Episode 632
with Emily Flake, Tessa Hulls, and Pure Bathing Culture
Cartoonist Emily Flake (The New Yorker) reveals Joke in a Box, her 70-card deck of creative prompts, which results in some live cartooning from the stage; writer and artist Tessa Hulls discusses her graphic memoir Feeding Ghosts, which looks at the three generations of Chinese women in her family; and indie pop duo Pure Bathing Culture perform "The Memento" from their latest album Chalice. Plus, host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello tells us some favorite (short) jokes.
Emily Flake
Cartoonist and writer
Emily Flake is a cartoonist, writer, and the author of That Was Awkward: The Art and Etiquette of the Awkward Hug. Her cartoons and humorous essays run regularly in The New Yorker, The Nib, and many other publications. Her weekly strip, Lulu Eightball, ran in alt-weeklies for many years. She’s written and illustrated two other books: These Things Ain't Gonna Smoke Themselves and Mama Tried. Her illustrations and cartoons appear in publications all over the world, including the New York Times, Newsweek, the Globe and Mail, The Onion, The New Statesman, and Forbes. She is active in the New York comedy scene, performing a mix of stand-up and cartooning at venues all over the city and beyond. She is also the founder of St. Nell’s, a humor writing residency and teaching institution. Website • Instagram • Twitter
Tessa Hulls
Artist and author
Tessa Hulls is an artist, writer, and adventurer who is equally likely to disappear into a research library or the wilderness. Her essays have appeared in The Washington Post, Atlas Obscura, and Adventure Journal, and her comics have been published in The Rumpus, City Arts, and The Margins. She has been awarded grants from the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, 4Culture, and the Robert B. McMillen Foundation, and received the 2021 Washington Artist Trust Arts Innovator Award. For the last almost-decade, she has focused on making Feeding Ghosts (MCD, 2024), a graphic memoir that traces three generations of women in her family across a backdrop of Chinese history to explore the complicated ways that mothers and daughters both damage and save one another. Website • Instagram • Twitter
Pure Bathing Culture
Musical band
Pure Bathing Culture is a Portland based indie pop band consisting of members Sarah Versprille and Daniel Hindman. Their debut album Moon Tides was released in 2013 following the release of three additional full length albums of dreamy shoe gaze melodies with a touch of sparkle. They’ve toured with Father John Misty, La Luz, Widowspeak, and Tennis. Their latest album Chalice was released in 2023 which embodies a collection of songs about the ritual of creativity, progress and transformation, and the search for transcendence and joy. Website • Instagram • Twitter
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Luke Burbank: Hey, Elena.
Elena Passarello: Hey, Luke. How's it going?
Luke Burbank: It's going really, really good this week. I am excited to play another round of Station Location Identification Examination. This is the part of the show where I quiz Elena on a place in the country where Live Wire is on the radio. She's got a guess where exactly we are talking about. Okay. In 1939, after a great day of marlin fishing in this place, President Franklin Roosevelt bestowed this town as the White Marlin Capital of the world.
Elena Passarello: So maybe I know he had a vacation home in Georgia and there's marlins maybe in Florida. So is this somewhere in Florida?
Luke Burbank: It's on the eastern seaboard, but you're going to go north. You're going to get a little closer to DC.
Elena Passarello: Oh, it's in the, Chesapeake Bay area.
Luke Burbank: Okay, now you're now you're warming up. The, boardwalk in this city, has been a beloved attraction for over a century. It's over two and a half miles along the beach. It's got, of course, shops and eateries and, it is considered a the place to be in this part of the world.
Elena Passarello: That's got to be Ocean City, Maryland.
Luke Burbank: Ocean city, Maryland is exactly right where we're on WYPO radio Also, if we would have needed to, I could have deployed this little clue for you. The guy who invented Noxzema apparently came up with it at Ocean City, Maryland, because the people were getting so much sunburn and wind burn. He whipped together this thing called prescription number 22, which then they later changed the name to Noxzema.
Elena Passarello: Wow.
Luke Burbank: Yeah. All right. Shall we take that momentum and roll it right into the show?
Elena Passarello: Let's do it.
Luke Burbank: All right, take it away from it.
Elena Passarello: It's Live Wire. This week, cartoonist Emily Flake.
Emily Flake: It was a father and a teenage daughter, and he's looking upset. And the caption is, I'm not disappointed. I'm just very, very mad.
Elena Passarello: Artist and writer Tessa Halls.
Tessa Hulls: I did my damnedest to never tell this story. Like I ran, as far away as I could get. And I mean that literally. Like, I went to Antarctica trying to get away from this.
Elena Passarello: With music, from Pure Bathing Culture and our fabulous house band. I'm your announcer, Elena Passarello, and now the host of Live Wire, Luke Burbank.
Luke Burbank: Thank you so much, Elena Passarello. Thanks to everyone tuning in from all over the country, including Ocean City, Maryland, home of Noxzema. Probably, if we can believe the internet, we have a really fascinating show in store for you all this week. We of course, ask the Live Wire listeners a question because we're talking to Emily Flake about comedy and joke writing and creativity. We have asked the listeners to tell us their favorite short joke. We had to put that in because, you know, sometimes they can be real Stem-winders. But we're going to hear those responses coming up in a minute. First, though, we got to kick things off with the best news we heard all week this. This is our little reminder at the top of the show that there's some good news happening out there in the world. Elena, best news that you heard all week.
