About this episode
Sabaa Tahir’s (“All My Rage,” “An Ember in the Ashes” quartet) upbringing in the Mojave desert, isolated nearly 100 miles from the nearest city, exposed her to an unforgiving landscape and many unforgiving truths of humanity. Within this backdrop, one place held significant importance in shaping her worldview: The Motel, a small business operated by her immigrant parents. As she notes, “The good is what helps you survive, but the bad is what makes you wary and careful and makes you lonely at times.” Sabaa ventured into the realm of academia and later pursued a career in journalism, where her understanding of the world's imperfections deepened. The essence of Sabaa’s stories lies in the raw exploration of sorrow and frustration…and taking action.
"This is happening in our world and at the very least you can bear witness to it. That's literally the absolute least you can do." - Sabaa Tahir
In this episode, Sabaa delves into the experiences of her childhood that left an indelible mark on her perspective of the world. From the motel her parents ran, to sonic booms, to wearing (dreaded) dresses on Mondays, Sabaa’s youth sounds eerily like a superhero origin story. She also opened up about the "outsized impact" of her time copy editing at The Washington Post and its influence on her writing. Sabaa reveals how she channels her outrage to resonate with her coming-of-age readers, validating their shared frustrations and coming to terms with her own.
For her reading challenge, Authors of the Muslim Diaspora, Sabaa wants readers to open up to other perspectives from Muslim diaspora authors, including their cultures, traditions, mythologies, and humor. She curated a fabulous reading list, and I invite you to check it out.
In this episode, we’re once again changing things up for our Beanstack featured librarian. Today we give the mic one more time to Lessa Kananiʻopua Pelayo-Lozada, the current American Library Association president, to share more about the upcoming ALA conference and exhibition. Beanstack has proudly participated in ALA exhibitions for the last eight years!
Contents
- Chapter 1 - The Middle of Nowhere (for real)
- Chapter 2 - The Motel
- Chapter 3 - One Art
- Chapter 4 - The Eyes of an Editor
- Chapter 5 - Books Like Sad Songs
- Chapter 6 - Back to Fantasy Land
- Chapter 7 - Lego Proof Socks
- Chapter 8 - Muslim Diaspora
- Chapter 9 - Beanstack Featured Librarian
Author Reading Challenge
Download the free reading challenge worksheet, or view the challenge materials on our helpdesk.
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Sabaa Tahir:
This is happening in our world, and at the very least, you can bear witness to it. That's like literally the absolute least you can do. So I guess writing Ember and then writing All My Rage, ultimately, was a way for me to bear witness in my own way and to try to put into the world something that... My hope is if someone reads Ember when they hear something similar when they see something similar, maybe they can find a way to care or to help instead of just letting it go over their heads.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
As a Muslim raised by immigrant parents in rural America, Sabaa Tahir learned early that the world can be a disappointing place, a devastating place. And while she escaped in music and books, Sabaa didn't look away from the underbelly of humanity that she witnessed at her parents' business, in school, or at her job as a copy editor for The Washington Post. As a writer, she has channeled that outrage into her books, validating the frustrations of her coming-of-age readers.
Sabaa Tahir:
It reminds me of music actually. Sometimes you're in the mood for poppy songs, and sometimes you want the sad song because that's what your heart needs in that moment. You need to feel seen. You need to feel less alone. You need to get in a headspace that allows you to sit with how you feel, if that's sadness or anger or frustration or loneliness. And I think that books can serve the same purpose in a way.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Sabaa Tahir is a New York Times bestselling author known for her Ember in the Ashes Fantasy Quartet. And more recently, for All My Rage, winner of the National Book Award. I read All My Rage on a flight to New Orleans. The wifi was out, which meant that my laptop and work were as well. And I was so wrapped up in the book that even when the internet was restored, I just kept reading and reading. And then I ugly cried, like ugly cried. So much that the person next to me offered me tissues and asked if I wanted to talk. I'm so thrilled to have Sabaa on the show and to share her voice with you as well.
In this episode, she tells us about the motel and a few sonic booms that shaped her early views on the world. How her time in journalism impacted her approach to fiction and about her bold idea for Lego-proof socks. My name is Jordan Lloyd Bookey, and this is The Reading Culture, a show where we speak with authors and reading enthusiasts to explore ways to build a stronger culture of reading in our communities. We dive into their personal experiences, their inspirations, and why their stories and ideas motivate kids to read more. Also, a quick reminder to check out The Reading Culture on Instagram @thereadingculturepod to hear more from our authors and to learn about some exciting giveaways.
What was growing up like for you?
Sabaa Tahir:
I grew up in the Mojave Desert of California, and when people ask me where I live, I usually draw a circle, and I label it nowhere, and then I point to the very center of that and say, "That's where I grew up." And this actually came up very recently when I was in Southern California, and I was speaking to a group of Pakistani artists who have an art collective down there, and they had joined with a Pasadena literary group to have me come speak to a group of students. And they said, "What town did you grow up in?"
And I explained it to them, and they said, "Oh, so what's that near?" And I said, "Nothing." And they were like, "No, I mean, what's the closest town?" And I was like, Lancaster, Palmdale, California, which is about a hundred miles away. And they were so bewildered. They were like, "No, but there has to be something closer." And I just tried to explain that there was nothing closer. That was it. The town was very isolated. So it was this isolated desert town, and it had about, I think, 25,000 people. It felt smaller than it was because it was built around a naval air warfare station.
And so part of the population was on that base. Many people's parents worked on the base. So you'd say, "What do your parents do?" And they'd say, "Top secret." Because that's where they built the Sidewinder missile and the Tomahawk missile, and they did all sorts of testing out there. I mean, I remember very clearly being at school and hearing sonic booms an explosion and walking out and seeing big black clouds of smoke out in the desert where they were testing.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Wait, really?
Sabaa Tahir:
[inaudible 00:04:41]. Yeah, absolutely.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Did they stop school for it or were they like, "No, it's just a sonic boom."
Sabaa Tahir:
Nope.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Don't... Keep going."
Sabaa Tahir:
Nope. "Just a sonic boom. Keep going." We had the earthquake drills. And it's so funny because a lot of people in California will say, "Oh, those earthquake drills were so useless." But we actually used them because we had tons of earthquakes in our little town. It was pretty common. So I was actually thankful for the earthquake drills because even though the quakes rarely happened when I was in school, for some reason, they always happened at 3:00 AM, I used what I learned. I like ducked and covered, hit under a table. I did all that.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
What an apocalyptic feeling childhood.
Sabaa Tahir:
It was. Yeah. And this is why I think I write what I do. This is why I started in fantasy because that town is just filled with stories. There were UFO stories. There were mysterious military testing stories. There was all sorts of stuff. It was like a...
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Do you remember any of them that really stayed with you? Oh my God. That just really stayed in your memory or stayed in your conscience?
Sabaa Tahir:
I do. I do. Yeah. So it's stuff that happened to me. I remember being with two of my best friends in high school, we're walking on one of their streets, and there's this wild flash of light that went across the entire sky. It wasn't lightning. I mean, it was the desert. We rarely had storms. You notice when it storms. It wasn't even cloudy. We're just walking, and it's very late at night. It was like, I don't know, midnight or something. And this crazy flash of light. And it was an unusual color. It was sort of like a green color.
I remember this because we all screamed and crouched at the same time. So we were like, "We're going to die." And then I wondered. I was like, "Maybe it'll be in the paper tomorrow." Which was such a silly thing to think because it was never in the paper the next day. But we had no idea what that was. It was just this weird, and it was an abnormally ginormous flash of light. This was not a transformer blowing or, like I said, lightning or something. It was like they did some type of test.
And then driving along the 395, which is one of the roads that went by the town, there are these train cars out in the desert that are just sort of abandoned and sitting out there, and they're pretty far off of the main road. And I remember driving with my mother, and we saw a truck, just a gigantic truck turning off and heading toward those train cars, but there's nothing else out there. And so we were just like, "Uh." And there's a million stories like that everyone in this town has, and they have far more extreme stories than what I'm sharing that those were just things that happened to me.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah. But it really laid the groundwork for Ember, the Ember series. You can see how.
Sabaa Tahir:
Yes, the Ember series. Yes, 100%.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
What were you like as a kid? Like an elementary school kid, what was your vibe?
