477. “Faust Meets Galaxy Quest”- Light from Uncommon Stars with Ryka Aoki

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello there! Thank you for inviting me into your eardrums. I’m Sarah Wendell, and this is episode number 477 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. My guest this week is author Ryka Aoki, whose new book Light from Uncommon Stars is out this week. We are going to cover a lot of topics, including transgender identity, found family, space opera, The Brady Bunch, the liminal state of the Olive Garden, chonky books, and what and where is the best doughnut? Light from Uncommon Stars is a really unique and fascinating book, and if you’re curious about it, of course we don’t have any spoilers, but we do take a deep dive into some of the more interesting parts of the research that went into this book.

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Now, we do talk a lot about doughnuts, so if you’re hungry I recommend getting a pastry to listen along. But let’s do this podcast interview. On with my conversation with Ryka Aoki.

[music]

Ryka Aoki: Hi, everybody! My name is Ryka Aoki, and I just finished this novel that’s coming out. It’s called Light from Uncommon Stars, and I, I’m holding it up to a camera, but I know it’s probably not going to be part of a visual shot. [Laughs] And I am an author, and I am a professor. Most of the time I think of myself as a teacher – I teach English at Santa Monica College – but I’ve also written a lot of books with, through the small and queer presses, and this is my first book with a press like Tor’s. I also compose music, and I do martial arts. I teach queer youth and trans women how to protect themselves here in Los Angeles, and I like walks on the beach, and I really like the churros at Disneyland.

Sarah: All right! That doesn’t give me anything to talk about at all. Gosh, this is going to be really challenging.

Ryka: [Laughs]

Sarah: So first, first and foremost: congrats on –

Ryka: Thank you!

Sarah: – Light from Uncommon Stars. Okay, not only is it a gorgeous, gorgeous cover, but it is a gorgeous book. What is your favorite way of describing this story to someone who’s like, oh, you wrote a book! What’s it about? What will, what will readers find in, inside Light from Uncommon Stars?

Ryka: This book covers a few, a few genres.

Sarah: Yeah.

Ryka: People have called it a mashup of science fiction and fantasy, and there is, you know, there’s barbecued duck and viol-, classical music and doughnuts thrown in, and I’ve noticed that when I actually try to laundry-list the book, people just look at me and think – like, I watch them glaze over, much, much like a glazed doughnut, and –

[Laughter]

Ryka: – I have decided that the best way of, of really, a really great new friend of mine – her name is Jenn Lyons; she just wrote this amazing set of books – called Light from Uncommon Stars “Faust” meets Galaxy Quest.

Sarah: Ooh!

Ryka: And I am happy with that. I am really happy with that. So if you think “Faust” meets Galaxy Quest and then you toss in the Asians and the lesbians and the trans people and you put it in San Gabriel Valley and you add doughnuts, we’re there!

Sarah: Yeah! That really –

Ryka: Oh yeah.

Sarah: – does seem to be, yeah!

Ryka: And you should all read Jenn Lyons’s work because she’s just brilliant all the way through.

Sarah: [Laughs] In this book – one of the hardest things for me to do is to do an interview about a book that is coming out because I’ve read it and I want to have a discussion with you that entices other people to buy it, but I don’t want to spoil too much, but there’s so much –

Ryka: Uh-huh!

Sarah: – going on, going on in this book I want to talk about. So there are some wonderful, wonderful major themes: there’s music and family and identity –

Ryka: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – and doughnuts. Now –

Ryka: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: – there’s all of these things going on. When you started writing this story, did you go in with family, queerness, violins, and doughnuts, or did those things evolve as you started putting all of the, all of the pieces together?

Ryka: Some of the themes were – and thank you very much for that; that’s – there are actually not that many themes, but a lot of different manifestations –

Sarah: Yes!

Ryka: – on the themes.

Sarah: Yes.

Ryka: So I knew, for example, that this would be the book that I was hitting my mid-career, I had no Fs to give, I was out, I was trans, there was going to be queer, I was going to put queer front and center. That was one of those things about this book that was non-negotiable. Now, in He Mele a Hilo, the book before that, there wasn’t so much queer stuff, but that was because it was about my childhood, and that was about my family in Hawaii, but this is about Ryka as an adult. You know, speaking of myself in the third person, which I shouldn’t be doing; please pinch me. But –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Ryka: – in any situation the, what, what I was trying to do was write a book about what means a lot to me now. I’ve had friends who I love who, who’ll never get the chance to tell their stories because they didn’t make it, and I wanted to write a book that – it could never encapsulate the beauty of my chosen family, but I wanted to at least allude to them. I wanted to give them some sort of tribute that I love you, and that’s what I really wanted to put in the book, so that was in there, and love was in there.