Elena Passarello: Okay. This is some Maryland news, actually very apropos. So we have to go back to 2014, which is when our story begins at a billiards competition, a pool competition in Laurel, Maryland. The prize for this competition was an all expenses paid trip to a pool tournament in Las Vegas. So the stakes were high, and I got a pool player named Russ Redhead was up against I. This great was up against a guy named James Harris Jr. And now James Harris was rated lower than Russ Redhead. So he actually got to start at some kind of an advantage. But then he crushed this game to the point where Russ Redhead was kind of suspicious. And he took his suspicions on to Facebook and sort of, disparaged the good James Harris Jr and James Harris. Junior's pool friends got online and let Russ Redhead have it. And they were like, you need to really think about what you said, because that's not true. And, contrary to what usually happens on Facebook, Russ Redhead was like, you know what? Maybe you're right. I was when they met six months later at another pool competition. He apologized, and that was basically all it took to strike up a long, long friendship. These guys, Russ and James, met each other at competitions. Sometimes they do sports betting together. And, there was a little bit of a secret happening or actually a lot of a secret. James Harris wasn't telling Russ or really anyone in his life that he had end stage kidney disease. He was getting dialysis 12 hours a week. He wasn't able to work. He was on the waitlist. But it's a five year wait list for a kidney. And it wasn't until 2022 that Harris, his wife, was talking to Russ Redhead and let the beans spill, that this was something that James Harris was going through. And Russell had was like, what does it require? What do you need? Sweet. I'll do it. So, two months ago, they had the surgery. The night before, they, Russ Red had spent the night at James Harris junior's house. His wife got them t shirts that said Kidney Buddies for life and forced the men to wear them. There are these great photos of the Washington Post, of the two of them in their hospital beds and pre-op fist pumping each other. And I'm so happy to report that everybody is feeling great, and the two can't wait to get back to playing pool again. And they are still the best of friends and the harshest of rivals.
Luke Burbank: I love that story. I want you to know, Elena, I would absolutely give you a kidney if you needed one. Although I have put some miles on this rig so I don't know what the car facts are on it. I'm not sure if you want it, but just know it's available if you need it.
Elena Passarello: Thanks, Luke.
Luke Burbank: Well, from the sport of billiards to the sport of hockey, the best news I saw this week, comes to us from the Cleveland, Ohio area, where recently, a mom named Asia Davis was at a Cleveland Monsters hockey game of the American Hockey League. And she had her four year old kid, Nassir, with her. And she says now, because she's talked about this whole story, that this was maybe not NASA's greatest night. Like, right. As the game was starting, he started to say, I'm tired, I don't want to be here. But they had already like gotten the tickets. And, you know, she was like, we're sticking it out for the game. And sitting next to him was some guy they didn't know him, some dude in like a backwards hat who Asia Davis says was being surprisingly patient, sitting next to her son who was kind of going through a bit of a meltdown. And so I don't know about midway through the game or something, just out of the blue, there is this moment in the game where the puck, which is very heavy, a hockey puck is really dense, gets knocked up in the air. It goes over that kind of protective glass and it is about to hit Nassir in the head. Nassir, by the way, oblivious to all of this. He's just being four years old. This mystery guy whacks the puck away from NASA's head at the last second. So she thanked the guy. She took a picture with him, and she, you know, they they pretty much at that point decided to call the night they went home. So it's like a day later and Asia Davis can't sleep. She just keeps playing this over and over again in her head. How close this puck came to hurting her little son and just how bad that could have been. And she realizes that she wants to thank this mystery person, but she doesn't know anything about him. She didn't get his name or anything. Well, of course she did get a photo though, so she throws that up on TikTok. And the next morning when she wakes up, basically, her post is like, help me find this person who, like, saved my son. There's like 600,000 people have shared this video. She's gotten all these responses, including from the guy who did the saving. He's 28. His name is Andrew Pollock. And he said, hey, no problem. I was like, happy to help the hockey team. The Cleveland Monsters, of course. Heard about this. Invited them all back. So Nassir and Andrew got to do the puck dropping at a game. I'm not a super kind of supernatural type of person, but this guy Andrew told Asia that he actually had tickets in a few different sections, and he was just sitting in the seat next to this kid, Nassir. Even though this kid was being kind of wild, he could have sat in a number of other seats that he had, but he stayed in that seat. He told Asia Davis that he feels like he was sitting in that seat for a reason that night. This is pretty sweet. So the fact that, everybody in this story, Elena also made it out in one piece, health wise is, that's the best news that I heard this week.
Luke Burbank: All right. Let's welcome our first guest on over to the program. She's a staff cartoonist for The New Yorker. She also performs something that she calls standup cartooning, which I think might be a singular art form for her. It's she shows cartoons that she's made via PowerPoint, and then she tells stories about them. Her latest project, though, is something called joke in a box, which is a 70 card deck full of exercises to teach the people that are participating in this how to write a joke, and also how to kind of unlock the humor, in their brain, which is something that we can always do more of on this show. If you've ever heard my attempts at humor, you know I can use all the help I can get. So here, we've got some. It's our interview with Emily Flake. We recorded this live on stage at Town Hall in Seattle, Washington. Emily, welcome to the program.
Emily Flake: Hello. Thank you for having me.
Luke Burbank: How do you describe a joke in a box to people? What do you say this actually is?
