Susan Choi

And at the same time, I'm kind of furious with my father for not speaking.

My father was beautifully fluent in Korean, Japanese, and English.

just think how cool would it have been if I was fluent in Korean and Japanese, as well as English.

But I can't say the first thing in either of those languages because he never spoke them to me when I was a child.

And the sensibility or the mindset was don't interfere with the English language competency, American identity, you know, like leave all that baggage in the past.

I don't think he could have anticipated how,

amazing I would have found it to be able to speak those languages in adulthood.

So I resent it, frankly, but I understand.

I think that I always wrote.

And it was a matter of realising that you could actually do it for a living, sort of.

I mean, honestly, I don't know if you really can.

But I was from a really early age writing little stories.

It was kind of just a

a pastime or like a way of playing that from really early on, like I would sit at my mom's typewriter and get it all messed up and get her keys stuck together.

But I would make little, you know, stories or I'd like create little books.

And it was so big a part of my life.

I would sometimes actually send my little stories off to the little children's magazine.

I had a very exciting story about a spider that was awarded first place.

Readers five to eight years old, I think.

If I'm being precise.