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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Where did you get the idea for the book, and where did Jasira come from?
Did you ever watch old "Saturday Night Live" tapes of when Gilda Radner was on?
Sure.
Ok, remember the character she used to do, this little girl in a nightgown named Christine? Her parents were always yelling, "Christine, don't touch that! Christine, get over here!" And she was always running around like a robot. It was to me the most horrifying and yet funny character; I always felt like that as a kid. Part of Jasira is modeled on [her]. And the book in general -- when I was a little bit younger than Jasira, my mother sent my brother and me to live with my father, who is Egyptian, in Houston. It was sort of a nightmare. After about seven months she came and took us back. I never wanted to write a novel, and the only idea I ever had if I was going to write one was, "Gee, I wonder what would have happened if she hadn't come and taken us back?"
So the idea for the novel is basically this what-if premise. And I had also separately baby-sat this boy whose father, an Army reservist, had a giant collection of Playboys. The last piece was the Gulf War. The hundred pages had a lot of the stuff with Daddy, Mr. Vuoso and Zack [Mr. Vuoso's son], but it wasn't working. Then September 11 happened and I went out to lunch with my agent and I was saying, I'm writing this book about Arabs, is it going to be a problem? And he was like, no, it's not going to be a problem because it's not a political book. And then it hit me, like, wow, it really should be a political book! [Laughs] If that's going to be a problem, we should make it a problem. I thought that the last thing that the book needed was this setting: Everybody could get really tense, and it would be this scenario that characters could bounce off of. It was like another character. They all needed that war to talk about and get upset about.
And you can use the first Gulf War to comment on today's politics.
That's right.
Especially the anti-Middle Eastern sentiment. Had you chosen the war, then, for that reason?
Sure. It was a really nice way to be able to do that, and often I felt that I was doing exactly that. But the other nice thing about having [Jasira] narrate the book was that it limited the flow of information -- you have a kid talking. I did that on purpose. I wanted to be responsible for as little information as possible! [Laughs]
Remove the culpability.
Right. That's all she knows; she's only 13. And then she would get Daddy's politics, and Mr. Vuoso's politics, and all the adults' politics filtered through her kid's brain. In some ways I felt like I copped out, that I could have made it more political. But you're careful about these things, because you want people to read your book.
Daddy's such a nightmarish character -- I can see some people reading the book and thinking he conforms to the stereotype of the oppressive Arab man, beating his daughter. When you were writing him, did you worry about that?
I did think about it. But I would say that -- let me choose my words carefully -- well, the first thing that interests me about that character is that most people who read the book -- strangely, mostly men -- the first thing they say is that they really like Daddy.
That wasn't my experience.
Yeah, I know. They think it's bad, how he beats her, but the person they hate is the mother. But I think it's mostly men that feel this way. They say that Daddy's bad but in his own way he wants what's best for his daughter. I did worry that he was playing into a stereotype. At the same time there is certainly some truth to the story. It's somewhat autobiographical and I have every right to write my life.
How much of "Towelhead" is autobiographical?
[Pause] I mean, I can't answer that question.
I figured it was very personal, but from what I knew of your own background, I felt like there had to be some element.
Right. There's definitely some element and then a lot of it's made up. I'm still trying to come up with a really good answer to that question, because it's a question that I would like to answer. But at the same time, I don't think it's a question that I can answer in an interesting way. I mean, if I had written something that was nonfiction, then we could talk about it in an interesting way. I also have concerns that it ruins what the book is. Part of fiction is reading something and thinking, Is that really true? Somebody said they read the book and thought, Is there really a girl out there who's like this, and did this or felt this way? Part of what's thrilling about fiction is being left with those questions and not necessarily having the answers. Writers will, I think, fairly often feel like they can ask each other, "Is that true?" If it's not true, then I can think, your level of craft is astonishing. And I can also feel very disappointed that it wasn't true, even if it was something horrible. So I just hate to mess with the fictional integrity of the book. But I am happy to say that it was a what-if story, that we did go and live with my father, that he certainly had the capacity to be abusive, and that there are certainly plenty of true things in the book, but there are plenty of things that aren't true. Although I will say that for me, the book emotionally is entirely true. Every emotion in that book is something that I definitely know.
