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David Furst: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm David Furst in for Alison Stewart. In the beginning of the new novel, Happiness Falls, 20-year-old Mia doesn't panic when her younger brother Eugene runs home from the park with blood under his nails and pushes her over on the front lawn. That's because Eugene has a rare genetic condition called Angelman syndrome, and he can sometimes get overwhelmed. But when it becomes clear that Mia's father who was in the park with Eugene hasn't returned with him, the family starts to worry.

Despite best efforts from her mom, her twin brother, and from police, it seems that the only person who really knows what happened to Mia's dad is Eugene, but because of Eugene's disability, he isn't able to communicate verbally or really much at all, so the family has no real way of asking him what happened or so they think.

Happiness Falls is the second novel from writer Angie Kim. You may have picked up her first novel, Miracle Creek. Angie's going to be speaking tomorrow in conversation with Susan Choi at the Korea Society in partnership with the bookstore Yu and Me. You can still grab tickets for that online but first, Angie Kim joins us on All Of It. Welcome.

Angie Kim: Thank you so much for having me, David. I'm really excited to talk to you about this

David Furst: Happiness Falls, this is a book that mixes big philosophical questions about happiness, disability, communication with a really page-turning mystery at the same time. The book focuses on a child with autism and this rare genetic disorder. Your first novel, Miracle Creek, also focused a lot on kids with autism and other neurodivergent conditions. Why have you decided to write two books that really pay attention to neurodivergence and disability?

Angie Kim: It's something that means a lot to me, and it's partly because of my own experiences and the experiences of some friends who are very, very close to me and also because I wanted to write about what it's like being an outsider. My first novel, Miracle Creek, features a Korean immigrant family, much like my own, including a girl who came over at the age of 11 in middle school, which is a very, very painful time to be coming over to a new culture and not knowing any English and things like that, which is something that I experienced.

This novel, Happiness Falls, deals with a biracial Korean-American family. I wanted to look at what it's like being an outsider in this country, linguistically, culturally in all of those ways, and juxtapose that with what it's like being an outsider from the perspective of having medical issues, having disabilities, being neurodivergent. I have three boys who are all fine now, but all three of them suffered really weird medical mystery types of ailments as babies. I have a lot of experience with what it's like being in a family like that and the frustrations and joys that go with that, so I really wanted to focus on that.

David Furst: How did you first learn about Angelman syndrome and decide that you wanted to write a character who was dealing with that?

Angie Kim: Yes, Angelman Syndrome is something that I learned about after I started writing about this family. I've actually been writing about this family that's at the heart of Happiness Falls for about 10 years or so, writing short stories and things. I always thought that Eugene, the 14-year-old boy here who is non-speaking and so therefore can't tell the family and the police what happened to the father, I always thought he had autism, as the family did at first too.

It turns out that Angelman syndrome is so rare that sometimes it gets misdiagnosed as autism and solely as autism. When I started doing research into an issue that's really, really important to me, which is people who are autistic, who are non-speaking and so therefore presumed to be cognitively deficient, and the therapies that people are using to teach them to spell and thereby communicate.

When I started looking into that issue, I learned about kids with Angelman syndrome. I happened upon it and I thought, “What is this?” because the strange thing about Angelman syndrome patients is that they have this persistent smile and they laugh a lot and so the assumption is that they're very happy. It raises all sorts of questions about happiness and objective versus subjective happiness and the relativity of happiness, which is something that I was really interested in too. I grabbed at it and met many, many people in this community who've really embraced it.

David Furst: Well, a parent seeing a smiling child is instantly comforted, right? Let me just ask you quickly just to move an inch or two back from the microphone because it was making a lot of popping sounds.

Angie Kim: Oh, sorry, sorry, yes.

David Furst: It's okay. How has Eugene's disability affected the family dynamics, especially the relationship between his parents?