Sabaa Tahir:
I don't think I was particularly remarkable in elementary school. I was kind of shy. I didn't have a large group of friends. I had friends all through those years, but I sort of drifted in and out of groups. I was always into story, though. I didn't really like reading until I was, I think, in second or third grade. But I did always love story. I always told stories. That was sort of what I was known for in my family with my parents and stuff.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
What kind of stories? Like at bedtime, you mean or...
Sabaa Tahir:
Any stories. Fairy tales, stories about animals. I remember telling my mom some story about a goose, and we were going on a walk together, and we just kept walking. And finally, I was like, "I'm tired." But my mom had wanted to hear what happened in the story, which is why she kept walking. You know jinn stories. My mom would tell me jinn stories. My dad would tell me jinn stories. And so I was really interested in story. I was pretty introverted, very internal.
There was always something going on in my head, and I wanted to fit in. When you're a little kid, and you'll have daydreams, my daydreams were all about fitting in. They were all about having the right clothes, the right look, the right things to say, and fitting in and being popular. And then, as I got older, got into fourth, fifth, and sixth grade actually, it was some of the more well-loved kids who could be the meanest that started hitting me that these people weren't something to aspire to.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Do you think there was some reason that you understood that they were not, as you put it, people to aspire to be?
Sabaa Tahir:
I mean, they were racist. A lot of people were racist. They were unintentionally racist, but they were absolutely prejudiced. It was the way my parents were treated. It was the way other parents would treat my parents. It was the way I was treated. I remember not necessarily understanding what Christmas or Easter were really about and being mocked for that by other kids who were like, "You don't know what Easter is?" And I remember later sharing this with a friend, and she was like, "I'm Christian, and I barely understand what Easter is."
So it was interesting upon reflection to see that that was just people being unkind. But it was everything. It was little things from, "You know, shouldn't wear that color." I remember being asked why I never wore dresses because I wore modest dress. Generally, my dresses went past my knees. And I remember being pestered about it, like kids saying, "Why don't you ever wear a..." And we have this stupid rule at our school that was like every Monday girls had to wear dresses and boys had to wear-
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
At your school every Monday girls had to wear dresses?
Sabaa Tahir:
Every Monday, girls had to wear dresses.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Oh, God.
Sabaa Tahir:
It was the worst. It was just the worst thing ever. And I remember dreading it because I'd always wear tights with my dresses because that was... Again, my mom dressed modestly. I dress modestly. And so I remember just dreading Mondays because there would always be someone in the thick of a Mohave Desert summer being like, "Why are you wearing tights?" And it wasn't like... As an adult, it's much easier, I think, to know what to say, which is, "Mind your own beeswax," basically.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah.
Sabaa Tahir:
But as a kid, I didn't always know what to say. So a lot of times, I just wouldn't say anything. And then that kind of, I think, made people feel like they could say more unkind things, but it was sort of always their low level. I would say it was... school was one of those places, though, where I eventually found my footing because, starting in seventh grade, I realized I was actually smart. Once I had that identity, it was like, "Okay, you're the smart kid."
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
How did you know that? How did... Just because getting good grades, or was it... were there teachers who called that out to you?
Sabaa Tahir:
My teachers, for some reason, had me put in all remedial classes in seventh grade. I say for some reason, but we all know the reason.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
[inaudible 00:11:58]. For some reason.
Sabaa Tahir:
For some-
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
[inaudible 00:12:01].
Sabaa Tahir:
... reason. I remember being in these remedial classes and all of my teachers being utterly bewildered as to why I was in these classes. They were just like, "You are not... You do not belong here." And I give them so much credit. I still remember two of their names. My math teacher was Ms. Claire, and my English teacher was Ms. Erickson.
And they both fought to have me put into all honors classes in eighth grade. And that's when I realized that I was smart and that all the reading that I had been doing was actually giving me something that... like giving me an understanding of language that maybe wasn't as common.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
I've read that you or heard, listen [inaudible 00:12:42] you used to give stories to your friends for their birthdays. So you were always a [inaudible 00:12:46]-
Sabaa Tahir:
Yeah.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Which I think is a great gift, especially now. I hope they saved them.
Sabaa Tahir:
I hope they didn't. They were terrible stories. They were all about death.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
About death. Okay.
Sabaa Tahir:
That was my main character was always the Grim Reaper. I was super into gothy Grim Reapery stuff because I couldn't... my mother never let me dress in all black, which is what I wanted to do.
I wanted to dress in all black and wear a black nail polish and have black eyeliner, and be a true goth. But my mother was like, "Absolutely not. You're not wearing all black, and you're certainly not painting your nails black." So I had to make do with writing stories about the Grim Reaper.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
[inaudible 00:13:27] like, "Thank you. This will be such a happy birthday for me."
Sabaa Tahir:
Pretty much. Yeah.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
"My father came to America with a deep belief in the goodness of people. But the motel taught him and all of us better." In 2021, Sabaa penned an autobiographical article in Vox titled The Ghosts of Our Motel. In it, she recalls the unusualness of her upbringing that largely centered around the motel her parents ran in the middle of the desert.
The revolving doors of strangers deep within the back rooms of Americana served as a window into the true goodness or lack thereof in people. Each experience peeling back a new layer, digging out the hope with which her parents had arrived to this country. This is where Sabaa learned that she was different. It's a place and a time that has stuck with her and shaped her.
Sabaa Tahir:
I lived at the motel almost exclusively until I was about 13. There was one school year where we lived in a rental while somebody else managed the motel. And that was a revelation for me because it was like the bell wasn't ringing all the time and there weren't people shouting at my parents, and the police weren't coming to have to get a tenant out. And I wasn't hearing these terms. I wasn't hearing, "Go back to where you came from."
I wasn't hearing all the things that people say, I think, when they're not just uneducated, but just sort of vicious. Whatever's happening in their life is making them desperately need to feel superior to whoever's around them. And for some of the tenants at our motel, that was my parents, that was us. And they really enjoyed treating us like garbage. There's a story in All My Rage about Misbah and how she rents a room to a woman for free.
And the woman's boyfriend takes everything in the room. And that is a true story. They just renovated the room. They'd put up pictures. They'd fix... It was really the first room my parents had properly renovated, because when they took over the motel, it was in pretty bad shape. And this woman came in. It was windy, storming. She had a baby. My mom rented her a room because she felt really bad for her.
And her and her boyfriend took everything. They took the bed. They took the TV. They took everything. That was an early lesson for my parents. And then it was dealing with everything from when they wanted to take out a business loan and being rejected by every bank in the town for really no good reason until one gentleman actually had a park named after him. His last name was Pearson.
But he was the only person who gave my parents a business loan because he wasn't racist. And I mean, there was so much of that in that, tell me, this is a town that remember our history teacher said there was a billboard that said, "Impeach Thurgood Marshall," for the longest time outside the town. And if you looked at the '60s yearbooks, there was clan pictures in them. I remember being in high school and having someone leave a clan flyer on my car.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Wow.
Sabaa Tahir:
It was a weird place. It didn't feel like California. It felt like the Twilight Zone.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
That is just sound like the... I mean, everything you've described is the... I mean, just down to the... starting from the sonic booms, I should say. It is the Twilight Zone.
Sabaa Tahir:
But again, I think it is important to see the nuance that even in a place like that, I had friends with parents who looked out for me. My parents had... they didn't have many friends, but my dad didn't really have any.
But my mom had had a few close friends. There were a few other Muslim families in the town. That is the thing about a town. This is it's not all good and it's not all bad. The good is what helps you survive, but the bad is what makes you wary and careful and makes you lonely at times.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
And then the motel is kind of like this other kid in your family. It's so interesting to me. I always say... We always joke that we have three kids, but just two are our children, our actual children, and one is our business. But in your case, it was really also physically like this other entity in your life.
Sabaa Tahir:
Yeah, that was my parents' main kid, right, was the motel. But they had other businesses too, right. They were just trying to make it. Ultimately, my parents were like so many immigrant families. They were just trying to make it so they had a clothing resale business that they shut down after a couple of years. They had a drive-through dairy. They sold a lot for it after a few years.
