Will Brehm  0:47
Chundou Her, welcome to FreshEd.

Chundou Her  0:49
Hey, thanks for having me here. Really excited to get to talk about the podcast episode.

Will Brehm  0:54
Yeah, congratulations on it. It was a journey. I mean, it was like going into a whole different world many times over, and I’m so happy that we can sort of unpack a little bit of it today and chat about it, because it’s really been quite enjoyable working with you over these last 12 to 18 months to put this together. So, you know, when I was reflecting on this conversation, I actually went back to the beginning of when you first pitched the idea, and you initially pitched this idea where you would basically do a story where you walked around the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison with different Hmong students to basically talk about different locations on campus where different racist acts took place. I guess, maybe to start, can you sort of place me in the University of Wisconsin,-Madison? What is it like to be a student there, particularly a student of Hmong background -a Hmong American student. What is it like to be a student on campus?

Chundou Her  1:55
So, I guess the first thing I want to say about the University of Wisconsin-Madison is that it is a massive, massive institution. I believe the number of students floats anywhere between 40,000 to 42,000 which you know, is a really significant number. And those numbers are only growing as UW-Madison continues to like, kind of break records in terms of like, this is our next biggest freshman class. No, this is our next biggest freshman class. So, they just kind of keep getting bigger and bigger, which isn’t a bad thing, necessarily, because, you know, more people getting higher education, I don’t think anyone would say is a bad thing. So, that’s like the first part of it -is that oftentimes students are coming to UW from medium-sized schools. So, they’re kind of going from being a big fish in a little pond or medium-sized pond, and then end up being just a fish in an ocean of people. And you know, there’s kind of a lot of ramifications for that, like you not only are you feeling homesick potentially, but you’re also feeling potentially some feelings of like imposter syndrome, or feelings of inadequacy, just by virtue of like, well, you’re no longer the smartest kid in your AP Calculus class, because, guess what, everyone took AP calculus and everyone got a five on the AP test. Those who live in America will kind of know what that means. So, to factor also in now, like that racial component to it, of like being a Hmong American on campus. Now, in comparison, our numbers are less than 500 at this point, I believe, I think we’re hovering at around 400 Hmong American students on campus, which, on the one hand, it’s like, wow. I mean, that’s great, because, you know, several years ago, maybe it wasn’t that high. I don’t know the exact numbers, but again, factoring in that like we are less than 1% of the population at this school, and it can be really easy to just feel isolated and to feel lonely and to be in a place where, quite frankly, a lot of people just don’t know who Hmong people are, or don’t know what the Hmong American story is, even though it is a very sacred part of ourselves that we kind of carry to classes. We carry it to our clubs. We carry it everywhere that we go. And that’s actually kind of where the walking piece came in, of like this idea of Hmong people carrying their stories. And I wanted to quite literally, physically capture that with literal walking interviews. But you know, as we know from how the episode turned out, it ended up not being that, but that was kind of the original inspiration.

Will Brehm  4:19
Do you still think that the final episode still talks about the story of the Hmong American experience?

Chundou Her  4:25
Oh, absolutely. And I actually think that what I ended up producing, with the help of my cousins, with the help of the FreshEd team, actually is a so much better representation of the Hmong American experience because it’s specific, like it’s not me trying to give this generalizable -like, you know, in qualitative research it’s always like, oh, let’s make a composite character that the audience or the reader can relate to. Like, this isn’t a composite. Like, these are very real, lived experiences of Hmong American students and so in my opinion, I actually think it’s a much truer version of the Hmong, American experience, versus if I were to go the other route of kind of doing a little bit more like -I don’t know how to describe it. The other way, I think, would have been great. But like, I think what we ended up with is also like, wow. Like, I really feel it in my heart.

Will Brehm  5:12
Yeah. And, you know, we’ll get into this. I think one of the things that’s so beautiful is that it’s non-linear, and its layers of storytelling and world-making, which might seem so fictional, but as you’re sort of saying, you’re actually getting to some deeper truth through that mode of storytelling.