Angie Kim: I think that the family dynamics of people when there is a child with medical disabilities is just something that I've been obviously very, very attuned to myself and wanted to explore more. What happens in this family is that all of the parents' attention really get devoted to Eugene just because he is the baby of the family and because he does have so many needs.

There are a lot of therapies. Financially and time-wise, the family really has to focus on Eugene. The older siblings who are John and Mia, who are 20-year-olds, and they're very bright. Mia is our narrator. She's very acerbic, she's brilliant and sarcastic and they loved-- [crosstalk]

David Furst: Can I interrupt and just say that I love Mia?

Angie Kim: Yes.

David Furst: Mia is a real person as far as I'm concerned. Just such a fully conceived character and the way she speaks with all of these asides in the book, she has footnotes at the bottom of the page. I am in. I believe that is Mia.

Angie Kim: I am so happy to hear you say that. My writing process is one that I call method writing because I used to be in theater, so I did a lot of method acting training. Now when I write, I really try to be in the character's voice, the voice of whoever I'm writing from. When I was in her voice, I kept on telling myself as me Angie Kim, the writer, “Maybe we shouldn't have so many asides because we really want the readers to focus on the mystery of what's happening with the father,” but I just couldn't help it. She is such a strong character. I'm so glad that you brought up the footnotes because-- [crosstalk]

David Furst: The asides are incredible, but she and she and her twin, they're dealing with, yes, this attention being diverted away from them, right?

Angie Kim: Absolutely and they love their little brother so much. They have this fierce protectiveness over him, but then at the same time, they have resentment and they have frustration, which is very human. Because Mia is talking to us directly in this confessional way, she does confess to the reader some of the things that she's feels ashamed about, the moments when she thought things that were ungenerous and that are shameful but I think are very human and that we all have from time to time.

David Furst: Back to the core mystery here. Mia's father is missing and we really follow the case step-by-step as the investigation unfolds. What did you learn about the procedures for missing persons cases that may have surprised you or perhaps helped to shape the story?

Angie Kim: Absolutely. I did talk to a lot of cops, ex-cops, people in the criminal justice system, especially ones who deal with juvenile justice and ones who deal with children who are considered special needs in some way. One thing that I have heard over the years from my friends who have non-speaking children especially is that the lack of communication is a constant worry for these families because they're wondering what happens if something happens and their child's actions that are maybe impulsive, or just being protective over themselves, or sensory meltdowns. What if those lead the police, or neighbors, or bystanders to fear them and maybe call Child Protective Services? That is a huge worry.

David Furst: When Eugene returns home alone, Mia doesn't immediately think something is- -wrong and they don't immediately start looking for her dad. Why not? Are they holding back for some of those reasons that you're talking about here?

Angie Kim: Absolutely. There is a fear that if the police get involved and Eugene can't communicate, that the police will come over and they will start thinking, “Well, what's happening here with this young man who's 14?” which is a child, but also I have a 14-year-old myself. They're getting big and they don't sometimes know the strength of their own bodies. They're worried about protecting Eugene certainly, but they're also thinking, “It must be okay because it has to be okay, right?”

I think we sometimes delude ourselves when huge emergencies and tragedies like that happen. There's that process of denial of, “It must be okay. Dad just must have sprained his ankle and he just can't come home and we just have to go and find him.”

David Furst: The cellphone battery must have run out.

Angie Kim: Exactly. Absolutely. Or maybe he lost his cell phone, which, hey, that dad definitely loses the cell phone sometimes. We all do. He can't do the Find iPhone because the cell coverage in the park where they were is so bad. I bet he's just going and trying to find the phone and I bet he was even home earlier and we just didn't even see him.

David Furst: Because they don't do something right away, there's lost hours before any investigation can begin.

Angie Kim: Absolutely. That is so crucial. One of the things that I learned is the myth of that somebody has to be missing for 24 hours or 48 hours. Everybody has different numbers in their heads from different TV shows and movies that they've watched of, “Well, they're not considered missing persons and so we can't call the police.” Especially in situations involving strange circumstances like this, the police will tell you, “No, that's just such a misconception, and it's one of these myths, and you can’t think like that.”

