Literary Roots

Monday, August 31, 2026

Intro

[upbeat music plays]

SYLVIA LEE:

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Bookish, A Casual Book Club. I'm Sylvia Lee, once again joined by my reading fellows in crime? Yeah. Kofi Adisa and Laura Yoo.

LAURA YOO:

Hello.

SYLVIA LEE:

Hello.

KOFI ADISA: 

Hello.

SYLVIA LEE:

It's been a hot minute. We've been traveling and doing things, and we thought we would come back and have an episode about something that takes us back in the past a little bit. And it kind of came from a conversation that Laura and I had, but I think all three of us have had this at some point, about the books that really made us what we are today, people who, one, studied English and, two, who take great enjoyment in reading.

And so I think one of the conversation threads that we had, or we have had over the past few years, has been those books that make us think, how are they doing that? Or I didn't know books could do that or that writing could do that. And so we thought, wouldn't this be a good episode to discuss the books that made us first think like that. So I'm really excited because these are some of my favorite conversations.

So I guess we'll start with Laura, because she came with a stack of books, some with their original post-it notes--

LAURA YOO:

From 1994 or 1995.

SYLVIA LEE:

Yeah. These are vintage editions. So why don't we start with you, Laura?

LAURA YOO:

OK, so my coveted copy of Macbeth is where it all started. I went to Wilde Lake High school here in Columbia. And I had a Mr. Berkowitz in 10th grade, I think, 10th grade English? Or was it 11th grade English? But we read Macbeth in that class. And we had to do this horrible thing, which was to keep an imagery journal and basically write down every instance of various categories of imagery. So if it was food imagery, we had to make a list, and blood imagery or whatever. But it was such tedious work that everybody hated it, but it made you read so carefully.

So it was actually Macbeth and that class and Mr. Berkowitz when I decided I wanted to be an English major. Until then, I really didn't-- I liked reading, I always enjoyed reading in books. But yeah, it was Macbeth that did it for me, and then I went to college, and I don't think I took Shakespeare ever again.

SYLVIA LEE:

You're like, that's enough.

LAURA YOO:

Yeah.

KOFI ADISA: 

I've heard all that I need from William.

LAURA YOO:

But it was in grad school, actually, when I had to revisit Shakespeare and I ended up writing a paper about Macbeth. It was so interesting to go back to Macbeth from when I read it as a 16-year-old versus in my early 20s in grad school. So very different experience.

And then the second book, I think, was really-- I didn't know books could do that, kind of moment was in college when I took an 18th-century British literature class. And that is what I ended up studying in college and grad school. And Professor Bob Shipka-- he was my favorite, but he was also that professor who was really strict and really mean. And by halfway through the semester, the class had dwindled down to half the size that it started with. And he took it as a point of pride.

But we read this book called Tristram Shandy, and it was one of those books that, especially being 18th century novel-- it was so postmodern. It's by Laurence Sterne. And he starts out a story like it's going to be a memoir, like an autobiography, but the narrator makes these digressions. And he's playing with narrative structure. He's playing with the book as a thing.

So he creates these pages where there's a blank page. You'll turn the page, and there's nothing there, and it's supposed to be a place for you to think about something that had just happened. Or he'll include these weird drawings or use asterisks or different symbols to indicate something. He'll break the fourth wall and talk to the reader directly. And ultimately, he never gets to the point that he was trying to make.

So that very first opening scene of the book is he's talking about the moment of his conception, of his parents having sex, and how he blames his mother because in that moment, she, for some reason, asks his father, did you remember to wind the clock? And he's like, what kind of woman asks that in the middle of-- you know. And he blames that as the moment when he became who he is, like it affected his body, his humor, who he has become. So it's very experimental.

So especially for being from that time, it was very forward, experimental, doing something different and interesting. And it was definitely one of those-- I didn't know books could do that kind of a moment. And it got me hooked.