Chundou Her  5:28
And I think that’s the part that surprised me the most, was that I could tell a story in a very non-linear way, and also just a very nontraditional way in general. Because I think even as far as podcasting goes like, I think what I’ve produced is probably not what people imagine when they think of a podcast. And I’ll be really interested to hear how other people are engaging with this and kind of thinking about it. But yeah, it has been a journey for sure to get to this point.

Will Brehm  5:54
So, I guess reflecting on both the podcast but your own experiences on campus, you know, what role did fiction and storytelling play in sort of allowing you to process your own life and experiences on campus?

Chundou Her  6:11
So, fiction, for me as an individual -I can’t say that this applies to every Hmong American ever, but for myself, like fiction has basically been my diary, like, ever since I was very young. I was a very avid reader as a child. I really enjoyed reading both traditional books, but then also, like, watching TV, watching movies, listening to music. So, I was just kind of consuming things all the time. And eventually I got to a point where I was like, you know, I feel like I have a story to tell now. And that was probably around like, I don’t know, like, late elementary school, going into middle school, when I finally started to really delve into, like, I’m going to write my own stories, especially because it’s really hard to find stories that can engage so many different parts of myself, like not just entertain me, because lots of things can be entertaining, but like, stories that really speak to my core of who I am. And so that’s when I started to write stories -with my cousins actually. We collaborated together to -like our dream was to write this, like graphic novel series at one point. And, you know, that takes a ton of work, obviously. And we were just middle school kids having fun drawing and playing pretend in our free time, you know, after school and during our summer breaks and stuff like that. And so, fiction continued to just play an important part of my life, as like, going into high school, I continued to write in my free time, and got really active in, like, especially fan fiction communities online, and then even going into college, like, when supposedly people are supposed to grow up and, you know, become adults. I was, like, still writing my fan fiction on the side and still participating in the like -there’s an annual competition called NaNoWriMo, which stands for National Novel Writers Month. And so, the month of November, like people around the world try to write a novel of 50,000 words, and I still try to do that every year. I don’t finish anymore because I don’t have the time, but, like, I at least start it every year, because it’s just such a key part of, like, who I am.

Will Brehm  8:11
Do you think that sort of key part of who you are somehow helps you heal through a lot of the racist acts that you recount in the podcast and that you’ve sort of told us about as we’ve gotten to know each other over the last year or so? Do you see that sort of the ability to write, to create stories, to create with your cousins’ sort of new worlds -like, is that a process of healing in some way?

Chundou Her  8:36
Oh, absolutely. And in the past, I did not know that it was healing. I just thought I was, like a weird person who just never grew out of my fan fiction phase. Because, you know, a lot of people, you know, will write stories and stuff, but a lot of people grow out of it where they’re like, ooh, yikes, that was kind of cringy when I was a teenager and wrote these, like, Hunger Games, fan fictions, or, like, you know, whatever people are interested in. And I just kind of never grew out of that. And I didn’t think that it was healing for a long time. I just thought I was like, a weird adult who never matured properly. But now, in retrospect, I do see a lot of that as like, oh, wow, no. That was my body and my mind and my spirit’s way of trying to communicate something from deeper within that, you know, cognitively, I couldn’t quite put into words yet. And so, like, I know a lot of academics like to shy away from, like, spirituality and stuff like that, but there’s something very deeply spiritual about, like, my own fiction process, and I think now pulling my cousins back into the fiction process through this podcast. Like, I think we’ve all kind of found something very deeply spiritual about that.

Will Brehm  9:41
Can you sort of tell us a little bit about what it was like to bring your cousins into that process? Because that was -from our end- it was really quite amazing to watch you do that. And sort of collectively, you and your cousins sort of ended up, in many ways, producing this episode into what it is finally so I’d love to hear, what was it like on a collective, interpersonal level, when you were working with your cousins?

