My Perfect Path

7. Rosa Easton - Author of "White Mulberry," Attorney

• Daniel Koo • Season 1 • Episode 7

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My White Mulberry Path

Join us as we explore Rosa Easton's fascinating transition from a legal career to becoming an author. Rosa's rich family history, spanning from Korea to Los Angeles, ignited her passion for storytelling, culminating in her soon-to-be-published book, "White Mulberry." She shares her inspiring journey and the unexpected turns that led her to embrace her true calling, providing invaluable insights for anyone considering a new path in life.

Rosa's journey is not just about her personal transformation; it's also a narrative of resilience and community. With a background in government and international affairs, her academic and professional experiences have profoundly shaped her storytelling. As she navigates the solitary demands of writing, balancing her extroverted nature with the creation of her literary world, Rosa emphasizes the importance of community support and the unexpected connections that can guide our paths. Her insights into preparing for the book launch and selecting the perfect audiobook narrator offer a behind-the-scenes look at the author's life.

Our conversation with Rosa also delves into intergenerational themes and the profound influence of personal history on her writing. Her family's immigrant story, marked by courage and sacrifice, resonates through her novel and her role as a library trustee advocating for free access to information. As she looks ahead to future writing projects, Rosa reflects on the balance between career and parenthood, the rewards of discipline, and the power of patience and curiosity in personal and professional growth. Whether you're an aspiring author or simply seeking inspiration, Rosa's story is a captivating reminder of the transformative power of embracing new beginnings.

Feel free to leave comments here!

Rosa Easton:

It was just this feeling and I felt like it had something to do with writing and reading. And see, even then, in my 30s, I didn't know what it was. But I just started collecting stories and I thought I'm a writer. I write briefs, I write memos. I could do this. I used to write for a living. I started just taking a few writing classes just because I had to keep my mind stimulated. That's just the way I am.

Daniel Koo:

Welcome back to my Perfect Path, a show about chasing dreams and building careers. I'm your host, daniel Koo, and today we're joined by Rosa Easton, a family friend and author of soon-to-be-published White Mulberry. Rosa's journey to becoming an author is as inspiring as it is unexpected. After studying government at Smith College, earning a master's in international and public affairs at Columbia and later attending law school at Boston College, she practiced law for six years before eventually devoting her time to her children and later pursuing her passion for storytelling. Today, rosa is a writer, attorney, elected trustee of the Palos Verdes Library District and mother of two adult children. In this episode, rosa shares what inspired her to write White Mulberry, how she balanced family with career as an attorney and as an author, and how her family's rich history, spanning from Korea to Los Angeles, shaped her work. Whether you're interested in storytelling, starting something new or discovering the roots of personal resilience, rosa's journey will inspire you. Hope you enjoy the episode. Rosa, welcome to my Perfect Path. I'm thrilled to have you here.

Rosa Easton:

Thank you, Daniel, for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.

Daniel Koo:

Could you tell us a little bit about your current state with your book and your current role as you would define it?

Rosa Easton:

Yes, actually, just before coming here today, I met with my conversation partner for my launch event. Usually, what happens when your book comes out shortly thereafter, you have a launch party or a launch event where people gather to celebrate your book coming out, which means it's in print and available for everyone to read. So I met with a woman who is going to be my conversation partner at that launch event.

Daniel Koo:

What is a conversation partner?

Rosa Easton:

So a conversation partner is just like this it's somebody who sits with you and asks you questions about your book. So it's in production right now, so it's waiting to be printed. I imagine like a conveyor belt of books waiting to be.

Daniel Koo:

In some sort of factory.

Rosa Easton:

Some sort of factory and I'm in line, my book is in line and December 1st it's going to be available to the general public and so right now my audio narrator is probably busy doing the audio book. And that was an interesting process because the production manager emailed me and said he had three people who auditioned for my book and I had the opportunity to listen to each one and I took it very seriously because I really wanted the spirit of the character to be reflected in the voice and I did research on each narrator and what other books they've read, and the one that I chose I think is going to be great. She's emotional, dramatic when she needs to be, and I really enjoyed her voice emotional dramatic when she needs to be, and I really enjoyed her voice.

Daniel Koo:

What's the best parts and worst parts about being an author? I imagine at this point you're in the fun stage. I imagine because the work is done, but I would love to hear more.

Rosa Easton:

Yeah, it's definitely a different stage and for some people, it could be really fun, but I think most authors are solitary by nature or they have to be in order to write a book, and this part requires more connecting with people and arranging things and, for example, organizing who's going to be at my launch event. Who am I going to invite, what am I going to say about my book? And I do have a publicity team helping me, so they're very outward facing, soliciting media contacts, interviews, Q&As, podcasts and helping me refine my social media presence as well. Looking at my website, how I do my Instagram and Facebook posts it's a lot of minutiae in there, so I'm very busy with all those aspects and obviously there's somebody who's helping me with events not only in LA, but in Chicago, New York and Boston.

Daniel Koo:

Wow, that sounds super exciting. I'm an extrovert, so I love meeting people going to events, holding events. I think I would be very excited, but are you more of an introvert?