Emily Flake: Honestly, I usually just sort of stammer around saying, like, it's sort of a booklet, really. It's a creativity joke, but creativity does just sounds like a dom. It's a deck of cards with some advice and things on it. I guess like the King of comedy.
Luke Burbank: Yeah. That's this is one of the few audiences that would even get that reference.
Emily Flake: It's dirt bag. Brian Eno, I don't know. Okay.
Elena Passarello: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Luke Burbank: That's a little more pitchfork than I think this crowd is ready for, but. Okay.
Emily Flake: I trust you guys.
Luke Burbank: One of the things that you point out in this, in this sort of project is that I think you say something like cartooning is not a growth industry, but there's basically the five people that work at The New Yorker. You're one of them. And like 2 or 3 other jobs in America, why did you create this thing that could potentially make you the Mr. Miyagi to someone's Daniel son, who will then crane kick your job away from you years from now? If this works, someone's going to come take your job.
Emily Flake: Well, I figure either they'll take my job or they will be unable to take my job. And either way, it's an act of cruelty. {Luke: Right.] So why not?
Luke Burbank: What was your what was the first cartoon that you that you drew them on?
Emily Flake: So it was it was a father and a teenage daughter, and he's looking upset. And the caption is, I'm not disappointed. I'm just very, very mad. That's. That was the first one. Not my favorite one, but the first.
Luke Burbank: I do want to ask you about maybe one of your favorites a little bit later, but I'm also curious. You also teach classes and and courses and so what? This joke in the box thing is kind of distilling that down into something that, you know, people can buy and bring home with them. Why did you want to do it in this format?
Emily Flake: For money.
Luke Burbank: I'm not mad at you, Emily. I'm just disappointed that that was your answer.
Emily Flake: Again, fair. No. And also, it seemed like a nice way to sort of, like, distill it for myself. I enjoyed writing the exercises and advice, and basically all the pep talks in here are pep talks. I try, I would give myself if I liked myself at all.
Luke Burbank: It is very, I have to say, encouraging. You know, it's sort of like really taking down some of the barriers that people might assume, would be in place, like being able to draw or think creatively or be funny. Which actually, would you mind reading this card? Page seven: What if I'm not funny?
Emily Flake: Sure.What if I'm not funny? I like that you're laughing already. What if I'm not funny? A sense of humor, meaning an inherent tendency to see the world slightly aslant, a desire to joke about it, and a general attraction to humor cannot be taught. But I'm guessing that if you've picked up this deck, you do possess this sense, and it's one that can be developed. Hopefully, the exercises here will help you to explore your own point of view and your own unique way of being funny. If you holding this deck, do not, in fact enjoy humor. Please know that I find the fact that you've read this far both touching and extremely hilarious, right?
Luke Burbank: Is there a person who cannot do this, or can this be for anyone?
Emily Flake: I mean, I think that there is the person who cannot do this, is the person who does not like jokes and has no interest in writing jokes. I think that anybody who is interested in writing humor, it's kind of like their joke stem cells that if they want to put those into, like into this particular like niche format, I think they can, you know, bend their talents to their will. But yeah, I think you have to at least want to write jokes. I cannot lead a horse to water that doesn't want to write a joke.
Luke Burbank: Is that also a premise for a cartoon that you've done? Have you done a horse being led to water and then something funny happens.
Emily Flake: Well, I'm going to do that this week.
Luke Burbank: This is Live Wire from PRX. We are talking to New Yorker cartoonist Emily Flake that when we get back, we are going to pull some cards out of this joke in a box set that Emily has created. And we are going to put our drawing skills to the test. And having been there, I just want to tell you all manage your expectations. That's coming up in a moment here on Live Wire. Welcome back to Live Wire. I'm your host, Luke Burbank. I'm here with Elena Passarello, and we are listening back to a conversation we recorded with The New Yorker cartoonist Emily Flake about her latest creation. It's called Joe in a box. Let's take a listen. This was recorded live at Town Hall in Seattle, Washington. What are some of the exercises that are that are in the box? What are some of the things that you kind of run folks through?
Emily Flake: So a lot of the box is just cards with like, you know, a prompt and not even a prompt, like an object on a. And so there are ways that you can like pull cards like by chance and then put them together in a way, that like forces a juxtaposition that you can pull something out of. So like if you pull like a person, place and thing, you put it together and it's kind of like making your own caption contest.
Luke Burbank: For folks who don't know, the New Yorker magazine has on the back page now cartoons that don't have captions, and you try to send in your ideas and, I it's something that I, as a person, I consider myself to be reasonably funny. I have never had one good idea for that. It's just not how my brain sort of operates. Do you ever participate in those under like a pen name or do you read those every week? Do you like do you try to win those just for your own kind of gratification?
Emily Flake: No, I feel like that would be illegal. No, I do not.
Luke Burbank: Do you look at them?
Emily Flake: Not really, unless I—unless they've pulled one of mine for the caption contest. I mean, like all of us, all of us cartoonists, I sound like we're some sort of cabal. We all have, like, a slightly like, you know, ambivalent relationship to the caption contest. [Luke: Really?] Yeah. [Luke: Why is that?] Sam Gross, who recently passed. He said it in a much more profane way, but he was like, I hate that thing. It makes it makes anybody think they can do this so well.
Luke Burbank: Wherever you are, Sam, just know it makes me think, I cannot do this.
Luke Burbank: I'm so bad at it.