But I remember playing with the milk crates, the drive-through dairy. And then the thing they had the longest was a gas station. And I worked there just like I would answer phones at the motel. One summer in college, I worked at the store. It was just part of sort of the family business. But I think when you are that outward facing, and you have so many interactions with strangers, inevitably, some of them are going to be pretty bad. And those are the ones that stick in your head.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah, it's like extreme acts of kindness might stay there, but just like the everyday negative ones stay with you too, you know.
Sabaa Tahir:
Yeah. "The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent, the art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother's watch.
And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned two rivers, a continent. I missed them, but it wasn't a disaster. Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster."
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
One Art is a poem by Elizabeth Bishop that was first published in 1967 in the New Yorker. It also appeared in her book Geography III, which came out that same year. The poem is a beautiful exploration of loss, acceptance, and learning how to move on, embracing all three as an inevitable part of life. But Sabaa's first experience with this poem is less about the finished piece and more about the craft of writing behind the scenes. It served as a critical point in her journey to becoming an author.
Sabaa Tahir:
I encountered this poem in a book called The Writer's Home Companion. My oldest brother gave it to me when I was in high school. It was my very first book about writing. He knew I was a writer before I knew I was a writer. I sort of saw it as like, "Oh, this is going to make me a better writer for school." But I think he sort of saw like, "This is something that you should have because you're a storyteller."
And One Art was in this compendium of essays about writing, and it was in the section about editing, and it showed the many drafts of One Art. And the essay was about how Elizabeth Bishop sort of moved through these drafts to end up with the final poem. And it taught me so much about drafting and about editing. It was one of the biggest gifts I could have gotten, which is this idea that the first draft is truly just the beginning.
It's almost like you're telling yourself the story as opposed to telling to anyone else. It was like these seemingly minute changes, but then you sort of see how they all add up. And it's like, "Oh wow. She really had to re-envision what she wanted this poem to be from beginning to end and rearranging and all that sort of stuff." And she did all this stuff that appears to be fine-tuning, but it's not. It's so much deeper than that. It has... It ends up becoming much more relevant to how the poem feels and to its tone and even to how one reads it.
But then the poem really stuck with me. I read it again when I was in college, and it meant something new to me. Loss was a different animal in college. And then, I moved into my late 20s and my early 30s, and loss took on a new meaning for me again. And then, in my late 30s, I turned to the poem again and I incorporated it into All My Rage because my hope is that maybe young people who need this poem, who will find comfort in this poem, it can be there for them in their life throughout the stages of their life as it was for me.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
The magic of editing or the evolution of a story is something that fascinates Sabaa. It's in the second, third, and fourth drafts that the story becomes what it was meant to be. And while reading about Elizabeth Bishop's poem gave her a transformative look into this process, her own mastery over fine-tuning her fiction was honed in a very non-fiction environment, the editing room at the Washington Post. Sabaa worked there editing copy at the foreign news desk before she ever became an author, and the experience was a crucial one.
Sabaa Tahir:
It's interesting because it wasn't like this huge part of my career. It was not this long period of time, but it had a very, very outsized impact. I learned so much about writing and storytelling from there. I learned how to look at a story and a source and always be asking more questions. And I was an editor. I was never a reporter there. But I think when you're reading these stories every day, you get a sense for what questions people are asking.
And when you listen to editors talking to the reporters, and you do some line editing where you talk to reporters, and you say, "Oh, I'm curious about this, or I would like to know more about this," that's where you really start to understand how to suss out the contours of a story. And that's where I learned how to do that. How I learned the idea of beginning, middle, and end of a story, or at least concluding thoughts on a story, even if the story is not over yet.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah. And especially as the editor, I'm guessing you were also... you have to find what's essential, which is also, I imagine, I guess, as a writer is a hard thing to do. Even writing fiction, just figuring out what's needed, what's not.
Sabaa Tahir:
Yeah. I mean, there's that old phrase about, "Killing your darlings," which is taking something that you think is really important and realizing that, "This doesn't belong in this story, and I'm just attached to it for the wrong reasons." And letting it go so that the story can breathe and shine and be a better story.
A lot of that I learned from the Post because I do believe that news organizations, I don't know about now because I don't work in the media now, but at the time, news organizations were sort of beautifully unsentimental about canning things that didn't matter or that were not worthy, that were not sourced, that were not properly proven. You couldn't go on a hunch. You had to have a quote. You had to have a source. You couldn't just opine unless you were in the opinion section, in which case that's the place for it, right.
And so it felt a little bit more neutral then than the news does now. And that's sort of where I learned this very important lesson, which is that multiple points of view are important. And that's actually why Ember has sort of an inside-outside narrative. It has the soldier who is sort of amongst the villains, and then it has the marginalized character who is sort of amongst the traditional heroes, but they're actually both heroes.
And it's sort of really about how they both have very different versions of what's happening. And then you have this third character of Helene, who is very much drinking the bad guy's cool-aid and seeing how she justifies everything. And the goal of having these points of view is to really tell a complete story. Because in journalism, you have to have more than one source. You have to be able to tell a complete story.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
All My Rage is Sabaa's first contemporary fiction novel. Diverging from her earlier fantasy novels, the three interwoven stories within the book showcase one of the defining qualities of Sabaa's work. Her adeptness at delivering heavy, emotionally charged storytelling.
Sabaa doesn't shy away from extreme feelings and intense situations, which results in harrowing but meaningful reads. I was interested to hear about how she balances staying true to the realness of life while focusing on a teen audience.
Sabaa Tahir:
I think, to some degree, I sort of let the books do the talking. There are things that I talk about with my childhood that I'm comfortable talking about, and then there's a lot of things that I will never talk about because the place for them is my books, and that's the only place I feel comfortable or safe talking about them. So I think that that feeling existed when I was a young person too, and I didn't know how to talk about it at that time.
I didn't know writing books was even an option. So it was like I just journal and then tear stuff up, or I would listen to music and be in my feels, right. But as time went on, I realized the things that frustrate you, looking at the world and seeing what felt like my people, like how my people were treated. And when I say my people, I mean people who look like me or who were just people of color.
I mean, it didn't even... just people who were marginalized, people who the world had written off as like, "Oh, that's a poor country. Oh, that's a Third World country." [inaudible 00:27:08] like that. The things that were happening in a lot of places didn't seem to register with most people I knew. And that really bothered me. And so I wanted to find a way to make it register.
And I did that by making these characters who, to me anyway, are deeply lovable. You want them to be okay. And putting them in situations that mirror what's happening all over our world and making people care that way. Even if they don't talk to people who've said, "I don't read the news." And I get it. I 100% get it. I remember being in post-college years, and many friends who were the same age, they'd be like, "So what's happening in the world, Sabaa?"
Because I was the only one who read the news because I did it for work, and so I would tell them, and they'd be like, "Okay, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Too depressing." And it was like, "But this is happening in our world. And at the very least, you can bear witness to it. That's like literally the absolute least you can do."
So I guess writing Ember and then writing All My Rage, ultimately was a way for me to bear witness in my own way and to try to put into the world something that my hope is if someone reads Ember when they hear something similar, when they see something similar, maybe they can find a way to care or to help, instead of just letting it go over their heads.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Do you think it's okay to just say... That's something I hear people say, I think, a lot is like, "It's self-care. I'm not not reading the..." These educated people who-
Sabaa Tahir:
I do. I do think that's okay because I think we have a pretty massive mental health crisis in the country. And I think a lot of it comes from sort of overexposure to the news and to all these terrible things happening in our world. And I understand when people need to step away from that. I don't think stepping away should be permanent. I don't think you should have a complete bubble of a worldview. I do think it's important to reengage at times to understand what's happening in our world.
And I think we have a responsibility to try to help in any way that we can, whether that's voting, whether that's... If something is happening abroad and it's bothering us, contacting our Congress people and saying, "I'm really disturbed by what's happening to, for instance, the Rohingya in Burma or the Uyghurs in China, or what happened to the population in Darfur, in Sudan. These are things that worry me. What is America doing about these things?" I do think we have a responsibility to do that because we are citizens of the world too.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
The book is so much about loss. And just to get back to [inaudible 00:29:57] we had talked about a little bit earlier. I guess, what has been either the reaction from kids, young people you've spoken to about reading something that is so deep in grief and loss or also, what are your thoughts on the importance of having books that grapple with these very hard experiences?