Rosa Easton:

I think some of my friends, and my husband too, would definitely call me an extrovert, but I do get energized by being around people and connecting and going to events. But I also need some downtime and I think that's where writing comes in, because it is definitely something you do alone, yeah, but important to have a community as well of writers who understand what that life is like.

Daniel Koo:

Yeah, I imagine it's really difficult to write a book when there's constant distractions, so that makes sense.

Rosa Easton:

Yes, it took me 10 years to actually write it and 20 years researching it and interviewing my grandmother and my father and relatives, and really 40 years, I think, having the first inkling of an idea that this might be an interesting story to tell someday, and that was when I did my junior year abroad in college in Japan, in Kyoto.

Daniel Koo:

Yeah, I'm really excited to read it when it comes out in December. It's going to be on Amazon, is that right?

Rosa Easton:

Yes, amazon Publishing is my publisher. Lake Union is the imprint that focuses on historical fiction, women's fiction, book club fiction, commercial fiction. There's a lot of genres and many genres in the publishing industry that I'm realizing and somehow I guess I wrote a women's fiction book because in a historical setting, women's fiction features a strong female protagonist and that's what I did featured a strong female protagonist.

Daniel Koo:

So, from a high level, what were some of your roles in the past?

Rosa Easton:

Yeah, I was a student for many years. I went to high school, undergrad, graduate school, law school and I didn't really have my first job until I was in my late 20s and I worked as a lawyer for only six years. So I went to law school for three years, then worked for six years and there wasn't a great return on investment there, I would say. But we started a family, my husband and I, and when our second child was born it was very difficult at the time. Things have changed.

Rosa Easton:

Finding childcare was difficult. You didn't work from home or you didn't have a hybrid possibility, so you were putting on your suit and going to the office five days a week and it was too much of a strain on our family both of us to be working full time. My husband's also a lawyer, yeah. So our family structure changed when we had children and I think I see that a lot in families. Fortunately, we were able to be financially okay with my husband's one income. But I remember we were talking and he said that was the scariest moment of his life, because now he was solely responsible for the family.

Daniel Koo:

For the entire family.

Rosa Easton:

For the entire family. It was a significant moment in my life because I felt I was giving up my career, what I had worked so hard for, not knowing what the future was going to bring.

Daniel Koo:

And writing. The book started while you were still doing childcare and that kind of came to fruition many years later right.

Rosa Easton:

It's such a full-time job that mostly I was just reading in my spare time and I wasn't consciously writing, but when we had family gatherings or I'd hear stories and I'd take notes and just put it away. But was always thinking about it in the back of my mind that someday I'm going to do something with this, because it's really important to recall our family stories because otherwise they'd be lost.

Daniel Koo:

I want to talk a little bit about where you grew up and what kind of circumstance your family was in.

Rosa Easton:

Yeah, I was born in Seoul, south Korea, and I moved to Los Angeles. My family moved to Los Angeles when I was seven that was 1971. And I have two younger brothers. They're younger than I am two years younger and then three years younger, so we're pretty close in age and my family moved to Hawthorne, california here, and we went to the elementary schools not knowing a word of English, I think from an early age. I found comfort and belonging in books.

Daniel Koo:

Were these English books.

Rosa Easton:

These are English books. Yeah, maybe I had some Korean language I was in first grade and so my Korean development and the Korean language stopped abruptly in first grade. I transitioned pretty quickly and we grew up with my parents both working full-time jobs.

Daniel Koo:

My father actually has an MBA from Yonsei University which is one of the top three universities in Korea.

Rosa Easton:

But when he came to the United States he was a janitor and when my grandmother heard that he was cleaning bathrooms, I think she felt that this is my mother's mom. She, and then my mother, also asked her if she wouldn't mind coming and helping, because it was very difficult for them. So she ended up coming and I would say that my maternal grandmother was my surrogate mom. Growing up, my mother worked. She worked at a Xerox assembly plant. She worked at a graveyard shift. She took a side job of sewing.

Rosa Easton:

She had a Singer sewing machine at the house and I remember her bringing pattern home and being on the sewing machine for a large part of that and the revving of the foot pedal going on all night and sometimes I'd peek around and she'd have like thread all over her hair and sometimes we'd be asked to do small tasks, like usually you sew a pattern inside out and then you flip it out, and so for socks and for pointy things, I used to take a little needle and make it pointy again, turning it inside out. Boy, I'm remembering a lot of things. I used to take a little needle and make it pointy again, turning it inside out. Boy, I'm remembering a lot of things.

Daniel Koo:

So during your childhood, how has books played a role in your life?

Rosa Easton:

Yeah, when you come to the United States and you start living in a new culture, you're curious or you need to know what that world is all about. And there's the inside, the home world. And then there's the outside the home world, and we certainly had that growing up, because at home we would speak Korean, eat Korean food, obey our parents. And then we go into the outside world and we're supposed to know how American society works and what the relationship between parent and child is in an American family and why they don't take their shoes off when they enter the house. And so I learned that through Beverly Cleary and Junie B Jones. I didn't know if that was even around.