Chundou Her  10:04
I guess the idea to start working with my cousin’s kind of came about because I needed to record something, quite frankly. The original idea was to like, do these walking interviews. And I was like, wait, I don’t have any participants to like do these walking interviews. Like, I haven’t contacted anyone fast enough to, like, actually do them. And so, that is actually kind of what drove me to working with my cousins. Of just like I need to work with people, and I know that my cousins will say yes, because they love me, and they want to support my work. So, like, a little bit of, kind of like family obligation played a part of it. I mean, I say that jokingly, but then I think once we finally started actually doing it, like it very much became not just a Chundou’s project or Chundou’s fellowship, like it very much became, oh, how is our podcast going, or just what’s going on with it? And I think that point happened when I suggested that we create the Hmagical Girl game, which is what this story, what this podcast, is based off of where, like, we made it a very intentional choice at the beginning to say, like, listen, all of us have the power to create a rule or to destroy a rule, or to create side characters, or to, like, do what we want with our own individual characters. Like, we just made that one of our understandings for how we engage with one another. And I think that’s actually one of the big pieces of what led to this podcast turning up the way it did, is that it was in the spirit of -I don’t even want to just call it collaboration, because that makes it seem very transactional, but it was like in the spirit of, we want to do this, and we wanted to represent us as a collective, not just Chundou’s sad story of college, or something like that.

Will Brehm  11:45
And I think you get there, you know, I mean, spoiler alert for listeners who haven’t heard this, but you know, at the end, you hear the, with our powers combined, and you have the forces of all the cousins coming together to overcome some of the big issues of racism, etc., patriarchy, sexism, that you sort of experience on campus. So, I think, you know, if that was the intention as a listener, I think you got there in the end. So, before we turn to how you actually made this podcast, because it is quite a sophisticated piece of audio that you’re working with, I’d just be curious to hear -you obviously have a lot of experience working in fictional storytelling; how does that relate to sort of non-fictional storytelling? Because your episode is sort of blending a little bit of both and I’d love to know just you know, how did you work in those two spaces? Like is telling a story different when you’re dealing in fiction versus when you’re dealing in nonfiction.

Chundou Her  12:40
I guess, like, to start off, for me, I do see quite a gray space in the division between fiction and non-fiction. Like myself, personally, I kind of think that there’s a lot of truth to fiction. And I also think there’s a lot of kind of like narrative that we make up even for non-fiction. Like I’m trying to think of an example off the top my head. But like, the Hmong American story, for example, like a lot of people will like to believe a story of like, oh, the Hmong people were -they fought alongside America because they were just so into freedom and, like, individual rights and stuff like that. And like that is a non-fiction story right there. Like, yes, we did fight alongside America during the secret war, which happened alongside the Vietnam War. However, that narrative, you know, at the end of the day, it’s kind of a political narrative to paint Hmong people in a certain way. And in a very similar way, I think you could almost call that kind of a fiction, because I don’t think it was absolutely true. Like, I don’t think it’s false necessarily, but I also don’t think it is like this absolute truth that is true of all Hmong people, because there were some Hmong people who sided with the communists during that time as well, and also many Hmong who sided with neither and just were trying to stay neutral in all of it. So, to create this like narrative of like liberation and fighting for democracy and stuff like that. I was like, well, it’s not wrong, but, like, is it the full story? Probably not. And so, that’s why I see fiction and nonfiction, like, I think they’re a lot more gray than people maybe realize. And I was hoping to kind of portray that through my podcast episode, especially through the technical elements. You know, very kind of like, show, don’t tell, kind of ways. Like, I very much wanted listeners to be a bit confused about, like, well, what is the real world in here, and what is the fake world? And like throughout it, the most realistic sounding thing is actually the imaginary world that the characters kind of escape to when real life gets too intense and too crazy for them. And I did that very intentionally, because I was like, yeah, for a lot of us Hmong American students and maybe just marginalized students in general, like real life feels like fiction, like it feels like everyone’s just kind of making things up as they go. And it feels like these systems in place -you know, systemic racism, etc.- all just kind of feel like these really absurd literary devices being thrown in our faces. And meanwhile, we have these, like, very rich inner lives, or very rich lives with our cousins and our families and our, you know, at home communities that feel like the real world to us. So, I was really trying to, like, play around with that grayness of fiction and nonfiction.