And I also wanted to write about the San Gabriel Valley for much the same reason: race and community, because the San Gabriel Valley is home to, for those of you who don’t know, it’s, it’s sort of thought of as the Asian-American holy land. This is where we have many Vietnamese, Hmong, even some old Japanese, and all sorts of folks who come from the Chinese diaspora: mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan. We have so much going on there, and on the surface it looks amazing. It looks, it looks prosperous. It looks like “model minority material,” and if you could see me, I’m doing the quotes with my fingers. But also down the street in old Chinatown that was burned because of racism, Santa Anita raceway was an assembly center for Japanese-Americans sent over to be carted away in World War II, and so I wanted to talk about not necessarily gentrification, but change. I think sometimes we gussy up change because we’re afraid of it, so we call it one thing or another, diversity or gentrification, and sometimes those are accurate words, but underneath it all it’s, it’s change, and so I wanted to talk about that. I want to talk about my neighborhood because it’s, I think that it’s – the themes in, in the San Gabriel Valley are happening all over the country, all over the world, that the existing vocabulary for diversity and change aren’t matching what people see in real life, so I wanted to, to touch on that in the book.

So then also with love, I wanted to talk a lot about love, but how was I going to talk about love? I have two characters who are the younger ones: Katrina, who is a violinist, and I have Shirley, who we’ll talk about more later. Shirley’s got all other sorts of issues of being othered. And originally, just using them as an example, I was going to do the natural thing that you do in any queer literature, lit story: you put them in the sack together!

Sarah: [Laughs] Which is hilarious, because Shirley’s actually in a sack!

Ryka: Yes! Yes, there you go, there you go! Oh my God, that’s so well done! Yes, yes, yes!

Sarah: I have to ask: was the choice of Lan’s surname as the Trans, was that a deliberate – please tell me that was deliberate, ‘cause I enjoyed that so much.

Ryka: If you notice, I threw that through the entire thing. Now, I’m not going to – here’s the thing: I’m not going to call, there are many, many people named Tran.

Sarah: Of course!

Ryka: So nobody named Tran, so for those of you named Tran, I did not mean your name as a joke. I did not mean it as a pun.

Sarah: No.

Ryka: But it worked –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Ryka: – and I didn’t change it, and I thought this was a really, really nice theme, and then I extended it towards the end: if you noticed, the last character is somebody who’s named Beltran, which is Beautiful Tran, and so that actually, I wanted to connect that all because I didn’t – here’s the responsibility: you use somebody who’s Asian and you use their name as a joke, we, we, we have this all the time, right, Ching Chang Chinaman, so –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Ryka: – I wanted to make it loving. I wanted to make it just, I wanted to make it respectful, and I wanted to make it community-building, so one of the reasons why at the end I had a, a Latina character come in with a name that evoked that is to show that it resounds.

Sarah: Yeah.

Ryka: That the theme resonates, and I’m not going to leave anybody in the cold. I don’t do that as a human; I don’t do that as a writer.

Sarah: One thing that I particularly loved about the, the use of last name Tran and talking about the Trans family –

Ryka: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm!

Sarah: – what you’re, what you did I loved so much was that you capitalized and made a surname out of Trans as a trans family.

Ryka: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: So you, you made the surname the found-family surname for here around –

Ryka: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – all around Katrina, who, my gosh, she needed a family. I love the way that language folded back on itself. That was so cool.

Ryka: You know, one of the things that – and I’m so glad you brought that up; that’s, you’re the first person to bring that up, and thank you.

Sarah: You’re welcome!

Ryka: The goal was, we understood that two of our characters who were Shizuka, the, the violin teacher, and Lan, the starship space captain, mother of four, doughnut shop owner, scientist – [laughs] – that relationship between those two was a very direct relationship, but what I wanted – and I’m so glad you picked that up – is the other, the other family members, in many, many ways, echo some of the identity struggles that a trans woman goes through.

Sarah: Yeah.

Ryka: And I wanted to do it in a way – we, we live in a world where it’s very, very difficult to, at the risk of getting a little bit deep here, it’s, it’s, this is not the time and place to be a trans woman and ask for empathy. It’s, it’s not happening. So for those of you who do, so have trans, trans people in your lives and are allies and support them, and for those sisters who are listening now, I know it’s not all of us, and I don’t want to make it all doom and gloom – I love you all – but trans folk right now, along with a lot of other things that are happening as the politics of this country become as they are, have, we don’t, we’re in a little bit of danger, and I didn’t, if I started just saying trans people this and transgender people this, I think it would have either, one, come across as too strident or, two, people would have just been turned off by the subject. I wasn’t sure of my readership; I didn’t realize they were as beautiful as the readership that I’m finding right now. I’m so grateful. But I, so I used as a, a device aliens and constructs: people who may in some ways have problems relating to other people. They may care deeply, but they don’t know how to talk. There’s, there’s no vocabulary. These are all things that I wanted to put into that family and hopefully have the reader love that family, and then by extension maybe look at the real world in a different way.