Elena Passarello: But I didn't know this, so you might get something that you've submitted. You, Emily Flake to the New Yorker pulled, and then put on that back page as fodder for the contest. [Emily: Yes.] Perhaps even without your knowledge?
Emily Flake: No, they tell you, and it's a little humbling because they're like, we're going to pull this for the caption contest. And you're like basically saying, like, we think somebody else can do better.
Elena Passarello: So they erase your caption. Yeah, you you say they did it with the caption and they block it out and then just throw it to the sharks.
Emily Flake: Correct.
Elena Passarello: Wow. Yeah. Oh my mind is blown.
Emily Flake: Am I is this like too much how your sausage is made? Is this ruining it?
Elena Passarello: No, I love it.
Luke Burbank: I am, an extremely bad draw. I had, like, a Garfield's Ren rendering that I tried to perfect in, like fifth grade. That was pretty bad, but was like, the one thing I could kind of, you know, just. I, like, drew it over and over again the way you do when you're a kid trying to get, like, what your thing is. Right? So I found it very gratifying here in joke in a box when you sort of mentioned that you, even though you are a professional cartoonist, that you are insecure about your drawing sometimes.
Emily Flake: Sometimes. Oh, yeah. It's like 100% of the time. Why? Because I well, that's a really interesting question. I guess my, my real answer, is because I don't think it's very good.
Luke Burbank: You feel like your actual drawing skills are not where you wish they were.
Emily Flake: Yeah, right. I think I'm like a middle of the pack. Solid B minus. Like, not as good as the people that I truly admire. And not as bad as people I don't like. Yeah.
Luke Burbank: So, like, not very blit, but not the guy from Family Circus.
Emily Flake: Just to really be mean to the guy from Family Circus doing a perfectly serviceable job.
Luke Burbank: Right. There's no way that's still the same dude.
Emily Flake: No. I think that I think there's actually just like a machine that does those now.
Luke Burbank: And it's not AI. It's like, like some kind, one of those perpetual motion water birds. That that just makes a thing where Little Billy has wandered around the yard. Yeah. It's like a broken line behind him, and it goes over the swing.
Emily Flake: It's you. You nailed it.
Luke Burbank: This has already been an extremely visual episode of Live Wire in a notoriously visual medium, radio. I guess this gets me to my next question, which is, I feel like really, the humor is the important thing when it comes to a cartoon. Like there's like a one panel joke versus the drawing. Like the drawing, it seems to me, is there to serve the comedy. Like there's a funny idea. A dad says to his kid, it's not that I'm disappointed to you, it's that I'm very angry. That's a joke. And then you just have to make the dad look dad ish enough and the kid, like, right. Is that mean? Is that really the order of events? It needs to be a funny idea. And then the illustrating of it is just kind of there to support the joke.
Emily Flake: That's how I think of it. But I think like because I always write first, I think I just privilege the writing. And I think the drawing can either sell your joke well or undercut it. But there are, there are like perfect gag cartoons where it's like a really beautiful marriage of the two or it's disappear visual. So, yeah, I mean, I would say in my own work, a lot of times I'm just drawing two puppets to say a line to each other. Like, I'm like, this is a nice line. Let's put them in a person's mouth.
Luke Burbank: This is Live Wire radio coming to you this week from town Hall in Seattle, Washington. How fun.
Luke Burbank: So I was thinking that maybe we could really, really test my sort of theory that the drawing is secondary to the humor, or that you don't have to be great at drawing to make a compelling one panel joke. And maybe we could test that by actually doing one of the exercises in your Joke in a Box.
Emily Flake: Sure. On the radio? Absolutely, yes.
Luke Burbank: So, what we're going to do is have you grab a couple of cards as kind of suggestions, and then Elena and I are going to have 60s to try to draw a cartoon based on whatever it is that you grab at random.
Emily Flake: Okay.
Luke Burbank: Now, we've also, asked the house band to, gin up some creativity music, which they're going to be playing for this 60 second exercise. And Emily, I'm going to be deep in concentration on my art. So could you try to just could you kind of handle the radio hosting and maybe do a little color commentary about whatever it is Elena and I are doing?
Emily Flake: I absolutely can do that. Yes. Okay. Okay.
Luke Burbank: Just please pick at random.
Emily Flake: You've got dragon and supermarket. All right. And so you have 60 seconds to do this? [Luke:Yeah.] You better get going. It's not very long. And so I think the important thing to think about is what could go wrong at this. Like if you just draw a dragon shopping, like there's not that much happening. Like, why is the dragon miserable? Like, what is the dragon trying to do that it can't. What would make a dragon? What would be unexpected or surprising about a dragon at a supermarket? Besides, just like—
Luke Burbank: That's exactly what I'm going for here.
Elena Passarello: Does, like, character work? Like, what's the dragon's motivation?
Emily Flake: What? Exactly! What is its motivation? What is its emotional truth? I think that's an important thing to get. There is. Wow. That dragon is a lot. Yeah. I mean.
Luke Burbank: This idea's not getting any better from here, I got to tell you.
Emily Flake: But, I mean, listen, I believe in both of you.
Luke Burbank: Okay. Here's, what I got. Mine is a—supposed to be a dragon, incinerating everyone in the self-checkout line, asking anyone in line here?
Luke Burbank: Well let's see, let's see, let's see what Elena has come up with. And then we'll we'll.
Elena Passarello: I only know how to draw one thing.