Will Brehm  15:23
I mean, I think you did it so well. You putting it in those terms, it sort of adds so much clarity to how people experience the world, right? People experience the world through sort of these layers of fiction and nonfiction that sort of coexist and reinforce each other. And like you said, it’s much more blurry than sort of either or. So, maybe we can turn to the technical side just briefly. You know, there is a lot going on in this episode. If anyone has ever played with audio, like an audio editor, you know, there must have been so many layers of sound that you were working with simultaneously. Can you just tell us a little bit of, how did you go about putting this episode together?

Chundou Her  16:04
First, I have to really thank sixth grader Chundou for getting really into video editing when I was very young. Like, literally in the sixth grade, I had started to watch a lot of, like, YouTube videos, and, you know, consuming a lot of online media like that, and it inspired me to become a video creator myself, like a content creator myself, and I made like little videos. Like, my first series was called Frenzy of Fruits, I think I shared like a clip with the FreshEd team at one point, just to kind of laugh at it and be like, Oh, wow. Like, look at how far I’ve come since then. So, like, in terms of editing abilities, like I came to this project with quite a lot of editing background already, but I would also point out that, like, it’s all just kind of self-taught through internet. Like, my main form of learning how to do editing was just like, watching YouTube videos. That’s my go to. Even today when I need to figure something out, I’m like, Oh, I bet someone has a video about this, and they usually do, and it’s usually very informative and very helpful. Because, you know, I love a visual to go along with a tutorial. And yeah, the audacity files ended up just kind of looking really insane. I don’t know if I personally would recognize them anymore if I were to go back and look at them, just because, like, there are so many layers, and, like, there were so many audio tracks that, like, had to be fine-tuned to, like, the smallest degree, just so that way it would have a certain sound to it. At the same time, I really tried to keep, like, the voices of my cousins, especially, like, as kind of sacred as possible, where it’s like, I don’t want to put too much editing on them. I don’t want to put too many layers on them, because these are their stories, and I don’t want them to be filtered through me. I don’t want them to be filtered through literal, technical filtering.

Will Brehm  17:46
Whereas your voice -because you played multiple characters, in a sense, so your voice was manipulated dramatically in the podcast.

Chundou Her  17:54
Yes. I played around with my voice a lot, which partially came from a place of necessity, because I didn’t know any voice actors, and also partially came because, like, I actually realized this kind of halfway through the process, but I was like, Oh, wait, it actually makes a lot of sense for me to voice a lot of these kind of dark and monstrous characters because, like, that’s what internalized racism kind of sounds like and feels like, where it’s like, maybe no one is telling me straight to my face, Hey, you don’t belong here. But like my inner voice, that monster in the back of my mind, is saying, You don’t belong here, and then it kind of sounds like that demonic force, you know, trying to push you out of the college or push you out of whatever space.

Will Brehm  18:32
You know, even when you know you’re obviously dealing with some pretty difficult, traumatic events and you know, microaggressions and racism and sexism and misogyny, but yet somehow your episode is also very funny. You know, Is that intentional? Obviously, I bet it is. But how did you navigate that sort of complexity?

Chundou Her  18:51
So, when it comes to, like, kind of some of the humor in it, I have to just thank Joh for that, like one of the other FreshEd advisors. She was actually the one who kind of recommended that I don’t make this too dark or too intense, because it’s like, well, if someone is not familiar with the Hmong American experience, or they’re not familiar with how racism operates in America, like this is a really depressing podcast episode, and so she really implored me to, like, use things like humor and absurdity to poke fun at these issues. So, like, very much a kind of like, Let’s laugh at it, because otherwise, if not, we’re going to cry. And so, like, after she gave me that one recommendation, I was just like, oh, okay, I get it. Like, instead of making this really depressing, like, just make it silly, make it playful, but still again, capturing the essence of like, what that experience was, which was very negative for many people.