And then-- even now, I really, really am curious about-- when I open a book, that are not just plot-driven, but it's doing something. The author is playing with something or experimenting with something or doing something that I haven't seen yet in a book. So that's always really exciting to me. And I think that's what keeps me buying books, or read books that I haven't read before, have seen before.

So I realized that I really am interested in the craft of the writing, but not because I'm a writer. I feel like that's something writers often read about and talk about, the craft. But I myself am not a writer. But I'm really interested in the craft of writing that you can then witness as a reader. So you are both writers, and so I'm curious to hear what you see in the books that you love, about the craft of writing that gets you hooked.

KOFI ADISA: 

It's not a real good segue to me.

[laughter]

SYLVIA LEE:

Thanks for nothing, Laura.

LAURA YOO:

So what got you hooked?

[laughter]

KOFI ADISA: 

I think there's just been various situations through my journey. It's interesting you started with high school. And I hadn't even considered the stuff that I was reading in high school because I went to such a different kind of high school, because Duke Ellington is not like your regular public school.

And so the program I was part of was literary media arts. So that's where you get your journalism, radio production, and television production and photography. And so the types of things that we were reading were almost always journalistic. There were certain creative aspects to it, but for whatever reason, my creativity was frowned upon, maybe because I gave way to the licentiousness and lasciviousness in my writing at such a young age, and that was definitely frowned upon among the more puritanical teachings that I had-- teachers that I had.

So I think it wasn't until by the time of my senior year that me and a couple of buddies-- we did this documentary in DC that looked at young African-American males and how the city responded to us, especially in predominantly white spaces. And my buddy Hayden-- he had to read the opening to Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. I mean, Hayden's a good reader, but there's such a cadence to Ralph Ellison's work that I hadn't really thought about before because I hadn't really read it. And then when I saw that it was, like, 500 and something-odd pages. I was like, damn.

[laughter]

You got a lot to say. But there's a certain type of rhythm. And I felt like Ralph Ellison was like William Shakespeare. That's, like, that high art. And as someone who was reading it, I felt like that was something beyond me, in a way.

But it wasn't until I was in undergrad and I took the short story class at University of Maryland-- that was my first stint at college. And then I left, and then I went to University of District of Columbia. But I was going to be a business major. And I remember the semester. It was 1990. I had Principles of Accounting 1, and I had a short story class.

And I had some other classes, but it was in Principles of Accounting 1, when I had the book, the ledger, and all that stuff that I realized, I think I want to be an English major because I don't want to do all of this. This seems so tedious. And--

SYLVIA LEE:

I did not know this story.

LAURA YOO:

I know. I'm learning this for the first time.

KOFI ADISA: 

It keeps it fresh. It keeps our relationship fresh. And so when I decided that, there was this guy who was the professor, and he would read parts of things to us, and we all had to read three different stories by Flannery O'Connor. And the one that really got me was A Good Man is Hard to Find. That was such a great story. And I think Everything the Sun, something-- it's a long title.

LAURA YOO:

Everything That Rises Must Converge or something?

KOFI ADISA: 

Yes, Must Converge. Yes, yes. I found her writing lyrical, but also just really delicious to consume. And I think that was also when we read The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. I think we also read The Faithful by James Alan McPherson. And that short story class got me very much interested in not only reading short stories, but writing short stories. And I think it was also the reading I was doing outside of the academy. So once I was away from Maryland-- basically, we broke up.

[laughter]

It was a mutual breakup, and that was in '91. I was working at the Library of Congress, and I would just do a lot of reading. And the one person whose books I read almost religiously was Ernest Gaines' books. And his seminal work, I guess people might say his most important work was The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. I didn't read that book until I went to graduate school. The first book I read from him was A Gathering of Old Men, and I just thought that was the perfect-- I still think it's a perfect book.

