CULTURE CORNER
Dr. Shahd AlShammari | Professor and a Writer
(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to Promenade Culture Center. This is Culture Corner. We bring you the authentic stories of creative individuals. Today our guest is Dr. Shahad al-Shamari, a literature professor and a writer. Dr. Shahad, welcome. - Thank you so much. Very happy to have you here today. - I'm really happy to be here to talk into. We like to start talking about the early childhood of our guests, hoping to find something very interesting and curious there in why today they are who they are. Does your, did anything in your childhood craft the path on which you are today? - It's a good question because like you said, we all have stories and we always have a funny story or a fun story if you go back in history. There's always that moment when you realize, maybe I wanna be an astronaut, maybe I want to fly, maybe I want to do this or that. And I think for me, I must have been maybe six or seven years old when I felt like I had a conflict. My mother was giving birth and I was gonna have a sister and I felt unsure about that. I remember feeling curious, what does that mean? Am I gonna have to take care of her? Does it mean I won't be the only girl anymore? How is that going to change my life? I'm pretty sure I didn't think that deeply about it, but I was frustrated and confused. And I remember my mom just saying write a story. Maybe you can write her a story. So sometimes parents have these ways of getting you to accept change and I think that was her way. She said, why don't you try and make it actually natural, make it something that you can actually show her later on? So I wrote a full book, it was a full story about how my mom is gonna have a baby and I'm gonna have a little sister. And I think I still have a copy somewhere. It was about 10, 15 pages with drawings and illustrated to trying to make sense of, I think, what was coming and I was just excited to show it to her. And I think that must have been my first imagined reader. How would she read that? What would she think? So I think for all of us, we begin with a question of how do I deal with change? How do I deal with life? And for me, I didn't wanna fly, I didn't wanna be an astronaut. I just wanted to tell stories more than anything. - School is usually a time where certain dreams are supported or sometimes they're crushed. - Yeah, both. - How did that look for you, given that obviously very early on, you aspire to writing and reading? - So I think most English teachers, I've been lucky, most English teachers were very supportive. I think I was privileged enough with great schooling. The teachers were very supportive at the time. They wanted us to be able to voice our own stories. We always had time for storytelling. We always had time to show and tell, even show and tell was a way for us to narrate. So I think I was really, really supported with that. Of course, there were times where I felt school was a bit difficult. Some subjects had to be in a certain way. Creativity doesn't always go the way we want. But I learned very early on also the idea of discipline. So for a lot of creatives, discipline can be difficult. You don't meet your deadlines. You wait to be inspired. You wait to have that come to you. But I also learned to work with deadlines. So we would be allowed to write a story or to write a poem, but you had to submit on time. So I worked with feedback very quickly. I learned to edit. I learned that my work wasn't always great. And I think a big part of creative work is learning that you actually need feedback more than anything else. So school was actually pretty supportive. - Oh, that's great to hear. So the writer in you was born very early on. - I think so. - Did you continue to write after your first little novel for your sister? - Absolutely, yes. - Before you actually became a writer. - Yeah, I think that was the first kind of conflict. And then in middle school, there's always the conflict of peer pressure, bullying, being amongst people of different diverse nationalities, trying to figure out who am I. So I wrote another book also about school and about different groups at school. And not really thinking, am I going to publish it or not? I remember it was just like in a notebook. And I showed it to a few teachers, to a few friends, family members, but that was it. But the idea was always with conflict, writing was the way out. And I still wish people would really hear that. With conflict, writing, whether for the public or for yourself is one of the ways you can start to make sense of change, chaos, difficulties in life. So as a teenager, I wrote quite a lot, was introverted. So I think journaling was a big part of my world. Writing stories, making up universes, different fantasies, different experimental stuff, poetry. And I think a big part of it was this desire for me to just make sense of life, not to be published or anything like that, just really to make sense of life. At that time it was very therapeutic, didn't cost anything, it was just for me. So, you write very openly about illness, including your own illness. I'd like us if you agree to find that moment in time where you find out about your diagnosis. Has the decision of what you will study been already made before that or together with such a great change in your life? So