> CD #80: Tote-bag famous

Last week I had the honour of hosting an event with New Yorker cartoonist Liana Finck. (Aside: They say you shouldn’t meet your heroes, but Liana is a thoroughly kind and smart person who was genuinely interested in getting to know me and my work when she totally didn’t need to.) It was my first time hosting anything, so I was pretty nervous and mostly focused on not screwing up.

When I picked up my badge and tote bag—essential elements of any book festival uniform—and saw they had hired a local artist to make illustrations of all the featured writers, I felt a little twinge of envy. I thought, “Maybe one day I’ll be important enough to get on a tote bag.”

Later, back home, I glanced over and noticed that one of the smiling faces on the bag looked Asian. I thought, “Cool, that must be Jen Sookfong Lee. Lucky her,” and let my writer jealousy spike for a brief moment before I remembered that Jen Sookfong Lee has published, like, a dozen books in multiple genres—one of which was nominated for an International Dublin Literary Award—is actively working to bring more marginalized voices to the forefront in CanLit as an acquisitions editor for ECW Press, and is a straight-up national treasure. Her new book looks amazing. Of course she is on a tote bag.

It turns out, though, the drawing I noticed was actually of me, lol.

I was on the back of the bag. All illustrations by Erica Guan.

Nobody told me the hosts were also considered festival authors! And I certainly don’t feel tote-bag famous. Don’t worry, though. I didn’t get a big head, especially when Liana had a long post-event signing line while I sat there awkwardly next to her, fiddling with my pen.

It was a good reminder to be happy with where I’m at right now, tote bag or not. When I was a little kid, I never allowed myself to dream of being an author, even though that’s what I wanted most. Too out of reach. I figured the highest possibility for me was maybe a bank teller, which was the “classiest” job I knew of all the Asian women in my world. So glamorous, hehe.

I’m lucky I’ve gotten to the tote-bag level of fame, but the writing life is not about that. What I get to do—making stories, searching for meaning, deep-diving into books, being in conversation, whether in real life or just in my mind, with other writers—is so much more satisfying than I could ever have imagined. And even if nobody ever published another thing I made or invited me to another festival, I would still have the work, which is the truly valuable thing. The work is real in a way that all the marketing and merch and schmoozing will never be. The work is what matters.

:) Teresa

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