Of course, when the family finds that out, they're devastated, especially Mia because she's the one who cited that. She told her family that she had read an article verifying that in a New Yorker article. When of course she says in an aside, “No, I actually think that I heard about it on Law & Order: SVU.”

David Furst: Got it. Well, we're speaking with the author Angie Kim about the new book, Happiness Falls. We're going to take a quick break here. Oh, we're not going to take a quick break. Oh, we're not having a break. Fantastic. Well, because I have so many more questions. We're talking with Angie Kim. I wanted to ask about this one section of the book where Mia describes a period of time in the family, which almost led to divorce.

This is when a speech therapist was brought in to work with Eugene. For a time, it seemed to be working until a series of events led the family to believe that the therapist was actually a fraud. Why do you think Mia's mom was so eager to believe that Eugene's therapy was working and while her father perhaps was eager to prove that it was a fraud?

Angie Kim: I think these debates in families about the best course of treatment and whether a therapy is, and especially in experimental therapy, is worthwhile or not, is something that happens in a lot of families that I know of personally. It's something that I was really eager to explore because it is one of these things that, especially the mom, she's a Korean immigrant. She has a PhD in linguistics. She firmly believes in the value of language and the presence of language innately, which is a Chomsky linguistics theory.

She is like, "I know my child can. He's not really nonverbal, which is the label that people put on him. He just can't speak. I know he has words." When a speech therapist who is I think well-meaning but she uses an unconventional method in which she guides the hand physically of Eugene to help him spell, to help him learn to spell then the family gets really intrigued.

But of course, Mia and the father who are skeptics are like, "Wait, is that really Eugene moving his hand, or is that like the Ouija board kind of thing where she's really helping him?" There's a lot of controversy. That's something that I understand from those in the community that some people who are not as well-trained in these spelling therapies have actually been accused of actually physically guiding the hands of the spellers. I think that's really, really interesting and it's something that I wanted to explore.

David Furst: There's a point where it comes to the surface in the book that Eugene's parents had been considering an experimental program that was working to "correct Angelman syndrome." This leads to a debate about whether doing such a thing would be ableist. Mia says no, her brother John says yes. What do you think about these thorny debates when it comes to disability? What is the difference between wanting to improve someone's quality of life versus being ableist?

Angie Kim: Absolutely. These are such interesting questions that you raise and they're so hard. I think that's one of the reasons why I raised that in the context of this family that is trying to think about it really thoughtfully. I was fascinated myself because I like Mia thought, “Well, if there's a genetic correction for a deletion or a genetic error and there's a study to correct that, why wouldn't you take it?” Especially since in a lot of the people with Angelman syndrome, they can suffer from seizures. They can't speak as Eugene can't. They have motor issues. Some of them are in wheelchairs. Then of course, you start thinking, “Of course, we should do that.”

Then I read some articles that we're debating, “Well, but they seem so happy.” If our goal for our children is happiness and I think we would all say, "Yes, I want my child to be happy above all else." Then why would you want to "fix that" and make them into the standard teenager who is depressed and taking pills and is stressed out? Why would we do that? The father, he's obsessed with ideas of happiness and he thinks about, well, there's micro happiness, hedonistic. Lying in bed all day and having Bonbons and watching your favorite shows all day long. You might be laughing and having fun, but would you want that at the macro level to be your life?

If you had that kind of a life where that was what your life was in totality, then would you say that you were a happy person and that you had a happy, fulfilled life? It's those micro versus macro levels of happiness that gets the family thinking about, “Well, I don't know. It's really hard to decide.” Eventually, we really need to hear from Eugene what he thinks because it's his life too. That's the frustration is that they can't communicate.

David Furst: Eugene really sparks his dad to question his own ideas about what happiness means.

