Big Books & Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller

Viet Thanh Nguyen has a critical mind.

He’s critic of populist politics. He’s a critic of history. He’s a critic of the country where he was born, Vietnam, and he’s a critic of the country he calls home, the United States. He’s even a critic of his own memories.

But Nguyen says his captious lens isn’t meant to blister. It’s simply meant to reveal truth. And if you write truthfully, you will likely offend.

Nguyen joined host Kerri Miller on stage at the Fitzgerald Theater for the third conversation in the 2023 Talking Volumes season. Their discussion was candid and eloquent, poignant and funny, as they talked and shared photos from Nguyen’s new memoir, “A Man of Two Faces.”

They were joined by musician D’Lourdes, who sang two songs off their new EP, “softer, for now.”

Guest:

• Viet Thanh Nguyenwon the Pulitzer Prize in 2016 for his novel, “The Sympathizer.” His new book, “A Man of Two Faces” is an unconventional memoir that combines his own story of being a Vietnamese refugee with larger themes of colonization, war and perceptions about America.

Use the audio player or video player above to listen to the conversation.

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In C Pam Zhang’s dystopian not-too-distant future, the planet is covered in a crop-killing smog. Food as we know it is rapidly disappearing to be replaced by a gray, mung bean flour.

Zhang’s protagonist, a young unnamed Asian chef, decides to flee her dreary career and lies her way into becoming the head cook at a mountaintop research community, where the sky is still clear and the uber-rich work to recreate and hoard the world’s biodiversity.

The prose in “Land of Milk and Honey” is as rich and sensual as a good meal. But it is the constant trade-offs made by the chef that keep the book evolving.

This week, on Big Books and Bold Ideas, host Kerri Miller sat down with Zhang to talk about what moved her to write this book, how her faith background informs her view of science and why she moved from California to New York City during the pandemic.

Guest:

• C Pam Zhang is an author who currently lives in Brooklyn. Her most recent novel is “Land of Milk and Honey.”

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The American Library Association observed Banned Books Week at the beginning of October — an especially poignant marker this year.

A report by PEN America found more than 1,200 books were censored or removed from U.S. public school classrooms and libraries during the 2022-23 school year, compared to only 333 in the previous school year. That’s an increase of almost 400 percent.

Authors whose books are most frequently targeted are usually female, people of color or LGBTQ+.

This week, Big Books and Bold Ideas commends the freedom to read by talking with three young adult authors whose books are frequently found on the targeted lists.

Kelly Yang is the author of many young adult and children’s books, including “Front Desk,” which is based on her own memories of working at her family's motel business after they immigrated to California from Hong Kong. As she tells MPR News host Kerri Miller, the first few years after “Front Desk” was published, it was a huge success. But then it started to get pushback.

“I guess people started to question why kids should learn about the immigrant experience. Like: I don’t want my kid to feel sad or uncomfortable,” said Yang. “But if we airbrush our nation’s history and ignore the experiences of millions of people, what is the difference between this country and where my parents came from, which is China?”

“The freedom to read is what makes this country great,” Yang told Miller.

Matt de la Peña is also a writer of children and young adult books. He won the Newbery Medal in 2016 for his picture book “Last Stop on Market Street.”But it is “Mexican Whiteboy,” the novel inspired his own experience of growing up mixed race in San Diego, that has faced the most criticism.

“When you’re a new writer, you sometimes glorify the idea of getting banned,” laughed de la Peña. “But then you don’t have the context for who is unable to have access to your book.”

“I wrote [‘Mexican White Boy’] because I’m mixed — my dad is Mexican, my mom is white — and I wanted to write about sometimes not feeling Mexican enough growing up.”

But then it got caught up in a political battle in Arizona. De la Peña met with students at Tucson High School who had the book taken out of their hands as they were reading. And why?

“There is no context for the banning,” de la Peña told Miller. “It’s a rumor. ‘Oh, I heard this book has a scene about such and such.’ Or, ‘I heard this book leans into racial identity too much.’ ‘Maybe it fits into that critical race stuff.’”

“Book banning has nothing to do with young people. It has everything to do with parents,” he said. “And I understand this instinct. I’m a parent of two young kids, and I’m very cognizant of what goes into their brains. But we run into trouble when parents are trying to eliminate that content for other people’s children.”

Samira Ahmed writes stories about “revolutionary girls” for middle grade students and young adults. Several of her books have been challenged, including “Internment,” published in 2019, and her newest novel, “Hollow Fires.”

