Suzy Ismail – Part 2
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And then he got all serious. And he was like, you know, this is not
the way to get published. I was like, I know, but you know, now we
have history. And
I know he kinda like I guess he paused for a minute, he was like,
you know, but just send me what you have. And I'll take a look.
And so I sent him my manuscript. And lo and behold, the BFF sisters
was about to be born, not yet about to be born. So he called me
back with the good news. And he gave me the release date for the
book. It was to be September 11 2001.
Now, that was a big day for me, because that was also my due date,
because I was expecting again.
And I was a little panicked. I said, Oh, no, that's my due date,
what are we going to do? And he said, Don't worry, don't worry,
we'll figure it out. You know, even if we release the book, we
have the launch parties later, we'll figure it out when the time
comes. And so my daughter, who is now 15, my daughter Aya, decided
to make an appearance a little bit early. She was born on August 24,
of 2001.
Now, during that time, I have been working in the city Standard and
Poor's. And for those of you who know, Wall Street, you know, that
Standard and Poor's is located directly across from the World
Trade Center. Now, it was out on maternity leave during that time.
And, you know, I was sitting at home on the morning of September
11. And my husband called me and he said, turn on the TV. And I
said, Okay, why I thought there was like an old Seinfeld clip, or
a Friends episode he wanted me to watch. So I turned it on. And you
know, with my daughter and my arms, I saw the planes going into
the buildings. And I didn't know what was happening. I didn't
understand what was happening. But I remember the first thought that
came into my mind was that every time as I left from work, I would
pass by a Spyros, in the World Trade Center. And every time I
passed by, there was a young man there, an Arab man who would try
to call out to me to give me free pizza.
And I've always ignore him.
And I just kept thinking, I hope he's okay.
And I just kept thinking, I never even asked his name.
And to me, you know, when I think back to that day, when I think
about having my daughter in my arms, when I think about watching
an area that was so familiar to me, that I have worked in, that
was my home,
crumble and come tearing down in front of my eyes.
I remembered my own parents journey, I remember what it means
to be an American. And I remembered that at this moment are
going to come together. That was the thought that came in my mind.
Little did I ever imagine that it would be quite the opposite, that
would come out from that.
So we'll fast forward a few years after that my book wound up coming
out in December of 2001. Because my publisher made the wise
decision to hold off a little bit in the afternoon. It came out in
December 2001, to terrible reviews, the reviews rare, this is
inauthentic. This is terrible. This is preachy, they will
probably write you know, it was my first book, my writing was not
super stellar.
But I was devastated. And I swore that I would never write another
children's book. And even though the BFF sisters had been signed as
a series, I told my publisher, I'm done. I'm not going down this road
anymore. And so I immersed myself in my studies, you know, I focused
on writing research papers and, and theoretical work and really
focusing on my PhD.
And as I wrote more of these theoretical research oriented
things, I began to study relationships. I studied the
intercultural world, I studied what it means to be an ethnic
minority in the workplace and at home with your family.
When my oldest daughter was about eight or nine years old, she
approached me and she said, Mom, when are you going to write the
good stuff again?
And I thought to myself, You know what? Maybe the time is right.
Maybe I need to go back to the BFF sisters. You know, I had been
licking my wounds for so long from the terrible reviews. But I hadn't
been ready to step back into that world. But I thought maybe now is
the best time to do it.
But I thought I would do it right. So I went to a program here at
Princeton University, actually very local, of a young woman, an
author who was speaking about her experience as an author and then
getting published, and she kept mentioning SC BWI, and I kept
thinking, what is this SC BWI that you speak of?
is like the Holy Grail. Wow. Sounds amazing. Direct me.
And so I figured out that SC BWI was happening right in my backyard
and Princeton. And so I attended one of the first workshops there.
And it was amazing to me because I see BWI. I started to meet amazing
people. You know, Steve, of course, best picture I could find
the
I met maybe a wonderful friend who had this passion for writing and
this commit
into a story that just lifted me up. Because I've never really been
around writers before. I have never really understood the
passion that goes into writing that motivates you to write and
rewrite and revise and look again, and keep going until your book
comes out. And just the plug in for me, me, her fabulous book just
came out a couple of days ago. So
I also met another incredible woman who changed my perspective
on writing completely. Because in those moments when I felt like a
complete imposter, when I kept thinking, what am I doing here? Am
I even a writer, I have one terrible book out set even mean
anything. I met this woman who said to me, you write, therefore
you are a writer. And the woman's name was Susie.
And when Susie and I first met, we talked to each other. And it was
amazing. We both had three kids, we both loved coffee, and we both
wrote.
And so we became fast friends. We soon started a blog together
called A Tale of Two Susie's. And in it, Susie wrote something that
was so profound, that anytime I get a chance to insert it into any
speech I'm giving, I always bring it up.
She wrote, when I started writing, again, desperate to remember who I
was, before I became a mommy, I prayed. I prayed for someone, a
friend, a confidant, a fellow writer, someone I could talk shop
with about writing someone who would understand the drive to
create a story and have it read by someone else. Such was my prayer.
Never, ever let it be said that God doesn't have a sense of humor.
Because God did in fact, answer my Christian Peck prayer. He sent me
a Muslim.
And she's a fabulous writer. So I know she's got big things coming
up. So that's just the fog of the person. And I met lots of other
fabulous people at SC BWI people that motivated me to write again,
that made me want to pick up that laptop and start typing away. So
one, the second book of the BFF sisters, it was almost finished, I
decided to give my publisher a call. I called him up. I said,
Guess what I'm writing again, I have the next in the series. And
it kind of laughed, and he was like, we closed our children's
department a couple of years ago. Where have you been like, Oh snap?