Will Brehm  19:46
I don’t know if you’ve seen like the television show, Stranger Things, or even like Euphoria or the movie, Everything Everywhere All at Once. There seems to be this like genre that is common these days, where it’s kind of -that I would put your episode into. I don’t even know what to call that genre, but it’s something about sort of working with these really difficult emotions but humor is there. They’re working with sort of nonlinear, sort of narratives. Like, do you see yourself working in that similar space?

Chundou Her  20:18
Oh, absolutely. And especially the movie, Everything Everywhere All at Once, like I saw that in theaters, I think, four or five times, because I just loved the movie so much. And like that movie really changed my view on what art could be because up until that point, I had been producing very, very, you know, kind of traditional art. Like my stories were very like, beginning, middle and end. Very clean, very tidy. There’s a nice theme in it, and a nice moral to be gained from it. And it’s like, that’s it right there. That’s the story. But watching that movie and other media similar to it showed me that, like, I could actually use the messiness of the technical aspects. So, in this case, the technical audio aspects in the podcast. I could actually use that messiness and some of the intentional ugliness, to tell a story about, like, how it feels to be in that organic chemistry final, and you’ve got five minutes left, and you’ve only gotten through a quarter of the exam, and it’s like, Well, okay, this is the end of my life right here. Like, I’m never going to become a dentist now.

Will Brehm  21:26
That was such a stressful moment listening to that. And I would imagine many people have been in similar situations. You are on the clock, you are taking a test, and you are just talking to yourself internally that you know you are bombing this test, and you captured that sort of feeling, that emotion, that vibe, so well. I hope other listeners sort of have a similar experience when they listen to that, because it’s just so beautifully captured. And in a way, it shows the power of sound. Like you’ve captured this sort of anxiety in a way that you couldn’t necessarily do in the same way with written text, but you also couldn’t do it necessarily with movies, with, you know, the moving image. Like it actually was the sound that created that affect.

Chundou Her  22:12
And I think that was really exciting for me to get to actually work in this medium of sound. It actually opened me up to an entire art form that I just hadn’t considered for myself before, like, because I truly thought I was like, well, podcasting is just like you sit down and you interview someone, and that’s a podcast right there. But like, now this has opened me up to the whole world of like, radio plays, radio drama, and how they also use sound to tell these very complex and very deep stories, like War of the Worlds. When that was presented as a radio drama it literally made people panic and think that it was actually happening. Because, again, like you said, that is the power of sound, is that it can be so visceral. And I think even sometimes the lack of a visual kind of forces you to like, have to overthink everything, which can be very powerful. And I think, you know, podcasters and audio storytellers use that as a tool.

Will Brehm  23:02
You know, when I listen to your episode, I make connections to a previous FreshEd flux episode by Michael Rumbelow, who last year in season two, he did the episode called Playing with Blocks, and he sort of tells this whole narrative, and there’s certain emotional elements that come out of it, and affective, sort of dimensions to the sound that he uses. Were you influenced in any way by Michael?

Chundou Her  23:25
I absolutely was. I actually still remember where I was and what I was doing when I first listened to his podcast episode, because I had been listening to FreshEd Flux, like, ever since I got to grad school, just because it was recommended to me. And I was like, oh, yeah, cool, I like podcasts, I’ll add this to my list. And his episode truly just was like no other podcast I had ever heard before, like, even across, like, other podcasts that I listened to. And again, I didn’t know that that was a way that podcasts could be. I thought they had to be very kind of linear and traditional and very clean. And not to say that his podcast is like messy by any means, but I think similarly, it uses, actually, like chaos as a way to tell a story, and as a way to explain a very complex idea. That’s actually one of the things that inspired me to even apply for the Flux fellowship, where I was like, well, if they let him produce that, I think they would let me produce something kind of weird as well.

