Ep. 316 The January Children by Safia Elhillo — The Stacks Book Club (Hala Alyan)

Written By Cherie Marquez

It’s The Stacks Book Club day and writer Hala Alyan is back to discuss this month’s pick, The January Children by Safia Elhillo. It is an award-winning poetry collection by the Sudanese-American poet Safia Elhillo. We examine the prevailing themes of displacement and duality, the urgency with which a poet writes, and we ask, how should one judge poetry?

Be sure to listen to the end of today’s episode to find out what our May book club pick will be.

 
 

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TRANSCRIPT
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Traci Thomas 0:08
Welcome to The Stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them. I’m your host Traci Thomas and today we are rounding out National Poetry Month with The Stacks book club episode. Hala Alyan has returned to talk about the award-winning poetry collection The January Children by Sudanese-American poet Safia Elhillo. The title takes its name from the generation of people born in the Sudan under British occupation, who are all assigned the same January 1 birthday. Today Hala and I dig into these poems and discuss what makes them special and also how we should be reading poetry. Make sure to listen through to the end of today’s episode to hear what our May book club pick will be. And reminder, everything we talked about on each episode of the stacks can be found in the link in the show notes. And now it is time for my conversation with Hala Alyan about The January Children by Safia Elhillo.

Alright, everybody, it is the stacks club day. First of all, just want to let people know this book is our 100 and first book club. Yeah, March was our 100 club. And first, I can’t believe it. And the book is The January Children by Safia Elhillo. And we’re joined again by Hala Alyan. Welcome back to The Stacks. We’re talking poetry. I told you this before. I tell everyone this. I’m bad at poetry, but I’m getting better. I feel like I’m finally kind of like, okay, I see what’s happening here. I still don’t get a lot. But I think I think I’m getting smarter. Like I’m really growing this muscle.

Hala Alyan 2:57
So what- Okay, let me ask you, what did you get? What did you get? Or like, if you had to, like elevator, pitch me this book.

Traci Thomas 3:04
Okay. I would say this is a book by a Sudanese-American person who is thinking a lot about the way that language borders home, sort of play into each other in her experience, because she feels like she’s sort of torn between these places between Arabic and English, between Sudan and Maryland. And I would also say, this book is a cultural criticism on celebrity culture, and I love it. Because of all the poems about the musician, the Egyptian singer who apparently is some sort of heartthrob, and I love this for me and him.

Hala Alyan 3:47
Kind of a hottie. And he also- Yes, like would address, “Asmarani,” which is kind of an Arabic term of I mean, quotation mark endearment, to like dark-skinned people, dark-skinned women in particular. Yeah. So she plays around a lot with that.

Traci Thomas 4:05
Okay, okay. How did I do? Do you think that I got?

Hala Alyan 4:08
You did Great, yeah! I completely agree.

Traci Thomas 4:10
Ok, I feel like I did it.

Hala Alyan 4:11
She’s playing with displacement. She’s playing with like, yeah, like border crossing. She’s playing with how to like inhabit these different worlds at the same time and how contradictory they are. Yeah, you know, like Safia is someone who I recommend people go and look at her. She won an Arab Rococo, Arab-American Book Award for one of her collections.

Traci Thomas 4:30
This one.

Hala Alyan 4:31
And she hasn’t really beautiful speech about how she liked like we know the reasons in which she does not identify as Arab and the reasons how like Arab spaces have not made room for Blackness, and that speech is – I really recommend people go look that up.

Traci Thomas 4:45
Ok, we will definitely link that in the show notes. So we usually start here, which is what did you think kind of generally of the collection?