I think for people listening, I have MS, multiple sclerosis, which is a neurological illness. It affects a lot of young people, and especially in Kuwait, there's a high, high incidence rate. Doctors don't really know why, it's not genetic, it just happens. Interestingly, women intend to be affected more. I was only 18 years old, previously I had no symptoms, and I woke up one day unable to walk, simply unable to walk. It was a sense of paralysis of the legs and the arms. The diagnosis pretty soon, it was about a month or two, was this is going to be a lifelong illness and disability, sometimes an invisible disability and sometimes visible. So sometimes I will end up using a wheelchair, a cane, and sometimes I'm playing squash, just two very different images within the same person. - I'm following on your squash career. - Okay, good. It's really interesting because as human beings, we don't think about our bodies much. We don't think that we have two or three sides to us, at least at the same time. With the diagnosis came an awareness that I do have a body. As a teenager, you don't really think about it, always running around. It's just there for me to do as I pleased with it. It's just there for me for sports, for PE, classes, to dress it up the way I please. But you don't think about the limitations of the body until you start aging or if you get sick. We start thinking about illness with the pandemic. We started really thinking about what does it mean to be sick or to have long-term fatigue? We never thought about that before. So as an 18-year-old, given that life-changing diagnosis, I think my first instinct was, okay, what now? Does it mean I don't have as much time? Doesn't mean I'm gonna die, all of these questions that didn't make any sense. So my initial plan was to actually go into medicine or to go into engineering, to make my parents happy, but also to do the right thing, the right career. And with the diagnosis, I felt like, okay, since I don't have that much time to be healthy and to be me, they were telling me the disease was like a ticking clock that things would get worse within five to 10 years. I might never have a job. So I decided then let me just study literature, which is something I really loved. Just never really thought that I could turn into a career. So you know, when they tell you, you know, if you had one day or one week to live, what choices would you make as cliche as it sounds, it's actually really accurate. You start realizing, you know, what do you wanna do with your life? Who do you really love? Who are you, when you feel that pressure of life, your, you know, basic instincts kick in. And I think for me, my instinct was, I will choose what I really want to do. I was not thinking about a career. I was thinking about just, you know, the process of learning. What am I curious about? Do I want to study about medicine or do I want to study about how medicine is represented in stories to completely different things? And I was really, really, I think also looking to see where does disability fit in literature? I hadn't seen any characters growing up who are sick. I didn't see any girls who are sick at all. - Very healthy, pretty girls only, right in Disney. So I didn't know what kind of narrative that would be. And I think all of this curiosity just pushed me to study what I really wanted to study. And I enjoyed it very, very much again, at that point of, you know, struggling with illness, struggling with depression, studying made me happy. And it sounds very nerdy, but actually it was because it was a choice that I wanted more than anything. I felt I was taking control of my life in a way that illness had, you know, taken me away from life more than anything. - I was thinking a lot about what sayings we have in different languages that relate to how our bodies are presumed healthy always. For instance, in Serbian, which is my mother tongue, there is a saying, when you want to say that something has become sustainable, you say it stands on tool X. - Yes. - Or in Latin, we say, man-son and corporation. So healthy mind, healthy body. - We have a scenario with two, yeah. - So how many of these actually deceive us? - Absolutely. - And we don't ponder these until there is a change with our body. - Absolutely. - Did you find, you said that reading, growing up, there were not a lot of characters. Are there authors who write about disability and illness today locally, regionally? Or are you still kind of a lone voice? - So I think I've started something. A lot of people now are interested in writing about disability, at least through poetry. They're writing about mental health, which I feel is a big part of- - Is there stigma? - Definitely. I think there's still a lot of stigma when it comes to not just women talking about illness, but when you talk about the body. There's a lot of this image still of ideal femininity. You know, having the perfect look, the perfect hair, the perfect body, you know, you don't necessarily see a lot of women out there with, you know, at least in a wheelchair. I remember, you know, being in a wheelchair and being stared at, and hearing comments such as, you know, you should just stay at home. From people who I didn't expect that from, using a cane and being told, you know, maybe you shouldn't play soccer, making the assumption that it's a sports