All posts filed under: Ten Questions Archive

Ten Questions for Jane Wong

By Sherisa de Groot

What inspired you to tell this story?  My mother! Everything I write and create comes back to her. My memoir is a love song for working-class, low-income immigrant women… I really wanted to spotlight her life and what I’ve learned from her. Her story is also my story. I also wanted to write a memoir that played with form – echoing migration itself. It’s non-linear and tonally textured… just like in real life, I wanted there to be moments where I’m laughing so hard to stop myself from crying. I also think we need more stories that refuse a singular voice; yes, this book is about me growing up in a take-out restaurant, but it’s also about my relationships with toxic men, what it means to fall in love with poetry, and the ferocious of matrilineal wisdom and clairvoyance. What did you edit out of this book? Writing a memoir is definitely a challenge in terms of what you keep in and what you leave out. I really wanted there to be a balance between …

Ten Questions for Neda Toloui-Semnani

By Sherisa de Groot

What inspired you to tell this story?  The first time I tried to explain the contours of my family and, frankly, my grief was when I was in third grade. I wrote a little story of my father’s death, illustrated it, and then my teacher helped me bind it. I knew then that I’d write this book. Every few years, I’d tell it, again and again. On holidays and family gatherings, my mother or aunts and uncles, cousins and family friends would exchange stories, and I wanted to be the one to record some of them.  Then, after my mother died when I was 31, it felt like the story I had to tell–a way to grieve her loss but also, a way to honor my parents, my family, and the whole of our community. It was also how I learned to write long-form.     What did you edit out of this book? They Said They Wanted Revolution has had several forms, but it really began as my MFA thesis. Hundreds of pages of research and …

Ten Questions for Melissa Coss Aquino

By Sherisa de Groot

What inspired you to tell this story? There is a long story and short version answer. In short, coming up in the Bronx I was taught to feel a lot of ways about myself, my mother and women who did not perform motherhood, female sexuality, and Latina identity in very specific ways deemed respectable. I felt compelled to tell the story of mothers and daughters who appear to fail to be good and right, but who love, protect and fight for each other in every way imaginable. What if we found a Holy Mother like that? A divine image of ourselves as right just how we are. The long version is about a whole vision I had walking down the Grand Concourse when I was 23 years old and had my first son in a baby carrier on my chest. It came after seeing a group of girls who looked to be getting into a fight with a young man. What did you edit out of this book? Dreams and scenes of chaos. The dreams …

Ten Questions for Malaka Gharib

By Sherisa de Groot

RAISING MOTHERS:     What inspired you to tell this story?  MALAKA GHARIB:     I wanted to know: how did spending my childhood summers with my dad’s family in Egypt shape my worldview and personality? I grew up going to Cairo every year from my home in Los Angeles from the age of 9 to 23. I spent a couple of years exploring that question and I came away with new understandings that surprised me. I learned that my father did the best he could to include me in his new chapter of life in another country. And that I learned a lot about relationships – that it takes love but also effort. Writing a book is like free therapy. RAISING MOTHERS:     What did you edit out of this book? MALAKA GHARIB:     You can’t include every detail of your life in a book, otherwise that wouldn’t be a story – it would just be a diary! The specific anecdotes I chose to tell, for example, the first time I smoked …

Ten Questions for LaToya Jordan

By Sherisa de Groot

RAISING MOTHERS:     What inspired you to tell this story? LATOYA JORDAN:    The idea began formulating in my head in 2016, after I read a news article about the first uterine transplant being performed in the US. Because my mind always goes to the worst-case scenario, I thought about the urban myth surrounding black market organs and waking up in a hotel bathtub filled with ice and a kidney missing. I thought about the lengths some people will go to to have biological children and wondered about what a future black market for uteruses might look like. Later that year, I had uterine surgery to remove a fibroid. I’d had many talks with my doctors about my uterus, surgery, and preserving my fertility. Then, the first Woman’s March happened in January 2017. What began as a kernel of an idea morphed based on what was happening in my life and what was happening in the country around medical advances, reproductive rights, and racial justice. RAISING MOTHERS:     What did you edit out …