Hala Alyan 4:52
I think it’s beautiful. I mean, Yeah, look, I got like, you know, like when when you have to sort of speak your like, biases or whatever, Safia is a friend of mine. So I’m like, I also just am obsessed with her as a person. But I knew her as a poet before I ever met her. And so I can say with confidence that like, I know that I love her writing outside of like, who she is, as a person. Like her writing, I think, is so, so beautiful. She also is someone who got her start in the slam world. Like slam poetry world. And you can tell in this really beautiful- she does this thing where she is, like, a very serious capital P poet. And that’s not to say slam poets aren’t. But I’m just saying like she both is like, someone who I think is very rigorous and conscious of like, the the real estate of the page and how it’s used up and how, you know, like, she remember her talking, during my episode, I was saying, like, I am not a great, like, I’m not great at linebreaks I’m not great at whatever. Like, I think I feel like she’s someone who is like, put some thought in like, when a sentence is gonna end, you know, and where you’re gonna place like a dash or you’re gonna place an end dash or whatever. And also is able to retain the sort of like melody and tune and like rhythm that often comes with, like people who have some sort of experience with slam poetry. So it’s like, it’s just a, it’s a delightful book to read on the page. And I have, because I’ve taught it in class before. It’s also a really delightful book to read aloud.

Traci Thomas 6:22
Yeah. So I told you this before, you know, I have a background in theater. And I every time we do a push up said I say this, sorry, everyone, but I studied Shakespeare. And one of the things with Shakespeare obviously, is the meter and reading it out loud. And the line breaks like mean something. And so every time that I approach a poetry collection, the form is feels very instructive to me. And sometimes when I’m reading a poem out loud, which I often do, or at least like, kind of like whispering, and under my breath a little bit. I think to myself, I don’t think that this writer has thought about the words on the page as instructions to the reader. And in reading this collection, I felt that Safia was thinking about that, like the lines felt nice to read out loud, they felt like they ended in places that made sense to me. They were playing with language in ways that like felt good coming out of my mouth. Like I wasn’t stumbling on words in the way that sometimes I think when people only think about their poems on the page, and they’re thinking of it like as a visual thing, and not necessarily an auditory thing. But I really felt like this collection. I could sense that. And one of the things we’ve also talked about is like, I even if I don’t know what the poet’s trying to tell me to do, I usually think that like formal elements are some sort of instruction to do something. So like, for example, you have in your book, you have the poem that has like the double slashes in between. And so I decided to take a breath every single time. So it was like a really like panting kind of because there’s like a lot of slash. And I was like hyperventilate, you know, like a little bit. And I felt like it was fun to do that with Sofia’s collection, too, because I felt like any choice I made, I could sort of justify, because she was thinking about me reading the book aloud in some way.

Hala Alyan 8:10
I was just gonna say exactly, it’s and that’s, to your point. That’s not always the case. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, I think a lot of poets probably spend a lot of time agonizing over where to place a comma, or where to place a word or what we know. And like not so much type of like, how is it going to be read aloud? And how are you going to cue the reader to do it in a way that becomes coherent?

Traci Thomas 8:32
And I guess in full disclosure, I was sat next to Safia at an event and she was lovely, but I don’t know her and so I don’t feel like the same- she’s not my friend. But I did sit next to her and she was lovely. And she dresses very cute.

Hala Alyan 8:43
And she reads beautifully. She reads in this like, like I think a lot of people who have done slam work will like they come on stage and they just fucking envelop- their energy is like radiating. They come in- And she does this really interesting thing in performance where her voice gets so low, and so melodic and so hypnotic, and she just commands the room with this like quiet power, and it’s beautiful to watch.

Traci Thomas 9:14
Yeah, okay, I gotta find some videos of her performing. And I also read some not all of her Girls Never Die. Is that what it’s called?

Hala Alyan 9:23
Yes! That’s also an excellent book.

Traci Thomas 9:25
So this was my second kind of foray into her work, which was interesting, because the poems do feel really different. Like this felt really different to me like she was, I think part of what I liked about this collection is that because it’s a debut, it did feel a little bit more accessible, because I felt like maybe I could like hang with her in some places. I feel like the more poets do the harder their shit gets.

