美国国家公共电台 NPR In 'Emergency Contact,' Finding A Safe Space In Texts

 

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

How do we find a real connection in a device-reliant world? In Mary H.K. Choi's debut¹ novel, "Emergency Contact," Penny and Sam strike up a text-based romance and soon become take-your-phone-to-the-bathroom inseparable. But for different reasons, they have trouble making it real.

Mary H.K. Choi joins me now from our studios in Culver City, Calif., to talk about her book. Hi.

MARY H.K. CHOI: Hi, how are you?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I'm great. So, I guess let's start with these two characters, Penny and Sam. Who are they at the start of this book?

CHOI: So, at its start, Penny, who is a Korean-American person, is going off to college and Sam is in the throes of the worst breakup. He's kind of - he's homeless adjacent, and he's dealing² with a lot of anxiety and panic.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: And they kind of have this - not a meet-cute, which is what they're normally called when you have romantic leads meeting. It was a meet-anxiety.

CHOI: Yes, it's definitely sort of meet-harrowing rather than meet-cute. Sam sort of has this panic attack on the street. And Penny, who is the type of person who would normally just sort of keep it moving and be like, ooh, someone else will deal with this, but she sees him, and she reaches out to him. And they become each other's emergency contact.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: What does that mean to you - emergency contact?

CHOI: It's that you have someone holding you down. And it might not be the person that you've thought it would be in terms of, like, it might not be your parent. It might not be your caregiver. It might not even be the most, I guess, Orthodox definition of who you're, like, besty is. It could be just someone else who makes the world feel like a safer space. It's like the tether to the spaceship when you're kind of like freefall floating out in outer space.

And I really liked the idea, too, of having that be someone who lives inside your phone...

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Right.

CHOI: ...Because you have that person in your, you know, literal back pocket but it's unencumbered by all this pressure of how you look, how they look. Like, is it romantic? Like, am I funny enough? Is that person thinking about how my hair is greasy³? Do I have a zit? Like, it doesn't have all of the stress of that, especially if you're, like, cognitively⁴ a little bit atypical and you struggle with different visual cues or timing⁵ for who's speaking next. And, you know, I find texting to be kind of a safe space.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: There are a lot of other themes in this book, which I want to talk to you about - race, class, friendship. Why did you want to tackle all of that in a YA novel?

CHOI: The thing that I find interesting about teens now is that no matter how desperate we seem to be taxonomically othering them for one reason or another - because the internet, because whatever - you know, I feel like a lot of the benchmarks and the experiences are, you know, same for teens through time immemorial.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Hm.

CHOI: And I wanted an old-school teen story that still had technology and felt very, very contemporary but with a lot of the sort of, like, bigger themes that are very real. Because teens now, it's this dual⁶ thing where they're either like super precocious⁷ because they're so good at the Internet and they're like YouTube billionaires or they're hopeless and they're depressed⁸ and, like, anxiety-ridden and overmedicated. And I wanted to give them credit. And I wanted to let them know that they're seen in some way.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: There's also another powerful theme in this book, and that is sexual assault. And Penny has an experience in her past.

CHOI: Right. It's funny - well, not funny, but people have described "Emergency Contact" as funny. And while it is really, really funny in moments, I definitely always kind of want to throw an asterisk⁹ on that because, to your point, there should be a trigger warning to this book about the sexual assault in it.

And Penny has an experience where, you know - and she's like me. She's an indoor cat. Like, she is very into, like, climate conditioning. She loves computer - like, she loves the Internet. And, you know, she has a lot of social issues outside. And, so, she befriends someone who is a trusted person. And basically he betrays that trust and sexually assaults her. And for a long, long time, her brain can't compute¹⁰ that.

And I feel like if someone is exposed to the #MeToo movement or Weinstein or Bill Cosby through the Internet, and if someone is in a position of seeing what they think, like, sexual trauma¹¹ looks like or what the right type of victim is, it can be really confusing about how to define their own experiences. And I had a personal experience where, for a long, long time, I was gaslighting myself into thinking that one experience was not as big a deal as I thought it was. And...

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I'm assuming you're saying that you had an experience with sexual assault.

CHOI: Sexual assault, yeah. And it was really, really painful because I just - there is just a discord¹². And I was thinking about how there's so much conversation about mutually affirmative consent, and we all know the language, and we all know the conversations, but in each moment, when it's just two people and you're wildy inexperienced, like, you don't know what that's supposed to feel like a lot of the time.

