- [Announcer] Articulate with Jim Cotter is made possible

with generous funding from the Neubauer Family Foundation.

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- Welcome to our show that explores the inner lives

of some remarkable thinkers.

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I'm Jim Cotter and on this episode, Finding.

Gish Jen has spent a lifetime navigating

internal cultural conflicts,

yet this best selling novelists has found peace,

with a person of East West divide

that could serve as a model all.

- Your job as a person, your imperative is to be flexible

and to respond to the needs of others

as opposed to in the West where we imagine ourselves

as kind of like avocados with a big pit inside of us.

And, your imperative is to be true to that pit.

So these are two very different things.

- Thomas Newman is among today's most highly respected

and successful film composers.

Part of a Hollywood musical dynasty,

he has found his own unique musical voice.

- Part of it is knowing that having an idea isn't the end

of having another idea.

I think the worst enemy for me is I wrote this

and therefore it has to be great.

And just puts me in a terrible position.

I'd rather say I wrote this and I'm gonna now put it away

from myself and let it come at my ears

and make sure I like it,

as opposed to liking it because I wrote it.

- That's all I had on articulate.

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- [Narrator] Of course Gwen's team the Lookouts

were hardly a tidy bunch at any time

ranging in age from 14 to 23,

they were not only every possible color, shape and size,

but had noticeably wide ranging ideas

about appropriate baseball attire.

People sported, sweatshirts, and jeans,

but also a bowler hat, a Cape, a dashiki,

and it kilt.

Still, all accepting as they were, they made a good team

and anyone could see that there in their midst,

Gwen felt, for once in her life that she belonged.

- The Resistors is the 8th book, the 6th work of fiction

from the best selling author Gish Jen.

A woman, intimately familiar with the struggle to belong

on the page she has dissected from every imaginable angle.

The battles that have waged within her first-generation

Chinese American for decades,

the group versus the individual,

tradition versus change, East versus West.

- I do come from a different cultural background

than a lot of artist in the United States, you know?

So they grew up, with everyone asking,

what do you think, how do you feel about this?

You know what I mean? What is it that you want?

I didn't have any of that.

So it's not like I have this loud voice that's coming forth

and I just need to kind of get myself

to have the nerve to express it.

It's much more like I had to be very quiet

so I could hear what it is that I think

and then it's just there and I just write it down.

- From an early age, Jen was outspoken,

opinionated and driven all these that would serve her well

as an American that they were unbecoming of the dutiful wife

for traditional Chinese parents,

Norman and Agnes hoped she would become.

- I was frequently told that I had too much to say,

I mean, my mother told me that every day.

I was the bringer of News from the outside World

into the households, you know?

So the president has been shot,

my mother said to me, you're crazy.

So that was, that was a very tough moment for me

because I wasn't crazy

because president really had been shot

and all these, a million ideas about,

things that were okay for girls to do okay,

for girls to wear pants.

You know pants to school.

Oh, and there's, so there's a lot of,

there's definitely a lot of rub the whole way,

especially for me as a girl.

The girls were supposed to be this

that you go speak graceful.

Girls were not supposed to talk so much

all those kinds of things.

- Outside the family home things weren't much easier.

In Suburban Yonkers, New York, the Jen's stuck out.

Gish and her four siblings were ostracized and tormented

by neighborhood kids,

who would throw rocks disguised as snowballs.

But this didn't break Jens' spirit.

Reading became an escape.

She found allies in her favorite authors, Isaac Asimov,

Louisa May Alcott, Albert Camus.

In high school she changed her name from Lilian to Kish,

Honoring Lillian Kish the first lady of American cinema.

Yet the more, the young Gish tried to find herself

the more difficult it became to live the kind of life

her parents envisioned for her.

Years later she would learn that her internal struggle

came down to two radically different notions of Southwood.

The pit-self of the West, centered on the individual

versus the flexi-self of the East

dedicated to serving the group.

- Your job as a person your imperative is to be flexible

and to respond to the needs of others,

as opposed to in the West where we imagine ourselves

as kinda like avocados with a big pit inside of us.

And your imperative is to be true to that pit.

So these are two very different things so,

but it's not that everybody gloms together

and everybody thinks alike, It's not that.