Sarah: And by having this, this family sort of assemble with Katrina at the center, a, an individual who is truly parched for love, like, it –

Ryka: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – by the time Katrina found her people I was like, oh, thank God! [Laughs] I was, it, it, she, she was parched for affection and care that was not a transactional exchange.

Ryka: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: When, when you were speaking earlier I wanted to ask, was Katrina the starting point for this story? Did you begin with Katrina, or did you start with one of the other characters, or did they all sort of show up and be like, hello, here we are?

Ryka: Mm-hmm. Actually, in terms of character, the first character I started off with was Shizuka.

Sarah: Oh!

Ryka: And the reason is, Shizuka’s name in Japanese means quiet; it means silence, and life as a trans woman who is very, very, very, very, very far from perfect and has, you know, gone through wrecked relationships and – not blamelessly, I might say – and has also dealt with transphobia – that’s blameless – you know, and a few other things, there had been so much crazy in the world, and I was thinking for this next book, what do I really want to write about? What do I love? I love music. I, I’m studying Japanese more now, and my Japanese is stronger than it’s ever been. I, I love being me. The world would just shut up and be quiet for a while, I can figure this out! And that’s how Shizuka came. And also I’m at that age right now where a lot of people call me an elder in the community, although I don’t feel like an elder? They, you know, there’s so many young, beautiful, amazing people; they need an elder, sure I’ll do it. And so I, in some ways I identify as much with Shizuka as I do with Katrina.

Sarah: When you were writing Lan and Lan’s family –

Ryka: Mm-hmm? Yes!

Sarah: – how delightful was it to create all of her, of her, of her family and her children? Because every time in the book it was almost like you’re dealing with some stuff as, as a reader, I am, I’m reading some things that are just deeply upsetting and, and hurt my heart, and then you go into the doughnut shop and it is this wonderful breath of, it was like the, the book was taking a break. It’s doughnut shop time!

Ryka: Hey, it’s doughnut shop time!

Sarah: Yes, and it was –

Ryka: Yes!

Sarah: – almost like entering like a really smart, interesting sit-com where you didn’t know what was going on? ‘Cause there’s so many voices. Was it like that for you when you were writing it?

Ryka: I wanted to bring in – I’m just going to go from inner and go to outer – good old-fashioned space opera, just good old-fashioned – and not just space opera – good old-fashioned shows – I’m just dating myself – like The Brady Bunch, okay?

Sarah: Yeah, yeah.

Ryka: They, they, they, for a little queer Asian kid who had no idea what was going on, these were good breaks for me –

Sarah: [Laughs] Yes!

Ryka: – and I would escape into this, sure, Mom! We’re going to do this! That’s right! You know, that kind of thing. Don’t run in the halls! You know, that kind of thing going on, and I wanted to bring that into the doughnut shop. The doughnut shop, for me, is more than a break; it’s, it’s an escape, because they literally are escaping!

Sarah: Yeah!

Ryka: And I want, you know, so we all know that, and even the children know –

Sarah: Yeah.

Ryka: – that they’ve been through a lot, so there’s a bit of bravery even there, and, you know, but is it bravery, or is it, is it denial and trauma? And, and we play with that in the book, and it shows up in different places.

Sarah: Yeah.

Ryka: I, I had so much fun – [laughs] – writing them, so just to answer your question directly, that part really, really made me smile?

Sarah: One thing I loved about Light from Uncommon Stars as a romance reader and, and reviewer was the very, very lovely –

Ryka: Thank you.

Sarah: – slow burn, absolutely the lowest bullshit romance between Shizuka and, and Lan. Just –

Ryka: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – they show up as they are, and they, they are very clear about who they are when they can be, and then they start revealing themselves to each other and they’re like, oh, okay! Yeah, Hell, ‘kay, space, all right, sure! Yep, mm-hmm! Was the romance between them a, a deliberate element? Was it something that you had wanted to incorporate from the start, or did they inspire that connection as you wrote them into being?

Ryka: I ran away from that romance.

Sarah: Oh no!

Ryka: I didn’t, I, I was scared –

Sarah: Oh no!

