Jan. 4, 1943: Doris Kearns Goodwin born.
Thursday, January 4, 2018
Wednesday, January 3, 2018
Q&A with Sorayya Khan
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| Sorayya Khan, photo by Barbara Adams |
Sorayya Khan is the author of the novel City of Spies, which takes place in Pakistan in the late 1970s. She also has written the novels Noor and Five Queen's Road. She lives in New York.
Q: What was the inspiration for City of Spies, and did you
need to do much research to write the novel?
A: The inspiration was a newspaper item around the time
Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged. A father described the
young son he’d just buried as a big fan of the Prime Minister whom, the boy
once predicted, would live a long life that would correspond with the boy’s –
instead, the Prime Minister was dead and so, too, was the son. When I
began writing, the boy took on a life of its own.
My research spanned many years and multiple forms:
books, newspapers, interviews, maps, photographs, and travel. I began the
research before I knew I would be a writer, already interested in what the
narrative of Pakistan looked like to others.
Q: How was the novel's title chosen, and what does it
signify for you?
A: The original title was some variation of “The Yellow
School Bus and the Land of the Pure,” which my agent worried was too YA and we
concluded was perhaps a bit too Miss Frizzle from The Magic School Bus
series.
I decided on City of Spies after reading my final draft and
recognizing that many characters are indeed spies of a sort, none more so than
Aliya, the narrator, who is intent on making sense of her world.
Q: What do you think the story says about the relationship
between the U.S. and Pakistan?
A: That the relationship is old and complicated, strained by
distrust and enmity, but perhaps not insurmountable.
Q: Who are some of your favorite writers?
A: I have too many to list! But I have a special place
for certain books, Svetlana Alexievich’s Zinky Boys, Gabriel García Marquez’s A
Hundred Years of Solitude, Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice Candy Man, Aleksandar Hemon’s The
Book of My Lives and the poet Agha Shahid Ali’s The Country Without a Post
Office.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m very excited about my current project, but it’s still
finding shape and hard to discuss--except to say that it is non-fiction and
involves research and plenty of travel.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: You can see some of the images that inspired my writing
process in a slideshow on my website.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
Q&A with Andrea Davis Pinkney
Andrea Davis Pinkney is the author of the new children's book Martin Rising: Requiem for a King, which is illustrated by her husband, Brian Pinkney. Her many other books include A Poem for Peter and The Red Pencil. She lives in New York City.
Q: Why did you decide to write about Martin Luther King, and
why did you focus primarily on the last weeks of his life?
A: April 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of
King’s assassination. It seemed to be a good moment to honor his contributions
and remind people of the days that led to the unfortunate event, and talk about
King’s legacy that transcends darkness.
The book has three sections—daylight, darkness, and dawn.
While the final days are filled with foreboding, the last poem says that with
his love, we will rise.
Q: How did you research the book, and did you learn anything
that particularly surprised you?
A: Like any author, I try to get to primary source material.
I spoke to people who were at the March on Washington, who were active during
that era. My own parents marched with King, and I talked to my mother. There
are many books about Martin Luther King Jr, and I read a lot of them.
The one thing that really surprised me is King’s humanity.
What I mean is that in the final days when he knew it was near the end, the
mountaintop speech was a premonition of what he expected. In the final days, he
was not feeling well. He had a fever. He said to Ralph Abernathy, I’m so tired,
can you go in my stead, and Ralph said, no, they want you.
We think of Martin Luther King as a heroic superhuman. In
many respects, he was, but we see also that he was a man. He started to face
his own mortality.
Q: How did you and your husband, Brian Pinkney, collaborate
on the book, and what role do you see the illustrations playing in the book?
A: Typically an author and an illustrator do not meet each
other. It’s the job of the editor and the publishing company to keep the people
separate. The author should be free to have his or her own vision, and the
illustrator shouldn’t have the author whispering in his ear.
I have a unique situation—I share the same house, the same
toothpaste, the same kids, the laundry, with the guy who’s illustrating my
book!
Brian’s studio is not in my home. Every day we go our
separate ways. I don’t say, come on, honey, give me a sneak peek, because in a
normal scenario, I wouldn’t have that. We do talk about our projects once a
week, but I don’t see the artwork until it’s done.
In the case of Martin Rising, I know now that Brian was
really influenced by Marc Chagall and Norman Lewis. [There’s a] spiritual,
metaphorical quality to them…
Q: What do you hope young readers take away from the story?’
A: A couple of things—one is that we learn about Martin
Luther King in school; there’s Martin Luther King Day, we see him as a
larger-than-life figure, which he was.
However, his message of peace, equality, brotherhood and
love is very much alive today. In the last poem, we can celebrate it. What
Would Martin Do—can we all go on a march? Sure, but for others, it could be an
act of kindness today. You, too, can be a transmitter of peace.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: My next project is one that I’m not fully at liberty to
talk about, but it involved the same era and it’s set in the South…that time of
history really resonates with me.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: One thought I had is that the poems are docu-poems. It’s
like a documentary approach to poetry, and it’s meant to be shared, read
aloud—you can create a chorus of poems with friends, in a classroom, for a
play. It’s meant to be interactive as well as contemplative.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Andrea Davis Pinkney.
Q&A with Sam Graham-Felsen
Sam Graham-Felsen is the author of the new novel Green, which takes place in Boston in 1992. His work has appeared in a variety of publications, including The New York Times Magazine and The Nation, and he was the chief blogger for President Obama's 2008 campaign.
Q: You write that the inspiration for Green came from the
question, “Why are interracial friendships—lasting ones—so rare in this
country?” How did that question lead to the novel?