And that's when I thought, man, you can make short stories that can be a kind of novel that tells a whodunit of all things. And I just found his writing-- I still find his writing just masterful. And it would be the two Southern writers that got me into it. But when I was at UDC, I took an English novel class by Dr. Bott, and I read Henry Fielding's Tom Jones. And I thought, oh man, if this is what the 18th century is about, I'm in. And so I was heading in that vein, too. The Earl of Rochester was definitely my jam because he was heavy into the scatological and the sensual.

[LAUGHTER]

And I kind of like that. I was digging it. But as I said in an earlier interview with this young lady from University of Utah, 18th century didn't fit in my mouth, so to speak. The language wasn't the language that I could speak well. It wasn't the same rhythm, and it wasn't the rhythm of the community. And I found that that's what Southern writers do best. And so I turned, in graduate school-- I'm like, no, I'm not going to do 18th century anymore.

SYLVIA LEE:

I see.

KOFI ADISA: 

But I had spent, like, maybe four semesters doing 18th century, like yeah, even though this is cool, it's not my jam as much as I think it is. So that's a large nutshell, but that's my origin story. And now your turn, Sylvia.

SYLVIA LEE:

Yes. Before I get to my list, I'm curious because I think you said there are some books that made you want to become an English major or read more. And then there are some books that made you want to write. And so now I'm curious, what are the books that made you want to write, unless there's overlap, but which ones--

KOFI ADISA: 

I would say definitely The Faithful by James Alan McPherson. In fact, I tried to rewrite that story.

LAURA YOO:

Really?

KOFI ADISA: 

Yeah, because the story's about changing times. And you have this barber who is seeing people with afros. And he's also a religious person, and he's trying to get people to understand that you got to be groomed a certain kind of way. He's kind of an old school kind of guy. And then there's this church that has magical thumpings going on. And so he feels like he's in competition with this younger generation.

And so this guy comes in, who normally would come in, and he wanted his 'fro stylized, and the guy doesn't do it the right way. And so the whole Faithful-- the thing about being faithful to that story is trying to be faithful to traditions that have gone by the wayside. And so I tried to rewrite that story and tried to make it more about a woman-- I remember the content. I made it a woman, and instead of afros, it was Jheri curls. So just trying to keep it all cultural. The story didn't go well, but that's what got me going.

And by the time I met Edward P. Jones-- he's another writer whose work I try to mimic and learn certain things from. Most of the writers, I would say, that make me want to write fit within a kind of genre or category. Most of them are Southern, and I think there's something about Southern writers, regardless of their racial backgrounds. There's a certain potency and a certain rhythm in their work that I try to infuse in my own.

SYLVIA LEE:

Yeah. Like you, I was only thinking about college, this is a college voice. But then I think what Laura had mentioned before about high school-- I thought, well, yeah, because for me, that impulse, that thought of, wow, books can do that, did start in high school. I just think I wasn't-- I'd always been indoctrinated by my Asian parents that, what are you going to do with an English degree? There's no money in that. You need to become a lawyer, at least, or something. And so I put that on the shelf. And I just thought, oh, I'm just going to enjoy reading.

I do remember we had Shakespeare-heavy curriculum as well in the beginning, and I actually really enjoyed his sonnets. I remember the first time I read the famous Hamlet soliloquy, I was blown away, like, how does this come out of somebody's brain, their imagination? I thought it was so interesting how these words that I use every day could be put together in this fashion and in this combination to create this and evoke this kind of emotional response. And that was the first time I remember thinking, there's some kind of power in that. And I didn't quite know what it was yet.

But then I remember we were-- my close friend, who I'm still friends with to this day-- we met when we were in preschool, and we're still friends. But we were in the same English class, and we got assigned to do a literary project on, of all books, The Catcher in the Rye.

And I was like, bleh. I hated The Catcher in the Rye. I was like, what an annoying, pretentious-- not pretentious. Yeah. What an annoying, self-involved brat. Like, get over yourself. You think you have a hard-- Ooh, ooh, boo me. I'm having an existential crisis because I'm coming of age. It's like, do you know what life is like for other people. Anyway-- so I was really annoyed and bitter that we had to do that.