Ryka: – of that romance, and the reason I was scared of that romance was I didn’t think I could write it. Now here’s what’s going on: how I feel inside, we, as a trans woman, to write a, a, to write two women in love, I know I feel it, but the moment I do it I ask – and all the internalized transphobia comes in, and the self-doubt – am I even qualified to write this? How can, how can I do this? And I know what I want to do, but am I good enough? Am I really a good enough writer to, to do this? So I thought about this a lot, and I thought, is there any way around this? And then, of course, once I realized that the two younger ones weren’t going to carry the romance torch, I was screwed. I had to do it, and so I asked, okay, let’s not worry about the trans part right now. They’re older. At this point in time, they’ve been around the block, they’ve been around the city a few times. Let’s, you know – [laughs] –

Sarah: Lan –

Ryka: – Lan’s, ‘kay, she’s been around the galaxy a few times.

Sarah: I was going to say, she’s been around a couple galaxies, yeah! [Laughs]

Ryka: Yeah! But she still loves her breadsticks, I’ll let you know. But –

Sarah: Bless her heart.

Ryka: [Laughs] But in any case, how would two older people fall in love? They have all the time in the world, but they also know that time is valuable. How do we do this? And then I built them, at first with terror, and then with hope, and then when it finally came out with, if I may be so permitted, pride: I felt really happy that I wrote them out, and I felt, I wanted to tell them both, here’s your life. I’m just so glad I could give you one.

Sarah: Yeah. And, and the thing about the romance that develops through the story is that, you know, obviously, any story, especially romance, thrives on conflict. What are the internal or external or both forces working against these two characters –

Ryka: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – arriving at a happy ending at the end of the book? And for these two characters, their conflicts are kind of everything?

Ryka: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Ev-, everything. Like, not even just the internal emotional conflict of can I have a relationship, or do I know how to relation-, have a relationship? Do I even know how to do this? How much do I tell this person? So they have all of these things working against them, and the more they reveal to each other, the tension still climbs because these issues are so big? So from a construction of the romance standpoint, excellent. Most excellent!

Ryka: Thank you! Again, these are older people. They just don’t have time for it.

Sarah: Yeah.

Ryka: And also, neither of them is particularly hopeful going into this relationship.

Sarah: No.

Ryka: So what allows them to be truthful is, they don’t think anything’s going to happen anyway. I might as well tell you because you’re going to find out, and it’s going to end badly anyway –

Sarah: Yep.

Ryka: – so you might as well know. So a lot of – so I didn’t want it to be, you know, this character and this character in almost an allegorical way – I didn’t, I wanted there to be a reason why these characters are so forthright!

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Ryka: They’re old! They don’t, they’re older; they don’t have time for, for BS. Had this been a younger pair, I don’t think I could have done that.

Sarah: No.

Ryka: But it’s because they both escaped and they’d both been damned and they both understood that, you know, I don’t have time.

Sarah: Yeah!

Ryka: And, and that’s what I wanted, I think I wanted to give. It’s really interesting writing romance about older characters. The story develops in a different way, and my gosh, it was so much fun to write this?

Sarah: Yeah.

Ryka: They’re, they’re coming in, because what they represent is not going to make me resolve. There’s science and there’s art; that doesn’t ever resolve, nor should it. So what I found is how they can help each other and complement each other. I very much wanted to keep this relationship complementary, where even at the end, they’re still bickering like an old married couple –

Sarah: Yep.

Ryka: – because that’s where they’re going to spend the rest of eternity. And I, you know, and they can help each other, but I also wanted each character to reveal a very different side of, of the other character. You know, Shizuka, who’s very, very fearsome and respected, but when, when she’s with Lan, then we see a different side, and, and the same way. And I’ll leave it there ‘cause I don’t want to spoil.

Sarah: Yeah. I mean, this fearsome, deeply intimidating, scary talented individual brings Lan to Olive Garden! Love it! I love it so much!

Ryka: And Lan loves it!

Sarah: Yes!

Ryka: And –

Sarah: They’ll, they’ll, they’ll bring more breadsticks? Yes! Yes, they will.

[Laughter]

Ryka: I’m so glad you like that part! I, I have been in Olive Gardens with too many brilliant queers not to have written a story like that, in Olive Gardens and the metaphorical Olive Gardens. We end up somewhere in the middle of who-knows-where and, you know, I’m thinking, you know, I want to just give you Pulitzer prizes. These aren’t dollar bills, these are Pulitzers and, and MacArthurs, because you’re all so brilliant. I’m just going to sit here with my zucchini and just watch you talk and pick up as much as I can, and, and I think that we, sometimes when we go into these places, you know how they say there’s flyover states, you know, sometimes there’s, like, flyover franchises and flyover people –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Ryka: – and, and yet there – nobody really is a flyover person; there’s always amazing magic going on everywhere –

Sarah: Yeah.

Ryka: – and that’s why I put it in the Olive Garden as opposed to something trendy in, in West LA.

Sarah: Well, I mean, one, when, when you’re there, you’re family, which is –

Ryka: Yeah!

