WOW Reads: S2, E5 - TRAP Reads The Colliding Worlds of Mina Lee by Ellen Oh

Join the Worlds of Words Center Teen Reading Ambassadors (TRAP) as we discuss The Colliding Worlds of Mina Lee by Ellen Oh.

Meeting Oh sparked our thinking around diversity in books for teens, book bans, ghost stories, and how far we are willing to go with research in service to story telling. There's plenty of Ellen Oh love in this group.

In this episode, we also mention:
Sunshine: a currently unpublished webcomic by Quin
A-Ha's Take On Me video
We Need Diverse Books
Spirit Hunter by Ellen Oh

Special shout out to Tucson Festival of Books! Watch for a bonus episode about our experience with the book festival. We are grateful for their work.

This podcast was recorded in the Digital Innovation and Learning Lab (DIALL) in the UArizona College of Education with assistance from the UA COE Tech Team.

Producer/Host: Rebecca Ballenger, Worlds of Words Center Associate Director
Audio Engineer: Liam Arias, Student Employee and Radio, TV, Film Major
Coordinator: Vianey Torres, Student Employee and Nursing Major

Reading Ambassador Adviser:
Katherine Connover, Retired Educator

For more information on the WOW Teen Reading Ambassadors (TRAP), visit wowlit.org.

We Can Promote Global Literature Together!

The Worlds of Words Reading Ambassador program is completely free for participants who receive a book for themselves and a book to share with their school librarian, ELA/English teacher, or other school entity. If you would like to support this program, please make a gift on-line through the University of Arizona Foundation.

Thank you for listening and keep reading!

Transcript

Welcome to Wow Reads a podcast of the Worlds Of Words center of global literacies and literatures, which is committed to creating an international network of people who share the vision of bringing books and children together, thereby opening windows on the world. We encourage thoughtful dialog around global literature so that children can reflect on their own cultural experiences and connect to the experiences of children across the globe.

World of Words Reading Ambassadors engage in a university experience of children's literature within the University of Arizona College of Education. Reading Ambassadors learn about literature for young people under the direction of faculty and staff with expertise in children's literature, education, library, science and marketing.

We respectfully acknowledge the University of Arizona is on the land and territories of indigenous peoples. Today, Arizona is home to 22 federally recognized tribes. With Tucson being home to the O’odham and the Yaqui. Committed to diversity and inclusion, the university strives to build sustainable relationships with sovereign native nations and indigenous communities through education offerings, partnerships and community service.

Today, it will be talking about Ellen Oh, who is a founding member of We Need Diverse Books, and an award winning author of numerous middle grade novels and the Y.A. Prophecy trilogy. She has edited and contributed to You Are Here: Connecting Flights, flying lessons and other stories, and A Thousand Beginnings and Endings. Ellen is a former lawyer who loves K-Pop, k-dramas and cooking shows, but her favorite thing to do is to try new places to eat good food.

A Gen Xer who grew up with MTV, Ellen credits Aha’s Iconic Take on Me video as the inspiration for the colliding worlds of Mina Lee Originally from New York City, Ellen lives in Rockville, Maryland, and her husband, three humans, human children and two dog children and has yet to satisfy her quest for a decent bagel.

I'm super happy she gets to live with her human children and her husband, it's great for her. Let's start out by introducing ourselves. My name is Rebecca. I'm the associate director of Worlds of Words.

I'm Lily. I am a freshman in the ambassador program.

I'm Quinn, and I'm also a freshman in the ambassador program.

I’m the other Rebecca. And I'm a junior in the ambassador program.

So today we got to talk to Ellen Oh, author of The Colliding Worlds of Mina Lee. She says, MEENAH Lee

I feel like I was.

thinking of MEENAH but then you said MINAH and I was like, uhhh

Okay. So that's a me thing. That's one thing that I learned today from Ellen. One of you start us off telling talking a little bit about that experience today.

So we met Ellen Oh today and she talked a lot about her book and then the program, We Need Diverse Books and then the banned books movement that has been coming across America, which they have been cutting out, diverse books such as LGBTQ Books, Asian books, books about colored characters and all sorts of books, and the same sort of character thing.