However, kind of in this kind of struggle between,

so, I want to be a writer.

That's a very kind of pit like thing to do.

If that's at odds with, my duties as a daughter,

as a mother, from the point of view of my parents,

that would be, but of course your duties come first.

You know what I mean?

So this idea that you should realize yourself is,

is not really, that's just not paramount.

It's not that you can't do it, but it doesn't come first.

And so here in America, of course,

your first obligation is to realize yourself,

you have to be true to that pit.

they don't have that idea.

- When the time came for Jen to attend college,

she nurtured a private love of writing,

but wouldn't give up hope of one day pleasing her parents.

At Harvard she studied Law and medicine,

but couldn't commit to either

in a last ditch effort to secure a future

her mom and dad would approve of.

She enrolled the Stanford business school.

That was a disaster.

She hated every minute of her first year

and dropped out early in her second.

- I will say that my parents did not speak to me.

My siblings, nobody would speak to me.

I mean, everybody was so angry at me.

My mother didn't talk to me for over a year.

And I know it was hard.

It was the full court press on the part of my sibs too.

I mean, it was just so unacceptable for somebody basically

to take off in this very Western individualistic direction.

But it was something that I had to do.

I mean, it's almost honestly,

I think if I could have made myself go to Business School,

get a nice job.

If I could have made myself do it,

I would've made myself do it, but I couldn't.

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- But just as her family was turning away from her,

Jen was falling in love with a star

of her business school class, David O'Connor.

He supported her unconditionally first in her choice

to drop out of Stanford.

Then in her decision to spend a year in China,

ultimately cheering on her move to the Midwest

to pursue her longstanding dream

at the Iowa writer's workshop.

In 1983, they wed and Jen's parents were so relieved to see

their headstrong daughter married at all that they welcomed

the pair back into the fold.

But the best part for Jen was the being with David,

never felt like a compromise.

- I still think that was kind of a magical thing,

I mean I can't, I mean it truly,

it was this really kind of depressed person

who wanted to do this thing

that she didn't really was not very at all clear

about what that would look like.

He never asked me like, kind of like, well,

what would that look like?

What would success look like?

Or how do you think, do you think that you would ever

get a teaching job?

Or he never asked me any of those questions.

When we got married, we're given tons and tons of crystal.

And we had Julie pack them all up and brought them all out

West to Stanford, right?

And then we're coming back and, I'm just like,

what, I, Oh my God,

I'm so overwhelmed by these kinds of duties,

the sense that we had to take care of all these items.

David opened a window, took a glass and he threw it out.

(laughs)

And that was that and we had a very huge garage sale

that Saturday we got rid of all of it, it was just David,

but he was so wonderful that way.

It was just like, forget it, boom, gone.

- O'Connor's, self-assuredness rubbed off on Jen.

And so to quiet the chorus of other voices in her head,

the threatened to drown out her own ideas.

She followed his example by throwing distractions away.

- When I first sat down at my desk,

I would make like a little visual icon

of anybody whose voice I did not want to hear

and I would take them and I would move them

and I would put them in the hall.

So starting with, of course my mother, right, bang.

(laughs)

My editor, early on certain people in my writing class.

So I didn't want to hear,

I would remove the more just so that I can hear myself.

- And the more she listened, the more she found,

she had to say about families like hers.

Newcomers to the West, walking your precarious line

between old and new world values,

between being a good Chinese daughter

and achieving in America and much of her fiction,

grandparents, parents, and children clash about

what they owe to each other versus

what they want for themselves.

In 1991's typical American,

the protagonist to Chinese grandfather,

Ralph resists assimilation.

- [Narrator] He refused to be made of an American citizen.

He thumbed his nose at the relief act meant to help him

as though to claim his home was China,

was to make China indeed his home.

And wasn't it still,

even if his place and it was fading like a picture

hung too long in a barbershop.

Even if he didn't know where his family was anymore

or was it exactly because he didn't know

where his family was?

For certainly he felt more attached to them

for their having turned abstract,

missing them more than he had liked them.

The missing being simpler.

- Much like Ralph, Jen's own parents

were reticent to build a life in America.

They came to the U.S separately in the 1940s

for graduate school and they always planned to return home.

But once communism took hold in China,

they weren't allowed to go back.