Emily Flake: Is it a dragon? No.
Elena Passarello: No. It's an upright bass. So I drew an upright bass at Costco saying, gee, I wish I was a dragon.
Luke Burbank: No fair.
Emily Flake: The fact that you came up with that workaround for the problem in Let In 60s is stunning.
Luke Burbank: That's impressive.
Emily Flake: Yes.
Luke Burbank: There's a lot of problems with my dragon. The dragon looks like, you know, in the original Little Mermaid cartoon, when Ursula takes someone's voice. My dragon looks like Ursula took its voice, but also the drawing. I think the issue is that I don't really think a dragon should incinerate people in the self-checkout line. I think he should incinerate whoever invented the self-checkout line. Yeah, that person's not at the grocery store.
Emily Flake: They might be. Which is why he has to incinerate everybody to make sure I feel like.
Luke Burbank: They're collateral damage. They're just trying to get through their life.
Emily Flake: Exactly.
Luke Burbank: If I gave you those cards. Emily Flake, professional cartoonist, Dragon grocery store. Where does. Where does your mind go with that?
Emily Flake: I mean, I automatically make him sad because that's what I go to. Dragon. Sad. Sad dragon. Like, you know, he's sad because he's at the supermarket, like. Yeah, I always imagine that, like, whatever he wants, he destroys with the dragon, right? Yeah. Yeah. For Dragon. So. Yeah. So I like to put things in a position where I feel sorry for them. Like, a lot of my work is, is has, like a base layer of of pity and sorrow.
Luke Burbank: But, like—
Elena Passarello: That's great.
Luke Burbank: Like, basically, what would it be like to be a dragon at the grocery store? What are the things that we don't think about as non dragons? Well, I the hassle of being a dragon. I mean.
Emily Flake: I would think about how awkward it would be to like move through the aisles because as a non dragon I feel that, I mean, like I live in Brooklyn and the, you know, the supermarkets are very tight and I am not small. And there's like, I never know where to put my body or my cart or my eyes. So like, if I had a tail, right, forget about it.
Luke Burbank: Or like, if you sneeze, you just, like, incinerate a baby.
Emily Flake: Exactly. It's happened.
Luke Burbank: This box Emily is it's a bunch of exercises to kind of get a person in motion, sort of, when they're trying to be creative. And I'm wondering, I mean, is that really the hardest thing is to go from not doing anything to doing something?
Emily Flake: For me personally, yes. And I don't like to think that I am so unique that I'm the only person that feels this way. Yeah, for me, it's the, like, push into the actual doing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Luke Burbank: What do you what do you think, is or what is one of your sort of favorite cartoons that you've done, even though you've, you've mentioned just how much you're sort of tortured by, by your own thoughts of inadequacy.
Emily Flake: I think the one that I've done that I like the most is, a family sitting at a, you know, at a dining room table. The the father looks very crestfallen, and one of the kids is speaking and the caption is, does this mean we have to scrape the daddy decal off the minivan? I want to thank the audience for giving me exactly the laugh I wanted out of that cartoon. You can all sleep well tonight.
Luke Burbank: And also what we didn't mention. The daddy is a dragon.
Emily Flake: Yes, yes.
Luke Burbank: Emily Flake. The new project is a Joke in a Box. Thank you so much. That was Emily Flake right here on Live Wire, recorded live at Town Hall in Seattle, Washington. Make sure you grab yourself a set of her joke in a box cards, and make sure you check out her work in The New Yorker. This is Live Wire each week. We like to ask our listeners a question. Since Emily Flake was helping us expand our creative and humorous abilities, Elena, we asked the audience to share their favorite short joke with us this week. You can always use, you know, a couple of good like, short jokes in your back pocket. You've got to break them out like some kind of an awkward, you know, dinner meeting or something. So people have been sending these in. What do you seeing?
Elena Passarello: Well, I think because of the prompt for this to be short, people went full pun.
Luke Burbank: Oh, alright.
Elena Passarello: All right.
Luke Burbank: I wouldn't call that promising.
Elena Passarello: You like, grumbled, and I was like, whoa, these are good. Okay. Hey, Luke, this is for Brody. Why don't ants get sick?
Luke Burbank: Why, Elena?
Elena Passarello: Because they have little antibodies.
Luke Burbank: Well, that's pretty good, actually. I haven't heard that one before.
Elena Passarello: Okay, how about this one from Serena? What did the janitor say when he jumped out of the closet.
Luke Burbank: What?
Elena Passarello: Supplies!
Luke Burbank: All right. Pretty solid. Maybe 1 or 2 more. These are going fast. So that's as good as we can actually get a lot of them in.
Elena Passarello: Okay, how about this one from Michael? You know, a lot of people don't find Cleopatra attractive, but that's not how Julius Caesar.
Luke Burbank: That's actually good. That's my favorite one so far. I need, you know, I need to write these down, and I need to laminate a card that has, like, 3 or 4 good jokes, because. Have you had this experience? You hear one like that, and it's actually pretty funny. And you think, oh, I've got to remember that to be able to, you know, deploy that on my friends at some point, or maybe my nieces and nephews, and then I can never remember those kinds of jokes in the moment when called upon to do so.
Elena Passarello: It would be really funny if you had a laminated card that you pulled out. At moments like that, like you would develop a really interesting reputation.