So yeah, so that's one of the things that she said was that as We Need Diverse Books and the publishing, publishing industry has been more successful representing a wider range of voices, people of color, characters of color, I guess we should say, and indigenous characters that, it coincided with an increase in books, books being banned or those particular books being banned.

What are your friends saying about that?

Well, I don't my friends don't really read that much, but I know it makes me really angry that the people are deciding that we should not be reading these books, that we should just be reading books about everyday white people when there is a entire world out there full of unique people and experiences and it is wrong to cut those out of our lives.

I don't talk to my friends like I don't have full discussions about this, but I go to a pretty liberal high school and we do have discussions as like a school or as a class about these things and just about diversity in general. And I think that it's really, really amazing that Ellen Oh. has been able to make this program and it's been really successful.

And when I was getting my book signing, I almost started crying when I was telling her Thank you for allowing me to grow up in a world where I can read these books and they're so diverse and I don't even have to think about them. Not them. Not all being white, because I they're not because I can read books that aren't about just white characters or just straight characters.

And I think that that's a really great way to explore yourself is through books and through other characters. So I think it's really important for us to have diverse characters that we can read about.

Yeah, she was making me cry too. Not going to lie. I really I'm really glad that I get to see more LGBTQ and BIPOC representation. Like even being at the Tucson Festival of Books today, it was really easy to forget that. Like it was only ten years ago that the numbers like 7% were like she was saying that 7% of all that was of the books were inclusive.

It's hard to it was easy to forget that. It was only that long ago I was four years old at the time. Now that I think about it, but I am really glad that I get to grow up in this world. But even today, sometimes it's a bit different. It's a bit difficult to find, like in some parts of the world, to find books that are like that, which is what we're seeing.

In some parts of our world. In the U.S., you mean?

Yeah. Sorry.

Yeah, I think so. Well, let's talk about this book. Let's talk about the colliding worlds of Mina Lee, What was your overall impression or your connections to it?

Well, I know that I really liked her being Asian because I am Asian myself. And it was nice reading about a character who comes from that part of the world. And then I found it funny that she that the main character mainly writes webcomics because I read some myself.

What webcomics are you reading?

I read on a platform called Web Tens, and a couple of them are called like the remarried Empress. Right. They're like, favorite. I really like the Isekai tropes, like one person does bad in this life, but then they relive it or they die and then get reincarnated into a fantasy novel.

Yeah, I thought it was really cool that Mina was creating webcomics too, because I really like art myself. I'm actually working on a webcomic or piece of art called I haven't posted or put it out yet, but it's called Sunshine, about one of my friends. And just seeing Mina's process and then relating it to Ellen own writing process, I thought that I thought it was really amazing to be able to see that.

I wanted to touch on what Lilly said about the Isekai trope. That means that there's two universes.

Yeah, it's like a portal, Like a portal fantasy where a character moves from one world to another. Usually they get hit by a truck, right? Truck-kun?

Yeah. Like 13.

14. It doesn't.

Thing. Yeah, she. Thankfully she doesn't. And we talked about it in or I said in the author intro that she was inspired by a Aha’s Take on Me video and she talked about that in the in the discussion too. And that was it was just cool to see that she got inspiration just from a music video. But I mean, we saw the music video.

It's really creative. And I think that it's it's cool that she kind of just created it in her own way and with a lot more detail and emotion and and culture. But yeah, I thought that was cool that she had the Isekai trope.

If you're wondering about what the sequel to the colliding worlds of Mina Lee is, you might want to take a look at the Take on Me music video and look at the end.

I was glad that she said that because when she's. So when we finished reading the book, we were like, really a sequel? Like, Yeah, we were kind of we kind of weren't really sure where to go with that. And then she reminded us about that video we saw, and it made so much sense.

Yeah. One of the things I found fascinating is that she's a nighttime writer, that she does most of her best writing from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m.. And then she shared with us a story, a very funny story. So apparently she likes writing horror and she was in the middle of writing one of the scariest scenes for Spirit Walker.

