna Anna okay. And it’s like Gossip Girl Meets Anna Karenina. They’re like rich kids in New York City. I can’t remember if it’s in the first one or the second one because there is a sequel, where she goes to Korea and like, like meets like a star that she like flirts with or whatever. So anyways, it’s so much fun if you like Gossip Girl, if you like teens, like teens having sex. It’s very big on teens doing drugs and having sex.

Elise Hu 42:09
Hey, I’m sex-positive. That’s awesome.

Traci Thomas 42:10
I love a teen having sex. Ideally, I guess but not actually I don’t like to watch or anything like that. It is getting dark. I love Gossip Girl is what I’m trying to say. Anyways, Anna K is really fun. It’s YA.

Elise Hu 42:27
I assume nobody throws themselves in front of a train.

Traci Thomas 42:31
Well, you’ll have to read and see. Okay, I’m hearing from you that you read a lot of fiction and a lot of nonfiction. Yeah. Are there any genres that you are not into or that you avoid or any favorite genres?

Elise Hu 42:47
Fantasy. I don’t really read fantasy. You get dragons in there and I’m like, tapping out.

Traci Thomas 42:52
And what’s your like go to?

Elise Hu 42:54
usually contemporary fiction so like the the Celeste Ngs of the world. Okay. Kazuo Ishiguro. I just read You made a fool of death with your beauty. Which I know is one of your favorites.

Traci Thomas 43:10
We did an episode on that with Sam Sanders for book club.

Elise Hu 43:14
Sam recommended it to me.

Traci Thomas 43:15
Oh, of course he did. I recommended it to Sam. So in your face, Sam.

Elise Hu 43:27
Mary. HK Choi is one of my favorites.

Traci Thomas 43:30
Love. Love Mary. Love it. You’ll like Anna K. Um, what’s the last great book you read?

Elise Hu 43:40
Um, Tru Biz.

Traci Thomas 43:43
Oh, we did that on Book Club. I feel like you should be in the book club. I feel like you’re joining it.

Elise Hu 43:48
I gotta get out of my one book club.

Traci Thomas 43:50
I had a book club with one friend. I had a book club with one friend for a long time. And then the next book club I did was this podcast. So I joke because I’m like, I’ve never been in a book club where I’ve had to let anybody else make any choices. I’m a book club dictator. And that’s it for me. But yes, we did. True Biz is good.

Elise Hu 44:09
I still think about True Biz a lot.

Traci Thomas 44:11
What are you reading right now?

Elise Hu 44:12
I’m reading interior Chinatown. Hey, that’s our book club. Hey, and it’s all in courier font. Do you want to say why It’s all in courier font?

Traci Thomas 44:22
Because it’s a script.

Elise Hu 44:24
Yes. It’s written as a screenplay. Yeah. Um, which is really awesome. Yeah, I’m trying my hand at screenplay writing myself. So I’m writing in courier font as well. And this is why it’s such a great book club choice. Sometimes. A book just meets the moment you’re in in your life and Interior Chinatown. Is it for me. So thank you.

Traci Thomas 44:43
I’m so excited. We’re going to discuss that the last Wednesday of the month, everyone so read up, meet us back here. At least we’ll be back to do that. Okay. How do you pick what you read next when I don’t tell you to read into your Chinatown? Sam Sanders. Okay. Well, spoiler alert, I guess you’re getting some wrecks for me because I definitely like to see him a lot. But he does write back to me.

Elise Hu 45:07
No, the answer is I have a few friends that I trust that also love reading as much as me and then we will talk to each other and text with each other every once in a while when we’re like really moved by something. There was a book last year that I read called Mad honey that I would not have read. But for my mom friend that’s like, you’ve gotta listen to Mad honey as an audiobook. Because it’s written, it’s read by one of my favorite audiobook narrators. And so I listened to Matt honey at her recommendation, I’m also still a working journalist. So I get a lot of galleys sent to me. And don’t stop sending them. publicists, because I find a lot of books just because they were mailed to my house. And I’m like, oh, catastrophe ethics. Interesting. So that’s on my shelf right now.

Traci Thomas 45:51
How much reading do you do for work itself, as opposed to for pleasure?

Elise Hu 45:56
Mostly for pleasure. So I think that I only read about 20 to 40% for 40% on a really busy year. And usually, when I read for work, it tends to be nonfiction. Because I’m sometimes fill in for life kit, which ends up being you know, a lot of like, how to how to optimize your life. Right?

Traci Thomas 46:17
They let me come on that show and talk about how to pick a book and I’m so excited. I listened to that episode. So much. I was like, I don’t know that I am a person for this show.

Elise Hu 46:26
Are you kidding me? Hi, what do you read, Traci? Can I interview you?