Luke Burbank: That would officially be the end of even any last vestiges of me being a young person. That's not the move. But anyway, well, thank you to everyone who sent in. Those are actually pretty good. The Julius Caesar one really got me. We have another listener question coming up for next week's show. We're going to read you at the end of today's episode. In the meantime, though, let's say hi to our next guest. She's an artist whose wanderlust is taking her everywhere from Antarctica to Ghana to China and Hong Kong. She was in China, in Hong Kong with her mother as part of an attempt to really better understand herself. It's all described in her new graphic memoir, Feeding Ghosts, which traces three generations of women in her family from China to Northern California and through mental illness, and eventually to an understanding of the complicated ways that mothers and daughters can both damage but also save one another. This is our interview with Tessa Holes. We recorded this at the Patricia Research Center for the Arts in Beaverton, Oregon. Tessa, welcome to the program.
Tessa Hulls: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.
Luke Burbank: This book is is really incredible. The book kind of starts with your grandmother, Sun Yi, who is, living in China. She's a journalist, and she meets a Swiss diplomat. And, and to having a child, the Swiss diplomat kind of bounces, and she is now a, a a woman, a Chinese woman raising a mixed race baby alone in China in the 1950s.
Tessa Hulls: Yep.
Luke Burbank: What is that? What does that look like for your mom and her mom?
Tessa Hulls: Complicated. That's the short answer. Basically. So my my grandmother, she wrote for pro nationalist newspapers. And when the communist came to power, she found herself caught in the crosshairs of this really complex history. So she was being intermittently arrested, held for unknown periods of time, all while raising my mother, who's biracial identity was politically really dangerous.
Luke Burbank: And then they manage to get to Hong Kong. And there your grandmother writes her memoir, which is this, like smash hit. How did that change their life?
Tessa Hulls: It both did and didn't. So because of the bamboo curtain, there really wasn't news coming out of mainland China. And so after they fled, there was this huge built in audience just wanting to know what was happening on the ground because the Communist government had just shut down the press and stopped all communication. And, you know, my grandmother, I also learned through reading her book was she's very smart, she was very calculated. And she was aware that not only did she have this amazing historical narrative, she also could write this kind of salacious romance about, you know, this white man. And then after she was pregnant, she needed support. And so she had a series of men who essentially supported her. And so when the book came out, it was an immediate bestseller in Hong Kong and Taiwan. And it goes without saying, you could not read it in China. Banned book. And so that's where it should have been a happy point in their story, because everyone was telling my grandmother, your ship has come in, you're going to be safe now. But unfortunately, she was only paid for the initial print run and the book ended up being pirated and she received very little money. So what she did get, she used to put my mom into an elite colonial boarding school, and that's where my mom learned the High Queen's English. That basically gave her access to the social class and path to the US that she eventually took. And that's when the real tragic side of the story starts, where my grandmother then succumbed to mental illness. She had a mental breakdown and was institutionalized in Hong Kong's first mental hospital.
Luke Burbank: I mean, the book is called Feeding Ghosts, and it's really something that you grapple with. It sounds like the version that you mostly knew of your grandmother, at least growing up, was almost a ghost of the person that she had been in in China and in Hong Kong. What was your sense of your grandmother growing up? The version you knew in in Northern California?
Tessa Hulls: Well, I really wasn't able to have one because my mom didn't teach me Chinese and my grandmother didn't speak much English. And she also spent most of her life really heavily medicated. And, all she ever did was rewrite the same story of her past. And I don't mean that as a metaphor. Like she literally would not leave her room. She sat at her writing desk and is endlessly scrolling the same stories over and over and over again. So there was really no way in until I was able to commission a translation of my grandmother's memoir. And that was the point at which her story began to unfold for me.
Elena Passarello: That's such a crucial part of the book for me that just it's so striking that you had this family story your whole life, that your grandmother was this famous author, but you didn't have access to the book in a way that you could read it, and you had to commission someone to translate it for you so you could get the story. Did it meet your expectations or exceed your expectations or?
Tessa Hulls: I think I went into it without expectations because how could I possibly know what was in there? And because there is a lot of foot work needed for this project. I was doing the research and writing for many, many years before I really did any of the actual making of the book. And so while I was waiting for that translation, that was basically when I began to address my own vast ignorance about how my family's story nestled within the broader strokes of Chinese history, because I didn't really understand that I had been raised to think of a fairly radical political stance as normal, where in my family it was always the communist takeover, not the communist liberation. And I really didn't realize that my grandma had been this stridently anti-communist voice at a point where that was incredibly politically dangerous. So that to me, I think was the most striking realization was that the political dissident side of my family, was something I just was unaware of.
Luke Burbank: We're talking to Tessa Hulls about her new graphic memoir, Feeding Ghosts, here on, Live Wire. This week we are in Beaverton at the Reaser. I read an interview with you in the New York Times where you said when you decided that you were going to take on this project, all you needed to do was basically learn Mandarin, learn how to draw a graphic novel. And I forget what the third thing was, but it also seemed really hard. Why? Why did you decide you wanted to kind of use this format, something that you were going to have to really learn in terms of the graphic novel, part of a graphic memoir.