injury, not necessarily an illness. So I think there's still a lot of stigma with how we talk about the body. And it's very interesting, you say, you know, all of these phrases, all of these sayings, even in Arabic, we have a lot of sayings that can be very stigmatizing to someone who's struggling with, you know, a disability or an illness. I used to think, what does that mean, healthy mind in a healthy body? What if the mind is affected? Does that mean my body is unhealthy? Or is it the other way around? Is my body actually unhealthy? But my mind is as sharp as ever. Which one is it? And I think always this dichotomy of what's more important. We place a lot of emphasis on the mind being, you know, superior, excellent. What happens when it's hurt, when it's damaged, when it's struggling? And that takes us also into mental health. I see a lot of young poets now writing about mental health. There's quite a few people who are, you know, openly writing about it. I haven't seen anything like a memoir yet or something that's nonfiction. I think we have a long way to go. But I'm hopeful that now we're beginning to talk about it. Ten years ago, there was nothing out there. Not even in Arabic. I was looking in English and in Arabic. I wanted to see, you know, somebody being able to challenge this notion of, this is a body that should be silenced. That is shameful. I couldn't find anything. - You have written a memoir. You are a prolific writer. But your last book, if I'm not mistaken, is Head Above Water. And it says, "Reflections on illness." And it is very raw, very open, detailed even. But written with such grace and easiness, this is my own take from, I read it, I feel, in a few hours, honestly. So you're championing this. How did this come to be this book? Is this something that was waiting for years to be out there? Did you also feel the need that you have to put something such a text out there for a public to see? - Absolutely. I mean, Head Above Water was, I think, at least a 10-year journey. I started with a blog. At that time, back in the day, blogging was the way to go. So I was blogging, you know, almost daily, not just about my experience with MS or illness, but also about society, how people were responding to illness. I had a lot of friends also in the disabled community. So I was able to see things that I had been, you know, ignorant of previously. So I started writing about how do we have access in education for people with disabilities? Do we understand what it means to have, you know, different learning styles? Do we even understand what it's like to not be able to carry your own bag to school? There's a lot of things I was writing about at the time, and I had some readers for that blog. And the more I wrote, the more I understood that there was kind of engagement, people were engaging, and I decided to keep writing, but to put it in a book style. Instead, you know, taking these blog entries, I was also keeping a journal for nearly 10 years about the diagnosis and about teaching and about how I was trying to really keep track of everything that was happening. I was told that my memory would be affected and I started to lose track of important things. So I wanted to document everything. So when COVID hit, I remember this was a time I was stuck at home, like many of us, and I realized I can put this all together. And I did, I put this together within the two year, I think it was a two year frame, and submitted it to lots of publishers. It was rejected by so many publishers. And then eventually-- - I'm sure they're very sad now. - It was really interesting because the question was, who is this book for? Is it going to be for the Western audience? Is it going to be for an Arab audience? Is it just for people with illnesses and disabilities? Who is the target audience? From a marketing perspective, you understand those questions. - Oh, yes. - Of course. But from a literary perspective, for me, the idea was I wanted to put the work out there so that it would be documented as maybe some sort of reference for some 18 year old looking at some point to cite something out there, to reflect on her own journey or his own journey about illness or even mental health, and be able to see some sort of representation. When I was really young, I couldn't find that anywhere. And when I did my PhD thesis, I was looking everywhere for a book about illness and a woman living with it, not tragically being killed off, which was fiction. And so I think it was more like an activist urge, more than anything. A lot of people think memoir writing is just about me, me, me. But even the word memoir is about memory and memory can be collective memory. It can be personal memory. So I was documenting not just my memories, but also the invasion of Kuwait, what that had to do with how we responded to it, our bodies, our minds, trauma. So I think the memoir is just my contribution, I think, to the way I think about it, to my community. And hopefully-- - Response is great to the book. - It's really good to hear. - And from what I've read and researched, I felt personally it felt like the book spoke to me. I could relate to so many things. I don't live with an illness, but it still spoke to me on so many levels. And I realized in a number of your books I've read that this complete honesty gets me always, every time. It simply overflows