Traci Thomas 46:30
Yeah, I read a lot.

Elise Hu 46:32
Yeah. So like last year, let’s say?

Traci Thomas 46:37
I finished 142 books.

Elise Hu 46:39
Do you consider yourself a fast reader?

Traci Thomas 46:41
No, I’m not a fast reader. It’s my biggest downfall.

Elise Hu 46:44
How do you get through it?

Traci Thomas 46:45
Well, it’s my job. So I set aside time like this morning after I dropped my kids off for work. I sat down and I read for like an hour, a little bit over an hour to finish the last 40 pages of the book I was reading. So I think like I think, to me, a fast reader is like a page a minute or faster. I’m definitely in the slower category. Well, you want to take it into Yeah, I want to take it in. But sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I wish I could just read faster to be done. Because I’m like done with the book. I figured it out. I’m done. I just want to know, so I could talk about it later.

Elise Hu 47:15
How do you decide when to quit a book?

Traci Thomas 47:18
It depends on why I’m reading the book. So if I’m reading the book for the podcast, I don’t quit. I finish, I think there have been two books and I will never name them that I did not finish before I interviewed the author. And I’m on episode 300 And something at this point. So that’s a lot of books to finish. But if it’s for pleasure, or just like for fun to check something out, I’ll finish it and I’ll quit 10 pages in if I keep grabbing me, there’s just too much for me to read to like really try to force myself. So I’ll quit pretty early.

Elise Hu 47:50
Yeah I remember asking my editor about this because she has to read so many submissions. And she says she gives fiction at least 50 pages. Yeah, she’s like I’ve given you 50 pages.

Traci Thomas 47:58
Sometimes I’ll quit so early. Because I’m like, the writing is bad. And I don’t care about the topic enough. Like sometimes I’ll like I’ll be like, Oh, maybe I’m interested in socks. And then the writing is so bad. I’m like, I’m not interested in socks. I don’t care. I can’t do 50 I can’t do 50 pages of this.

Elise Hu 48:14
You will be quickly engrossed in body hair removal, though.

Traci Thomas 48:17
I am interested in that for several hours. by Rebecca Hertzog. I can’t wait. I’ll give it back to you back to you back to this was a trick. This is a journalist trick.

Elise Hu 48:26
I’m just more comfortable asking the questions.

Traci Thomas 48:29
I know I know how that is, but you’re here for me to do this. Okay. Okay, what’s the what’s the book that you think that you recommend to people the most or you love recommending to people?

Elise Hu 48:45
Oh, that’s the one I gave you. Before? 1000? Yeah, it’s 4000 weeks. I know. It sounds like I’m recommending a business bro book. It is not. I’ve heard it’s great. I’ve also heard it’s horrible. And I think it just depends on where you’re at, and where you’re at. But I have heard fantastic things about that book. Specifically from like, people our age and middle paid life who are paid. Yes. Yeah. So I so that’s another book that I’ve been recommending at post turning 40. It’s called the Middle Passage by James Hollis. It looks like self published. It might have been in the 1970s or something. But this was recommended to me by the showrunner of Mad Men, Oh, Matt Weiner, who said that reading this, who is which is based in Union philosophy. And Freud was really informed his thinking in developing the characters on that show. And the Middle Passage is about this kind of time in our lives which some people are describing as a vortex I think that apparently a lot of women are going through like met Natalie Portman, etc, etc. A lot of women who are getting famously getting divorced like the cup of joe Joanne in two and a good word. And so anyway, it’s it’s very, it’s very kind of woowoo in some places and academic and even hard to read. But if you can extrapolate the ideas out of it. There’s so many times where I’m like, oh, yeah, that tracks that tracks. And so the Middle Passage is on, oh, no other pop culture reference. This was in a scene of Ted lasso. It was like on somebody’s table, and it was the middle there was like this cover of the Middle Passage that I’m holding up for Tracy right now. Some sort of influence maybe in people for people who write some of our big cultural exports.

Traci Thomas 50:48
Interesting. Do you have an ideal reading setup? snacks, beverages location, anything like that?

Elise Hu 50:56
Yeah I like a lightly sweet iced tea. Okay, or boba, but usually at home, I have a lightly sweet iced tea, so I won’t do any of that Gold Peak stuff.

Traci Thomas 51:06
Okay. Do you do brew at home or you buy?

Elise Hu 51:09
I’ll either brew at home, and then add simple syrup, or I will buy a kind of iced tea bottled iced tea that’s ridiculously overpriced. And it shipped to my house in 12 packs. But I really survived on that during the writing of the book. Okay. I also like to read in transit a lot. So I really miss public transit, I spent a lot of time reading on subways, and on buses when I lived abroad. And even now when I travel, that’s something I really enjoy.

