The Monkey King and Boy Giant w/ Van Hoang
Spirits: Mythology, Legends, & Folklore
Multitude
4.8 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 9 November 2022
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We’re joined by author Van Hoang, who teaches us the story of the Monkey King, how Journey to the West MIGHT have been a romance novel, and how going through puberty turns every kid into a trickster spirit.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of trauma, puberty, crude jokes, misogyny, and arranged marriage.
Guest
Van Hoang’s first name is pronounced like the van in minivan. Her last name is pronounced “hah-wawng.” She earned her bachelor’s in English at the University of New Mexico and her master’s in library information science at San Jose State University. She was born in Vietnam, grew up in Orange County, California, and now resides in Los Angeles with her husband, kid, and two dogs. Girl Giant and the Monkey King is her debut novel, and its sequel Girl Giant and the Jade War came out in December, 2021.
Housekeeping
- Recommendation: This week, Julia recommends Dead End: Paranormal Park on Netflix.
- Books: Check out our previous book recommendations, guests’ books, and more at spiritspodcast.com/books
- Call to Action: Check out Exolore: Helping you imagine other worlds, but with facts and science! Every other week, astrophysicist/folklorist Dr. Moiya McTier explores fictional worlds by building them with a panel of expert guests, interviewing professional worldbuilders, or reviewing the merits of worlds that have already been built.
Sponsors
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- Clockworks Academy offers online courses on literature and popular culture, focusing especially on monster theory and on medieval literature. Go to clockworksacademy.com and use SPIRITS for 10% of any course.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm |
| 0:02.0 | M. |
| 0:05.0 | The Welcome to Spirth's podcast, a boozy diamond to mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda. And I'm |
| 0:37.9 | Julia. In this episode 309 with Van Hoang, Van, welcome to the show. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. |
| 0:44.5 | I'm like obsessed with you guys. I'm so happy to be here. Like I said before, I'm like, |
| 0:49.2 | anytime someone's like, oh yeah, I listened to the show and now I'm here. I'm like, oh, good, you stayed. Great. Excellent. I'm so glad. But we're so, so happy to have you. And you're going to be telling us a little bit about a story that I'm not super familiar with. And I'm really, really excited to learn about. But first, how about we talk a little bit about your books? because we're very excited to talk about them. |
| 1:12.9 | Yeah, thank you. |
| 1:13.7 | So my first book is called Girl Giant and the Monkey King, and it has a lot of Vietnamese mythology influence. |
| 1:20.1 | It's about a very strong girl who develops like super strength for like inexplicable reasons. |
| 1:26.2 | And it causes a lot of problems in her life. |
| 1:28.3 | So in order to get rid of it, she makes a deal with a trickster demon god named the monkey king. |
| 1:32.7 | And then she gets, you know, like absorbed into this world of magic and mythology that she |
| 1:37.3 | didn't know existed and then kind of learns that magic is way more than it's worth. |
| 1:42.0 | And yeah, I'm obsessed with the Monkey King. And the sequel to that book |
| 1:45.8 | is out already. It's called Girl Giant and the Jade War. Incredible. And if you are listening to |
| 1:51.1 | this episode right now, there are links in the show notes where you can go and you can just buy |
| 1:54.9 | those books or ask your library to go get those books. Like, that would be great, wouldn't it? |
| 1:58.9 | And as a librarian van, I know that you're probably like, yes, ask your library. You get those books. Like, that would be great, wouldn't it? And as a, as a librarian, Van, I know that you're |
| 2:02.2 | probably like, yes, ask your library. Yeah. I'm also a librarian. I work a lot with children, |
| 2:07.9 | the children's department, but I'm primarily an adult librarian. So I have like, you know, |
| 2:11.6 | my feet in both worlds. Excellent. Is that why you chose middle grade as kind of an area of expertise here, let's say? |
| 2:18.9 | I don't actually know. So I kind of like fell into middle grade by mistake. I was just like writing in all ages. |
... |
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