Sarah: – major theme! And, and breadsticks, obviously.

Ryka: And breadsticks! Oh my God!

Sarah: Breadsticks and the, and the never-ending cheese – I actually own one of those cheese graters where you spin the dial and the cheese comes out?

Ryka: Oh my gosh, yes!

Sarah: Yeah.

Ryka: Yes. And you know, breadsticks are kind of like, you know –

Sarah: Savory doughnuts.

Ryka: Exact-, exactly. Savory doughnuts: you know, it’s, you know, if you think about, they’re these straight, not very sweet, not very spectacular doughnuts, so they’re the, you know, they’re the heterosexual version of what a doughnut is.

[Laughter]

Ryka: A lit-, a little salty, very straight –

Sarah: Yeah.

Ryka: – I guess, and, and they’re always available. [Laughs]

Sarah: And, yeah, they’re everywhere; they’re ubiquitous.

Ryka: They’re everywhere!

Sarah: They’re ubiquitous.

Ryka: They’re everywhere!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Ryka: Uh-huh.

Sarah: Now, I have to ask about the music part of this, of this story.

Ryka: Of course!

Sarah: Did you, did you take apart a violin as part of, of the research process, or did you watch a luthier do surgery?

Ryka: Yes!

Sarah: I had no idea that was a thing, and I absolutely loved this whole, nonono, we don’t tell the musicians about this part.

Ryka: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Is that real?!

Ryka: Okay, so, when I was learning how to, to work with violins, I, I was told by the person who was introducing me to the violin, this is it, and this is how you do this and this, and it was all very, it was like an owner’s manual for a car. You know, this is where the ignition is, this is how you start it, this is how you open the gas tank, but it told me nothing about what was under the hood –

Sarah: Yep.

Ryka: – and I found this very curious because she’s an accomplished violinist. I went to talk to luthiers at that point, and I bought a couple books on how to construct a violin and just looking at the various parts, and that wasn’t to teach me the violin culture; I just wanted to go into a luthier shop and not sound stupid.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Ryka: So I, I built up the vocabulary so I could talk, you know, luthier talk, and I said that I was writing a novel and I batted my eyelashes, and they let me into the workshop! And I, I, I was – and I listened.

Sarah: Yeah.

Ryka: I listened to them talk, and I listened, and I’d occasionally say something like, you know, what does a luthier look for in a violin? If you were building a violin and somebody was looking at your violin, what would you like them to notice? Oh, the scroll! Oh yes, the scroll! Why the scroll? [Laughs] And, you know, oh, because it just starts from the end and goes out and it’s beautiful, and that’s where we really get to express our, our artistry, in the carving of the scroll. Okay, I’m writing all of this down, and, and I’m smelling the varnish, and I’m looking at the tools, and I’m having a wonderful, wonderful time. Then later I’m looking on YouTube, and there, and I’m looking at the violin videos because that was part of my research, and there was this video from this comedy duo called TwoSet Violin. There are these two Asian violinists from Perth, or I don’t know if, no, they’re from Sidney. They’re from somewhere in Australia, and they go into a violin shop. The luthier takes one of the violins and goes pow, and, and the faceplate comes off, and they, they just lose their shit.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Ryka: And, and, and I’m thinking, you know, that’s right, because they’re, in some ways the violin is a part of them; they’ve extend-, it becomes an extension of their body, and, and they’ve just seen somebody, you know, cut their chest open, boom, on video, and –

Sarah: [Chokes] Yeah!

Ryka: – and, and then he says, that’s why we don’t show violinists this.

Sarah: What we do. [Laughs]

Ryka: And then at that point I go, oh, I’m going to so run with this.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Ryka: I’m going to so run with this. So just a quick shout-out: the people in the violin community, the, the repair, the luthiers that I visited and all of that, I just, they were really nice to me. They, they really, they really helped me with this book. I, I do a shout-out at the end of the book, but I just wanted to say, you know, if you make violins, you’re doing, you’re doing the Goddess’s work, and thank you so much.

Sarah: It’s like all, so it’s almost like watching surgery on a body on YouTube, which, I mean, you can watch, you can watch autopsies if you want to. You, you’re not used to –

Ryka: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – seeing the inside parts. It’s a little alarming when you see them unexpectedly just pop the front of the violin off. Ah, guts! [Laughs]

Ryka: I was actually, you know, typing all of this, and there must have been something in my key words on YouTube, because suddenly I got all of these videos for surgeries –

Sarah: Ah!

Ryka: – and people popping pimples.

Sarah: Oh no!

Ryka: And I don’t, I don’t really like that sort of thing at all, so I just –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Ryka: – that was one of the worst parts of doing this research: people thought I really was into dissection, which I’m not.