A generation on Jen has reconciled her Eastern roots

with our Western surroundings.

And to a great extent resolved her own

bi-cultural identity crisis.

Today, she understands the forces that play

within her own spirit and has come to cherish the values

her parents instilled in her.

- Today as an adult.

I feel that kind of like the richest parts of me

are not those, I mean, yes, that hard one individualism,

which I certainly have in the end, as you know,

I did what I wanted.

I became this writer that my family did not want me to be.

And yet I would say that kind of that the older,

this older self,

that I fought so hard to kind of get rid of.

I would say that boy,

if I could do something to the world,

I would somehow give it to all my individualistic friends

who I think are just suffering, frankly,

from the levels of individuals

that they've been brought up on.

Because I see so much isolation,

I see so much protection of the pitch to the degree

that they're very anxious.

And I want to tell them,

you know what?

if you actually brought up with this other self,

it's fine to be ordinary.

You know not everybody has to be extraordinary.

It's like a, not in a bad way.

Like you're not extraordinary, but like you're really fun.

It's really fun for you to meet your extraordinary.

- Nevertheless, Gish Jen is extraordinary.

Her latest book, 2020s, "The Resistors" is in some way,

a radical departure from her earlier works.

But at its core it tells a familiar story

of a strong willed outsider who survives

by finding a way to live on her own terms.

Not because she's selfish,

but because it's what she must do to survive.

And today at age 65, Gish Jen has discovered

how to be exactly who she needs to be, a writer.

- It's my home, I'm a fish in Waterland.

That's what I was put on earth to do.

- Isn't that a lovely idea though, that you've.

- I think its hell.

(Jen laughs)

It's caused me no end of difficulty, but.

- But While you're in the action of doing it.

- But while I'm doing it.

It's just, it's simply what I was put on earth to do.

- Well, long may you stay and do.

(Jen chuckles)

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- [Narrator] The film composer Thomas Newman

is part of a Hollywood musical dynasty,

but as a young man,

he wasn't sure he'd be able to live up to the family name.

- I never felt entitlement.

I guess I've just always been, I've always had grit.

I think if I've had any quality that's driven me forward,

it's just a sense of, shoulder, shoulder down

and let's keep moving forward.

- [Narrator] Thomas Newman's father Alfred,

was a nine time Academy award winning composer

who spent nearly two decades as music director

of 20th century Fox during the 1940s and '50s.

He also wrote the iconic fanfare for the studio.

The next generation of Newman's brought cousin Randy,

who's become one of America's most beloved songwriters

and film composers.

The rest of the family is littered with accomplished

classical musicians and composers and growing up,

it was a given that music would be an important

part of Thomas's life.

His mother would drive him and his two siblings

to lessons with best teachers.

Sometimes hours away,

but the Newman children didn't get much advice

from their famous father.

He would spend long hours holed up in his studio.

- My dad was, I think in the days when he was alive,

it was enough to make a living.

And, then mother would do most of the parenting

and that's just not as true now as it was then,

I always believe my dad loved us a lot.

He would get up late and work late.

He would rarely have dinner with us.

There was a Sunday dinner he'd have with us,

which was typically roast beef and mashed potatoes.

And he'd have a flagon of Heineken keg I remember,

but he was 55 when I was born.

So, so much of what my father was had already happened

by the time I was born.

And in the time I was alive and he was alive,

he was sick,

a lot of the time,

he was a terrible smoker and died of lung cancer.

- [Narrator] Newman was only 14 when his dad passed away.

And though his mother was supportive,

the young Thomas felt the loss deeply,

naturally shy and reserved.

It took a decade and two degrees from Yale for him to figure

out where he belonged in music and in life.

- Maybe by the age of 24, 25, I was kind of nowhere,

it was like, okay, now what?

Do I love music enough to stick with it?

And the answer was a kind of vague. Yes,

I really did like it,

but I think it made me think that I had to bend

as opposed to break and what was good about what I did

and what wasn't

and now, okay, I'm gonna reengage.

I just wanted to always put it above me.

I wanted to enjoy it.

- [Narrator] This was one of many values reinforced

by Newman's mentor.

Stephen Sondheim time was already a legendary

musical theater composer when they met.