Daniel Koo:

then I remember those.

Rosa Easton:

Actually, I think Junie B Jones came much later. But Judy Blume, hardy Boys, nancy Drew yeah, lots of books. I imagine I can see the rows in the library where they were at my local library.

Daniel Koo:

And I imagine you had to do a lot of translations for your parents too.

Rosa Easton:

Yes, yes, they called that being parentified in psychology, which I learned in therapy that when you assume the role of a parent at a young age, that has an impact on you, you are more responsible, you feel more responsible than maybe a child should be at that age. Yes, translating documents or forms, school forms, calling people when something was needed, turning the electricity on or answering the phone when strangers would call, and things like that.

Daniel Koo:

And I'm the oldest and birth order plays a role in that you had to be like the leader of the family in the English world.

Rosa Easton:

In the English world, in the outside world.

Daniel Koo:

So when you were growing up, did you ever imagine that you might even be an author, or was that never in the grand plan?

Rosa Easton:

Author was so nebulous because my parents and a lot of the immigrant communities they talk about only three careers lawyer, doctor and engineer businessman. So I was raised only thinking those three careers existed, although there was a period of time when my mom saw Connie Chung on TV Connie Chung was the first Asian American news anchor in the 70s and she thought that I could be that too, but I didn't really have an interest in being in front of TV.

Rosa Easton:

Yet here we are with cameras, yet here we are with the cameras TV Yet here we are with cameras. Yet here we are with the cameras and yeah, and getting a lot more attention to my book and how I wrote my book, and so it's an interesting circle. The outwardness, though, I experienced a lot when I was a lawyer, because I was a litigator and I had to go to court and I did have to speak in front of people. So it's not foreign to me, but it's in a completely different context, where you're talking about yourself and you're not advocating for your client's best interest.

Daniel Koo:

I'm sure the shyness goes away after once or twice going in the courtroom. Yes, at least I think that one. You get to prepare a lot.

Rosa Easton:

Yes.

Daniel Koo:

And maybe have some partners and things like that.

Rosa Easton:

And it's not about you.

Daniel Koo:

So I guess I feel like it's a little bit different.

Rosa Easton:

Yeah, yeah, and I think that's what I'm trying to learn through this process is that, yes, the book came out of me. We call it like the birthing of a book, and you carry your child for 10 years and comes out into the world and you don't know what's going to happen. It's like having a child. Actually, you don't know they become their own thing. And that's what my author friends say is that you've done your job and it's going to have a life of its own. And they say, when your book goes out into the world, you don't really know how it's going to turn out, but you've done the best you could do and that's what you have to feel satisfaction from.

Daniel Koo:

Yeah, I'm sure if you only look at the rewards or if you expect it to be some amazing like bestseller, then I'm sure it's going to be a tough job to do in the future. If your first book you spent 10 years on it, it doesn't perform as well as you thought it would, or something, and if you want to give up right there and then I'm sure it's not very sustainable.

Rosa Easton:

Yeah, I don't regret doing it, but I didn't do it for it to be a bestseller. I did it so that I could share a story that hasn't been told with an audience that I think is out there, but waiting for something like this to end up in front of them when they most need it.

Daniel Koo:

I want to talk a little bit about going to college, undergrad, and what you majored and what you want to study.

Rosa Easton:

Like I said, my family settled in Los Angeles but I went to Smith College, which is in Massachusetts. It was originally a seven-sister college in Massachusetts. It was originally a seven-sister college which is an all-women's college, and my parents initially were very wary of sending their first daughter across the country alone, but they were comforted by the fact that it was an all-women's college. But there were no bars or locks. There were plenty of men on campus and I had the opportunity to go to other campuses. So, yes, it was a women's college, but-.

Daniel Koo:

Was it a false sense of security?

Rosa Easton:

Yeah, I think they had a false sense of security that I wouldn't meet men if I went to an all women's college and I could just go and study.

Rosa Easton:

But it was a wonderful experience and it really broadened my world and I think having that education and this is fleshed out in my book as well the drive for education and the importance of education and the doors education opens is really powerful and I think education is one of the most important gifts that we could be given and a young person could be given to expand their minds and opportunities.

Daniel Koo:

If you go back to maybe 20-year-old Rosa. What were you passionate about? What did you want to study there? What was your major?

Rosa Easton:

Yeah, thank you for bringing me back on topic.

Rosa Easton:

No worries me back on topic. No worries, no worries. I majored in government because I thought I was going to law school. And I did end up going to law school, but it was not because I loved political science and studying about political systems and philosophy, but it seemed like it was the right thing to do and I didn't dislike it. It was a social science and I thought that was practical. I did take some English and creative writing classes and a couple of art history classes, but thinking back on it now, I wish I had taken more of those humanities-type classes instead of more practical social science or science, instead of more practical social science or science, because I think I realize now that that was my chance to take some of those classes offered to me on a silver platter really.

Daniel Koo:

Is majoring in government helpful to go to law school? Is that usually like a track that people take?