Will Brehm  24:22
Oh, I’m so glad you did apply, because it’s been an absolute pleasure to work with you. Can I ask you, where were you when you first heard Michael’s episode?

Chundou Her  24:30
So, I was outside walking my dog at the time, just like, around my condo area, and it came up on my like, playlist, or whatever. I wasn’t thinking too much about it. I was like, Oh, cool, another grad student, FreshEd flex episode. And then once it started playing, I just, like, kind of stopped for a moment. And I was like, Wait a second. I feel like I need to listen to this more carefully than just like, in the background as I walk my dog. So, then I, like, stopped the episode there, finished my walk, and then went home and finished the episode. Because I was like, no, this requires me to think.

Will Brehm  25:01
I’m so happy that you did that and then you applied because I think that -I don’t even know what we call this genre and I’m just so happy that there’s students like you that are really pushing these boundaries in podcasting, in sound. But of course, you can do this in other media too. I honestly don’t know what to call it, and it’s just like this refusal to be boxed in. It’s a refusal to sort of say podcasting has to be one thing, and you are just breaking these boundaries and doing these things in such creative ways that I am inspired by, you know. So, thank you for doing this hard work and I hope others sort of can recognize just the value of what it is that you are actually doing in this episode in 30 minutes, right? It’s not even that long. So, I guess Chundou, you know, you’ve spent over a year working on this episode. It’s now out in the world. Where are you going next? Where is Chundou in the future?

Chundou Her  25:59
Where is Chundou in the future? Wow, that is a wonderful, wonderful question. Well, I need to finish this dissertation at some point, so supposedly that’s going to get done at some point, and then I’ll have to be on the job market and such like that. But I actually think the more interesting part of my future is actually a byproduct of this podcast episode where, like, you know, I’ve been a creative writer and an artist my entire life, but I’ve never finished something like this before, like, to this degree and like, gotten it polished and, like, gone through so many revision drafts with people. Not even just by myself, but like, there was a whole team of people who were giving me feedback and being like, take this knob and turn it two degrees to the left if you want it to sound like this. Such fine detailed feedback that I’m not accustomed to getting because, you know, arts has typically been something I do as a hobby, not something I do as, like, a real, like, day job, essentially. And so, I’m really excited about all the potential for what I might be able to accomplish now. I really want to be able to produce more radio play type stuff, because I think this is so much fun. I love getting access to all the online resources now, like all the open-source resources, I know where all those are now because of this program, and you know the guidance that you’ve all given us. And so, I think there’s going to be a Hmagical Girl podcast part two at some point maybe. My cousins are very much like -and I think that’s why I’m so inspired by this and want to keep it going, is because, like, my cousins too are like, no, we want to keep doing this. Like, we don’t want this to be a one and done. Like, maybe we don’t do another podcast, but like, we want to keep producing stories about our lives, and stories that are important to us, and stories that can help inspire other Hmong Americans to tell their own stories. And so, that’s a long way of me saying, I don’t know exactly what yet, but like, I’m going to keep this energy rolling, and if it takes me 10 years to finish my dissertation, because I’m also writing, like plays, and radio dramas, and movies, and television series, and I’m like, Well, I think that’s fine. I’m not in a rush to finish my dissertation, although, don’t worry, I will finish my dissertation.

Will Brehm  28:13
For the advisors that are listening out there. Well, Chundou Her, thank you so much for joining FreshEd. Thank you so much for being a Flux fellow. It was such a pleasure working with you over this year and a half, and I can’t wait for the second episode of Hmagical girls.

Chundou Her  28:28
Well, thank you so much for having me as a fellow. I learned a lot about myself through this process. I learned a lot about other people and how they work. I’ve learned important skills from other people as well, and I’m eternally grateful that someone actually just believed in one of my weird ideas enough, one of my weird fan fictions enough to actually come to fruition.

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