Hala Alyan 9:48
I think that’s right. Because they’re like challenging themselves. They’re going on a journey.

Traci Thomas 9:53
I think that’s true for most artists, like your first thing, even if it’s great, like even if you’re Toni Morrison and it’s The Bluest Eye, like that is not as complicated as Beloved. Let’s talk about language again. Because I think oh, wait, before we do that, did you read the foreword in this book by Kwame Dawes? What did you think about it?

Hala Alyan 10:23
I thought it was very beautiful. I mean, I haven’t read it in awhile. But I think like, it’s fair, we actually, it’s one of the things that my class and I like, worked on a few years ago. I think one of the things that they do is they’re able to sort of really track- like, a lot of the forward is about Abdul Halim Hafez. And like, you know, like, like, how he functions as- I think like Kwame describes it as an imaginitive construct, a source of fantasy that is sensual, yes, but that is profoundly related to her sense of identity. Yeah, I thought it was good. I mean, I thought it was like really like a dove pretty deeply into all the different things that she’s touching upon in the poems. What did you think about it?

Traci Thomas 11:01
Well, I’m not used to poetry having a foreword. And so sometimes when I read books, I don’t read the foreword if it’s by someone else, because I feel like it’s a spoiler. Like, if you go back and like read forewords in like, classic literature, they tell you the ending, and you’re just like, leave me alone. But I did read this, because I thought it would might give me clues. And I certainly think that it did give me clues. But I almost think it gave me too much information. I sort of think he got or they got in my way a little bit. And I wish that perhaps it was at the end, after I had time with the collection. I didn’t dislike it. Like I thought it was nice, but it was also really long. There’s only like, 30 poems in here.

Hala Alyan 11:43
Yeah. Well, also this is, so she had won a prize. So I think that’s like it was like, it’s the African Poetry Book Series. So she won the first book prize prize for African poets.

Traci Thomas 11:53
I see. So they redid it and put it in.

Hala Alyan 11:56
So I think that’s why they because- Because usually, yeah, you don’t like or rather, it was published because it had won a prize. So like, usually there’s no yeah, of course, there’s no foreword. But I think in this case, because she had won, she was like the one that was selected. Yeah, whoever was I don’t know if Kwame was the judge, but I’m guessing they were the judge and so in that case, it would make sense.

Traci Thomas 12:17
How do you judge poetry?

Hala Alyan 12:20
I mean, I’ve judged poetry before, like I’ve done like. It’s very, I mean, I actually maybe this will make people feel better, because they’ve like, submitted and not gotten stuff selected, which, by the way, I have definitely submitted for many things. It’s so dependent on what you like. So like, the judge is going to pick a book that the judge resonates with. And that’s it, they’re not going to pick the best book, like capital B, like objective best, they’re not going to pick those off. But you know what I mean? Like, that’s what’s gonna happen, they’re gonna pick the book that they enjoy the most. And there’s no way like, I don’t know how to like, like, how to make the process more objective, actually. Yeah, what I’ve done it, I just, I’m like, I’m like, Yeah, I’m moved by this. And so I like this. And that’s it. I don’t know how to explain too much why I’m moved by it, except that I like it.

Traci Thomas 13:11
I judged a nonfiction prize for the LA Times this past year, but it was a specific category. And so it felt like there were parameters, but I think a lot of times with like poetry, it’s just like best poetry collection. And like, poetry is less of a genre and more of a medium, like, sort of like could be about anything. Some, some poems are fiction, some poems are autobiography, biographical, like some poems are about a please, some poems are about all humans on the face of the earth. Some poems are about dolphins. Like, it’s just like, how do you narrow it down?