But we were sitting-- I remember very distinctly-- and Jocelyn, if you're listening to this, I don't know if you remember this either. But we were sitting in my dining room of my house, and we were like, what are we going to do this project on? We just had no ideas.

And then suddenly, it just came to us. And I think Jocelyn was the first one, actually, to be like, what if we looked at the things that are known but unknown to people? And what we were actually talking about was a level of self-awareness that each character has about-- that people have about themselves. And so we were like, what does Holden Caufield know or not know, but other people know about him?

And that's what makes adolescence so cringey. Other people are there witnessing your most embarrassing, cringe-worthy moments. And you may think you're the coolest person ever. I'm so disillusioned. I'm so cool for this. But other people are like, he's so insecure.

And so what we decided to do is-- I had a stack of teen magazines. And what we did was we scoured through them and we cut out different images and words that would describe how each character-- what they knew about the other characters that were unknown to that particular character. And so we created this 3D pyramid with each character on it.

So Holden had his own side, and you would pull the side down, and it would show everything that was hidden to him that he didn't know that other character-- and so for each character, it was a 3D thing, that each character had their own thing. Anyways, this thing was so janky. And it looked like a little pyramid disco ball. It was so janky, and I was like, uh, I don't know if this is going to be-- whatever. And we had to present it. And she loved it so much.

LAURA YOO:

The teacher?

SYLVIA LEE:

Yeah, that she hung it like a disco ball in the middle of her classroom, and she hung it there for years.

LAURA YOO:

Oh, wow.

SYLVIA LEE:

And that was our sophomore year. Our senior year, it was still hanging there, falling apart. She had retaped it up together. And I was like, huh. But that was the first time I really had fun with literary analysis. And I thought that, oh, OK. That was kind of fun. And by the time I got to college, I thought I would be pre-law.

LAURA YOO:

I did not know this. I'm learning all kinds of things about my friends today.

SYLVIA LEE:

Yeah, and so I had learned that a lot of English majors actually go into law. But the track that I had to take was a lot of retcon, which is why I started learning about that, too, and that was interesting. But I had to take, as one of my electives, a Caribbean literature class. And really, it was postcolonial literature. I had read Jane Eyre in high school as well. And I love that speech that Jane gives to Mr. Rochester. I'm also a gentleman-- all this stuff, the feminist speech.

And then I read Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, which was a direct response to Jane Eyre. And for those of you who've read that book or are familiar with Bronte's novel, Jane is going to marry Mr. Rochester. They're all set. It's like the Cinderella kind of story. And then she finds out that he has a wife who has gone insane and is shut up into the attic of their house and sets the whole house on fire. And it's kind of a crazy thing if you think about it, but you don't really hear a lot from her. And so Jean Rhys-- the author, Jean Rhys-- gave her a voice in the form of Antoinette Cosway.

And so Wide Sargasso Sea-- reading that-- our professor, the role of a good teacher, had us read Jane Eyre again, and then had us read Wide Sargasso Sea as a conversation piece. And reading those two things, it was so eye-opening. I think what you said is so true. These words never really fit in my mouth very well. But to hear the response to it revealed a desire I didn't know that I'd had to hear more.

And then the next class-- I don't know if it was-- it was not the same professor, but it was another conversation between Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Achebe's Things Fall Apart. And to me, that was so moving to hear the response and the humanity being provided and saying that this is just as valid as this colonial view and gaze on things. And it really opened my eyes to the gaze that I had been operating under and that I didn't realize always felt a little lacking to me.

So those were the two experiences where I was like, oh, all of literature is a conversation. And that extended to my appreciation for the craft and how different these books were, like you said, Laura, crafted in the art of writing. And so those books really got me thinking, when I open a book, what is this going to say, and what other conversation is it going to bring up in me from the other things I've read? And that's the part I really like the most about it.

