You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hi, this is Mike Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

This week I'm talking to Cynthia Catojata,

whose new book, The Floating World, has been published by Viking,

and I'll be talking in the second half of the program

to Brian Kightly, whose first novel, Still Life with Insects,

has been published by Tickner and Fields.

Cynthia is here in town visiting her family.

Her novel, The Floating World, is a soft, spiky, funny book

about someone who's coming of age takes her floating through the Pacific Northwest down to Arkansas

and along our coast.

Los Angeles has visited for a while.

It's a novel that might be said to be about the experience of someone growing up in America,

who is also growing up as an Asian American.

When you started to write The Floating World, what was your goal?

Just to get published, I guess, was my first goal.

But I definitely wanted, I guess, was my first goal.

But I definitely wanted, I'd always thought that the first thing I write,

I wanted to be about Asians because just sort of as somehow redeeming my parents' lives or something.

...