every emotion and every thought we have about the book. And that's, I think, this is what people respond to. We are constantly lied to. - That's true. - And there is a lot of phony and fake around us, and then just someone who speaks so openly and with such honesty, that means a lot. - I think that's a big part of what I'm trying to foster in the community. Like you said, we're lied to most of the time. You see perfect images on social media, perfect womanhood, perfect femininity, perfect mind that does not struggle with anxiety or depression and so on. And vulnerability is what we are missing. And I think we keep teaching our kids and we keep teaching in schools and we keep teaching even from the way we write, to write rigidly, to write academically. Do not cry, do not show weakness, you're strong, you got this, you got this, which is all beautiful. But I think we do forget our very simple, vulnerable, humane side. And I feel in writing, a big part of it is vulnerability. Being able to reach this random person on the other side, this reader who's looking for themselves, they're not looking to read about me. No one is really looking to read about the other. You're usually looking for yourself in books. And if you can find at least one image of yourself or maybe one feeling, one emotion, that's when you start to feel connected to the person, to the words, and then you take it with you, you never take back the image of the author, you take back the book or even the emotion that you felt, did I read it in an hour, did I struggle to get through? How did I feel after finishing it, did I hate it, did I love it, and if so, why? - We will come back to the book more. I wanted to ask you the teaching after you finished college. Was that a natural path? - Yes, absolutely. I think I realized also because the clock was ticking, I still felt the clock was ticking. I felt that I wanted to teach even for free. At that point, I was saying, you know, it doesn't matter. I just want to be able to be part of that journey for others, not just for myself. For me, teaching became a primary role. It was how I defined myself, you know, not just as, you know, Shahid, who's a writer or who has a love for literature. I just wanted to be an educator more than anything in the classroom, within the walls of the classroom, and to be able to have at least a bit of change within these students, and I saw that very early on. I was very young when I started teaching, really young, which was also a bit difficult, you know, to establish authority. I was also teaching university students, so they're 18, 19. - And at a very challenging place, because you had the students were-- - Better older and right, men and women had different classes. - There was segregation at the time, and a lot of them were older than me. And I think I really wanted to make an impression, so I really tried to befriend them, but also to have that balance of establishing authority. And it taught me quite a lot about different learning styles, about also how you carry yourself with different people, with diversity. I, you know, had previously no experience at all. All I had was a love for books and a love for literature, but no previous training in curriculum or in education. - This was real life. - It was very different, and not everybody loved literature. That was a big part of it, and I think that was my realization. - You don't necessarily deal with people who marry you all the time. We wish we could deal with people who are just like us, or merit our belief systems. But I realized very quickly I would come, you know, head to head with lots of people who didn't see what I was saying, and that was fine. - I remember a person who most influenced my life. That was my literature teacher in high school. I went to a very specific high school because this was school for humanities, languages, linguistics, and so on. But the students were all very, well, I mean, I was one of them, but I swear all of my friends were just pure geniuses, very talented students, who were actually very talented in sciences as well, and in so many other subjects. But they chose literature, linguistics, and languages, translation, and so on. And our teacher, who was a very tough woman, and we will never forget her, but she has influenced so many of our decisions and gave us the strength and hope. This is how I always see literature teachers and professors, and that will never change, I think, because it feels a very tough job, but also so rewarding at the same time. And she said one thing that I loved, she said, you can analyze characters, which means you must be great at math as well. There's no way a person who can analyze a text is not someone who can really do anything, anything that comes to your mind. So on that note, I'm wondering, you've mentioned briefly, but how much are you a leader in the classroom, and how much you try to just kind of live next to these young beings who are just at the beginning of their own independent lives? - Well, I think it's beautiful that you remember your teacher, and it's always really nice to remember her. And I think that's what's really important, that you remember the line, she said, do you remember the words, you carry that, you don't necessarily remember every single day, or the exams, or maybe the questions on the exams, but you do remember that