And then just like you, Kofi, at the same time, there were other books-- pieces that were stirring in me, like this desire to create as well. And for me, it came in the form of poetry. In college, it wasn't really there in my freshman and sophomore years. In fact, I hated poetry, like a lot of people. And then I decided, on a whim, to apply for this poetry seminar that-- you had to get accepted to get into these workshops. So I was like, I'll just try, and then I got accepted into these workshops. And there is where I really was open to what poetry can do in a very distilled form.

And I think it takes me back, now that I think about it, to that soliloquy, that Hamlet soliloquy. The sonnets of Shakespeare's was, I think, to me, the most powerful over everything. So the idea of what can you do in a distilled form, where each line carries a lot of weight and matters.

And so when I started reading poems, it was the poems that had a very strong image at the center of it that really made me want to write out my own images, the things that I was seeing around me. So one of the first ones I read was Elizabeth Bishop's "The Fish." Oh, my god. I loved this poem so much because of how she commits to the image of this fish that she catches. It really made me think about-- it's saying something without saying something. And I really-- that one really stuck with me.

And then all these other poems, Like, I wrote some of them down. I was thinking about what poems, really, I had been reading at that time. Yusef Komunyakaa-- I remember reading "Fast Break" for the first time. It's a poem about basketball. And the way that he writes the poem and uses line break, imagery, rhyme, rhythm to pace it, like a fast break, like in basketball, like, a fast break-- I thought it was so cool. I was like, wow. You can really shape and bend language like that.

Even Philip Larkin's-- this "Be the Verse." It's a very famous poem that is in a blank verse, I believe, and it has a very fixed rhyme and meter scheme. And the first line is-- I'm not going to use the curse word. But the first line is, "They F you up, your mom and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had and add some extra, just for you." And then it keeps going. And I just loved almost the playfulness, too, but the subject matter was actually quite serious.

And then towards the later, I really appreciated hearing the writers who were writing from an immigrant experience like Edwidge Danticat, Jamaica Kincaid, who are looking at things from the outside in. Those are the pieces of writing that really just made me think, wow, language is so varied and vast and really cool, and to see it-- the best novels and the fiction and even nonfiction, I find, are the ones that are poetic in that way, where it's not overly flowery language. I don't really like that. But it's showing restraint in the language. And that restraint is what draws you in, more so than the plot, if that makes sense.

This is why I think George Saunders's writing sometimes, because when he wrote Lincoln in the Bardo, I felt like that was a lot of restraint that he practiced. But he was getting away with some really-- I was like, how is he doing this? And it's very piecemeal and fragmented. It's not everybody's cup of tea, but I just really thought it was so interesting how he was controlling the language to do what he needed it to do. Anyways, so yeah, that's my literary journey.

KOFI ADISA: 

That is a very interesting literary journey. When we talk about craft, though-- and I sometimes think about craft as more about the choices you make during the editing and revising process, as opposed to the actual story creation. But I think you can really see the impact of craft, probably mostly in poetry--

SYLVIA LEE:

I agree.

KOFI ADISA: 

--than you can in the short story or the novel, because you are dealing with the economy of words. And every verb or adjective has a powerful meaning in a way that-- you might paint a scene in a short story that emotes something, but if you have four lines that say so many things, and yet it's still just four lines, that is craftsmanship at its highest level, in my opinion.

LAURA YOO:

I remember in one of grad school classes, we had to do research. And the research-- we had to look at different versions, like manuscripts, of-- going to archives and look at different versions of this one particular poem, and to see the journey from beginning to end, as in how it was eventually published. And I remember that being really eye-opening. It did not look like how it started, the end version.

And you can see the-- because this is what I meant earlier about-- I'm always curious, when I open a book, what are you doing in this book? So I'm thinking of the author, not only what is happening in the book-- what is the author doing, comparing different drafts of a poem, for example, like, oh, you can see what they're doing, kind of, a little bit of the choices that they're making and things being scratched out.