Sabaa Tahir:
It reminds me of music, actually. Sometimes you're in the mood for poppy songs, right. You want the poppy song, and sometimes, you want the sad song because that's what your heart needs in that moment. You need to feel seen. You need to feel less alone. You need to get in a headspace that allows you to sit with how you feel, if that's sadness or anger or frustration or loneliness. And I think that books can serve the same purpose in a way. They just maybe go... They last a little longer, and they sort of go a little deeper.
So far, one of the things that I've heard from young people is, "I saw myself in this book in unexpected ways." And it's not... I'm not talking about necessarily Muslim kids or Pakistani kids. I'm talking about all sorts of kids. And it's always something they say when they come up to me at an event usually, and they have just a few minutes to chat with me. Sometimes they tell me why, and sometimes it's very heartbreaking. And sometimes they just... I've had actually multiple students just come up and say, and it's like, "Yep, I know."
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah.
Sabaa Tahir:
And that's it. The book is... it's meant to be something very, very simple. It's meant to be a witnessing of a story that maybe hasn't been witnessed before. And it's not meant to represent all Pakistanis. It's not meant to represent all Muslims. It's not meant to represent all desert people.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Do you feel that weight on you sometimes, though, or have you? It's sort of a question because you're like the first to do this, the first for that.
Sabaa Tahir:
I think people have tried to put that weight, but I don't carry it because I don't think that we put that weight on other people. I don't think that Stephen King sits there thinking, "Do white men really relate to this other white man that I have in this book?" And I don't think that really many authors sit there thinking that way. And I don't think we should have.
I think we should be able to just write a story because we think the story matters and the story is important, and the characters matter, and their voices are important and they're a universality to what they're struggling through and to the change that they're going through that other people will be able to relate to or learn from or feel witnessed by. All of my work is meant to kind of look at some of these difficult things, but then ultimately offer hope and say, "Hey, there's life after."
And in the case of Ember, it's like these characters go through hell essentially. And most of them, not all of them, but most of them survive, and they get through it and they find joy and they find hope. And even in the worst situations, they find a way through, which is something that I learned at the newspaper, reading stories about people in some of the most dangerous and scary places in the world. And the same goes for All My Rage. These kids are going through something really difficult, but there is life after their grief and after their trauma.
There is hope after their pain. There is a whole world waiting for them. And just because they go through something doesn't mean that thing is all they are. And that's really a lot of what the story is meant to be about. And that's why I think that it works for young people because I think that at that age, at the age of 14, 15, that is a time when we need to hear that. I know I needed to hear that. I needed to know that I wasn't just my trauma. That's why I wrote it.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
During the preparation for this interview, I thought about Zainab Jabak, an inspiring 11th-grade teacher and dedicated listener of our show who recently won one of our giveaways. We've kept in touch on Instagram, and I remembered her sharing her admiration for Sabaa's work online. So I reached out and I asked if any of her students had questions for Sabaa. Of course, they did. This is Elizabeth asking a question related to the two main characters in All My Rage.
Elizabeth:
What advice would you give to any Noors or Salahudin in our high schools today?
Sabaa Tahir:
Oh, man. The first thing I would do is not advise. I'd just sort of send a verbal hug because it's not easy. And I would just try to remind them that they're not alone and that there are people in the world who care about them and who will care about them.
That whatever their story is, it's not all they are. Their story is still being written and it doesn't have to be bad. Even when you go through things that are difficult or even when you make decisions that maybe are not decisions that put you in the best circumstances, you're still writing your story, and there's hope in that.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
That's beautiful. And they all want to know what you're working on now or next. That's her entire class.
Sabaa Tahir:
So I'm working on another fantasy novel. It is really fun. I don't know if I'll go back to contemporary anytime soon.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Did you miss having a whole world... a different world to escape into?
Sabaa Tahir:
I did. I did. I missed having the world-building. I missed the monsters and the jinn and the feeling of fun that happens in a fantasy book where you have this combination of edge, adventure, and romance, and tension and mystery. It's always been my happy place in reading. And so I'm very excited to be able to do that again. And I think this fantasy feels a little bit lighter than Ember.
Not... I think the themes are just as big, and the stakes are very high, but I'm sort of letting more of my humor into this book. And that was something that I didn't really know how to do before, and I really started doing it for the first time with... I mean, I always have little teeny tiny jokes, but nothing very... And this book is like, I think, the characters. Their voices are just... One in particular. She struggles to take things seriously. So that's been fun for me.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
I read somewhere that you said your dream job is a professional ice cream taster. So I guess, in another universe, that's what you are.
Sabaa Tahir:
Yes. Well, I should say my dream job is what I do.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah.
Sabaa Tahir:
Thus I am living my dream job. I'm very, very lucky. But a lot of times, people are like, "Well, what would you do if you weren't a writer?" And I used to be like, "Well, I wanted to be a rock star, but I have a voice like a dying alley cat, so that's not going to work." So professional ice cream taster, I feel like, is most fitting with my personality. Another thing that I would want to do is make a garish sock company because I do feel like I have really good ideas for socks.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Okay. Well, and I need to get back to the ice cream too, but for example, what's going to be on some of your socks?
Sabaa Tahir:
So it's actually a combination of how the sock feels, which is to say that I feel like socks in general can... The cool socks that have the patterns and stuff can be kind of thin and they can wear through really quickly. I have this pair of Taco Cat socks that I really love. It's a cat. But also it's a taco, and I adore them, but I've had to buy three pairs because they wear through really fast. So part of it is just creating a sock that does not wear through really fast.
And then, I would really like to do a line of stepping on Lego socks. So animals like the shark being like, "Ah," or a bear screaming [inaudible 00:37:43] shouting just like that. But I want it to be animal themed. So we have a bear. We have a shark. Maybe we have an otter. And every single one of them looks like they've just stepped on a Lego because that was something that I experienced as a parent of two children. And it is a very unique look... face look. So that's one of my ideas. I have others, but I think that's all we have time for.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Well, maybe this is the beginning of a collab. Like Sabaa Tahir and Bombas can have a...
Sabaa Tahir:
Yeah.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
That can be your next extension.
Sabaa Tahir:
Yeah, I love it.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Growing up Muslim in rural America had a profound impact on Sabaa's perspective on the world as an adult, but her experience is one of many. So for her reading challenge, she wants listeners to embrace the vast world of Muslim writers.
Sabaa Tahir:
I would love for readers to check out books by Muslim diaspora authors, and I hope that it will give an insight into the varied cultures, traditions, and humor, and mythology across the Muslim world. I loved the book Hollow Fires by Samira Ahmed. It is a murder mystery, but it's also very timely, very haunting, definitely one of those books that'll kick you in the [inaudible 00:39:01].
Really, really powerful story told from multiple perspectives. I really love This Woven Kingdom by Tahereh Mafi. It's a new fantasy by Tahereh. She's known a lot for her early dystopian work Shatter Me, the Shatter Me series, which is a fantastic series. It's incredible that it's wildly popular even now.
But she has written another series. The first book is called This Woven Kingdom, and it takes place in a magical world inspired by Ancient Iran. And I loved it. I thought it was a beautiful, beautiful book. And that series is very hooky and fun, and there's romance and adventure and beautiful writing. So those are a couple of books that I recommended that I hope people will enjoy.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
This week we're giving the mic once more to Lessa Kanani'opua Pelayo-Lozada, president of ALA, the American Libraries Association. She's spreading the word about the upcoming ALA annual conference June 22nd to 27th in Chicago. You can check out the program and register to attend in person or virtually at 2023.alaannualconference.org. And in case you missed it, ALA recently announced that Judy Blume is going to keynote the opening session of the conference, which is very exciting. And here's another speaker about whom Lessa is very excited.
Lessa Kanani'opua Pelayo-Lozada:
As a Broadway lover, I am very excited to welcome Tony Award winner Idina Menzel, of course, as Frozen's Elsa and her sister, who's acclaimed writer and teacher Cara Mentzel, who will share the inspiration behind their new book, Proud Mouse, which is a lyrical picture book about a proud sister learning to find her own way.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
And finally, for those who cannot attend in person, Lessa also shared a bit about the digital experience.
Lessa Kanani'opua Pelayo-Lozada:
Our digital experience is in addition to the in-person experience in Chicago and offers access to more than 60 presentations from the conference wherever you are. The presentation selections are specially curated and include access to main-stage sessions, as well as exclusive virtual speakers, education programs, news-you-can-use sessions.