Rosa Easton:

no-transcript international affairs. So I went to the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia and delved a little bit deeper into Japanese language study and Asian studies, and I think learning more Asian history at that time really helped me with the research for my book.

Daniel Koo:

When you were in undergrad, were you already thinking about going to law school?

Rosa Easton:

I think I was toward the end, because I really didn't know what else I was going to do and I thought I should be a paralegal so I could just try it out. And then I thought it's not bad, but I don't know yet. So I got my master's and I thought, well, maybe I'll work for the UN or maybe I'll be a diplomat. But it just seemed undefined a little bit, and law school seemed more certain.

Daniel Koo:

Was money at the top of mind for you? Were you thinking about, oh, I need to make a living, or did you have some sort of ambition to make money as well?

Rosa Easton:

I be financially stable. I don't think I worried that I wouldn't have a job, but I just I guess I didn't know what my perfect job was, so I just leaned into what I knew I was good at and that it seemed interesting and something I should know more about. I was exploring.

Daniel Koo:

For your master's program. How did you find the program and what kind of drew you to it?

Rosa Easton:

You're bringing me way back into the past now.

Rosa Easton:

When I was a paralegal I worked at American International Group, which is a global insurance company. I worked in their legal department and my boss there was an attorney and he had gone to master's program before he went to law school. So I thought that was a cool route and actually he made me aware of a scholarship program that was offered to me so I could go to graduate school and it didn't cost me anything because I was awarded this scholarship. So the opportunity to get upper level education without having to worry about the financial repercussions was an amazing gift.

Daniel Koo:

Was the process to get that scholarship difficult? How would one get that? Is that something you can share?

Rosa Easton:

Well, no, I mean and this is the other thing that you learn over time is that it was my connection with my boss at my job who told me about this opportunity, and he helped facilitate the introduction to the foundation that gave me money for my graduate program.

Rosa Easton:

And it was a private family foundation, so it's not well known. A private family foundation, so it's not well known. So I think it's always good to meet people and be yourself and be your true self, and if people like you and you do good work, doors will open.

Daniel Koo:

I agree. I also know that it's a good practice to be the squeaky wheel. You want to complain, you want to talk about what you're trying to achieve and people around you will help you because they know, yes, and if they don't know, they can't even help you.

Rosa Easton:

Yes, and I so value having had those two years to study international affairs, delve more into my Japanese language skills, and actually that's how I met my husband.

Daniel Koo:

Oh, we got to get into that. So during your master's, what was top of mind? Were you passionate about something or did you just want to get it over with what was going through your mind?

Rosa Easton:

No, I was passionate about the world. I worked for this multinational insurance company and I wanted to know more about America's place in the world, and I took a lot of classes in international policy. Actually, my senior year in college I did a seminar class in Japanese foreign policy toward Korea, and so I just became more interested in Asian studies and so I have a certificate from the East Asian Institute as well at Columbia. So I have the master's and also a certificate from the East Asian Institute, and as part of the requirements to obtain that certificate I had to be proficient in a foreign language. So I decided to go to Middlebury College, which has a very rigorous, intensive foreign language program, where you go and you only speak that language for the entire summer. And it's even more intense than actually going to the country, because when you go there's all this English around you and people want to speak English with you.

Rosa Easton:

But when you go to Middlebury College Summer Language Program, each language has its own school and its own dormitory, and so you only interact with the people in your dormitory, so everyone speaks Japanese, for example, 24 hours a day, in the bathroom, in the kitchen, in the dining hall. Russian school, chinese school, french, german, spanish. I think those were the six schools that were available at the time, so I was at the Japanese language school and that's where I met my husband. Did you know any Japanese before going there?

Rosa Easton:

Yes, I spent my junior year abroad, when I was at Smith in Kyoto on the Associated Kyoto Program, and so that's when my Japanese improved a little bit and that's when I met my Korean-Japanese relatives for the first time. So I met my husband in the summer between my first and second year of graduate school and he was headed to law school in Boston and I was still in New York. So we had a long distance relationship for a year, but then I ended up going to Boston for law school.

Daniel Koo:

So were your first interactions with your husband purely in Japanese?

Rosa Easton:

Yes, we have it's very interesting. It's a very interesting beginning because you realize so much of communication is body language and we were pretty good academic Japanese but when we had to speak it we were pretty goofy and I think we let our guard down because we didn't have to be who we thought we were and we were just trying to communicate in a foreign language together and it really made it simple, I think.

Daniel Koo:

It kind of feels like summer camp or something like that.

Rosa Easton:

It was summer camp. It was summer camp. And when we went on our first date together. We weren't really supposed to do this, but he had a car and we drove to Montreal. Montreal wasn't very far from Middlebury, which is in Middlebury, vermont, and so we crossed the border. So we thought, okay, we're safe, now we could speak English without violating any rule. We had to sign a contract when we entered the school saying we would only speak Japanese for the entire time we were at the school.

Daniel Koo:

Okay, so you left the country to do that. So we left the country to speak English.