And that, too, also adds to my real interest in book as a thing. And that's why I still don't read on Kindle. I can't do it. I really like books, and that's why I carry books with me. You can see my post-it notes and all that. So the materiality of books, I think, is also really interesting. So when I open a book and I see weird things going on, like little weird gaps or weird drawings or how a paper feels, I think all of that adds to that idea of, what are you doing in this book?

SYLVIA LEE:

That reminded me of-- in one of my undergrad classes, the professor had us buy this book. It was the facsimile of TS Eliot's The Wasteland. So you could see all the copies, the notes that he and Ezra Pound wrote to each other and stuff like that. And at first, I was like, why do I have to buy this giant-- it's huge, too. It's a giant book. It didn't fit in my book bag.

But I remember reading through it. I was like, this is so fascinating to see the facsimile copies of his handwriting, like scratching things out, and then getting closer to what you see.

And then I think Mark Strand, the poet, Mark Strand, for his book Man and Camel-- he came out with this illustrated copy of him drafting these poems for this book and with the illustrations, because he was also an artist, in between. And you could see, literally, the journey of the poem from beginning to the end version of it. And it was-- to your point, it's so fascinating to see how the craft played out. I don't think you can see that as much in novels, even though you know it's even more substantial, the editing process and all of that.

KOFI ADISA: 

Yeah, I don't know. I know when I've been toying with writing novels, something that I do-- and I did it even with some nonfiction-- I keep all my drafts, and I date them, not in a romantic way, but in a numeric way.

[laughter]

I give the exact date in which I either stopped or began a new draft. And the interesting thing is, I've been doing more academic stuff more than creative writing stuff for the last several years. And I'm trying to get back into the creative stuff, and I'm going back to some short stories that I've been working through.

And when I would go through my folders and I would see all these dates, I was like, man, I wrote a lot of drafts. And when I explained to people my process, it is just that I draft a lot. It takes me a very long time to accomplish writing, because I'm always trying to make it say the way I want it to say, say the things that I wanted to say.

And so I have to draft and draft and draft. It's almost like I'm writing myself into the story or writing the story as I'm drafting and not really plotting it out. But then again, I've not published a novel, so maybe I'm not doing it right. So there's a ways to look at it. [LAUGHS] But I think that process of going over and revising and revising and revising has at least helped me understand my process and my craft and the way I go about doing it. And sometimes it feels like it's working, and other times it feels like I'm just writing a whole bunch of stuff.

LAURA YOO:

Well, and that's partly what we've all come from teaching composition, and that's the basic idea we try to instill in our students, the importance of revision as part of writing. Or, I mean, revision is writing, and writing as revision. And it's hard to convey that to someone who is not interested in the process or is not interested in the craft or what goes into-- or doesn't have that kind of curiosity.

So it does make you wonder, what was it? Obviously, not everybody who took Shakespeare class with Mr. Berkowitz perked up and decided, oh, I'm going to be an English major. But something-- it sort of cracked open something that was already in me, and same for you guys, that opened the door, right?

KOFI ADISA: 

Yeah.

LAURA YOO:

I mean, it wasn't principles of accounting that did it for you.

KOFI ADISA: 

No, it really was not. But there was a couple of things you did mention, Laura, that I wanted to go back to. But at this point, I think for some students, they need to understand that writing-- if you're writing lyrics to a song, you're going to make changes. There's always going to be some level of revision.

I think the way that students are introduced to writing is often not the way I was introduced to writing. I was introduced to writing through reading and not through assignments. So--

SYLVIA LEE:

Yes. And if you had an assignment, it was based off of that reading. So you really had to know-- so as you guys were just talking, and especially when you were talking about your revision process, Kofi, I was thinking-- I was actually doing some writing this morning, and I haven't-- for myself, and I haven't done that in a long time.

And as I was writing, I was thinking-- it's always the struggle. And I think it's what calls me to read good stuff. I'm always wondering, did you know what the end destination was going to be? And how did you know that? That's the area I struggle with the most. Sometimes I have a very clear vision for what it's supposed to sound like, like it's too short. There's something missing. The pacing is off.