And if you are an ALA governance wonk like me, you even have access to your ALA governance meetings. You'll be able to build out your own personal schedule, select your favorite sessions for easy access throughout the week, and you'll also have availability beyond the conference for our on-demand sessions through August 31st.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Okay, y'all, see you in Chicago. This has been The Reading Culture, and you've been listening to my conversation with Sabaa Tahir. Again, I'm your host, Jordan Lloyd Bookey. And currently, I'm reading Miracle's Boys by Jacqueline Woodson and We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America by Roxanna Asgarian.
If you enjoyed today's show, please take a few seconds to give us a five-star review. It's a small thing, but it really helps us out. To learn more about how you can help grow your community's reading culture, you can check out all of our resources at beanstack.com and join us on social media @thereadingculturepod.
And be sure to check out the Children's Book Podcast with teacher and librarian Matthew Winner. It's a book podcast made for kids ages six to 12 that explores big ideas and the way that stories can help us feel seen, understood, and valued. This episode was produced by Jackie Lamport in Lower Street Media, and script edited by Josia Lamberto-Egan. We'll be back in two weeks with another episode. Thanks for joining, and keep reading.
This is happening in our world, and at the very least, you can bear witness to it. That's like literally the absolute least you can do. So I guess writing Ember and then writing All My Rage, ultimately, was a way for me to bear witness in my own way and to try to put into the world something that... My hope is if someone reads Ember when they hear something similar when they see something similar, maybe they can find a way to care or to help instead of just letting it go over their heads.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
As a Muslim raised by immigrant parents in rural America, Sabaa Tahir learned early that the world can be a disappointing place, a devastating place. And while she escaped in music and books, Sabaa didn't look away from the underbelly of humanity that she witnessed at her parents' business, in school, or at her job as a copy editor for The Washington Post. As a writer, she has channeled that outrage into her books, validating the frustrations of her coming-of-age readers.
Sabaa Tahir:
It reminds me of music actually. Sometimes you're in the mood for poppy songs, and sometimes you want the sad song because that's what your heart needs in that moment. You need to feel seen. You need to feel less alone. You need to get in a headspace that allows you to sit with how you feel, if that's sadness or anger or frustration or loneliness. And I think that books can serve the same purpose in a way.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Sabaa Tahir is a New York Times bestselling author known for her Ember in the Ashes Fantasy Quartet. And more recently, for All My Rage, winner of the National Book Award. I read All My Rage on a flight to New Orleans. The wifi was out, which meant that my laptop and work were as well. And I was so wrapped up in the book that even when the internet was restored, I just kept reading and reading. And then I ugly cried, like ugly cried. So much that the person next to me offered me tissues and asked if I wanted to talk. I'm so thrilled to have Sabaa on the show and to share her voice with you as well.
In this episode, she tells us about the motel and a few sonic booms that shaped her early views on the world. How her time in journalism impacted her approach to fiction and about her bold idea for Lego-proof socks. My name is Jordan Lloyd Bookey, and this is The Reading Culture, a show where we speak with authors and reading enthusiasts to explore ways to build a stronger culture of reading in our communities. We dive into their personal experiences, their inspirations, and why their stories and ideas motivate kids to read more. Also, a quick reminder to check out The Reading Culture on Instagram @thereadingculturepod to hear more from our authors and to learn about some exciting giveaways.
What was growing up like for you?
Sabaa Tahir:
I grew up in the Mojave Desert of California, and when people ask me where I live, I usually draw a circle, and I label it nowhere, and then I point to the very center of that and say, "That's where I grew up." And this actually came up very recently when I was in Southern California, and I was speaking to a group of Pakistani artists who have an art collective down there, and they had joined with a Pasadena literary group to have me come speak to a group of students. And they said, "What town did you grow up in?"
And I explained it to them, and they said, "Oh, so what's that near?" And I said, "Nothing." And they were like, "No, I mean, what's the closest town?" And I was like, Lancaster, Palmdale, California, which is about a hundred miles away. And they were so bewildered. They were like, "No, but there has to be something closer." And I just tried to explain that there was nothing closer. That was it. The town was very isolated. So it was this isolated desert town, and it had about, I think, 25,000 people. It felt smaller than it was because it was built around a naval air warfare station.
And so part of the population was on that base. Many people's parents worked on the base. So you'd say, "What do your parents do?" And they'd say, "Top secret." Because that's where they built the Sidewinder missile and the Tomahawk missile, and they did all sorts of testing out there. I mean, I remember very clearly being at school and hearing sonic booms an explosion and walking out and seeing big black clouds of smoke out in the desert where they were testing.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Wait, really?
Sabaa Tahir:
[inaudible 00:04:41]. Yeah, absolutely.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Did they stop school for it or were they like, "No, it's just a sonic boom."
Sabaa Tahir:
Nope.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Don't... Keep going."
Sabaa Tahir:
Nope. "Just a sonic boom. Keep going." We had the earthquake drills. And it's so funny because a lot of people in California will say, "Oh, those earthquake drills were so useless." But we actually used them because we had tons of earthquakes in our little town. It was pretty common. So I was actually thankful for the earthquake drills because even though the quakes rarely happened when I was in school, for some reason, they always happened at 3:00 AM, I used what I learned. I like ducked and covered, hit under a table. I did all that.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
What an apocalyptic feeling childhood.
Sabaa Tahir:
It was. Yeah. And this is why I think I write what I do. This is why I started in fantasy because that town is just filled with stories. There were UFO stories. There were mysterious military testing stories. There was all sorts of stuff. It was like a...
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Do you remember any of them that really stayed with you? Oh my God. That just really stayed in your memory or stayed in your conscience?
Sabaa Tahir:
I do. I do. Yeah. So it's stuff that happened to me. I remember being with two of my best friends in high school, we're walking on one of their streets, and there's this wild flash of light that went across the entire sky. It wasn't lightning. I mean, it was the desert. We rarely had storms. You notice when it storms. It wasn't even cloudy. We're just walking, and it's very late at night. It was like, I don't know, midnight or something. And this crazy flash of light. And it was an unusual color. It was sort of like a green color.
I remember this because we all screamed and crouched at the same time. So we were like, "We're going to die." And then I wondered. I was like, "Maybe it'll be in the paper tomorrow." Which was such a silly thing to think because it was never in the paper the next day. But we had no idea what that was. It was just this weird, and it was an abnormally ginormous flash of light. This was not a transformer blowing or, like I said, lightning or something. It was like they did some type of test.
And then driving along the 395, which is one of the roads that went by the town, there are these train cars out in the desert that are just sort of abandoned and sitting out there, and they're pretty far off of the main road. And I remember driving with my mother, and we saw a truck, just a gigantic truck turning off and heading toward those train cars, but there's nothing else out there. And so we were just like, "Uh." And there's a million stories like that everyone in this town has, and they have far more extreme stories than what I'm sharing that those were just things that happened to me.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah. But it really laid the groundwork for Ember, the Ember series. You can see how.
Sabaa Tahir:
Yes, the Ember series. Yes, 100%.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
What were you like as a kid? Like an elementary school kid, what was your vibe?
Sabaa Tahir:
I don't think I was particularly remarkable in elementary school. I was kind of shy. I didn't have a large group of friends. I had friends all through those years, but I sort of drifted in and out of groups. I was always into story, though. I didn't really like reading until I was, I think, in second or third grade. But I did always love story. I always told stories. That was sort of what I was known for in my family with my parents and stuff.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
What kind of stories? Like at bedtime, you mean or...
Sabaa Tahir:
Any stories. Fairy tales, stories about animals. I remember telling my mom some story about a goose, and we were going on a walk together, and we just kept walking. And finally, I was like, "I'm tired." But my mom had wanted to hear what happened in the story, which is why she kept walking. You know jinn stories. My mom would tell me jinn stories. My dad would tell me jinn stories. And so I was really interested in story. I was pretty introverted, very internal.
There was always something going on in my head, and I wanted to fit in. When you're a little kid, and you'll have daydreams, my daydreams were all about fitting in. They were all about having the right clothes, the right look, the right things to say, and fitting in and being popular. And then, as I got older, got into fourth, fifth, and sixth grade actually, it was some of the more well-loved kids who could be the meanest that started hitting me that these people weren't something to aspire to.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Do you think there was some reason that you understood that they were not, as you put it, people to aspire to be?