connection. - Oh, I remember her tough tests, trust me. - It's always interesting, because again, people have all these different sites to them. She had tough tests, but she also was tough, but she also gave you hope, but she gave you the sense of you can do really anything. And that's the balance I try to strike. I don't think I am a leader, I think I'm a guide, and I think I do guide them into literature, but also to look at themselves, where are they in their journeys? We talk a lot, not just about the books that we read, but we always relate to what about you today? Why is reading Shakespeare even relevant today? How is Romeo and Juliet similar to creative society? And then they laugh initially. But then we start really talking about different family names. What does that really mean? How do I define myself in terms of the community, but also where do I belong? So I think I'm constantly guiding, but also waiting to see that spark, or waiting to see a voice that challenges me. And there's a lot of that also in class. We do have very open discussions. I think I am really one who believes in discipline. And also I would be probably tough. I think I'd be described as that. Having discipline I think is so important if you want anything in life, whether you want to be a writer or you want to be, or a business owner or you want to sell something, you have to have discipline. You can be a creative genius all you want, but if you don't meet your deadlines, you disappoint people, you lose your customer, you lose the people who you're trying to make an impression on. So I'm pretty strict, I think, with deadlines. I'm not teaching them about the exam or about the research paper, but just how do I manage to deal with life? It's life lessons all along more than anything. How do you balance your work as a professor and your life as a writer? Well, they're very similar, but also very different. It's hard to balance, to be honest. It's a journey where I've written head above water and now I'm unable to write anything else. I've been just constantly in a state of teaching. And in a state of doing other things, but not writing at the moment. I do keep a journal still. I do journal, I believe it's a big part of life in general to reflect and to think about where I am right now. But it's hard to be able to have that creativity, but also to follow rules and abide within the educational system and academia. We're also required to publish different kind of style of work and academia. It is not creative. There has to be a sense of, again, discipline. So I think that balance for me, I try to be as engaged as possible within the writing community in various work that I do, but I'm currently not writing. Well, we are looking forward to anything new that will come, but at the same time, I think it's a luxury you can afford yourself at the moment to write when the time is right. - Absolutely, yes. What is the role of a writer in today's world? You have mentioned that to deal with a lot of things happening to us that are frustrating and that are not initially positive writing and reading can help. Now, the world is very polarized. And with everything happening currently in the world, somewhere in the end of the last year, I was talking to my colleagues and saying, we must do more cultural activities. We must engage children more. Now is the moment not to stop the activities, but to engage them more in reading, in writing, in having, making contacts with people, not their nationality, not their religion. And my kids sometimes say, not everything is in books, but I do believe that all truths are in the books. And do you see yourself with the role as a writer in somehow, if not rectifying the world, then supporting the light in the world? - I think it's really important, what you say is everything is in books. I think so too. There's a lot of great truths in books and universal ideas that no matter the year we're at or what's going on in the world. You can always look back and look for justice. You can look for peace. You can look for revenge. You can look for these really key concepts in life. I think the writer, of course, is always needed, but perhaps now even more than ever. Poetry poets are writing about, you know, horrific wars that are happening. There's a sense of, of course, how do I document pain? How do I document trauma, a genocide? How do I write about all of that for future generations? And that's what's happening. Writers are now documenting more than ever, not just fiction, but nonfiction. So I think nonfiction is now even more powerful than ever. It's a historically, you know, moment that we're in. And that's when the writer comes in. I think also a writer should be able to kind of, like you say, make connections with everything that's happening. Create empathy or foster empathy for people who would otherwise not connect. So if you read, for example, Palestinian literature today, you don't read about the genocide. You read about family. You read about love. You read about home. About land. Yeah, plants. Exactly. So I think exactly 100% political, but it's personal. And again, that personal is vulnerability, is political also. It's just not in your face and which could turn off some people. Of course, I was very proud. I am very proud of a lot of writers I know, especially writers, obviously, who come from background. I