Ahmed said her earliest experience with book banning was “soft banning.” Librarians told her they were hesitant to put her first book on their shelves because they had no Muslim students in their community. A Kansas teacher told her a school staff member continually delayed putting in a purchase order for Ahmed’s “Internment.”

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  Book ban attempts on the rise in Minnesota schools
  
  

“You might not read about this in the newspaper. It’s not even getting to a school board meeting,” Ahmed said to Miller. “But this is happening — not just to my books, but to queer authors and authors of color, where there’s this soft banning, almost this pre-banning, where people are not allowing the books to come into schools.”

But Ahmed, like de la Peña and Yang, is not deterred.

“The voices of those who want to challenge books or censor books or ban books are very loud,” she said. “But I assure you, they are the minority. Find your community who is willing to advocate to ensure that our children have freedom to read.”

And if you want proof that authors are willing to fight being silenced, Ahmed’s next novel comes out in 2024. It’s called, “This Book Won’t Burn.”

Ann Patchett is a perennial favorite at Talking Volumes. So it’s no surprise that she sold out the Fitz for her conversation with host Kerri Miller on Sept. 28.

What ensued was a raucous two hours of honest conversation. Just a few of the topics they covered: Ann’s “shiny new attitude” about book tours, how to be a feminist while still making dinner every night, why Ann keeps a drawer stocked with $20s in her desk and — last but certainly not least — Ann’s new novel, “Tom Lake.”

Don’t miss this lively exchange, which includes music by singer-songwriter Sarah Morris and closes with a special guest appearance by the author to whom Ann dedicated “Tom Lake” — Minnesotan Kate DiCamillo.

Guests:

• Ann Patchett is the author of many beloved books, including “Commonwealth,” “The Dutch House,” “Bel Canto” and “Truth and Beauty.” Her latest novel is “Tom Lake.” She also owns Parnassus Books, an independent bookstore in Nashville, and she adores her husband, Karl — even if he doesn’t make dinner.




• Kate DiCamillo is also an author of many beloved books, including “Because of Winn-Dixie,” “Flora and Ulysses,” “The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane” and the forthcoming, “The Puppets of Spelhorst.” She is a staunch friend of Ann Patchett, which is why “Tom Lake” is dedicated to her and how she ended up on stage with Ann at Talking Volumes.

Use the audio player or video player above to listen to the conversation.

Don’t miss a conversation! Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcastonApple Podcasts,Google PodcastsorRSS.

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Lauren Groff’s new novel, “The Vaster Wilds,” begins in the bleak winter of 1609, when the residents of the early American colony of Jamestown are diseased and starving.

A young servant girl, who was brought to the new world by a prosperous and indifferent family, decides to run from the desolation. But she leaves Jamestown not knowing her direction, her surroundings or even her name. Can she survive the untouched wilderness?

Groff says her new book is haunted by climate change — the fact that we, as a species, are also running into the vast unknown. But like her unnamed protagonist, she finds moments of ecstasy in the starkness of nature, times when she sees her own body experience euphoria in the midst of pain.

This week, Groff joined host Kerri Miller on Big Books and Bold Ideas for a conversation about “The Vaster Wilds.” Like her other books, this one plays with themes of feminism, religion and morality, and she dives into all those topics.

But she also reveals how many covers she and her publishing house went through before they settled on the one that was printed, and how many books she’s writing right now, simultaneously.

Guest:

• Lauren Groff is a New York Times bestselling author of several books, including “Matrix” and “Fates and Furies.” Her new novel is “The Vaster Wilds.”

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When Dr. Abraham Verghese released his debut novel in 2009 it was an literary marvel. “Cutting for Stone” captivated readers, sold more than 1.5 million copies in the U.S. alone and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for two years.

Readers had to wait 14 years for another book by Verghese, but by all accounts, his new novel was worth the wait. Oprah Winfrey named it a book club pick, called saying it was “one of the best books I’ve read in my entire life — and I’ve been reading since I was three!”

It was a pleasure to have him kick off the 2023 season of Talking Volumes. Dr. Verghese joined host Kerri Miller on stage at the Fitzgerald Theater the evening of Sept. 14 and talked about redemption, inspiration, how his “day job” as a doctor informs his writing (and vice versa) and why his belief in the essential goodness of humanity is core to his novels.

Their conversation was complimented by Kerala folk music played by local musician Nirmala Rajasekar, who was joined onstage by one of India’s premier percussionists, Thanjavur Murugaboopathi.

Guest:

• Dr. Abraham Verghese is a physician and professor at the School of Medicine at Stanford University. He is also a best-selling author. His latest novel is “The Covenant of Water.”