Sarah: No!

Ryka: You know, I, maybe if I write horror I’ll be doing that, but I, I will tell you if I ever write horror there will be no pimple-popping, because no! No. No.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Ryka: No, no, no! All right, so anyway. [Laughs] I don’t know how much of this makes it into the podcast, but there you are.

[Laughter]

Sarah: This is the key question for this, for this whole conversation.

Ryka: Yes!

Sarah: What is the ideal and most perfect doughnut flavor or filling? If you have a top three, that’s also fine, ‘cause I would have a very hard time narrowing it down to one.

Ryka: Mm-hmm. So this is a personal list.

Sarah: Yes.

Ryka: As in being transgender, there are many ways to do it. There’s no right, and there’s no wrong. Doughnuts are fluid. Thank you.

Okay, with that disclaimer – [laughs] – I, the first doughnut is very, very personal because I think of Hawaii, and I think of my uncle, and I think of the Big Island, and I think of my grandmother, and that’s a malasada, which is a Portuguese doughnut in Hawaii from Tex Drive-In in Honokaa in northern, on the northern part of the Big Island, and malasadas are, are a Hawaiian thing, and I mentioned that not in this book, I mention it in He Mele a Hilo, which is the previous book. And they are these, the original doughnuts are sort of like something somebody would eat at Hanukkah – it’s bread; it’s fried – but it’s Portuguese, and it’s light and it’s fluffy, and then they also fill the inside now with Boston cream filling, and it’s just such a post-colonial smorgasbord of God knows what, but somehow it’s beautiful, it fits in your hand, and it tastes wonderful. So I love that doughnut.

Sarah: I have to share with you –

Ryka: Mm-hmm?

Sarah: – my, my theory of, of human love? I’ve said this –

Ryka: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: – on other podcasts. Talk about food a lot on my show ‘cause you’re going to read, you’re going to eat.

Ryka: Yeah!

Sarah: My, my theory of universal human love is that the purest expression of human love is that you take a food and you put the food inside of a dough, and then you cook it, and this in every culture –

Ryka: Yes!

Sarah: – is the expression of human love, whether it’s dim sum or doughnuts. In all of the different cultures there’s a food that’s inside a dough that is cooked, and in every culture –

Ryka: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: – that is the greatest expression of love, so I love, I love discovering another form of human love in doughnut form!

Ryka: I will – [laughs] – I will tell you not just with doughnuts, but in my work, just, just, you know, just sort of like a, a pro tip, analyzing my work: trace the pork buns.

Sarah: [Laughs] I will do!

Ryka: Trace the pork buns. They show up a lot –

Sarah: Yeah.

Ryka: – in my work.

Sarah: Yeah?

Ryka: But yeah, that’s, yeah. And so just trace the pork buns. And the other two doughnuts –

Sarah: Yes please!

Ryka: – that I really like is the Kindle’s Texas doughnut, which is in south LA. It’s called Kindle’s Donuts, and it’s one of the giant doughnuts that’s in Los Angeles, and the Texas doughnut is referred to in the book, and it exists; it’s a thing. It’s about like yay big, and it’s fluffy, and the lady says, oh, Texas doughnut! You like Texas doughnut! It’s really good! It big, but it good for you – her. And so it’s, it’s there, so you go, you get it. It’s a nice doughnut. There’s Randy’s Donuts, which is a really big doughnut. They’ve got great doughnuts too, but Kindle’s is another big doughnut in LA. Their Texas doughnut: to die for! Mm. Mm-hmm, yeah.

Sarah: And it’s a, it’s a massive, very fluffy, light glazed, right?

Ryka: Yes! Hai! So it is! Yes, absolutely!

So that one, and then my, you know, my doughnut from high school is the Uncle Joe’s apple fritter, which is, again, about the size of a, you know, of a small asteroid but here, and it’s got chunks of apple, so you can feel, you can fool yourself into thinking you’re just eating an apple pie that had had a horrible transporter accident –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Ryka: – and it’s got sugar all over it, and it’s, it’s, it’s a mess. It’s like the ambergris of apple fritter, but it’s so yummy, and you just eat that and it’s lovely. Mm-hmm.

And so those are my three doughnuts. If you want an elegant doughnut, Mister Donut in Shimokitazawa in Japan has, like, the daintiest, most ladylike doughnuts, if you want to feel that way, which I sometimes do, and that’s really nice too.

Those are my doughnuts.

Sarah: Those are good doughnuts! Those are really good doughnuts.

Ryka: Oh my God! Those are good doughnuts, and I’d love to hear other people’s doughnut recommendations. You know, so if you’re listening to this –

Sarah: And you want to –

Ryka: – drop me an email –

Sarah: Yeah.