am from, who stood up to what is going on, who have refused the residences in the countries that have been supportive, that have actually, in a way, supported genocide or enabled it and so on. And we know how writers live. Not a lot of writers can easily live off of their writing. Yeah, of course. So we know that refusing a residency in a very important institution, leaving a job position means a lot. And I tremble when I read these stories. But they are so honest and they are powerful. They are brave, but also what is brave, if not being honest, in at the time when you really have to be. So I feel like the writers and no one can own literature. I think that's what we've seen nowadays. And the writers have really been the heroes of our time. I would feel among other people, of course. Yeah, absolutely. And I think you go back in history, and the poet's job was also always to document history more than anything, even through oral poetry. The job was to tell us what's happening, make sense of the events, and before they were even writing, before people were even literate. That was the idea to document history and human emotion. I wanted to discuss another platform that you have many, many different careers, but all around the same beautiful topic of writing. We at the center work with you. Not enough, to be honest. We need to rectify that. But we hold a workshop or organize a workshop that you hold on writing, called writing to heal. At least this is what we have adopted. And recently I've seen that your initiatives have grown into a platform literary mentor. Can you tell us more about it? Absolutely. Well, I love working with you and the PCC. It's always really fun. It's a great community that we get to. I get to meet a lot of wonderful people. And I think that's what it's all about at the end of the day. So the literary mentor is my personal initiative. It's a creative platform. I am offering not just workshops on how to write, but also how can I even reflect on whatever I'm going through, whether it's a life transition, retirement, changes in life, marriage, a disability, and how we can use writing and journaling creatively, but also effectively. So not just writing, just for the sake of writing, but also asking the right questions. So my role as the literary mentor, and I thank my students for that, they gave me the title of mentor. They've always said, you know, you've been a mentor. And for me, when I started reflecting on that word, the idea is to simply guide not to really educate or teach one correct way of doing something, but just to be there as the person comes to their own voice or their own recognition. So writing to heal basically takes a lot of therapeutic techniques that are part of journaling and reflective writing, but specifically writing from the body. So again, it goes back to my work on disability and disability studies. When you're writing from the body, you are writing more vulnerably, more openly. You're not writing from the mind. You're not just writing your thoughts down, and that's it. It does involve being more present. It involves just a connection to your heart, to even what feels wrong in your stomach. How do I describe it without saying butterflies in my stomach? How can I actually go against cliches that we tend to use? It means listening to your body. If you're gonna be healing, so to speak, then you're also going to be listening to your body. For me, writing has always been a big part of my healing journey. Emotionally, physically, spiritually, you name it. And so I use writing to heal for all age groups. Tends to be for people around 18 and above, because that's a time where we get to really reflect on our bodies and our minds. It's interesting. I tend to get a lot of different people with different needs. So someone might be joining the workshop because they want to look at mental health. Others want to look at just how can I write better as somebody who journals quite a lot? It works for everybody. Again, it's all about you. It's not necessarily about defining what is writing to heal, but what does it mean for you? How do you write to heal? There's a few other workshops using poetry sometimes, using non-fiction sometimes. How do I even begin to write a memoir? Why is my story even important? And those are called life stories or life narratives. How do I narrate a life? And we work through all of these techniques. These circles, how do you achieve a safe circle? And people to actually share. So a big part of this kind of circle is the safe space, or safe community. Usually the people who actually come are readers, who are very respectful of the other. There's no judgement. I really, you know, lay it out very clearly, where if you want to share, you can. If you don't wish to share, it makes you anxious. You're also safe. You don't have to. You won't be judged for not sharing. Usually people end up very comfortable. We work peer-to-peer one-on-one first. So you pick somebody in the group who you don't necessarily know. You get to share your work with them. They give you feedback, not critical feedback. But I also work with, how do I give feedback that is not constructive feedback? It's not critical feedback. It's just I read that. Thank you for sharing. I listened to your vulnerability. I was able to feel it without really trying to correct anyone, or make it