Yet, he treated Newman as an equal.

- He listened to the things I had to say as if

what I had to say had some interest,

and I don't think I'd ever been really

spoken to that way before.

So he was and he was very open about process

and collaboration in a way that he was not afraid

to share vulnerability with me

as a matter of what it meant to be collaborative.

So I think I learned basic lessons in how humans interact.

- Mmh, I'm sure that that translated

to the film world from the musical theater world.

- It does your ability to be a team player,

to know how to try to make something better,

not to outsize something based upon,

an idea of oneself.

All those are I think,

really important qualities to have

cause you were in the service of some thing.

It doesn't, a movie doesn't start with me.

It kind of ends with me.

And it's, it's kind of an obligation I have to kind of carry

it out in a way that's respectful to the makers.

- [Narrator] 30 years on

those makers have included the likes of Steven Spielberg,

Ron Howard and Robert Bradford.

And he's been a GoTo collaborator for Sam Mendez

since the directors first film, 1999,

five time Academy award winning American Beauty,

the tragic comic tale

of a suburban man's chaotic midlife meltdown.

(piano music)

- I tend to like, I think scenes that have psychology

in them and that are subtextual in their musical nature.

That they're not redundant to image and that I can actually

bring something to a movie

that a director never would have thought of.

And that's always a joy for someone to say,

I never thought this scene had a kind of depth

that it has now with this bit of music underneath.

- [Narrator] Thomas Newman uses unusual,

sophisticated, melodic, and harmonic devices

to create uniquely evocative scores.

And he's written some of the most memorable soundtracks

in recent movie history.

The Shawshank Redemption, Road to Perdition, 1917.

Today Thomas Newman has secured his place

in his esteemed family's legacy by keeping an open mind,

listening carefully and never being afraid to scrap it all

and start again.

- Part of it is knowing that, having an idea,

isn't the end of having another idea.

I think the worst enemy for me is I wrote this

and therefore it has to be great,

that just puts me in a terrible position.

I'd rather say I wrote this and I'm gonna now,

put it away from myself and let it come at my ears

and make sure I like it.

And as opposed to liking it because I wrote it

because I spent five hours writing it dammit

and it better be good.

Giving up as an act of kind of self acceptance in a way,

these are all ways of measuring the product.

And in the end you do want that kind of measurement.

You don't wanna to be born beautiful, but somehow weak.

It needs to be beautiful,

but it has to be ultimately built to last.

- [Narrator] Most of the time,

Thomas Newman works to serve someone else's vision,

but despite being one of the most revered movie composers

alive, he still goes to the piano to make music

just for himself, like this,

a congregational song called,

"Speak So I Can Hear You"

written for his late mother, Martha.

(piano music)

And though this is a deeply personal piece music.

In their own way.

All of Thomas Newman's compositions

feel like they come from the very soul of the man

that in the service of evoking,

a universally heartfelt idea or emotion,

he must give not only of his prodigious musical talent,

but also truly of himself.

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- For more articulate, find us on social media

or on our website ArticulateShow.org.

- On the next articulate being declared stateless

at just six months old, did not predict greatness

for the celebrated musician, Daniel hope.

(violin music)

The course of his life was changed when his mother

began working for the legendary violinist Yehudi Menuhin.

- Their was a finite amount of time,

We were allowed to stay in the country,

unless they, until they would have kicked us out.

So she needed to find employment

and she speaks six languages.

She trained as a secretary and she met somebody

that had an agency that supplied part time jobs.

And there were two jobs going secretary to the archbishop

of Canterbury and,

it was amazing for us and it surrounded me

and our whole family, not just with a wonderful human being,

but with music and the musicians that came to the house

and the extraordinary meeting point of cultural worlds

that was Manuel's life.

(violin music)

- I'm Jim Cotter, join us for the next Articulate.

At a time when we are reassessing, what is truly valuable?

our most precious asset might be imagination.

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It allows us to envision a better world

to wonder, what if?

That simple fearless question has forever driven

the world's greatest innovators.

Articulate brings you some of today's most creative thinkers

to explore how they can help us better understand our world.

Articulate, ask yourself, what if?

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- [Announcer] Articulate with Jim Cotter

is made possible with generous funding

from the Neubauer Family Foundation.

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