But then most of the time, I feel like I start off with an idea or an image, and then I'm grappling around. And this is the process, I think, of any writing, is you're just grappling around. And then you pull things in as they're-- this is why I think the imagination is fascinating. As it's connected to other things, you pull that thing in, and you're wrestling with it.

But at what point-- and this is where I struggle. At what point do I go back and I say, OK, this is done; this is it? I think I could revise, forever, certain things. And I just-- at some point, it's done because I give up. I give up. There's nowhere else I can take it.

KOFI ADISA: 

That's when you submit it to a journal.

SYLVIA LEE:

That's right. You're like, I'm done with this. But sometimes I go back-- like with you, I have a lot of stuff in the Google Drive, for example. And I'll go back to different dated versions of it, and I'll compare it. And I'll read it, and I'm like, I actually like that old version a little bit better. And then it keeps going back and forth. But I often wonder, especially as I'm thinking about students writing, and AI, too, where the end destination is often given to you. It's so much faster. But sometimes it might not fit with what you want it to do, and you have to know what that end destination is, or at least have some kind of vague notion of it. And where does that come from?

And I feel like it comes from a deep aesthetic sense, and that-- how do you create and cultivate or curate aesthetics, your own personal style? It comes from, I think, an accumulation of things, knowing yourself, but also what have you read and what has really resonated with you, and how are you kind of bringing that in?

Sometimes when I work with students, especially in a creative writing context, either they don't have the patience for revision or they don't know where they're going with it, or they think it's the most original thing under the sun. I'm like, I hate to break it to you, but there's nothing new under the sun. Everything is a remix of something else. So I think that's interesting. But I love being with students when they find that aha, that thing, that piece of poetry or book that is doing what we just talked about. So anyway.

KOFI ADISA: 

Yeah, I'll just end with this. I don't think everyone is meant to be a writer or a reader. I think some people are good at listening to stories and not necessarily reading them and not necessarily writing them. But I think tuning your ear to how a story can be really, really rich takes a lot of practice. And I don't think a lot of-- not just students, but just people in general-- have that patience. But you know when you are feeling a really good story. You're like, oh, my god. I want to see that again or read it again or hear it again. But yeah, so this has been great.

I want to say-- when you were talking about Edward P. Jones earlier-- we did an episode on "The First Day." And-- because I kept assigning that story in my lit classes, and making the students listen to our podcast, that I kept reading it every semester, because I'd go in to teach it. So when you mentioned Edward P Jones, I thought of that story because that is where we see the thing that the author is doing, as evidenced in the text itself. And every time I read the story, there's something else there to discover.

And so I think you talking about practice of reading-- I think that's really important. It's not that it comes to you naturally. But just like writing, reading takes practice, too, to be a kind of a reader that you want to be.

KOFI ADISA: 

Absolutely.

SYLVIA LEE:

Yeah. I told Frank this morning-- I was like, we're about to have a very nerdy conversation about why we became English majors, but it really is about why we love books, why we love reading. So thank you, everybody, for joining us for this conversation. You can find us wherever, however you find podcasts, Bookish, A Casual Book Club. See you next time.

LAURA YOO:

Bye.

KOFI ADISA: 

Bye-bye.

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SPEAKER: Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed what you just heard, we have a whole universe of podcasts waiting for you. Simply search Dragon Podcasts wherever you get your podcasts. You can also explore our full lineup and discover new shows at podbean.com/dragonpodcasts. That's podbean.com/dragonpodcasts.

Outro

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Podcast Producer:

Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed what you just heard, we have a whole universe of podcasts waiting for you. Simply search Dragon Podcasts wherever you get your podcasts. You can also explore our full lineup and discover new shows at podbean.com/dragonpodcasts. That's podbean.com/dragonpodcasts.

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Literary Roots