Sheila Sundar is the author of the new novel Habitations. She is a professor of English and creative writing at the University of Mississippi, and she lives in New Orleans.
Q: What inspired you to write Habitations, and how did you create your character Vega?
A: Vega came together slowly for me. I had a rough image in my mind of a smart woman—a sociologist—who moves to the United States from India to pursue her career. I was interested in the political and cultural questions that would be raised by this experience, but I didn’t have a real sense of her as a person.
I began to play with her in my mind, imagining different scenarios she might find herself tangled in.
Eventually, I started the novel with a short story that developed into the Vega/Winston section and I knew right away that I found my entry point into Vega; the emotional intensity of this relationship forced me to understand her, not just as an intellectual and academic, but as a flawed person with human needs.
From there, I was able to create a full picture of the life she had led leading up to that complicated relationship. Then, with each passing draft, I got to know her better and better.
Q: The writer Ha Jin said of the book, “Covering dramas both personal and universal, Sundar offers insightful reflections on the desire for arrival and the longing for return.” What do you think of that description?
A: I love that description, and I am enormously grateful for Ha Jin’s words. He was my graduate professor at Boston University and he emphasized the importance of looking deeply into a character to understand the specificity and peculiarity of their lives.
I think that, when we explore characters intimately, we do end up telling a very universal story, because it’s that intimacy that makes them human and allows readers to be touched by their lives.
Ultimately, my dream as a writer is to write stories that affect readers and make them feel connected to my characters. If I pulled that off, I’m very happy.
Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: In terms of plot, I didn’t know how the story would end. I did have a sense of the emotional closure I sought for Vega. And I knew that she would be okay—in part because I like happy endings—and also because she had developed into someone capable of creating her own happiness.
So, while I didn’t have a sense of the events that would come together, I knew she would end up in a home of her choosing, living a life that felt truly right for her.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: The title was hard to choose, and I didn’t arrive at it until I had finished writing the book.
I think of titles as representations of a recurring symbol, expression, or feeling in a story, and Habitations is a novel about the tangled, sometimes messy process of finding home.
I’m also not an outliner. In writing Habitations, I followed Vega’s lead and let her tumble through her own story with (again) a loose vision of where she would end up.
In coming up with the title, I needed to go back to that journey and examine it with some distance. I had a long conversation with a friend of mine, who had read the manuscript and is a wonderful reader in general, and she and I played with a number of titles. We tossed them back and forth until we found one that really felt right.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m currently working on a novel about a couple in the Foreign Service. It explores the ways in which they observe and respond to the politics of the early 2000s, as well as the broader complexities of interracial partnership, parenthood, migration, and the moral questions raised when we bear witness from a distance.
It sounds quite heavy, and on some level it is, but I also believe it’s shaping up to be a very warm, intimate, and sometimes funny story.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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