Tessa Hulls: I think that decide maybe gives the choice of more agency than was there. There's there's this line. Yeah. So, there's a science fiction writer named Connie Willis, and she said in an interview once that when people ask writers, where do you get your ideas? It's like asking Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, where do you get your leeches? And, so my background before I started this book, my most established career was as a painter. So I came up in the visual arts and I drew the whole thing by hand. It's not digital. It's all done in Japanese brush pen, and it's almost 400 pages. And I calculated that it's, 4000 square feet of ink, so. [Luke: Oh my gosh.] Yeah, it took a while. But I knew for me that doing this as a graphic novel and having that tension between the words and the images and the negative space that arises when I have those contradict or play off of each other in unexpected ways, was the only way that I could really tell this meta narrative about how we choose to craft a story. And so in that sense, drawing it was, was a way to allow me to show multiple contradicting realities.
Luke Burbank: This was not even almost not a choice for you.
Tessa Hulls: Know, I did my damnedest to never tell this story. Like I ran, as far away as I could get. And I mean that literally. Like, I went to Antarctica trying to get away from this.
Luke Burbank: Did you really have a radio show at McMurdo?
Tessa Hulls: I did, I did, yeah. So there's a radio station down there—
Luke Burbank: Did you have more listeners than us? Because that that's going to hurt?
Tessa Hulls: No, I don't think I mean, I don't know how many people are in this auditorium, but there aren't many people listening to the radio in Antarctica.
Luke Burbank: Okay. Alright. Whew. Thank you. What was this show about?
Tessa Hulls: Well, I called it Poor Life Decisions. And like, the radio show. The radio station was ice 104.5. The logo is a penguin in front of a radio tower.
Luke Burbank: But, see. Okay, so this this sort of, relates to, it sounds like a way that you processed a lot of really intense emotions, which were, and particularly with you and your mother and that dynamic, which was to go to the furthest flung places that you could find. Sounds like you spent your 20s just anywhere that wasn't home. What were what did you feel you were trying to get space from?
Tessa Hulls: I think I was running away from a sense of duty and denying in a lot of ways, I think are really a common experience for children, of immigrants, of feeling like you have an obligation to your parents pasts, but as an American, don't necessarily know the way in or feel able to face it. And I think I also realized that if I entered into this story before I was ready, I wouldn't be able to survive telling it. And so I think the fact that I began shortly after my 30th birthday, it was sort of the first moment in my life where I recognized that all of this running away had given me the skillset and the tenacity to be able to enter this story and survive it.
Luke Burbank: So you and your mom then go, to China and Hong Kong to kind of research your family and for her to introduce you to people from your family's history. And it really sounds like or reads like in the book that that was an incredibly important sort of bonding experience for you and your mom.
Tessa Hulls: Yeah. I remember one moment in particular. We were, walking down a street and she saw a sugarcane vendor, and she just tugged on my arm and she said, oh, Tessa, look, look, it's a sugar cane vendor. I used to love sugar cane. And just the look on her face. I had never seen her like that. I had never seen her unburdened and unguarded. And it was incredibly powerful and incredibly heartbreaking as well, because it made me realize that until I traveled to China with my mother, I had actually never seen her in a context in which she belonged. And it was as though this immense sadness that she always carried was lifted for the first time, and I was able to see the possibility of that use for her.
Luke Burbank: Well, I thought it was interesting that if I read it right, I, you know, I'm reading the whole book and it's you're really speaking so honestly about your experience being the child of your mother. And I'm thinking, oh my God, is her mom reading this? And then you write it as a collaboration. At some point, you describe the book as a collaboration. How was this a collaboration for you and your mom?
Tessa Hulls: So the first step for me in this book was writing my mother and telling her, okay, I'm I'm ready. I need to do this. And I, I thought it was going to take me about five years. Here we are nine years later. But I think I embarked on this in an attempt to heal my relationship with my mother. And so we had many, many, many, many long conversations. Me interviewing her, me asking her for the touch points and references that made her who she was. And eventually we were able to get to a place where I think we understood that the conflict between us really was rooted in cultural misunderstanding in a way that we hadn't been able to see. And it's definitely not a happily ever after story of, oh, and now we understand each other and we, like, get manicures. But it's more we can leave room for each other's emotional truths without trying to fundamentally override or change who the other person is.
Luke Burbank: I'm curious about promoting this, this book that's so personal because it's your life story and the story of your family, and yet it's also a product that is for sale. I read an interview with one of your editors who described you as, I believe, almost undefinable. Does that mean this is the first and last like, graphic memoir, graphic novel work for you?
Tessa Hulls: es. Yes. Yes.
Luke Burbank: But but no, to elaborate on that somewhere. I think what I've really been learning in this journey is that I'm not somebody who is a writer. I never had the ambition of making a book. I never thought of myself as an author and as has this kind of move further along in the process. I've been thinking about this phenomenon called homoplasy, which is where you have animals that share are not just animals, plants as well, but basically things that look similar. So you think they have a shared genetic ancestor. So like a shark and ichthyosaur and a dolphin, they all have really similar forked tail fins. So you think like, oh, somewhere back there, no divergent. And so homoplasy. That's the term for it. And so I think what's happened is a case of homoplasy where I'm like, I am a multidisciplinary artist who's making a book, making a book, making a book. And I've been doing it for so many years that people are like, oh, well, she must be want to be an author and make a book because that's what she's doing where the whole time I've been like, this one story requires me to do this one thing, so I'm going to do it. But I've never had that aspiration.