Rosa Easton:

And I started speaking English and he looked at me and said, oh my gosh, you're speaking Valley Girl English. And I said, yes, I'm from Los Angeles girl English. And I said, yes, I'm from Los Angeles. At the time in the 80s the valley girl thing was big, so I think he associated me with that, but also he's from Boston and he's not Korean and so I think he might not have expected that he might not have expected that valley girl would come from a Korean woman.

Daniel Koo:

Yeah, To come back a little bit to your master's program, I feel like your motivations were very sincere and genuine, which I feel like is very different than how a lot of us now approach master's programs. Especially for engineering, we tend to look at the shortest program that will give us the most technical skills.

Rosa Easton:

Right.

Daniel Koo:

With just the right amount of, I guess, authority and name so that we can us the most technical skills, with just the right amount of, I guess, authority and name so that we can get the next job. Did you go through a similar process? Did you ever think about what that master's program will do for you?

Rosa Easton:

I don't think I was very smart in those days because I didn't think in those terms. I think I have a much more liberal studies attitude and interest. So my goal was to learn as much as possible and then a job will come from that. That might be a very altruistic way of looking at things, but if I just did what interested me and that I wanted to learn more about that, something good would come of that. I knew eventually I'd have to get a job. And so then I did end up going to law school after my master's program because I thought time was running out. I thought I have to get a job now soon, enough of just studying all the time. So that's when I went to law school and, yeah, it was much more technical and practically oriented and I didn't love that actually, but I wasn't bad at it. I don't think I had a passion for it and I think in retrospect that's why it wasn't as difficult for me to give it up when I had children.

Daniel Koo:

So the decision to go to law school finally, did that feel like a big risk to you or did you feel like it was a natural progression?

Rosa Easton:

I think it was a natural progression, something that I had in my mind, but something that not that I put off for as long as possible, but something that where I knew that once I went to law school, I would never have the chance to go back and get a master's and to learn from my professors, to go to summer camp, to explore different internship opportunities. I just wanted to prolong that education phase for as long as possible.

Daniel Koo:

Right. I think one of the great parts about education earlier on is you get to use it for the rest of your life.

Rosa Easton:

Yes.

Daniel Koo:

Whereas if you maybe push it off and say maybe I'll do it later, maybe when I have time, you're never going to have that time and once you start working, it's just. I feel like there's no end.

Rosa Easton:

That's right. That's right, I'm working is, as my children said, it's like we only get two weeks vacation. It's yes, that's right. No, three-month summers and I really liked those three-month summers and the rhythm of being in school and I thought about getting a PhD. Actually, that was one of my other interests.

Daniel Koo:

Stay in school for even longer.

Rosa Easton:

Stay in school forever. But I think by that point I realized that academic life had its own limitations and I think I like interacting with people more than I thought and I thought being a lawyer would get me out in the world a little more, in the real world.

Daniel Koo:

Did you feel like there were any significant challenges during this time? Maybe it's looking for a job, or maybe it's looking for a new career path, or maybe it's relationships. Did you feel like there was anything that was difficult?

Rosa Easton:

I think first year of law school is really hard academically. It's the 1L experiences.

Daniel Koo:

It's notorious.

Rosa Easton:

It's notorious. And I did okay, but I wasn't at the top of my class and I think by then I just enjoyed learning for the sake of learning too much, that I didn't put all my eggs in one basket, like I had to get all A's my first year, or else I'm going to think less of myself. I think I had matured enough to know that there were other things in life, and so when I met my husband, things were already shifting. My priorities were shifting a little bit. I think when you find a life partner, your priorities naturally shift, and I think meeting him when I met him changed me and my career path for sure.

Daniel Koo:

Do you feel like you had a bigger capacity to handle these things because you went to law school a bit later To handle relationships and law school and balancing everything?

Rosa Easton:

Yeah, I took four years between undergrad and law school and I think it was just enough time to mature enough to realize that life is not all about getting the best grades. And, of course, if you want the elite law firm experience, that's what you're going to have to do. But I didn't know what I wanted to do. I thought I wanted to work in a law firm because that's what everybody did, so I did eventually end up at a small boutique law firm in Los Angeles representing healthcare companies and, ironically, my book. I have a lot of healthcare providers in my family my grandmother was a nurse, my brother's a doctor, my aunt's a nurse, my cousin is a surgeon, so medicine was an important part, and so I think that was in the back of my mind when I accepted this position. But it certainly wasn't like one of the work 3,000 hours kind of law firm and by that point I don't think that's what I wanted. And then we had children and then my life completely changed.

Daniel Koo:

As you had children. How did that kind of change your life? So obviously, making the decision to let go of your career must have been really difficult, and I think that actually would help a lot of listeners make that same decision or make a different decision. Is there anything you want to share?