Sabaa Tahir:
I mean, they were racist. A lot of people were racist. They were unintentionally racist, but they were absolutely prejudiced. It was the way my parents were treated. It was the way other parents would treat my parents. It was the way I was treated. I remember not necessarily understanding what Christmas or Easter were really about and being mocked for that by other kids who were like, "You don't know what Easter is?" And I remember later sharing this with a friend, and she was like, "I'm Christian, and I barely understand what Easter is."
So it was interesting upon reflection to see that that was just people being unkind. But it was everything. It was little things from, "You know, shouldn't wear that color." I remember being asked why I never wore dresses because I wore modest dress. Generally, my dresses went past my knees. And I remember being pestered about it, like kids saying, "Why don't you ever wear a..." And we have this stupid rule at our school that was like every Monday girls had to wear dresses and boys had to wear-
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
At your school every Monday girls had to wear dresses?
Sabaa Tahir:
Every Monday, girls had to wear dresses.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Oh, God.
Sabaa Tahir:
It was the worst. It was just the worst thing ever. And I remember dreading it because I'd always wear tights with my dresses because that was... Again, my mom dressed modestly. I dress modestly. And so I remember just dreading Mondays because there would always be someone in the thick of a Mohave Desert summer being like, "Why are you wearing tights?" And it wasn't like... As an adult, it's much easier, I think, to know what to say, which is, "Mind your own beeswax," basically.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah.
Sabaa Tahir:
But as a kid, I didn't always know what to say. So a lot of times, I just wouldn't say anything. And then that kind of, I think, made people feel like they could say more unkind things, but it was sort of always their low level. I would say it was... school was one of those places, though, where I eventually found my footing because, starting in seventh grade, I realized I was actually smart. Once I had that identity, it was like, "Okay, you're the smart kid."
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
How did you know that? How did... Just because getting good grades, or was it... were there teachers who called that out to you?
Sabaa Tahir:
My teachers, for some reason, had me put in all remedial classes in seventh grade. I say for some reason, but we all know the reason.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
[inaudible 00:11:58]. For some reason.
Sabaa Tahir:
For some-
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
[inaudible 00:12:01].
Sabaa Tahir:
... reason. I remember being in these remedial classes and all of my teachers being utterly bewildered as to why I was in these classes. They were just like, "You are not... You do not belong here." And I give them so much credit. I still remember two of their names. My math teacher was Ms. Claire, and my English teacher was Ms. Erickson.
And they both fought to have me put into all honors classes in eighth grade. And that's when I realized that I was smart and that all the reading that I had been doing was actually giving me something that... like giving me an understanding of language that maybe wasn't as common.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
I've read that you or heard, listen [inaudible 00:12:42] you used to give stories to your friends for their birthdays. So you were always a [inaudible 00:12:46]-
Sabaa Tahir:
Yeah.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Which I think is a great gift, especially now. I hope they saved them.
Sabaa Tahir:
I hope they didn't. They were terrible stories. They were all about death.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
About death. Okay.
Sabaa Tahir:
That was my main character was always the Grim Reaper. I was super into gothy Grim Reapery stuff because I couldn't... my mother never let me dress in all black, which is what I wanted to do.
I wanted to dress in all black and wear a black nail polish and have black eyeliner, and be a true goth. But my mother was like, "Absolutely not. You're not wearing all black, and you're certainly not painting your nails black." So I had to make do with writing stories about the Grim Reaper.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
[inaudible 00:13:27] like, "Thank you. This will be such a happy birthday for me."
Sabaa Tahir:
Pretty much. Yeah.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
"My father came to America with a deep belief in the goodness of people. But the motel taught him and all of us better." In 2021, Sabaa penned an autobiographical article in Vox titled The Ghosts of Our Motel. In it, she recalls the unusualness of her upbringing that largely centered around the motel her parents ran in the middle of the desert.
The revolving doors of strangers deep within the back rooms of Americana served as a window into the true goodness or lack thereof in people. Each experience peeling back a new layer, digging out the hope with which her parents had arrived to this country. This is where Sabaa learned that she was different. It's a place and a time that has stuck with her and shaped her.
Sabaa Tahir:
I lived at the motel almost exclusively until I was about 13. There was one school year where we lived in a rental while somebody else managed the motel. And that was a revelation for me because it was like the bell wasn't ringing all the time and there weren't people shouting at my parents, and the police weren't coming to have to get a tenant out. And I wasn't hearing these terms. I wasn't hearing, "Go back to where you came from."
I wasn't hearing all the things that people say, I think, when they're not just uneducated, but just sort of vicious. Whatever's happening in their life is making them desperately need to feel superior to whoever's around them. And for some of the tenants at our motel, that was my parents, that was us. And they really enjoyed treating us like garbage. There's a story in All My Rage about Misbah and how she rents a room to a woman for free.
And the woman's boyfriend takes everything in the room. And that is a true story. They just renovated the room. They'd put up pictures. They'd fix... It was really the first room my parents had properly renovated, because when they took over the motel, it was in pretty bad shape. And this woman came in. It was windy, storming. She had a baby. My mom rented her a room because she felt really bad for her.
And her and her boyfriend took everything. They took the bed. They took the TV. They took everything. That was an early lesson for my parents. And then it was dealing with everything from when they wanted to take out a business loan and being rejected by every bank in the town for really no good reason until one gentleman actually had a park named after him. His last name was Pearson.
But he was the only person who gave my parents a business loan because he wasn't racist. And I mean, there was so much of that in that, tell me, this is a town that remember our history teacher said there was a billboard that said, "Impeach Thurgood Marshall," for the longest time outside the town. And if you looked at the '60s yearbooks, there was clan pictures in them. I remember being in high school and having someone leave a clan flyer on my car.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Wow.
Sabaa Tahir:
It was a weird place. It didn't feel like California. It felt like the Twilight Zone.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
That is just sound like the... I mean, everything you've described is the... I mean, just down to the... starting from the sonic booms, I should say. It is the Twilight Zone.
Sabaa Tahir:
But again, I think it is important to see the nuance that even in a place like that, I had friends with parents who looked out for me. My parents had... they didn't have many friends, but my dad didn't really have any.
But my mom had had a few close friends. There were a few other Muslim families in the town. That is the thing about a town. This is it's not all good and it's not all bad. The good is what helps you survive, but the bad is what makes you wary and careful and makes you lonely at times.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
And then the motel is kind of like this other kid in your family. It's so interesting to me. I always say... We always joke that we have three kids, but just two are our children, our actual children, and one is our business. But in your case, it was really also physically like this other entity in your life.
Sabaa Tahir:
Yeah, that was my parents' main kid, right, was the motel. But they had other businesses too, right. They were just trying to make it. Ultimately, my parents were like so many immigrant families. They were just trying to make it so they had a clothing resale business that they shut down after a couple of years. They had a drive-through dairy. They sold a lot for it after a few years.
But I remember playing with the milk crates, the drive-through dairy. And then the thing they had the longest was a gas station. And I worked there just like I would answer phones at the motel. One summer in college, I worked at the store. It was just part of sort of the family business. But I think when you are that outward facing, and you have so many interactions with strangers, inevitably, some of them are going to be pretty bad. And those are the ones that stick in your head.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah, it's like extreme acts of kindness might stay there, but just like the everyday negative ones stay with you too, you know.
Sabaa Tahir:
Yeah. "The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent, the art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother's watch.
And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned two rivers, a continent. I missed them, but it wasn't a disaster. Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster."
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
One Art is a poem by Elizabeth Bishop that was first published in 1967 in the New Yorker. It also appeared in her book Geography III, which came out that same year. The poem is a beautiful exploration of loss, acceptance, and learning how to move on, embracing all three as an inevitable part of life. But Sabaa's first experience with this poem is less about the finished piece and more about the craft of writing behind the scenes. It served as a critical point in her journey to becoming an author.
Sabaa Tahir:
I encountered this poem in a book called The Writer's Home Companion. My oldest brother gave it to me when I was in high school. It was my very first book about writing. He knew I was a writer before I knew I was a writer. I sort of saw it as like, "Oh, this is going to make me a better writer for school." But I think he sort of saw like, "This is something that you should have because you're a storyteller."
