In this conversation that took place shortly before the pandemic and shelter-in-place order, award-winning writer Mai Der Vang and I discuss why failure is always a way to build resilience; the burden of excellence that many immigrants experience plus the challenges of being a female, P.O.C. writer and academic in the American literary landscape; and the devastation of the Secret War that wreaked havoc on the Hmong people and how this trauma influences her writing, as the child of Hmong immigrants.