Rosa Easton:

I think I tried to look at it as my not giving up something but gaining something, and maybe to a fault, because all the energy that I had from my career I threw into my children and they would probably say to me mom, get a job Please. But, danielle, I know your mom and I know that she is a very supportive volunteer and wants to give back to the community and lift up children and students, and I think that's where I decided I was going to focus my energy, that the energy that I had for my career is going to shift and it's going to go into a different area, and I found it in volunteering at my children's school, volunteering in the community. I was very active in a women's organization that raised funds for women and children in crisis. I joined the boards of my children's schools and eventually became the president of the Chadwick Parents Association, and that's how I met your mom.

Daniel Koo:

And that's how I met you, that's how I met your mom and that's how I met you. So, for some context, the school that Rosa was a board of is Chadwick School, and they have a sister school in Korea called Chadwick International, and my mother was actually the president of the.

Rosa Easton:

I guess the Chadwick International Parents Association.

Daniel Koo:

Yes the Chadwick International Parents Association, and that's how, I guess, rosa and my mom met. What was it like 10, 15 years?

Rosa Easton:

ago, 2011 or 2010,. I think.

Daniel Koo:

So almost 13 years ago, and here we are talking about your book.

Rosa Easton:

Well, here we are talking about you too, because I met you when you were in seventh grade, when you stayed at my house for a couple of weeks as a homestay student, and you were so polite and mature.

Daniel Koo:

I can't imagine or I guess it's wild to think about that. I'm back here working in LA. I went to school in LA as well and it feels like LA is becoming my second home. So we went over gaining something from our children Children, mm-hmm and home. So we went over gaining something from our children. I think that's a really good way to look at it, because childcare is basically two full-time jobs. I feel like you have a full-time job and you're on call. You have to be ready for any sorts of emergencies, whether it be physical medical or emotional.

Rosa Easton:

So I think that's something that's really valuable, and it's not something to easily dismiss and I was fortunate because my husband was scared to death of being the sole breadwinner, but we were able to make it work financially. And not everybody is in that situation, and certainly in my novel the protagonist is a single mother and she had no choice. So all the choices that she had revolved around earning money to keep a roof over her and her son's heads and making sure that he had an education. That life must have been and that I was very fortunate that I was able to stay at home with my kids and focus on learning about their world and learning about the volunteer community. And now, through all that volunteer work, I'm a trustee of my library district here in.

Rosa Easton:

Palos Verdes, where I live, and I'm very proud of that work, and you know I'm passionate about people having free access to books and information, because that's what I was given when I first came here.

Daniel Koo:

As your children grew up, I feel like your third career was beginning to bloom. Could you tell us about how you got started writing your book and how you did the research?

Rosa Easton:

how you got started writing your book and how you did the research. Yeah, I was always told that there are seasons in your life and you know, after my motherhood season or during my motherhood season, I always knew that there was going to be something else, because I think I always felt that I had something that I needed to say or do that I haven't yet done yet. It was just this feeling and I felt like it had something to. I needed to say or do that I hadn't yet done yet. It was just this feeling and I felt like it had something to do with writing and reading. And see, even then, in my 30s, I didn't know what it was, but I just started collecting stories and I thought I'm a writer, I write briefs, I write memos, I could do this. I used to write for a living, so I should be able to do this, and I had no idea. But I took notes. I interviewed my grandmother when she was alive. I interviewed my father, interviewed my aunts, my mother, my maternal grandmother. I still have some cassette tapes that they were recorded into, so you can see how old those are. I moved on to more digital tapes, but now I could just use my phone and it's something that I've just thought that I would do.

Rosa Easton:

When the time was right and when my kids were in elementary school, I started just taking a few writing classes, just because I had to keep my mind stimulated. That's just the way I am, and I was starved for education in a sort of a more formal setting. But I couldn't get an MFA, you know, master's of Fine Arts, which is the degree that you get for creative writing, and I couldn't commute to school. I couldn't take classes. At least in my mind I couldn't. I mean, I probably could have, but it wasn't for anything in particular, it was just to cultivate my own interest in. If I were to tell my family story, what would that look like? What could that possibly look like?

Daniel Koo:

So you had that book in mind, is that right?

Rosa Easton:

I always wanted to do something that served others or gave back to the community in some way, and in trying to find my unique way or the only thing I could do, the only thing I could write was this story that starts with my grandmother Tell us a little bit about your story.

Daniel Koo:

I thought it was super interesting when we talked about it before where there was this kind of parallelism with your grandmother, with your father and you.

Rosa Easton:

Yes.

Daniel Koo:

So if you can ease us into the story Sure.

Rosa Easton:

So the parallels are that we're all immigrants, we all left our birthplace to go somewhere else, and I don't know why it took me writing a whole book to figure that out, but I realized that there's an intergenerational theme and some intergenerational conflict that arises from this experience. But my grandmother moved from Korea to Japan during the Japanese occupation. During the Japanese occupation she moved there around the 1930s to seek an education, basically because girls' education pretty much stopped in primary school and she wanted to further her education. And then my father was born in Japan from my grandmother and my grandfather, who passed away at a very early age of tuberculosis. But then he was uprooted from his home when my grandmother was drafted into the Japanese army to serve as a nurse in the front lines for Japan and she decided that she wasn't going to serve in another country's war, a country that didn't treat her well when she was living there. And she and her husband had a dream of going back to Korea and to reclaiming their identity and their heritage that she lost when she went to Japan.

