Author R.O. Kwon's Parents Watched Margaret Cho Talk About This Sex Act — And a Funny Misunderstanding Ensued

Mar. 15, 2025

R.O. Kwon (left) and Margaret Cho.Photo:CraSH/Shutterstock; Michael Bezjian/Getty

CraSH/Shutterstock; Michael Bezjian/Getty

“My parents speak English quite fluently, but they don’t understand everything,” Kwon added. “For instance, Margaret Cho was talking about fisting. I helplessly glanced at my parents, and I saw that my father looked gently puzzled, and then he nodded approvingly. And I realized, ‘Oh, he’s thinking that Margaret Cho punched somebody … And he’s just like, ‘Great.’”

The author added that her father has always been an advocate for self-defense.“He believes strongly that everyone should learn how to defend themselves,” Kwon said. “He enrolled me into TaeKwonDo when I was a kid.”

Kwon also explained that she initially felt hesitant about writing the book, and even experienced panic attacks throughout the process.“What I started understanding, the more I looked into it, was Korean women … we’re not really supposed to talk about sex, still, at all. We’re not supposed to really think about sex,” Kwon said.

“The book has a lot to do with desire, including physical desire, including sex,” she added. “It’s also queer desire … it just felt increasingly more and more like something that I shouldn’t be talking about at all.”

But she managed to take that experience and make art out of it.“That’s one really great thing about writing, I think,” Kwon went on. “You can just be having a terrible experience, but maybe you could turn it into something.”

Conley, who also penned the memoirBoy Erased, added that he was interested in exploring desire inAll the World Beside, which details an illicit relationship between two men in Puritan New England. The author wanted to showcase his characters’ experiences as “not inherently shameful.”

“I think that repression is really hot,” Conley said. “Obviously I do, because I’m a preacher’s kid, so I really wanted to write some scenes that felt sexy to me and maybe to no one else.”

The PEOPLE Puzzler crossword is here! How quickly can you solve it? Play now!“I wanted to write that into the story of these two men who were circling around each other and coming together, but then going apart … all of that to me is really fun to write about,” he added.

For Grattan, who didn’t grow up in a religious family, writingIn Tongues, about a young gay man whose life becomes intertwined with those of a wealthy couple, called for a different approach.

“There’s a connection between religious and physical ecstasy,” Grattan said, adding that “It felt so much part of [the protagonist’s] story and so much part of his expansion over the course of the story.”

Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.“I also think, in a world where something about queerness is often seen as shameful … It’s almost like a little bit of a’ f— you to that, the sense that this is something you shouldn’t be writing about or that,” Grattan said. “I think there was something about that, the discomfort that some people feel.”

source: people.com