Readers, Authors Celebrate Written Word at Book Festival

When Anchee Min left her native China in 1984 for the United States, her grasp of English was, well, awful.

Cleverly, she had avoided speaking much English to get a visa (consular officials thought she was just determined) and a letter of acceptance from the Art Institute of Chicago (they liked her paintings). But when she stepped off a plane from Shanghai in Seattle and her response to any question customs officials had was “thank you,” they told her she would have to go back to China.

She broke down in tears. “I said, ‘Please, give me a chance, give me six months. If I don’t learn English, I deport myself,’ ” recalled the 43-year-old Min, who now lives in Hacienda Heights. Since then, she has learned English, written three books in English, and earned enough literary praise to be sitting on a panel about the “new China writing” at the Festival of Books telling this story. She had to be told Saturday by the panel moderator that she was one of the exemplars of the new writing.

All across the sun-dappled UCLA campus in Westwood, authors spoke, told stories and read before thousands of visitors at the annual festival, sponsored by the Los Angeles Times. They amused, sometimes befuddled and occasionally inflamed an audience of readers and book buyers who wandered from lecture hall to outdoor tent in search of authors.

Passions ran high in all directions. Hundreds of people cheered actress Cybill Shepherd, the latest of the celebrity memoirists, and at another venue a black sociologist angrily confronted a white sports journalist who has written about racial genetics and athletic ability.

In some ways it was more like a book carnival. There were balloons, food stands, a little music and, of course, a cornucopia of booths selling books to satisfy every interest and idiosyncrasy. (And, outside the Borders booth, a hawker was handing out 15%-off coupons.)

Only jousters were missing--and actually, early arrivers to the opening events walked past a group of people, not connected with the festival, on the lawn near Royce Hall juggling knives.

On an outdoor stage before a gaggle of children, Mayor Richard Riordan and his wife, Nancy, both in khaki pants (his were baggy, hers were sleek) read “Green Eggs and Ham” and “Where the Wild Things Are.”

“But the wild things cried, ‘Oh, please, don’t go!’ ” read the mayor, sitting on the edge of the stage.

When he was finished, he worked the crowd.

“Would any of you like them as pets?” he asked, pointing a microphone at one young listener. The boy had no comment.

More vocal were Shepherd’s fans, who packed the seats around an outdoor stage to listen to her talk about her book, “Cybill Disobedience.” They laughed and applauded her wisecracks about the book’s passages on her love life, her struggles with co-stars, her career highs and lows in film and television.

“It’s a how-not-to book,” she said. “I considered putting on the cover, ‘Do not try this at home.’ ”

She brushed off criticism of her penchant for writing about her romantic escapades. “People said, ‘Why would you want to have your kids read about your sex life?’ As long as they could read, my kids have been reading about my sex life,” she said.

To her fans’ surprise, she talked for barely five minutes--then got to the business of signing all those books they were buying.

“I love her as an actress, but I love her as a woman too,” said attorney Leslie Baker, who was first in line for an autograph. “She wasn’t skinny and airbrushed.”

But there were plenty of books on how to improve your appearance. Outside one book tent, Carmen Schenk was holding a tray with samples of a beauty tea (“It plumps the skin”) and a tart cherry tea called Tibetan Magic. “It’s a blood oxygenator,” said Schenk, who works for Ron Teeguarden at his store Dragon Herbs in West L.A. Nearby sat Teeguarden selling his book, “The Ancient Wisdom of the Chinese Tonic Herbs.”

At other sites, authors were wrestling with more global issues. At the panel “Life on the Border: Mexican American Realities,” several U.S. authors who had lived and written in Mexico talked about the interplay between the cultures and how each was affecting the other.

Tony Cohan, who wrote “On Mexican Time” about living in San Miguel de Allende and restoring an old house, said, “Suddenly our town that used to be ‘the other’ is being blended in with the world.” He noted that in a nearby city, a Wal-Mart, Price Club and Sears have sprouted. “All these Americanized things are moving in, and people like it,” Cohan said.

David Lida, author of the collection “Travel Advisory: Stories of Mexico,” noted that it goes both ways. “There might be Wal-Marts in Mexico,” he said, “but I understand sales of bottled salsa have supplanted sales of bottles of ketchup” in the United States.

Perhaps no panel had a more intense subject--and testier exchanges--than the one that took as its topic: “The Color of the Game: Race in American Sports.”

Panelist Jon Entine, a sports journalist who wrote “Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We’re Afraid to Talk About It,” essentially said that there’s a genetic component to athletic ability . “Elite athletes who trace most or all of their ancestry to Africa are by and large better than the competition,” he writes in his book. (He points out that there will always be individuals with varying athletic skills, no matter what their ethnic background.)

“I don’t know if you know the difference between Africans and African Americans, but how could these [body] traits be maintained over years?” asked panel moderator Todd Boyd, a USC professor of cinema and an author.

Said Entine: “This is nothing more than how genetics affects populations--it only becomes controversial when you play the race card.”

To which Boyd shot back: “I’m playing the race card?”

At that point, the exchange got so heated that audience members called out for the debate to calm down.

Later, Entine, defending his work, walked to his book-signing tent. “Writing about race doesn’t mean you’re playing the race card,” he said.

Not all panelists wanted to engage each other so deeply. In fact, some barely wanted to talk about their work at all.

When Sarah Vowell, author of “Radio On: A Listener’s Diary,” and Dave Eggers, author of the hot new memoir, “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” showed up for their panel, they weren’t alone. They had invited a rocket scientist and a man in a wolverine costume who was described simply as Egger’s “junior high school friend Paul.” Neither the scientist nor the wolverine had anything to do with the authors’ books.

Moderator Nancy Updike asked both writers how living in the Midwest had affected their work.

“When I was a little girl, my favorite show was ‘Charlie’s Angels’ and I wanted to live in Los Angeles,” said Vowell.

“I don’t have an answer to that question,” said Eggers.

“What exactly is this gooey stuff on your book?” asked Updike.

“I had a Junior Mints disaster in my backpack,” he answered.

But Eggers’ seeming reluctance to discuss writing didn’t stop him from teasing audience members as they left early.

“You show up, and 10 minutes later you’re leaving? Where are you going?” he called after one woman.

“Jane Goodall,” she shot back, referring to another panelist about to start speaking elsewhere.

The audience roared.