Use the audio player or video player above to listen to the conversation.

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Carol Dunbar didn’t set out to be an writer.

For more than a decade, she was an actress based in the Twin Cities. She told stories by embodying them.

But then she and her husband — also an actor — decided to leave it all behind. They moved off the grid, to rural Wisconsin, so her husband could handcraft furniture. It was there, while learning to split wood and pump water and raise two toddlers in the midst of the chaos, that Dunbar came to the stunning conclusion that she was a storyteller — just one who had been working in the wrong art form. So she began to write.

Her first book, “The Net Beneath Us” won the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award and told the story of a young woman learning to live close off the land in Wisconsin after her husband has a logging accident. Her new novel, “A Winter’s Rime,” is also set in northern Wisconsin and plays with truths Dunbar has learned firsthand about PTSD, healing and place.

This week’s Big Book and Bold Ideas features a conversation between host Kerri Miller and Dunbar. They talk about how the rural north woods influence Dunbar’s writing, how both her books are informed by her own story and why learning to forgive one’s self might be the key to redemption.

Guest:

• Carol Dunbar is a novelist who lives off the grid in northern Wisconsin and writes from a solar-powered office on the second floor of a water tower. Her latest book is “A Winter’s Rime.”

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Jason Fitger is not a likeable character.

A creative writing professor at the fictitious Payne University, an aptly named small liberal arts college in the Midwest, Fitger is cantankerous and acid-tongued, beleaguered and inappropriate. He doesn’t really like students — and he doesn’t like England, which is where he has been pressured into leading a study abroad program.

The students on the tour are equally hapless. For the most part, this is their first trip away from home. One believes they are actually going to the Caribbean. And another remarks that she has never left her cat. Someone writes in his application that he is “a business major … for obvious reasons. There are no jobs out there for people who just want to read.”

It’s enough to push Professor Fitger to the brink — and that is the story told in “The English Experience,” Minnesota novelist Julie Schumacher’s final book in the trilogy that follows Fitger’s academic misadventures.

This week, on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Schumacher joined host Kerri Miller in the studio for a rollicking and candid conversation about how Schumacher channels Fitger, why she hopes he’s likeable in spite of all his faults, and the frustrations she shares with him about the future of academia.

Guest:

• Julie Schumacher lives in St. Paul and is a faculty member in the Creative Writing Program and the Department of English at the University of Minnesota. “The English Experience” is the completion of her trilogy about Professor Fitger.

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The first time Helen Macdonald and Sin Blaché met, it was to finish the book they had been cowriting for a year.

Macdonald, author of the best-selling “H is for Hawk,” and Blaché, an artist living in Ireland, first met online. During the COVID lockdowns, bored and restless, they started to play with the idea of writing a book together. Chapters began to fly digitally over the Irish Sea.

What resulted is “Prophet,” a fast-paced techno-thriller that centers around a lethal mystery: Someone has developed an aerosol that can weaponize nostalgia, bringing people’s happiest memories to life only to have them be killed by it.

‘Prophet’ doubles as a queer odd-couple romance, thanks to the main characters, whom Blaché and Macdonald fondly call “our terrible men.” Adam is a gruff American super solider, and Rao is a former British intelligence officer who has a gift for telling when people are lying — unless that person is Adam.

On this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, MPR News host Kerri Miller talks with Macdonald and Blaché about why cowriting a book online turned out to be a raucous, joyful thing and how their shared love for tropes and pop culture influenced the book.

Guests:

• Helen Macdonald and Sin Blaché cowrote “Prophet.” It will not be their last project together.

Use the audio player above to listen to the podcast version of the conversation.

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A pair of best friends determine to leave behind their conservative families and societal expectations, and live by a new motto: By Myself, For Myself.

What happens when one of those friends marries, and the other friend sees the new husband as a betrayal of their values?

That’s the premise behind British-Nigerian author Ore Agbaje-Williams debut novel, “The Three of Us.” The story plays out on a single wine- and whiskey-soaked afternoon, when the wife, husband and best friend Temi toy with the fine line between compromise and betrayal when it comes to themselves and the people they love.

On this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, Agbaje-Williams joins MPR News host Kerri Miller to discuss the power of female friendships, why her story had to unfold in a single afternoon, and how love and loyalty can shape our lives.

Guest:

• Ore Agbaje-Williams is a British-Nigerian writer. “The Three of Us” is her debut novel.

Use the audio player above to listen to the podcast version of the conversation.

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