Luke Burbank: Wow. Well, as a one off, it's a hell of a project and you've always got an Arctic DJ to fall back on. So Tessa Hulls, the book is Feeding GhostS. It's really incredible. Tessa, thank you so much. Thank you. That was Tessa Hulls right here on Live Wire. Her book, Feeding Ghosts is out and available right now. I'm Luke Burbank. That's Elena Passarello over there. We have to take a very quick break, but do not go anywhere. When we come back, we are going to hear some music from indie pop band and Live Wire favorite Pure Bathing Culture. So stay with us. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm your host, Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. Okay, before we get to our musical guest this week, a little preview of next week's show, we're going to be talking to Aparna Nancherla. You've probably seen her all over TV and Netflix with her acting and also her really funny, very droll stand up comedy, which I love so much. Aparna now has a memoir out. It's titled Unreliable Narrator me, myself and Imposter Syndrome Comedy Legends. We are going to hear from Gary Gulman, the very, very funny stand up comic. And we're going to get some music that also serves as a bit of a history lesson from no, no, boy, it's going to be a great episode of the show. We cannot wait to play it for you next week. In the meantime, though, we do have a question for the listeners for next week's show. Elena, what are we asking folks?
Elena Passarello: We would like you to please tell us about a time in which you felt like an imposter.
Luke Burbank: Okay. So that'll be connected to Aparna's book. So, yes, if you felt like an imposter at some point and you want to tell us about it in a possibly humorous fashion or not, just whatever hit us up. We're on social media, at live wire radio, pretty much everywhere. Hey, did you know Live Wire Radio is also available as a podcast? Yes, it is featuring the same engaging conversations, live music, and original comedy that you find on the radio show. But now you can listen to it when you want to and where you want to go to live wire radio.org to download the podcast or anywhere else you get your podcasts. This is Live Wire from our musical guest this week. Are a duo with a knack for making music that sounds otherworldly, but also very familiar. And maybe that's because it is familiar to you, particularly if you've caught them over the years. Opening for Death Cab for Cutie or The Shins, or have listened to one of their many critically acclaimed albums, the latest of which is chalice and features songs about the search for transcendence and joy. Your Bathing Culture joined us on stage at the Patricia Research Center for the Arts in Beaverton, Oregon. Take a listen. What song are we going to hear?
Pure Bathing Culture: This song's called The Memento.
Pure Bathing Culture: All right. This is Pure Bathing Culture right here on Live Wire.
Pure Bathing Culture: Last night I dreamt an island. I called it from.
Unidentified: The corner of my eyes. I saw you as an.
Pure Bathing Culture: Apparition in the sky.
Pure Bathing Culture: You were alone and you cried. Only rose above the stars.
Unidentified: Falling into a ghostly lover's charm. I saw you rising with a crimson angel. Arm in arm.
Pure Bathing Culture: I saw you rise. An apparition in the night. You were looking for a light.
Unidentified: Like a memento to keep me alive. Like it.
Pure Bathing Culture: Like a ring.
Unidentified: A. Like a memento to keep. Like a rock. It's like a like rain. Like a memento to keep it. Like the light or like a ring. It can ring like a lucky. A memento for you.
Pure Bathing Culture: Like a ring.
Unidentified: And the silver. The keyhole.
Pure Bathing Culture: An apparition in the night.
Unidentified: I saw Crimson Rose, the ghost of. Where angels fly. I saw you dreaming with your eyes closed tight. I think you're.
Pure Bathing Culture: Looking for the love.
Unidentified: I a memento to keep. You like a ring? I. Like a memento to keep I.
Pure Bathing Culture: I can rock it for the king like a really. Like a memento. The key. Like a ring. Like a memento. To keep a. Like a ring in a crimson ghost upon the wing. Like a ring, like a light. A memento for your pocket.
Unidentified: Like a ring. The light is like a memento. The key is the light. I don't like ring. Lucky.
Pure Bathing Culture: A memento for your pocket.
Unidentified: There's a lot. In your pocket. It's a memento to keep. Like a ring. Like the. Like it like a rocket for the king. There's a lot. In your pocket. It's a memento to keep like a. Like a locker. Hey, memento for your pocket. I'd like a memento to keep me alive. The life.
Pure Bathing Culture: A memento for.
Luke Burbank: Pure Bathing Culture. Right here on Live Wire. Their latest album Chalice, is available now. That's going to do it for this week's episode of the show. A huge thanks to our guests Emily Flake, Tessa Hulls, and Pure Bathing Culture.
Elena Passarello: Laura Hadden is our executive producer, Heather De Michele is our executive director and our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Ebon Hoffer, Leona Skinner Kinderman and Molly Pettit are our technical directors, and our house sound is by Daniel Neil Blake. Tre Hester is our assistant editor. Our marketing and production manager is Karen Pan. Rosa Garcia is our operations associate, Jackie Ibarra is our production fellow, and Becky Phillips is our intern. Our house band is Ethan Fox Tucker, Sam Tucker, Ayal Alves, and A Walker Spring who also composes our music. This episode was mixed by Molly Pettit and Tre Hester.
Luke Burbank: Additional funding provided by the James F and Marion L Miller Foundation. Live wire was created by Robyn Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week, we'd like to thank members Laura Frizzell of Portland, Oregon, and Charles Passarello of Atlanta, Georgia. [Elena: Tony P!] That rings a bell. It might even be your actual dad. Hey, if you would like more information about our show or how you can listen to our podcast, head on over to Live Wire radio.org. I'm Luke Burbank. For Elena Passarello and the whole Live Wire team. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next week.
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