And One Art was in this compendium of essays about writing, and it was in the section about editing, and it showed the many drafts of One Art. And the essay was about how Elizabeth Bishop sort of moved through these drafts to end up with the final poem. And it taught me so much about drafting and about editing. It was one of the biggest gifts I could have gotten, which is this idea that the first draft is truly just the beginning.
It's almost like you're telling yourself the story as opposed to telling to anyone else. It was like these seemingly minute changes, but then you sort of see how they all add up. And it's like, "Oh wow. She really had to re-envision what she wanted this poem to be from beginning to end and rearranging and all that sort of stuff." And she did all this stuff that appears to be fine-tuning, but it's not. It's so much deeper than that. It has... It ends up becoming much more relevant to how the poem feels and to its tone and even to how one reads it.
But then the poem really stuck with me. I read it again when I was in college, and it meant something new to me. Loss was a different animal in college. And then, I moved into my late 20s and my early 30s, and loss took on a new meaning for me again. And then, in my late 30s, I turned to the poem again and I incorporated it into All My Rage because my hope is that maybe young people who need this poem, who will find comfort in this poem, it can be there for them in their life throughout the stages of their life as it was for me.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
The magic of editing or the evolution of a story is something that fascinates Sabaa. It's in the second, third, and fourth drafts that the story becomes what it was meant to be. And while reading about Elizabeth Bishop's poem gave her a transformative look into this process, her own mastery over fine-tuning her fiction was honed in a very non-fiction environment, the editing room at the Washington Post. Sabaa worked there editing copy at the foreign news desk before she ever became an author, and the experience was a crucial one.
Sabaa Tahir:
It's interesting because it wasn't like this huge part of my career. It was not this long period of time, but it had a very, very outsized impact. I learned so much about writing and storytelling from there. I learned how to look at a story and a source and always be asking more questions. And I was an editor. I was never a reporter there. But I think when you're reading these stories every day, you get a sense for what questions people are asking.
And when you listen to editors talking to the reporters, and you do some line editing where you talk to reporters, and you say, "Oh, I'm curious about this, or I would like to know more about this," that's where you really start to understand how to suss out the contours of a story. And that's where I learned how to do that. How I learned the idea of beginning, middle, and end of a story, or at least concluding thoughts on a story, even if the story is not over yet.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah. And especially as the editor, I'm guessing you were also... you have to find what's essential, which is also, I imagine, I guess, as a writer is a hard thing to do. Even writing fiction, just figuring out what's needed, what's not.
Sabaa Tahir:
Yeah. I mean, there's that old phrase about, "Killing your darlings," which is taking something that you think is really important and realizing that, "This doesn't belong in this story, and I'm just attached to it for the wrong reasons." And letting it go so that the story can breathe and shine and be a better story.
A lot of that I learned from the Post because I do believe that news organizations, I don't know about now because I don't work in the media now, but at the time, news organizations were sort of beautifully unsentimental about canning things that didn't matter or that were not worthy, that were not sourced, that were not properly proven. You couldn't go on a hunch. You had to have a quote. You had to have a source. You couldn't just opine unless you were in the opinion section, in which case that's the place for it, right.
And so it felt a little bit more neutral then than the news does now. And that's sort of where I learned this very important lesson, which is that multiple points of view are important. And that's actually why Ember has sort of an inside-outside narrative. It has the soldier who is sort of amongst the villains, and then it has the marginalized character who is sort of amongst the traditional heroes, but they're actually both heroes.
And it's sort of really about how they both have very different versions of what's happening. And then you have this third character of Helene, who is very much drinking the bad guy's cool-aid and seeing how she justifies everything. And the goal of having these points of view is to really tell a complete story. Because in journalism, you have to have more than one source. You have to be able to tell a complete story.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
All My Rage is Sabaa's first contemporary fiction novel. Diverging from her earlier fantasy novels, the three interwoven stories within the book showcase one of the defining qualities of Sabaa's work. Her adeptness at delivering heavy, emotionally charged storytelling.
Sabaa doesn't shy away from extreme feelings and intense situations, which results in harrowing but meaningful reads. I was interested to hear about how she balances staying true to the realness of life while focusing on a teen audience.
Sabaa Tahir:
I think, to some degree, I sort of let the books do the talking. There are things that I talk about with my childhood that I'm comfortable talking about, and then there's a lot of things that I will never talk about because the place for them is my books, and that's the only place I feel comfortable or safe talking about them. So I think that that feeling existed when I was a young person too, and I didn't know how to talk about it at that time.
I didn't know writing books was even an option. So it was like I just journal and then tear stuff up, or I would listen to music and be in my feels, right. But as time went on, I realized the things that frustrate you, looking at the world and seeing what felt like my people, like how my people were treated. And when I say my people, I mean people who look like me or who were just people of color.
I mean, it didn't even... just people who were marginalized, people who the world had written off as like, "Oh, that's a poor country. Oh, that's a Third World country." [inaudible 00:27:08] like that. The things that were happening in a lot of places didn't seem to register with most people I knew. And that really bothered me. And so I wanted to find a way to make it register.
And I did that by making these characters who, to me anyway, are deeply lovable. You want them to be okay. And putting them in situations that mirror what's happening all over our world and making people care that way. Even if they don't talk to people who've said, "I don't read the news." And I get it. I 100% get it. I remember being in post-college years, and many friends who were the same age, they'd be like, "So what's happening in the world, Sabaa?"
Because I was the only one who read the news because I did it for work, and so I would tell them, and they'd be like, "Okay, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Too depressing." And it was like, "But this is happening in our world. And at the very least, you can bear witness to it. That's like literally the absolute least you can do."
So I guess writing Ember and then writing All My Rage, ultimately was a way for me to bear witness in my own way and to try to put into the world something that my hope is if someone reads Ember when they hear something similar, when they see something similar, maybe they can find a way to care or to help, instead of just letting it go over their heads.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Do you think it's okay to just say... That's something I hear people say, I think, a lot is like, "It's self-care. I'm not not reading the..." These educated people who-
Sabaa Tahir:
I do. I do think that's okay because I think we have a pretty massive mental health crisis in the country. And I think a lot of it comes from sort of overexposure to the news and to all these terrible things happening in our world. And I understand when people need to step away from that. I don't think stepping away should be permanent. I don't think you should have a complete bubble of a worldview. I do think it's important to reengage at times to understand what's happening in our world.
And I think we have a responsibility to try to help in any way that we can, whether that's voting, whether that's... If something is happening abroad and it's bothering us, contacting our Congress people and saying, "I'm really disturbed by what's happening to, for instance, the Rohingya in Burma or the Uyghurs in China, or what happened to the population in Darfur, in Sudan. These are things that worry me. What is America doing about these things?" I do think we have a responsibility to do that because we are citizens of the world too.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
The book is so much about loss. And just to get back to [inaudible 00:29:57] we had talked about a little bit earlier. I guess, what has been either the reaction from kids, young people you've spoken to about reading something that is so deep in grief and loss or also, what are your thoughts on the importance of having books that grapple with these very hard experiences?
Sabaa Tahir:
It reminds me of music, actually. Sometimes you're in the mood for poppy songs, right. You want the poppy song, and sometimes, you want the sad song because that's what your heart needs in that moment. You need to feel seen. You need to feel less alone. You need to get in a headspace that allows you to sit with how you feel, if that's sadness or anger or frustration or loneliness. And I think that books can serve the same purpose in a way. They just maybe go... They last a little longer, and they sort of go a little deeper.
So far, one of the things that I've heard from young people is, "I saw myself in this book in unexpected ways." And it's not... I'm not talking about necessarily Muslim kids or Pakistani kids. I'm talking about all sorts of kids. And it's always something they say when they come up to me at an event usually, and they have just a few minutes to chat with me. Sometimes they tell me why, and sometimes it's very heartbreaking. And sometimes they just... I've had actually multiple students just come up and say, and it's like, "Yep, I know."
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah.
Sabaa Tahir:
And that's it. The book is... it's meant to be something very, very simple. It's meant to be a witnessing of a story that maybe hasn't been witnessed before. And it's not meant to represent all Pakistanis. It's not meant to represent all Muslims. It's not meant to represent all desert people.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Do you feel that weight on you sometimes, though, or have you? It's sort of a question because you're like the first to do this, the first for that.