And I wanted to introduce some of that ambiguity¹³ back in like a blameless way where I wanted it to be OK for Penny to admit that she was sexually assaulted. And I wanted her to be OK with the fact that she did not want to tell anyone because I do think that there are situations in which you feel pressure to do one thing or another.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah, to just speak out.

CHOI: To speak out.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: There is a lot of pressure to be public about what's happened to you.

CHOI: There is a lot of pressure. And the thing I'm not saying - I'm not saying that you shouldn't say anything. But what I'm saying is that you don't have to be any type of person in that moment because you are absolutely blameless. And that's something that took me a really, really long time and also a lot of therapy to sort of get to.

I say that it's kind of a time capsule in terms of me writing YA. It kind of does go both ways. It's more like a portal, which is like if I can at all share any wisdom that I've collected over my many, many years on planet Earth and if I can tell it to someone who's younger than me that they can use, like, that's great. It's like, you know, "Back To The Future" when Biff has, like, the almanac and makes all those bets and is, like, suddenly really, really rich in the future. It's like kind of that. If I can enrich anyone before they get to where I am at, like, I think that that is time well spent. And I would love to keep putting my weight behind it.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Mary H.K. Choi's new novel is "Emergency Contact." Thank you very much.

CHOI: Thank you.

1 debut   

n.首次演出，初次露面

参考例句：

• That same year he made his Broadway debut, playing a suave radio journalist.在那同一年里，他初次在百老汇登台，扮演一个温文而雅的电台记者。
• The actress made her debut in the new comedy.这位演员在那出新喜剧中首次登台演出。

2 dealing   

n.经商方法，待人态度

参考例句：

• This store has an excellent reputation for fair dealing.该商店因买卖公道而享有极高的声誉。
• His fair dealing earned our confidence.他的诚实的行为获得我们的信任。

3 greasy   

adj. 多脂的，油脂的

参考例句：

• He bought a heavy-duty cleanser to clean his greasy oven.昨天他买了强力清洁剂来清洗油污的炉子。
• You loathe the smell of greasy food when you are seasick.当你晕船时，你会厌恶油腻的气味。

4 cognitively   

参考例句：

• Cognitively,man,the subject of cognition,must classify and categorize the objects. 从认知学角度来看 ，作为认知主体的人对于认知对象必须进行分类和范畴化。 来自互联网
• Cognitively, reference can be studied along with information processing of human mind. 从认知的角度看，要研究人类思维的信息处理过程。 来自互联网

5 timing   

n.时间安排，时间选择

参考例句：

• The timing of the meeting is not convenient.会议的时间安排不合适。
• The timing of our statement is very opportune.我们发表声明选择的时机很恰当。

6 dual   

adj.双的；二重的，二元的

参考例句：

• The people's Republic of China does not recognize dual nationality for any Chinese national.中华人民共和国不承认中国公民具有双重国籍。
• He has dual role as composer and conductor.他兼作曲家及指挥的双重身分。

7 precocious   

adj.早熟的；较早显出的

参考例句：

• They become precocious experts in tragedy.他们成了一批思想早熟、善写悲剧的能手。
• Margaret was always a precocious child.玛格丽特一直是个早熟的孩子。

8 depressed   

adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的

参考例句：

• When he was depressed,he felt utterly divorced from reality.他心情沮丧时就感到完全脱离了现实。
• His mother was depressed by the sad news.这个坏消息使他的母亲意志消沉。

9 asterisk   

n.星号，星标

参考例句：

• The asterisk refers the reader to a footnote.星号是让读者参看脚注。
• He added an asterisk to the first page.他在第一页上加了个星号。

10 compute   

v./n.计算，估计

参考例句：

• I compute my losses at 500 dollars.我估计我的损失有五百元。
• The losses caused by the floods were beyond compute.洪水造成的损失难以估量。

11 trauma   

n.外伤，精神创伤

参考例句：

• Counselling is helping him work through this trauma.心理辅导正帮助他面对痛苦。
• The phobia may have its root in a childhood trauma.恐惧症可能源于童年时期的创伤。

12 discord   

n.不和，意见不合，争论，（音乐）不和谐

参考例句：

• These two answers are in discord.这两个答案不一样。
• The discord of his music was hard on the ear.他演奏的不和谐音很刺耳。

13 ambiguity   

n.模棱两可；意义不明确

参考例句：

• The telegram was misunderstood because of its ambiguity.由于电文意义不明确而造成了误解。
• Her answer was above all ambiguity.她的回答毫不含糊。