Rosa Easton:

She's a single mom at this point with a young six-year-old son, and she brings him back to Korea, and this was during the middle of the war, this was about 1943. But her Japanese was perfect and he was born in Japan, so he spoke Japanese. So they were easily able to pass checkpoints and nobody asked for their identification cards, fortunately. And so they were able to take the ferry from Shimonoseki, which is the last port in Japan where you could take the ferry to Busan. So they made that journey in 1943, mother and son, and then they arrived back in Korea, and that's really where my first novel ends, and it's a hopeful ending. Even though it doesn't sound hopeful, she does escape the draft, she does take her son with her, she doesn't leave him, they're together, they're a small family and there's hope. So that's how the first novel ends. And then I'm writing my second one now, because I have a two book deal. So when my editor purchased or acquired my first book, she bought my second on spec or without it having been written.

Daniel Koo:

Will it be kind of a continuation of the story?

Rosa Easton:

Yes, the second book is the story of again uprooting, of this time a young boy who is based on my father, leaving his place of birth, which was Japan, now to Korea, and eventually they end up going to Manchuria and that's where they experienced the end of World War II. Then they live in North Korea for a while under the Russian occupation, and then they escape that and come to the South right before the country was officially divided along the 38th parallel.

Daniel Koo:

Wow, that's very dramatic.

Rosa Easton:

Yes, it's very, very dramatic.

Daniel Koo:

And I know there's so many families that were split apart during that division. Yes, yes, and some people just happened to be in South Korea at the time, maybe on a trip, or sometimes it's a temporary kind of arrangement and the country got divided and now you couldn't leave the country or meet your family.

Rosa Easton:

Yeah, in the novel the mother and son were able to flee through the mountains with a guide to make it to the South before the country was officially divided, but they were treated like North Koreans at that point.

Daniel Koo:

Right.

Rosa Easton:

So they had only lived in North Korea for a short period of time, although that's where my grandmother and the protagonist in White Mulberry is from, from the Pyongyang area. In white mulberry is from from the Pyongyang area, but even though she made it back to North Korea, which was her dream, after she went to Japan and then came back, it was not the country she left, and so she made the decision again to take her son south. He was more like 10 or 11 at the time, again displaced and uprooted from home and family. However, that is defined in this period of time because people were homeless and rootless.

Daniel Koo:

I imagine there has to be some sort of intergenerational trauma that was experienced. Do you talk about that in your book?

Rosa Easton:

Not explicitly. I mean, fiction is about showing, not telling, and hopefully people see and maybe even reflect on themselves that these experiences of prior generations stay with you and it's important to know what they went through, because that's the starting point of understanding who you are. That's the starting point of understanding who you are and what wounds you may still carry in your genes, in the stories that you've been told, in how you feel about certain things Like you don't even know where that kind of inexplicable longing comes from. There's a longing for something. And then, of course, the third generation, which is my generation. We get uprooted too. We leave Korea and come to America. So it's three generations of movement, and I find that to be fascinating. But our family is probably not the only one who experienced that.

Daniel Koo:

I'm sure so many people will read your book and relate to it a lot.

Rosa Easton:

Yeah, I hope so Especially all the families in Los Angeles.

Daniel Koo:

You know all the Koreans that have moved. I'm sure they went through a very similar experience, maybe not exactly the same.

Rosa Easton:

Yeah.

Daniel Koo:

So I'm very excited to read your book.

Rosa Easton:

I'm excited for you to read it.

Daniel Koo:

I've already pre-ordered it. Thank, you. So I'll read it as soon as it comes out.

Rosa Easton:

Well, I hope you'll come to one of my launch events, since they'll be in LA.

Daniel Koo:

I would love to. That's amazing. I'll bring my cameras and everything and I kind of want to go over. What advice would you give people to, those who want to become an author? I would imagine this to be anyone, so it could be a student. It could be someone who is well into their career, looking for a switch or looking to do it in parallel.

Rosa Easton:

Yeah, I think you can be an author at any point in your life. I think if you pursue it at a young age, you don't have the benefit of experience per se, but you can still find your voice, whatever that unique voice is, because you are an individual. There are lots of things that make up who you are, and finding what makes you different, what makes you unique, and sharing that and what that means is an author's job. I think, finding it now, at this stage of my life, I could rely a lot more on my experience of being a mother, of having a career, of reflecting back on relationships and love. And when you start younger, your experience is more limited. But you have a voice, you have a story that's uniquely yours and finding that, I think, is an author's greatest challenge and joy. Once you find it.

Daniel Koo:

After going through the entire process of creating a book. To whom would you not recommend this career? Is there maybe like an archetype or a persona that you would say if you don't like these things, maybe you're not stepping into the correct path?

Rosa Easton:

Yeah, sitting down in your chair for a long period of time if you don't like that. It's hard because so much of it is the habit of sitting down alone and staring at a blank screen and that could be scary for a lot of people and it's self-imposed deadlines for a lot of people and it's self-imposed deadlines. It's finding accountability, like an accountability writer friend or something that's really important because it's a solitary career.