Sabaa Tahir:
I think people have tried to put that weight, but I don't carry it because I don't think that we put that weight on other people. I don't think that Stephen King sits there thinking, "Do white men really relate to this other white man that I have in this book?" And I don't think that really many authors sit there thinking that way. And I don't think we should have.
I think we should be able to just write a story because we think the story matters and the story is important, and the characters matter, and their voices are important and they're a universality to what they're struggling through and to the change that they're going through that other people will be able to relate to or learn from or feel witnessed by. All of my work is meant to kind of look at some of these difficult things, but then ultimately offer hope and say, "Hey, there's life after."
And in the case of Ember, it's like these characters go through hell essentially. And most of them, not all of them, but most of them survive, and they get through it and they find joy and they find hope. And even in the worst situations, they find a way through, which is something that I learned at the newspaper, reading stories about people in some of the most dangerous and scary places in the world. And the same goes for All My Rage. These kids are going through something really difficult, but there is life after their grief and after their trauma.
There is hope after their pain. There is a whole world waiting for them. And just because they go through something doesn't mean that thing is all they are. And that's really a lot of what the story is meant to be about. And that's why I think that it works for young people because I think that at that age, at the age of 14, 15, that is a time when we need to hear that. I know I needed to hear that. I needed to know that I wasn't just my trauma. That's why I wrote it.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
During the preparation for this interview, I thought about Zainab Jabak, an inspiring 11th-grade teacher and dedicated listener of our show who recently won one of our giveaways. We've kept in touch on Instagram, and I remembered her sharing her admiration for Sabaa's work online. So I reached out and I asked if any of her students had questions for Sabaa. Of course, they did. This is Elizabeth asking a question related to the two main characters in All My Rage.
Elizabeth:
What advice would you give to any Noors or Salahudin in our high schools today?
Sabaa Tahir:
Oh, man. The first thing I would do is not advise. I'd just sort of send a verbal hug because it's not easy. And I would just try to remind them that they're not alone and that there are people in the world who care about them and who will care about them.
That whatever their story is, it's not all they are. Their story is still being written and it doesn't have to be bad. Even when you go through things that are difficult or even when you make decisions that maybe are not decisions that put you in the best circumstances, you're still writing your story, and there's hope in that.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
That's beautiful. And they all want to know what you're working on now or next. That's her entire class.
Sabaa Tahir:
So I'm working on another fantasy novel. It is really fun. I don't know if I'll go back to contemporary anytime soon.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Did you miss having a whole world... a different world to escape into?
Sabaa Tahir:
I did. I did. I missed having the world-building. I missed the monsters and the jinn and the feeling of fun that happens in a fantasy book where you have this combination of edge, adventure, and romance, and tension and mystery. It's always been my happy place in reading. And so I'm very excited to be able to do that again. And I think this fantasy feels a little bit lighter than Ember.
Not... I think the themes are just as big, and the stakes are very high, but I'm sort of letting more of my humor into this book. And that was something that I didn't really know how to do before, and I really started doing it for the first time with... I mean, I always have little teeny tiny jokes, but nothing very... And this book is like, I think, the characters. Their voices are just... One in particular. She struggles to take things seriously. So that's been fun for me.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
I read somewhere that you said your dream job is a professional ice cream taster. So I guess, in another universe, that's what you are.
Sabaa Tahir:
Yes. Well, I should say my dream job is what I do.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah.
Sabaa Tahir:
Thus I am living my dream job. I'm very, very lucky. But a lot of times, people are like, "Well, what would you do if you weren't a writer?" And I used to be like, "Well, I wanted to be a rock star, but I have a voice like a dying alley cat, so that's not going to work." So professional ice cream taster, I feel like, is most fitting with my personality. Another thing that I would want to do is make a garish sock company because I do feel like I have really good ideas for socks.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Okay. Well, and I need to get back to the ice cream too, but for example, what's going to be on some of your socks?
Sabaa Tahir:
So it's actually a combination of how the sock feels, which is to say that I feel like socks in general can... The cool socks that have the patterns and stuff can be kind of thin and they can wear through really quickly. I have this pair of Taco Cat socks that I really love. It's a cat. But also it's a taco, and I adore them, but I've had to buy three pairs because they wear through really fast. So part of it is just creating a sock that does not wear through really fast.
And then, I would really like to do a line of stepping on Lego socks. So animals like the shark being like, "Ah," or a bear screaming [inaudible 00:37:43] shouting just like that. But I want it to be animal themed. So we have a bear. We have a shark. Maybe we have an otter. And every single one of them looks like they've just stepped on a Lego because that was something that I experienced as a parent of two children. And it is a very unique look... face look. So that's one of my ideas. I have others, but I think that's all we have time for.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Well, maybe this is the beginning of a collab. Like Sabaa Tahir and Bombas can have a...
Sabaa Tahir:
Yeah.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
That can be your next extension.
Sabaa Tahir:
Yeah, I love it.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Growing up Muslim in rural America had a profound impact on Sabaa's perspective on the world as an adult, but her experience is one of many. So for her reading challenge, she wants listeners to embrace the vast world of Muslim writers.
Sabaa Tahir:
I would love for readers to check out books by Muslim diaspora authors, and I hope that it will give an insight into the varied cultures, traditions, and humor, and mythology across the Muslim world. I loved the book Hollow Fires by Samira Ahmed. It is a murder mystery, but it's also very timely, very haunting, definitely one of those books that'll kick you in the [inaudible 00:39:01].
Really, really powerful story told from multiple perspectives. I really love This Woven Kingdom by Tahereh Mafi. It's a new fantasy by Tahereh. She's known a lot for her early dystopian work Shatter Me, the Shatter Me series, which is a fantastic series. It's incredible that it's wildly popular even now.
But she has written another series. The first book is called This Woven Kingdom, and it takes place in a magical world inspired by Ancient Iran. And I loved it. I thought it was a beautiful, beautiful book. And that series is very hooky and fun, and there's romance and adventure and beautiful writing. So those are a couple of books that I recommended that I hope people will enjoy.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
This week we're giving the mic once more to Lessa Kanani'opua Pelayo-Lozada, president of ALA, the American Libraries Association. She's spreading the word about the upcoming ALA annual conference June 22nd to 27th in Chicago. You can check out the program and register to attend in person or virtually at 2023.alaannualconference.org. And in case you missed it, ALA recently announced that Judy Blume is going to keynote the opening session of the conference, which is very exciting. And here's another speaker about whom Lessa is very excited.
Lessa Kanani'opua Pelayo-Lozada:
As a Broadway lover, I am very excited to welcome Tony Award winner Idina Menzel, of course, as Frozen's Elsa and her sister, who's acclaimed writer and teacher Cara Mentzel, who will share the inspiration behind their new book, Proud Mouse, which is a lyrical picture book about a proud sister learning to find her own way.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
And finally, for those who cannot attend in person, Lessa also shared a bit about the digital experience.
Lessa Kanani'opua Pelayo-Lozada:
Our digital experience is in addition to the in-person experience in Chicago and offers access to more than 60 presentations from the conference wherever you are. The presentation selections are specially curated and include access to main-stage sessions, as well as exclusive virtual speakers, education programs, news-you-can-use sessions.
And if you are an ALA governance wonk like me, you even have access to your ALA governance meetings. You'll be able to build out your own personal schedule, select your favorite sessions for easy access throughout the week, and you'll also have availability beyond the conference for our on-demand sessions through August 31st.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Okay, y'all, see you in Chicago. This has been The Reading Culture, and you've been listening to my conversation with Sabaa Tahir. Again, I'm your host, Jordan Lloyd Bookey. And currently, I'm reading Miracle's Boys by Jacqueline Woodson and We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America by Roxanna Asgarian.
If you enjoyed today's show, please take a few seconds to give us a five-star review. It's a small thing, but it really helps us out. To learn more about how you can help grow your community's reading culture, you can check out all of our resources at beanstack.com and join us on social media @thereadingculturepod.
And be sure to check out the Children's Book Podcast with teacher and librarian Matthew Winner. It's a book podcast made for kids ages six to 12 that explores big ideas and the way that stories can help us feel seen, understood, and valued. This episode was produced by Jackie Lamport in Lower Street Media, and script edited by Josia Lamberto-Egan. We'll be back in two weeks with another episode. Thanks for joining, and keep reading.