Read to Know Basis: Aisha Abdel Gawad
The author of Between Two Moons talks about black market fruit and her greatest distractions.
Read to Know Basis is a weekly interview series with authors. It features debut authors and established writers talking about reading, writing, and of course snacks. This series is free to all. If you like what you read considering subscribing to support the work of Unstacked, and of course go out and buy the book!
What are five words to describe your book?
Muslim girlhood under state surveillance
What is the strangest thing you googled while researching/writing this book?
The father character is a halal butcher, so I spent a lot of time googling cuts of meat. The scariest thing I googled were ISIS recruitment videos. I was like, how do I clarify to anyone surveilling me that this is for research? But then again, I also googled a lot of Young Thug lyrics, so if someone was surveilling me, they were probably pretty confused.
Describe your ideal reader?
Someone who seeks out books in order to feel all the emotions our over-scheduled, over-productive, over-stimulated lives don’t allow us to. Someone who wants to riot in her mind–to smash and burn everything, and then make something brand new and beautiful out of the ashes.
What are three books that are in conversation with your book?
The poetry collection Look by Solmaz Sharif, which is such a stunning dissection of the language used to construct the “War on Terror.”
Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie for the way it fearlessly reshuffles categories like patriot, enemy, terrorist, and brother.
Sula by Toni Morrison for the way it explores the revolutionary possibilities of female friendship.
What is a piece of writing advice that you’ve received that you think is really bad? What is a piece of writing advice that you think is really good?
Someone once told me that I shouldn’t always fall back on “cultural writing,” that it was a lazy way to spark readers’ interest in the exotic/different/other. But that assumes that the reader is always white, or, at the very least, non-Arab in my case. And isn’t everyone’s writing “cultural”? I felt free to ignore that particular piece of advice!
When I was an undergrad, I took a fiction workshop with Marcelle Clements. I remember one day she arrived holding an empty wine glass and a metal butter knife. She set the glass down on the table and struck it once with the knife as if about to give a toast. We all fell silent and waited for her to explain, but she didn’t. It wasn’t until the very end of class that she went back to it. She told us that our endings should feel like that sound–like the reverberation of metal on glass. Our ends should resonate, should “sound” beyond the last words. I think about that wine glass every time I finish a scene or chapter, let alone an entire book.
What is the single biggest distraction to your writing?
Hands down my actual children and my students, so it’s like I have 40+ kids. This is why I like to write in the very early hours of the morning when they’re all still sleeping and no one needs me yet.
What are you reading right now? And what book are you desperate to read next?
I just finished Minor Detail by Palestinian writer Adania Shibli. In this current moment especially, I’m seeking out Palestinian voices. I read it in a single sitting, my hands trembling, my heart in my throat.
I am very excited to read James by Percival Everett. Even the renaming (of Jim from Huck Finn) implied by the title thrills me!
What book are you an evangelist for?
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward. It’s such a quiet book–so much of the story lives in the interiority of Esch. And yet the emotional power roils just beneath the surface. Another book I love for similar reasons is What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad. I admire writers who can deliver a gut-punch through the use of restraint.
What's a book that has changed the way you think about life/the world?
So many. But I’m going to go with one I’ve been thinking of a lot lately: Orientalism by Edward Said. I grew up in a time when the only Arabs I saw on TV were raving brown lunatics that Jack Bauer killed on every episode of 24. Orientalism gave me language to identify and articulate the more insidious tentacles of empire.
Who is your literary crush?
Maybe Elena Ferrante, unknowable, untouchable queen who drops books from the sky, leaves us desperate for more, and gives us nothing of herself. What a legend.
If you could not be a writer what would you do?
Well, I am also a high school English teacher and it’s a big part of who I am, so I would do that! But if I were to choose something I don’t already do, I would be a gardener. I like to be outside, alone in the quiet, with my hands in the dirt.
You’re invited to a literary potluck, what are you bringing?
Everyone goes crazy for really good mangoes, and they’re so hard to find. I would bring mangoes so buttery and juicy, we would scoop the flesh out of the skins with spoons and talk about people and places we are longing for. My cousin knows a guy (I sound so Egyptian right now) who sells blackmarket mangoes from the back of a truck. Actually, I’ve already said too much.
Connect with Aisha: Instagram | Website
This was EXCELLENT from beginning to end wow. Need to pick up her book asap
Ummm...LOVED that glass/knife "good writing tip" story!