Daniel Koo:

Did you have a community to rely on?

Rosa Easton:

Yeah, so I developed writer friends over time. In fact, during COVID when I really finished my book was my writing group and I. Four of us met every week during COVID and it really helped me finish my novel. So an author needs to be disciplined. I think my legal career helped that. All those years in school and studying helped. I think it's a myth that authors have spurts or bursts of inspiration and they're brilliant and so they're a writer. I think it's a lot of sitting down and hashing out shitty first drafts and going back again and again, even when it's discouraging. You get negative feedback or you feel like you have imposter syndrome. Why am I doing this? But there's a famous quote that you know you're a writer if you don't love sometimes to write, but you love having written and I think it's that feeling of having written makes you a true writer.

Daniel Koo:

I like that. I try to have that perspective for a lot of things in my life, even working out. Before you go you're not happy about it, but afterwards you feel great. You feel good. I experienced this with my. I've been into running recently. If I run over 30 minutes, I get the runner's high and I feel glee afterwards.

Daniel Koo:

It was quite the experience, um, and I think when you first start your run, you know it's going to be rough, um, and you, you know you question everything about your life during the 20 minutes that I'm running, um, but afterwards it's's just so great and I feel great having done it, and I feel like it's a very similar experience that you went through.

Rosa Easton:

Yes, I think that's true about a lot of things is continuity routine, doing it day after day. As Malcolm Gladwell said, 10,000 hours is when you feel like you've put in the time and the effort to make something that you're proud of.

Daniel Koo:

What's one piece of advice you'd give to someone who may be considering leaving their career for a little bit to become a mother or to become a parent, because I'm sure a lot of people will struggle with that decision?

Rosa Easton:

Yeah, it's a highly personal choice, but I think I always knew I wanted to have kids. So when we had them I felt a tremendous sense of responsibility and I think you do what feels right to you and your particular circumstance. And everyone's going to have a different approach and a different decision when it comes to being a parent based on your financial circumstances, based on your personality. Who has more patience between you and your partner and want to actually raise the children and spend the time, who really wants to go back to their careers or have fulfillment in their careers and it's a constant adjustment. One way is not going to be the only way and that way only.

Rosa Easton:

Family dynamics change all the time and I think you have to be ready to pivot and be flexible about if you need help in something. As a mother, you know you rely on your spouse, or you rely on a friend, or you rely on a neighbor. Raising a child is not something that one could do alone. Really, I think it takes a village, it takes a community, but people are willing to do it. I think asking for help is an important virtue to being a mother. It's important to be able to know your limitations and ask for help when you need it.

Daniel Koo:

Could you tell us a little bit about where your career is headed? So I'm imagining from now to December you're going to be busy promoting your book and celebrating, and I'm sure also writing your second book, yes, but what's ahead in your career like far into the future as well?

Rosa Easton:

Finishing my second book by my August 2025 deadline will be my immediate path After that. I think I mentioned to you before we started this conversation that I actually realized I have a third book, so my agent will. I haven't really discussed this with her yet, but if I were to write a third book then we have to go through the process of finding a publisher for that book. So I imagine that's going to take time and I'll be keeping the first novel, moving forward, writing the second novel, thinking about the third novel and living sort of a writerly life and managing my time as my own time. I think that's really the gift of being a writer is you can write in the middle of the night If you can't go to sleep. You could do it in the morning when you're fresh. But it's that dedication and that discipline that will help you reach your result, reach your goal. My husband joked the other day that because he's nearing retirement from his legal career and he thinks it's ironic that his career is ending and mine is beginning.

Daniel Koo:

It's your time now.

Rosa Easton:

My season has come, my hung up just passed and I'm being reborn and I think that analogy is a good one too is that we're never stagnant, and being open to possibility and being curious about your environment, your past, other people, anything in life being curious, I think, is really what an author truly needs to keep going, and whatever it is that makes them curious.

Daniel Koo:

To summarize a little bit about what we talked about today. One of the most important things I think I've learned is being curious, as you just mentioned, and also being very patient. I've realized that before you went to law school, you've explored a lot of things. You've studied the things you wanted to, or you trained in a new language and you've been a paralegal, so you know where you're stepping towards. I think that patience has been a very big virtue in helping you with this career later on big virtue in helping you with this career later on Also, before you became a writer. I feel like you've done so much research and also not rushing it and being able to really process it and understand it so that you're able to write these stories a lot better. So I take those lessons with me today. Thank you so much for being here and my hope in the future we'll have you again.

Rosa Easton:

Thank you, daniel, I really appreciate it. My hope in the future we'll have you again. Thank you, daniel, I really appreciate it. Yes, with my second book and third book maybe, but you're doing a phenomenal job with this podcast and I really appreciate the opportunity to be invited here. And I'm touched because we have this connection to Chadwick and from when you were younger and you stayed at our home, so I think trading places like this is very heartwarming, so I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Daniel Koo:

Thank you.