A: This is my first novel, but in everything I’ve written,
from short stories to essays, I usually find myself starting out with a
question — something I’m curious about, feel confused by, and want to try to
work my way towards understanding better.
So it’s true, I started out with that animating question,
but, of course, I knew I couldn’t — nor did I want to try to — answer a
question as sweeping and general as that, especially in the form of a novel.
All a novel can do is describe specific characters in a
specific situation. The situation I was interested in was a friendship between
a white kid named Dave from a privileged, middle class household, and a black
kid named Marlon who lives in a housing project around the corner from Dave’s
house.
I knew, heading into the novel, that I wanted to write about
why the friendship built up so quickly, but also why it fizzled out so quickly.
How would the differences in the levels of privilege between
Dave and Mar grate on their relationship? What kind of micro and
macro-agressions might Mar face, including from Dave? How would society’s
different treatment of Dave and Mar impact the way Dave and Mar treated each
other?
These were questions that fascinated me enough to keep me
writing, until at some point, I had a draft of a novel.
Q: How would you describe the friendship between David and
Marlon, and what do you hope readers take away from their story?
A: I would say that Dave and Mar are two misfits — strange
puzzle pieces that happen to match up perfectly together.
Mar doesn’t conform to what the kids at school think of as
“cool.” He doesn’t have the right clothes or the right haircut, he doesn’t like
the right basketball players, he’s not good at sports, he’s the kind of guy who
doesn’t dance at the school dances.
And Dave is a misfit because, first of all, he’s white at a
mostly black and Latinx school, which makes him stand out quite a bit, but also
because he’s awkward and anxious, and so obsessed with being cool that he’s
constantly making faux-pas and embarrassing himself.
Mar and Dave initially connect because they both love the
Boston Celtics. Normally, loving the home team is a very normal thing to do.
And the Boston Celtics happen to be the most successful franchise in basketball
history!
But in early-90s Boston, the Celtics stunk, and the cool
teams to root for were the Charlotte Hornets, the Chicago Bulls, and the
Phoenix Suns, among others. So ironically, it’s Dave and Mar’s loyalty to their
uncool team — and frankly, uncool city — that puts them on the same team.
But beyond that, Dave and Mar share a sense of humor — they
laugh at the same terrible TV ads, each other’s corny jokes, etc. — and a moral
sensibility.
Mar is a religious kid who has a basic sense of empathy for
the less powerful (including Dave’s emotionally troubled younger brother
Benno); Dave is a secular kid who wants to be religious, and wants to be
morally pure, even though he struggles a lot with “sinful” temptations.
Mar loves to be around Dave because he can be his authentic
self without feeling judged; and Dave loves to be around Mar for similar
reasons, but also because he thinks Mar is a good guy, and he wants to be a
better guy, too.
I hope readers connect to this friendship — and that it
prompts them to recall their own powerful childhood friendships, and maybe even
to pick up the phone and reconnect with someone they haven’t talked to in years
:)
But I also hope that readers come away feeling upset at the
way institutional racism and segregation put up so many boundaries between
kids, and make friendships like Dave and Mar’s so complicated and trying.
It should be so simple — kids should be able to connect, no
matter what race, class, or gender they are. And yet, it’s not simple at all,
and that’s tragic.
Q: Did you need to do much research to recreate Boston in
the early 1990s, or did you remember most of it from your own childhood?
A: I spent a lot of time listening to early ‘90s rap music,
but that’s my favorite music anyway, so it wasn’t exactly a chore. I spent some
time on YouTube, watching old commercials and clips from old TV shows. And I
spent a lot of time with my middle school yearbook.
I actually went to a school called the Martin Luther King
Middle School in Boston, which I based the school in the book on. It was pretty
embarrassing to see the clothes I wore back then! But it was also useful to see
how everyone dressed, all of the different amazing early-‘90s stylings, from
Cross Colours suits to ‘X’ tee shirts.
Q: You worked on President Obama’s 2008 campaign. What do
you see as the legacy of his presidency when it comes to race relations, and
what do you think about race relations in the Trump era?
A: It’s hard to say what the Obama legacy is, because it
will continue to evolve and play out in different ways, for decades, if not
centuries, to come.
But overall, I am something of an optimist, and I would say
that Obama’s presidency was hugely important for race relations in this
country. Did he usher in a post-racial era? Absolutely not, and no one I knew
on the campaign was ever naive enough to believe that he would.
But his presidency and movements that emerged in his era —
particularly Black Lives Matter — have brought race to the forefront of
our national conversation. For so long, race had been a topic many Americans
wanted to run away from or brush under the carpet.
Now, institutional racism, microagressions, police
misconduct, wage and wealth inequality, school and housing segregation are all
major topics of national conversation.
I don’t think Trump’s victory stopped this conversation. If
anything, the dialogue about race has become even more robust and urgent, now
that we have an openly racist president.
There’s so much incredible political organizing and social
movement activity springing up, all over the country right now — not only
against racism, but sexism, xenophobia, and religious bigotry, too.
It’s a dark time in American history, but these movements
actually make me more hopeful than ever that we’ll get through this period of
darkness and emerge a fairer and more decent society.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m trying to write another novel — key word being trying.
I don’t want to say what I hope it’ll be about, because I don’t want to jinx
it. But also working on some personal essays and journalism. In general, just
keeping the pen moving and not trying to worry too much about rushing out my
next book.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Just that I’m deeply grateful to you, and to anyone else
who picks up my book and reads it. It’s a powerful and rewarding thing to know
that readers are spending time with something I put my heart into.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
Monday, January 1, 2018
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