Ryka: – tell me about an unre-, just this doughnut that I need to have.

Sarah: And the thing about a doughnut, it is, it is deeply indulgent, but it is, it is – I mean, unless you’re talking about the Texas doughnut – in the most cases it’s a manageable size.

Ryka: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: You know?

Ryka: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: So you’re getting this incr-, it’s, it’s like smaller than a cupcake, less of a commitment than a cupcake, but enough of a treat, especially when you get all the toppings involved, right?

Ryka: Absolutely! And, and, and doughnut, doughnut culture has expanded. Now there’s like some, there are some doughnut shops that I feel like I need to dress up to go into.

Sarah: Oh, right? Yeah!

Ryka: You know, there are, like, yeah! What’s with, what’s, what’s with, like, you know, what’s with the sort of uppity fancy doughnuts? But, you know, we’ll do it. You know, there, there’s a doughnut shop nearby, and, and they will, they have literally garnished their doughnuts, it’s a dragon fruit doughnut garnished with an orchid –

Sarah: Ohhh!

Ryka: – and you just kind of go in there and go, can we still call you a doughnut?

Sarah: Yeah!

Ryka: Do we have to – those are those doughnuts where I have to put the G, the, sort of the O, D-O-U-G-H, doughnut.

Sarah: Yeah.

Ryka: I have to use the full name because they’re –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Ryka: – they’re far too fancy. [Laughs]

Sarah: That’s the, that’s the kind of doughnut where if you bring it home, like, you have to dress up to go to the bakery; I might have to, like, comb my hair and put on some mascara before I eat it. Like –

Ryka: Yeah!

Sarah: – it’s, it’s a, it’s a doughnut that –

Ryka: And then you have to kind of say something in, my driver was sick and – [laughs] – some sort of a thing because you’re, you’re approaching this doughnut anyway, yeah, yeah.

Sarah: That’s a next-level doughnut.

Ryka: Mm-hmm! [Laughs]

Sarah: So in, in addition to book launch, which is an all-consuming thing –

Ryka: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – what are you, what are you working on right now?

Ryka: Well, right now I am working on the bookplates for the book launch as, as we speak, so these, I, I did something really dumb: I decided to make the bookplates complicated, so, like, I’ve got these, like, little bookplates –

Sarah: Yeah.

Ryka: – and I drew a koi on them and, and this koi says, will you be my doughnut? And so I have to draw, though. I’ve got two hundred bookplates, and I’m at maybe, I’ve got to draw maybe about a hundred and twenty more koi, and I have to tell you, after about the, maybe about the thirtieth or fortieth koi you’re just thinking, why am I drawing fish?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Ryka: So I’m doing that. So, so there’s a lot of book promo things. I have, the, the, the publicist, Carol Perny, who has been working with me. That, you know, has been beautiful and, but there’s just been a lot of work.

Besides that, though, I am also working on my next-next book. I’m about forty thousand words, fifty thousand words into my next-next book, which is in-universe with Light from Uncommon Stars. It’s not a direct sequel, but you, you’ll see – yeah. There, there, there are some Easter eggs, shall we say.

And then I’ve also been asked to write a lot of essays, and I think I’m eventually – not eventually – I’m actually working on a way to show some more of my essays online, so just more on that coming, rykaryka.com, but I noticed when I was doing my research for this book, the last book, the other book, I learned some neat things, and I just want to talk about them.

Sarah: Yeah, for sure!

Ryka: So, so that’s coming up. Again, rykaryka.com. Just stick around; it’s coming. It’s the new semester at Santa Monica College, so it’s, a lot of it is just, I love teaching, but we’re getting a new semester started, and if you’re, if you’re a student out there, I feel for you.

Sarah: Yeah.

Ryka: We’ll, we’ll, we’ll get you. We’ll take care of you.

And so that’s kind of what I am, that’s kind of what I’m up to. It’s been busy. This has been about, I was telling some of my really close friends, I don’t believe I’ve ever been busier in my life!

Sarah: Yep! And book launch takes over everything, doesn’t it?

Ryka: Book launch takes over everything, but since – and, and it has a way – you know like they say at Disneyland you can walk like ten miles and not know it because you’re just going from place to place ‘cause everything is so shiny?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Ryka: That’s how I feel with the book launch, you know, that everything is so new and so shiny, and I have these bookplates and their scent, and I want to do good things because I really love my readers and everything, but at the end of the day I have a couple close friends going, make sure you hydrate.

Sarah: Yeah!

[Laughter]

Sarah: Don’t forget to sleep and drink water; it’s very important.

Ryka: Don’t forget to sleep and drink water, and you know, sometimes I need that. And so –

Sarah: Oh yeah, just a little!

