Min Jin Lee

Somebody died of cancer.

Somebody was hit by a car.

Somebody was beaten to death.

These are terrible things.

It's not a story.

A story requires recognition and reversal in order to achieve catharsis.

So very often I always feel like that's an incomplete work of art.

And I guess I would have to defend that and just say, go look at Aristotle.

I guess I agree with that old guy.

Yeah.

You wrote Free Food for Millionaires, which was really your third book, but your first to publish.

And you said that the experience over the 12 years that it took for Free Food for Millionaires to be published was a good lesson and that every single writer that you could name, all of the greats,

Thank you so much for having me.

that all the greats were writers before they published their first book, that all the artists were artists before they had their first show.

All of the trying counts is something that I think is one of the most profound things I've ever been able to share with my listeners.

Well, I want to share it and I want for all of us to own it because waiting for the validation or the permission

from some external source that we call the stamp.

It's so deeply hard and unfair, especially for outsiders.

So almost all women who are creators have been outside the gate waiting to be let in, right?

Every woman in the world pretty much.