He said, Do you have anything in the adult segment? And I didn't
really at the time. But I had always wanted to write a book for
adults, a book, particularly about a lot of the difficulties that I
was seeing happening around me in my community. And so I told him, I
did, because we're writers, and that's what we do. I told him I
did. And he said, What is it and I said, I have a book about divorce.
So he said, get it to me in 10 days. And
so for 10 days, I did nothing but write, I focused on this book. And
I realized that over the past, you know, 10 years or so when I had
taken this hiatus from writing, I have actually been subconsciously
gathering all of this data and stories of people who are having
difficulty in their families. All of my research and the time that I
put into studying communication and interpersonal relationships
came to the surface in this moment. And so 10 days later, I
had my book, what was the marriage vows? The book came out in 2010.
And again, I remember, you know, thinking, I wrote this book for
some audience, that's who's going to read my book. But it was
rejected over and over again, by every mosque that I approached by
every Muslim community group that I approached, and I was constantly
told, Stop causing trouble. We don't have this problem of divorce
in our community. You're making this up.
And it was one after another after another. When I started
questioning what I was even doing, why was I even writing this? And
then I got an interesting invite from the Roman Catholic Church,
who said to me, we have a problem with divorce, and we can't seem to
tackle it. And we saw your book, and we'd like him to give a
presentation on divorce in the Muslim faith. I'm like, Yes. And
so I spoke at the Roman Catholic Church. And that's kind of how my,
my journey to speaking began. And it culminated actually this past
September when Pope Francis came to visit Philadelphia, and that I
was invited as the first Muslim woman to speak with the Pope at a
Catholic Conference on.
So this is kind of how the journey of understanding diversity of
realizing that you never know who your audience is going to be. You
never know who your words might touch. You never know who needs to
hear the words that you've put down on paper. So when I signed
that book with my with my publisher, we signed for a three
book contracts. So my next book that came out the following year
was called nine to five Muslims in the western workplace, and it
focused again, adult audience it focused on my research and the
organizational world.
Now, interestingly enough, when this book came out, a lot of the
commentary that I received on it is, why is there a picture of the
twin towers on the anniversary of 911 of this book about Muslims?
And I received quite a bit of backlash, you know, hate mail,
kind of, and I just kept thinking, have you ever been to New York,
these are not the Twin Towers.
But again, it was it was difficult to kind of break through until I
received a call from Goldman Sachs, who had just had a bit of
an incident. They were being sued by someone for a diversity type of
an issue. And they were required by law to bring in someone to give
a diversity seminar, and they said, you know, we saw your book,
and would you want to come in? I'm like, Heck, yeah, I'll come in. So
I remember when they spoke to me, the first time they said, you
know, what is your speaker speak. And the United spoke about this
briefly in my workshop today, but I kind of hummed and hard. And I
was like, I don't know, like, five, I was gonna say, like, $5,
like, 500, I don't know. And so immediately, the receptionist was
like, 5000 done, which was very nice, very lovely surprise. And
they also bought many copies of the book as well. But this is when
I began to realize that people need to hear our stories, people
need to hear that side of diversity of who we are, what
makes us tick, because that's the only way we can understand each
other.
So soon after, you know, I needed to put out another book with the
publisher. And they asked me if I would write an upbeat book about
marriage and the Muslim faith just to counter all the negativity that
the divorce book had kind of cultivated. And so this is the
book that came out in 2012. And since that time, you know, I've
kind of found that this is where I need to be in that field of
diversity in that field of speaking about who I am, who my
community is, what our faith is, not necessarily to speak to all,
you know, in the voice of all Muslims out there, but to speak in
the voice of one Muslim American woman, and to speak in the voice
of allowing people to understand what it means to be a Muslim
American woman.
So when we write our own stories, people often come up to me and
say, you know, how PC do I have to be in writing this book? You know,
like, What can I say? And what can I not say? And I can't tell you
how many times people have emailed near called me or come up to me at
conferences, saying, I don't want you to be offended. But is it
offensive if you know and insert offensive comments here.
So it's an interesting dynamic when you're trying to write
particularly about a culture or a faith that you may not be a part
of, that the key to being able to enter into that world is to
immerse yourself in that world. And multicultural writing or
writing from a diverse perspective is no different than the writing
that we all do day in and day out. Now, there was this beautiful
quote that I wanted to share with you, which is that all writing is
about crossing boundaries. Good writers learn how to inhabit the
skins of others, even those whose life experiences are very
different from their own. So in a very real sense, the skills you
need to successfully write across cultures are the same skills you
need to master in order to be a good writer, regardless of your
subject.
And I find that this whole is incredibly true. We all have
different experiences. We've all experienced the world in different
ways. We all come from our own worldview. And we can put that
into our writing, we can incorporate that into our writing.
And that in itself makes it more authentic. But what happens when
you do want to step outside yourself, and you want to write in
a voice that may not be natural to you, that may not be what you
lived or what you grew up with. But you identify that there is an
issue out there. And you need a character in your book that
represents a certain culture or a faith or an ethnic minority? What
do you do?
First of all, it's about literary literary anthropology, being able
to immerse yourself and study the people of that culture. Please
don't try to write a book about Muslims just by watching Fox News.
Focus on the people themselves, get to know someone have that
faith or that background, or immerse yourself in that culture.
Go to little towns and areas that may be known for having, you know,
a diverse group people that you want to write into your stories.
There's a beautiful little last passage, if you have a chance to
read it up. It's called the master Remo by Horace miner, and it was
written quite some time ago in the 1950s. I believe Horace minor is a
sociologist. And he wrote about this culture, this exotic culture
where people would you know, bake their heads in little oven in
order to make their hair look nice, where people would lacerate
their faces with sharp objects in the pursuit of looking clean,
where people would use hog hairs with some magical potions on them
to rub