Ryka: Mm-hmm. So that is what, that’s what I’m up to. For the, you know, it’s like, I don’t mean that to scare anybody from –

Sarah: No.

Ryka: – doing this. It’s –

Sarah: It’s the reality!

Ryka: Yeah. You know, instead of working for the Man, I get to work for the trans, queer, Asian woman, and that’s a better person to work for.

Sarah: As, as someone who is self-employed, though not trans nor Asian, I understand the sentiment very much.

Ryka: Yes. Hey, here’s to us. Yay!

Sarah: Woohoo!

Ryka: Okay, woohoo!

Sarah: I always, I, I said this so many times: good news! You’re in charge! Bad news: you’re in charge. [Laughs]

Ryka: Yeah! Yeah. I have to, like, I get an extension on my taxes, but that’s coming up in a month and a half. Ha-ha-ha-ha.

Sarah: Ugh.

Ryka: Okay, so anyway.

[Laughter]

Sarah: So I always ask this question: what books are you reading that you would like to tell people about? Any genre –

Ryka: Okay.

Sarah: – you do not have to limit it. Tell me about all the books, ‘cause we read everything.

Ryka: Okay. So right now I’m not doing much, much reading ‘cause I’m writing. However –

Sarah: And drawing koi.

Ryka: – I’m going to plug my really good friend Jenn Lyons, and The Ruin of Kings is the first book in the series. These are chonky books; I mean, these are big, thick books, and if we’re –

Sarah: That is a big book!

Ryka: – if we’re in lockdown, I believe Jenn is on her fifth book right now in this series. It is a spectacular series. If you don’t like a character don’t worry, because she’ll probably take that character down if you hang out. It’s kind of like New England weather: don’t like where things are? Wait a, wait a minute. And I have no idea how somebody can be this smart and this brilliant through five books, but that’s one.

The, the other two books that I, I haven’t read yet but I really want to read when, when time permits is Nghi Vo’s The Chosen and the Beautiful. Now, I’m an English professor, you know. I don’t particularly like The Great Gatsby because I find The Great Gatsby to be an elitist mess. Nghi fixes it, and so I want to read her take on it, and I, I’ve, I’ve just read so many things about this book that I just can’t wait to, you know, get my little paws on it.

And the other book that I’m really looking forward to read, which comes completely from a different, different direction is a novella called Nothing But Blackened Teeth, and that’s from the writer Cassandra Khaw.

Sarah: Oh!

Ryka: And it’s a novella, and I don’t even know Cassandra, but I, the book is, I found out they come from a gaming tradition, so they’re, they’re gaming writers and they’re, they’re writing, and so I really want to see how they plot out. But mostly this book is about the Heian period and Japanese yokai and things like that, and because I’m going to be, I’m, I’m researching yokai right now for my book and I just want to see how other people handle them, and I hear that they’re a brilliant writer, I’m looking forward to seeing what they do as well.

So that’s Nothing But Blackened Teeth from Cassandra Khaw, The Chosen and the Beautiful from Nghi Vo, and The Ruin of Kings and all the other books from Jenn Lyons. Those are my three.

Sarah: That’s brilliant! Well, thank you so much for, for doing this interview. I really appreciate your time!

Ryka: Oh my gosh! I, I appreciate your time; I appreciate the time of everyone reading. You know, whenever, whenever anybody reads a book, I know it sounds really corny, but they’re giving a significant portion of their lives –

Sarah: Sure!

Ryka: – to be in my playground, and, just, I can’t be, I can’t be more grateful. Thank you.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you to Ryka Aoki for hanging out and talking with me. Thank you to her publicist Caro for setting this up.

If you would like to find out more about this book or about any of the things we talked about, including the doughnut locations, everything is in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

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Now, you know I want to hear your doughnut recommendations, right? I want to know where you think the best doughnut is or where I should go and buy my next doughnut, because now, of course, I want to eat doughnuts. You can email me at [email protected], or if that is not going to stick in your memory, Sarah with an H at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books dot com [[email protected]]. It all ends up in the same place, but I do love hearing from you, so please tell me, tell me about doughnuts. I really need to know about doughnuts.

I always end with a bad joke. This week is no exception, because why would I do that to you? It’s the best part of the podcast, right? This joke is from listener Emily Jane. Thank you, Emily Jane! You ready for an outstandingly wonderful joke that you will tell everyone you know? Of course! Let’s do this.

Did you hear about the trouble with the new professional Hide and Seek league?

Yeah, good players, hard to find.

[Laughs] It is so silly, I love it! Thank you, Emily Jane! I love a good terrible joke.

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend, and we’ll see you back here next week.

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find more outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at frolic.media/podcasts.

[mellow music]