Angie Kim: Absolutely. Eugene is just so wonderful because the dad's theory, he has this happiness quotient theory where he says happiness is relative. Happiness is not a number that you can quantify in a vacuum. He does try to quantify it, by the way. He has many fun equations and things, but he says you have to compare it, so divide it by your expectations and by your baseline view of your life. If you lower your expectations as much as possible, then you might actually be happier.

Eugene has some thoughts that we get to access toward the end of the book. One of the things that Eugene points out is, “Yes, but if you're trying to make yourself miserable now or tell yourself that tomorrow is going to be crappy so that you'll be happier tomorrow, yes, maybe your tomorrow will be better but today is going to be really bad. It is going to be crappy.”

David Furst: Today also counts.

Angie Kim: Exactly. Today counts. It's not just tomorrow. It's a balancing view and I think Eugene reminds us of that.

David Furst: Well, I want to come back to Mia. Mia is such a great character and the chronic over thinker of the family. Is that fair to say? How do you think that helps her, and how does that hurt her?

Angie Kim: Well, it hurts her in that she could be very annoying to people, which she recognizes. She in fact is very much working on that and she tells us that. She says, "Look, I know that I can be really annoying, and I have these asides, and I'm so sorry, and I'm really, really working on that." In fact, she tries to be very thoughtful by saying, "You know what, here's what I'm going to do. When I find myself having these asides, I'm going to put them in footnotes. If you get annoyed by those like my mom does and like my twin brother does, then you can just skip them. But if you like them like my dad and I do, then you can actually go ahead and revel in them and enjoy them." I think she hurts herself by just overthinking things too much. Sometimes you can get into these spiral loops, and she does.

David Furst: She's telling the story with the benefit of hindsight. All of this has already happened, so she's telling us what she remembers about everything that went on. Do you think she's a reliable narrator of these events? You don't even have to answer that if you don't want to.

Angie Kim: No, no, no, I think it's an interesting question because I think people have. I’ve read reviews where people have said she is such an interesting unreliable character. I don't think she means to be an unreliable narrator. There are narrators who I know in literature who deliberately lie or deliberately hide things from the reader. She is not that at all. In fact, she goes the opposite. She goes out of her way to let us know everything and every facet.

In that sense, I think she is unreliable in that there are just so many things that you can be thinking, and she points out all of the theoretical possibilities. It really does become up to the reader to decide what we think about certain things that she's telling us, but she really doesn't mean to be. She definitely does have that tendency of not making it simple and being like, "Okay, here's the story, here's the story as I see it, here's the truth." She will not do that because she doesn't believe in the truth. She believes in epistemological dualities and things.

David Furst: Exploring every possibility.

Angie Kim: Exactly and making sure that she doesn't tell you the simple answer because she doesn't like simplicity.

David Furst: Well, I have to ask, your two books, Miracle Creek and Happiness Falls, did you mean for these two titles to be connected and what body of water will you include next?

Angie Kim: I know. We were joking in my team, with my agent, and with my editor. I was like, "Okay, what's the next one going to be Love Over The Ocean or-- [chuckles] We definitely didn't mean to. It is really strange and interesting that that ended up happening but I do think of these two novels as interconnected in many ways. They are companion novels to my way of thinking. They're definitely not sequels or anything like that. They're unrelated from the characters' perspectives, although there is a very sassy, badass female lawyer named Shannon that makes an appearance in both, and I love her dearly.

I do think that they're companion novels because they're both exploring what it is like to be an outsider from a racial perspective juxtaposed to what it's like to be an outsider from a medical disability perspective. Miracle Creek is doing it from the perspective of really the extremes of parenting sacrifice, whereas Happiness Falls is really focusing more on the children and the siblings, and also focusing directly on the life of one particular young man who has struggles.

David Furst: All of that, plus a really page-turning mystery. Once again, the new book is Happiness Falls, and you are going to be speaking tomorrow in conversation with Susan Choi at the Korea Society. You can find tickets online for that. Angie Kim, the author of Happiness Falls, thank you for speaking with us.

Angie Kim: Thank you so much for having me. It's been such a pleasure.

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