right. And I think that's what really people need more than anything. Like you say, it's a safety that we don't necessarily find, even in school. Yes, oh, true. I have three children. So I know how it looks in school. A lot of our time is actually dedicated to somehow protecting children from what's going on at school, even in that relation teacher and student. I know you also hold these book discussions. There is a book, a topic on the table, and then people gather and discuss the book, like a book club. This is also a form of sharing vulnerability and learning about it. Absolutely. So it's quite a versatile approach to these workshops. Coming back to your latest book, "The Memoir," do you still hold book promotions? Do you still meet with your readers? Is it more online? Is it in person? Do you travel for it? How does that part of the life of a writer look? And is it difficult to take at all? I think it's one of the things people don't talk about, actually. As a writer, you have to constantly promote your work. So the publisher asks you to do promotions. So there's a lot of self-promotion involved. You do need to talk to people. You need to listen to them. I do go on good read sometimes. I have a look what's out there. I do travel for book readings, still actually quite a lot. I was just in Abu Dhabi for a book reading. So usually there's a reading and then there's a book signing. Sometimes people just want to talk again and be listened to. They don't necessarily have questions. As much as people want to say, "Hey, I feel the same." Or, "My sister also has so-and-so and is stuck at home, is hiding at home, or is hidden at home." Sometimes you have people who will tell you, "There's so much stigma that I wish my sister or my brother would actually read the book." So it's a beautiful and rewarding feeling. But there's a sense of constantly being aware that the book has left an impact and continues to on others. And I have no idea how far it extends. Some people will send emails or shy, so they will send you a message, direct message and email. And there's still that sense of the reader talking back, I guess, to the book. Is it easy to let the book go, in a way, believe it to readers? Who might even dissect it in a negative manner and damage it? Yes, yes. I think most writers will say the same. Maybe it's a cliche answer, but they will say, "I say it's gone outside into the world." Kind of like you with your kids, at some point, they do have to go off to college, and then you won't know what's really happening there the whole time, who they will meet, who they will talk to. The same thing with the book, you really don't know where it lands, or who it begins to talk to, who dissects it. When I was just starting out, I remember negative reviews, I would be really upset. And now I just recognize it's a big part of not being able to control what happens once the book is out there. It's very hard to let it go, but there are steps I take. I don't check goodreads as much. If there's a review, I don't necessarily read it anymore. But there's a sense of also these quick, short conversations that I have with readers, and that leaves a huge imprint. It leaves a huge effect on me. Somebody has read it, somebody has loved it. You're proud of the work, but there's also a sense of recognizing. It's on its own. I tell my students sometimes, don't ask me about the book. Right now, this is me, your teacher, your educator, the author is dead, and then they'll start laughing. But I'll say, no, seriously, the author is not here. You don't have access to the author. So you are free to imagine whatever you would like, make your own assumptions, make your own decisions, come to your own conclusions. Because I teach them, I guess, and I'm in the classroom, sometimes they'll ask me why this ending and not that. What happens to so-and-so in the book? And the response is always just leave the book on its own. It becomes also a part of the reader. Sometimes people find things that I never even thought about. Oh, true. We will use the opportunity that you are here to ask you to share an insight or an advice for someone who is pondering over a piece of paper, maybe with a pencil in his hand or her hand. And look at me now, completely old-fashioned thinking of writing or maybe typing. What would be your advice for someone who really wants to start writing? I think I say this quite a lot because we hear this quite a lot. People are very protective of their writing, which is very normal. We're very afraid of how people will receive it. But we're also very defensive of how people react. A big part of writing is recognizing that it will not necessarily be received the way you would like it to be. So someone might actually pick it up and say, "I don't understand anything you've written here. What's going on in the story?" And instead of feeling defensive or being really upset and throwing the book away and probably even the person away, saying, "You know, I never want to hear from them again," this openness, you need to start working on it. It's one thing to say, "I'm open to feedback," but it's another to actually put it into action. It hurts, but it shouldn't kill the writer either. It definitely hurts. But that idea of learning to live with that pain of noticing my writing is not perfect. It's not a great ending. It's not as exciting