Traci Thomas 51:38
Me too. That’s part of the origin story of this podcast is I used to read a lot. And then when I moved to LA, I stopped reading. And so I was like, I’m going to start reading again. And I’m going to overachieve and read 150 books a year, then I’m going to become a person who has a problem and needs help. What do you have a favorite bookstore?

Elise Hu 51:56
Here in LA, I go to Village Well, that’s my local bookstore. It’s awesome.

Traci Thomas 52:01
Oh, that’s the new one in Culver?

Elise Hu 52:02
It’s in Culver on the main drag and Culver on Culver Boulevard. And Jennifer who runs the store is just an awesome curator. And she has events like almost every night and it has become such that used to be like a vegan burger shop and nobody went. And now it’s become such a place for community and you can just go and hang out it is it’s one of those bookstores where you can go and no capitalistic exchange is required. You can just go and hang out and read and discover and I love that I like bringing my kids there too.

Traci Thomas 52:32
I gotta go. I need to. I was supposed to go with a friend and then it just didn’t ever happen. Now I gotta go. No, I gotta go.

Elise Hu 52:39
Skylight is awesome. North Fig is awesome.

Traci Thomas 52:41
There’s so many great bookstores here. What’s the last book you purchased? Do you remember?

Elise Hu 52:47
Yeah, I just I just did I just purchased hunt gather parent, by my colleague, Michael. I really like Yeah. Because I am in development on some documentary ideas and thought maybe that the the notion of us in the West and in the US being the weird perspective, and everybody else being kind of like a better perspective I love. And so I’m trying to think of projects that might be able to be based in that lens.

Traci Thomas 53:16
I really liked that book. It really helped me when my kids were very small, which is when I read it, and now sometimes I catch myself doing things that she’s like, definitely don’t do that in the book and being like, Well, too bad for me, I guess. Sorry. I live in America again. I’m gonna remind my kid 15 times, but issues on. What’s the last book that made you laugh?

Elise Hu 53:36
Not counting Britney Spears the woman in me?

Traci Thomas 53:39
Well, okay, I guess.

Elise Hu 53:41
No, there were parts of that.

Traci Thomas 53:43
Yes, for shiz, for shiz is an iconic moment.

Elise Hu 53:44
Right. The audiobook part of that made me laugh at Justin Timberlake in particular. I’m unintentional, unintentionally. This is it. One book that made me laugh that like maybe didn’t wasn’t trying to make me laugh. In its absurdity was disorientation. Oh, yeah. By Elaine che Cho. Yeah. And that’s a that’s a modern or that’s a take of kind of a takedown of academia. I loved that book. And yellow fever, which is Asian fetish. Right. It made me laugh a lot.

Traci Thomas 54:22
Yeah, it’s very funny. What’s the last book that made you cry?

Elise Hu 54:27
Crying in H Mart.

Traci Thomas 54:28
Oh, okay. Yeah. What about her last book that made you angry?

Elise Hu 54:33
This is actually a cousin of Disorientation- Yellow Face. It made me super angry about the publishing industry. And it helped me see things about the publishing industry that I didn’t realize. I didn’t know that the publishing industry essentially chooses winners and losers before books even come out. Which means that like, if you are a debut author, you don’t really know you’re left to the whims of these deciders and so you can’t really do anything about these larger forces that are out of your control. I didn’t realize that and that made me kind of mad.

Traci Thomas 55:09
Yeah, I mean, I would make me mad. There’s too much gatekeeping. So much in publishing, some of it is really intentional. And I think some of it is because people who work in publishing don’t always know about, like culture, unfortunately. What about a book where you felt like you learned a lot?

Elise Hu 55:30
Besides Plucked by Rebecca Hertzeg? Yeah, I’m just I’m like, I’m a one man. Rebecca Hertzog, Stan. Yeah. Yes, the book that I learned from a lot, and that I’m now applying in my life is a book called the nutshell method, which is one of the 1000s of books on screenwriting. Because Flawless got optioned. And I got the privilege of writing the treatment for a feature film, and I have no background in screenwriting whatsoever. And I was really starting from scratch. And somebody told me to read the nutshell method by Jill Chamberlain. And she’s a script doctor. And she kind of breaks things down for you and talks about structure in a way that was really eye opening. And I think that I could reverse engineer and apply to journalism to like, I wish I knew about this method, and the importance of this kind of structure and where to put things and trying to map them out in advance. I wish I knew about this 1020 years ago, right? As a fledgling journalist.

Traci Thomas 56:30
I love that. That’s really cool. Yeah. Okay, if you were a high school teacher, what’s the book you would assign in class?

Elise Hu 56:36
I’m trying to think a book that I was assigned that Oh, I hope it’s still assigned in this age of book bands that listen, the Invisible Man.