One of her middle school novels. And she felt this. Her dog was barking and the other room and she told them to be quiet. Then she felt this cold, clammy sensation on her. And apparently she grabbed her dog and bolted out of the house.

Leaving her husband and her three kids in the.

House, about which her husband pointed out. The next morning she said, Well, I could leave you. You didn't know about it. You were sleeping.

She seems to believe in ghosts, that's for sure.

And also that she believes saying, well, ghost will leave you alone if you're sleeping.

Right. And she said she said that she thought that the ghost was saying, like, good job, which I thought she was so funny. She was hilarious and she was just so lovely and really inspirational.

Her reactions and her ability to storyteller that stood out to me because she was like, even making gestures as she was telling the stories made you feel more involved and closer to her.

Yeah, she was a really great author to interview.

Yeah, she mentioned. So apparently the colliding worlds of Mina Lee started out as a story in which the hero mainly gets sucked into a webcomic a cartoon world. But Ellen, did not want the opposing character to Mina, a guy named Jin, the handsome boy of her dreams, to be just a cartoon character like Winnie the Pooh or something.

And so she, despite how much she hates physics, went into string theory and quantum mechanics to create a world parallel to Mina’s to make sure that Jin could be a real boy.

Do any of you think that you would take such a deep dive into physics, string theory, quantum mechanics in order to write a book?

Nope.

There's some serious stuff, I would say.

Yes, yes, yes.

If it if it meant making the story sound more like believable, authentic, and if I'm actually I kind of like some of that stuff too. If it or I guess it was a topic I didn't like, maybe I'd back away from it a bit and try to change the plot, but I think it'd be really fun to learn about that.

And it would if it would make my story better than yes, definitely.

I'm not sure about me. It sounds like a lot of stagnation.

I would not be patient enough. I've somehow been motivated, actually. So.

Does does anybody want to address Bomi?

Bomi, the robot character?

yes. You. Ellen was talking about how she Bomi was the character that Mina created the robot character that Mina created to help her through this new world. Because Mina couldn't create. She was the creator so she could make anything she wanted as a but like something that wasn't alive or biotic. So she ended up giving her a robot pet.

And I think that Bomi was really important in moving the story along and giving the reader information as to what was going on in this world. Along with Mina. So I thought that was a really clever way to incorporate that.

Bomi is like the Google of for Mina in that world.

Yeah. So any if you were telling your friends about this book, you know what is just one thing that you would tell them about this book?

That's a hard question because there are so many things to talk about.

I'd talk about how all the different, all the characters and most of the characters have like powers and these and these, like, different abilities and like, one of them can m... and what's the word for it can manipulate time. One is like electric powers, wind powers, healing powers. I thought all of that was really cool. I think I think super powers are pretty cool in general, not gonna lie.

Well, I know that might not catch my friend's attention if I did say something cool, like they got sucked into this world or something. But I'd still say that it is about an artist who makes a webcomic. Sorry. This. Yeah.

She is an artist. She is an art. Mina is an artist who she's trying to create a webcomic so she can get into college.

But her dad isn't supportive of that.

Yeah, I was going to say, I think I would talk about how I really disagree with how her Dad doesn't like that. I mean,

Well, the her.

Even though it's his way of dealing with his grief, I think that it's unfair to take away somebody else's coping mechanism.

Mina's mother died, and it's left both of them grieving in a different way. With Mina, it's like the art is painful to look at, but it's also a reminder that her mom was there and it also help. And it helps her. But her dad sees that as a more painful reminder and he decides to hide all the art that Mina's mom made away and shut that out and force what was the job that was being forced.

Doctor or lawyer? Yeah, I think it was doctor stuff. Yeah, because Jin was talking about how he wanted to go into pre-med.

Well, I wish Mina luck as she enters her college career. And I wish each of you luck as you start to think about colleges or whatever comes for you after high school, maybe it's not college, but if it is, maybe the University of Arizona. I'd like to thank Liam at this point, he's our sound engineer. I'd like to thank Vianey for keeping us collected together.

Catherine, our volunteer. I'd like to say thank the COE tech team here in the University of Arizona College of Education. We are recording in the DIALL lab the Digital Innovation and Learning Lab. Thank you so much.