as I thought. My poetry isn't that beautiful. For a lot of poets, it really hurts. Again, it is your baby in many ways. So I think receiving, being open to ask also different people, not just my best friend or my mother who will tell me the work is great, but also sharing with different groups. Being open to people saying, "I didn't understand." Helps me because I will rewrite and make it more suitable for another reader. So having a peer reviewer find another writing buddy, find another person who is not your friend and begin to work with them. It really makes a difference. Thank you for that. What is in plans for you? Well, at the moment, I'm working on the literary mentor. That's the big, big platform. We do have the reading circle. It takes up a lot of time, but it's also really rewarding. I do hope to go back to writing one day, but for now I'm just not to break, but working with the community more than my usual. And a question that we ask some or all of our guests, depending in which area they work, what is something a reader shouldn't miss? What are you reading? What would you suggest? Anything that's good. So I think there's a book called Evil Eye by Ita From. She's a Palestinian author, a Palestinian-American author. The book is a novel and it deals with mother-daughter relationships, but also about the Palestinian diaspora, looks at Palestine as just, you know, a political cause right now, but also looks at the motherland, what it means to be connected to your mother, not land, but also your mother, to your sense of language, your sense of identity, and also be living, you know, she lives abroad, the character lives abroad, so she's quite westernized, but also trying to find the sense of belonging. So Evil Eye is quite a bestseller right now, given the current climate, but it's definitely a book to read. She has another book, I think it's called Girl Is Not A Man, Something Along Those Lines Ita From. She's a beautiful writer. There's also Hello Beautiful and it's by Anne Napolitano. She's really a beautiful writer who works with family also. All of her novels are about family, what it means to forgive family. And if you think about it, we all have a lot of family to forgive. It's very common. So her writing will touch on, you know, many different themes that we can all relate to. And it's called Hello Beautiful. I think it was on Oprah's, you know, Best Books List. And it's a bit of a long read, but it's a must for me. That book really was very, very beautiful in terms of how we talked about forgiveness. We have to forgive. Is it really for me, if I forgive my sister or my brother? Or is it really for them? Or do I have to forgive them because they're my sister and my brother? Those are the main questions with it. Do you still suggest Shakespeare? Not all the time. No, not really. When I say still, I mean, given that you teach, that you lecture on Shakespeare. No, I don't actually suggest Shakespeare for a general reader who's interested in books that, you know, might affect them. I want people to read because they're searching for something that they love. So a big part of what I do is also I kind of study the person that I'm talking to. I get to see what are their interests. If you have one shot at, you know, getting them to read the book, don't want to, you know, misplace my shots and lose by saying, you know, "Hey, read Romeo and Juliet." And then they'll say, "I hate it." And then they never pick up a book again. I had a situation with my son the other day because he read. So when I was a child and when I was asked for my favorite activities, I would always say reading. And in very vulnerable years, when no one would find it, you know, cool. And tiptorine, I would say reading. And I would still say that. And I listened to one of your interviews and you said, "I love reading. I still read a lot, you know. This is something that stops over the years for a lot of people. But this is my main source of energy. So I still do it. And the kids, in British schools, they do a lot of Michael Merpergo books. Which are not always, I remember reading some of these very sad style of books when your horse dies and your dog dies. And it's really, on some children, that's very difficult. So we wanted to see whether he would like to read one of another book by the same author. And he said, "Please, please, not just not this kind of books." And then found something that's, you know, a series, an almanac, something that's more on a comic side, but still anything really, just to kind of keep them engaged in books, their little noses in books. Yeah, I think it's more challenging today, actually, to convince anyone, especially the younger generation, that this is going to be interesting. I think very carefully before I suggest anything to, you know, a reader, or somebody who wants to even explore reading, I'll ask them, you know, what do you like, what do you watch as a genre? Do you like fantasy? Do you are interested in witches or vampires? Or, you know, that's the start. But I never just go to the classics immediately. Yes, of course, yeah. Well, this was a lovely conversation and a time flow very, very swiftly. We hope to see you very soon back at Culture Corner and here at Promenade Culture Center. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. See you now. Appreciate it. Thank you. [BLANK_AUDIO]