015: Kindness, Culture, and Writing Legacy with Allison Hong Merrill

In this last episode of Season 2 of The Nature Of Authors, Chrissy interviews Allison Hong Merrill, author of Ninety-Nine Fire Hoops: A Memoir. Chrissy starts with an icebreaker related to nature and one question related to writing.

Allison's memoir, Ninety-Nine Fire Hoops, is all about the power of choice. The book starts when she was fifteen-year-old, unwilling to bend to the conditioning of her Chinese culture, which demands that women submit to men's will. She disobeys her father's demand to stay in their faith tradition, Buddhism and instead joins the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Then, six years later, she drops out of college to serve a mission--a decision for which her father disowns her.

After serving her mission in Taiwan, twenty-two-year-old Allison marries her Chinese-speaking American boyfriend, Cameron Chastain. But sixteen months later, Allison returns home to their Texas apartment and is shocked to discover that, in her two-hour absence, Cameron has taken all the money, moved out, and filed for divorce. Desperate for love and acceptance, Allison moves to Utah and enlists in an imaginary, unforgiving dating war against the bachelorettes at Brigham Young University, where the rules don't make sense--and winning isn't what she thought it would be.

Throughout the episode, Allison and Chrissy talk about how to stay positive through adversity, what guided her decision to break traditions and create her own destiny, what gravitated her toward memoir, and what inspires Allison to write.

Near the end, Allison reads two of her favorite paragraphs. Be sure to check out Ninety-Nine Fire Hoops: A Memoir and connect with Allison Hong Merrill.

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Until next time, keep reading, writing, spending time in nature, and dreaming up new worlds, my friend.