Traci Thomas 56:46
Oh, I’m sure it’s assigned some places and definitely not assigned other places.

Elise Hu 56:50
Yeah, that I was like, Yes, I remember reading that in high school and having a lot of questions and that and what else kind of opened up a lot of questions for me? Oh, I would I wouldn’t assign like, essays, you know, like journalistic essays. David Foster Wallace has a great collection called consider the lobster. That’s one of my favorite books. And I wish I would have read that earlier in my life. His journalism, I prefer to his novels. Yeah. So that collection, but then something I keep near me, let me see if I have it near me. Joan Didion has a book called political fictions. That’s really very good. And another book that I wish I had read earlier in my life, and before I became civically minded and can vote, and then the other is this tiny, I use this like a booklet it’s not even Yeah, a book. It’s just for speeches, right? Yes. And I keep this with me, because anytime I’m feeling like, I don’t know, as I talked about, at the very beginning of the interview, I’ve often feel have, I often felt like my place in life had to be earned. You know, and I think that I really reckon with that be now that I’m older, and I live in a more diverse place, but I grew up in this place that was very heavily Caucasian persuasion. And I remember reading Audrey Lorde. And this particular speech, I’m holding up the Masters tools will never dismantle the Masters House, and there were parts of it, where I was just like, oh, my gosh, I am worthy. And I matter and I don’t have to do anything different or have to be perfect in order to earn my place. And in fact, the reason why I feel the way I do do and that I have to sort of earn my worthiness is the product of a structural, right, isms, all sorts of different intersectional isms. And so, I wish I would have had it, you know, I wish the younger me would have had it.

Traci Thomas 58:49
Yeah for sure. I mean, that that speech, if you have Sister Outsider that speeches in sister outside are also because that’s like a compilation of a bunch of her speeches. Okay, last one. Last one. Last one. I know we’re over time. Sorry. I stole it from the New York Times by the book. If you could require the current president of the United States of America to read one book, what would it be?

Elise Hu 59:12
Do we know whether Joe Biden is a reader?

Traci Thomas 59:14
Like we knew that? I don’t know. I don’t know. We knew that.

Elise Hu 59:20
We thought Obama was a big reader and I felt like he and then we know that Donald Trump never reads

Traci Thomas 59:26
Anything. I think he’s probably somewhere between the two is my sense.

Elise Hu 59:31
Yeah. I would love for him to read something about the way you know what I would actually I hope that he reads this because it’s just out and I feel like it’s really relevant to this misinformation and tech addled time that we live in now, which is Kara Swisher is new book, burn book. And it’s a memoir. And so and it’s it may be some people are critiquing it as like self aggrandizing of Kara Swisher. But she also lays out the unique moment that we’re in when it comes to the collapse of media and a subsequent or parallel collapse of democracy. And so I could recommend Of course I could recommend like some sort of high minded clash of civilizations type write nonfiction, but I actually think that for this particular president, he should be more hip on what’s happening in media. Yeah. Should be more hit misinformation period.

Traci Thomas 1:00:42
Actually, that’s a really good recommendation. Okay, everybody, we’re out of here. This is what you need to know for me one flawless it’s out in the world. You can get it wherever you get your books. You can also get the audiobook Elise reads it I listen to some I read some highly recommend the audiobook. I had a great time with it. Oh, yeah, too. We are going to be back Elise and I discussing Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu on March 27. That is the last Wednesday of this month, there will be spoilers. So read the book, read some courier font, enjoy your time in the screenwriting world. And that is it for housekeeping. Thank you so much for being here. At least.

Elise Hu 1:01:20
This was so much fun and you really stumped me on a lot of things. But it required really being thoughtful and I love it.

Traci Thomas 1:01:28
Oh yay! And everyone else we will see you in The Stacks.

All right, y’all. That does it for us today. Thank you all so much for listening. And thank you again to Elise Hu for joining the show. I’d also like to thank Ilana Nevins for helping to make this conversation possible. Don’t forget Elise will be back on March 27 to discuss the stacks book club pick Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu. If you love the show and you want insight access to it, head to patreon.com/the stacks and join the stacks pack. Make sure you subscribe to the stacks wherever you listen to your podcasts and if you’re listening through Apple podcast be sure to leave us a rating and a review. For more from the stackss follow us on social media at the stacks pod on Instagram threads and tick tock and at the stacks pod underscore on Twitter. And you can check out our website thestackspodcast.com This episode of the Stacks was edited by Christian Duenas with production assistance from Lauren Tyree, our graphic designer is Robin MacWrite. The Stacks is created and produced by me Traci Thomas.

Cherie Marquez https://www.cmediacollective.com/
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