Hala Alyan 13:43
That’s so accurate, where it’s like, it’s kind of impossible? To be able to know or to speak to exactly what it is that you like. I mean, like, because Because to your point, it’s going to be, it’s going to be like, are you moved by the contents of the poem? Because someone could submit an absolutely gorgeous, kind of technically perfect or beautiful meter-like series of poems. And if it’s about something that you’re not like, if it’s about I’ll speak for myself, baseball, right? You know what I mean? I don’t know how pulled in I’m going to be on the subject matter, right? You give me a book about borders and displacement, kind of like this one, and I’m probably gonna be like, immediately hooked up.

Traci Thomas 14:19
Yeah, I also think with poems like, and we’ve talked about this before, a collection of poetry. If I like, like, 10 poems out of a collection, I’m like, this is the best poetry collection that was ever written. It’s not like, I’m like, I need to like, the whole thing. Generally, like, you could like three or four poems that really hit you. And you could like this collection is the most important poetry collection on my life. And you could hate just as many poems and so like, that’s hard to like, when you think about a poetry prize. I’m like, how did you pick 10 books for this long list? Like, there’s so many!

Hala Alyan 14:53
Yeah, I mean, I think that it’s funny you say that because I think sometimes that’s by design that you want to publish a book that has some like, not duds- But like, I mean, like with poetry, it’s like you want to publish- You can’t like you can’t try to make them all 10 out of 10 Then that would kind of be an exhausting book in its own way.

Traci Thomas 15:11
But your 10 could be my five anyways. Like one of the duds you put your poetry collection was probably my favorite poem, because I’m an idiot, and it’s like, the most accessible and you’re like A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and I’m like, Yes, I know the alphabet, it’s a banger. And you’re like, doing all this other shit. And I’m like, it was a- it was a haiku and I knew all the words.

Hala Alyan 15:33
It leaves me unmoved. That’s actually a very good point, right? Like you get such a range. And like what- I think it’s always funny to me what a poet’s favorite poem is, like, it’s, I always like to think about, like, what poets- What’s their favorite poems in their books are, you know, what I mean? Or the ones they believe are the best or their most accomplished. And like, how often to your point that doesn’t actually even match up with like readers.

Traci Thomas 15:57
Okay, wait, no, I have to know what your favorite poem is in your new collection. I gotta see if it’s one of mine.

Hala Alyan 16:02
It might be one of the interactive fiction ones, maybe interactive fiction house saints. It’s actually the one that opens the book. Because that was the first one that I wrote from, like, of this type. And I think of like, of this form, and I remember just feeling like a real sense of accomplishment because again, it’s like you’re publishing, or rather, you’re writing 10 poems.

Traci Thomas 16:22
I think my favorite was Spoiler, the last one. I just love the last line.

Hala Alyan 16:26
I also like Spoiler! I forgot about Spoiler!

Traci Thomas 16:29
The last line is so good. Oh, I liked Bore, on 58. But these are very straightforward poems. They’re just like, here are lines.

Hala Alyan 16:40
Also you like the narrative ones, right? Like the ones that are telling the story. Like not like they’re not like, they’re not too, like obfuscating what’s happening.

Traci Thomas 16:49
Yeah, and I think I stopped writing down all the guzzles that I like, because I liked them so much.

Hala Alyan 16:54
I have really enjoyed the guzzles. I’ve enjoyed, like writing them and I enjoy reading them.

Traci Thomas 16:58
And I like form. Form is so interesting. I like when poets have to be even more put in a box than just like a few words, like I really liked to see, like, Oh, you got to use this word a bunch. How are you going to use it? Back to Safia’s book. So you mentioned this, I think on the first episode about how you can speak Arabic, but you write and read at like a second grader’s level. Also a guest we had previously, also Sudanese, Elamin Abdulamoud, when he came on, he talks about that also in his memoir, about like, being able to speak but not being able to read or write like at an adult level. And I think Safia is really getting at that same thing here that like, and I guess, my assumption is that because I don’t read or speak or write Arabic, because Arabic is a pretty complicated language on the page, that you can have that ability and not be- like, you can speak, but not write.

Hala Alyan 18:05
Yeah, I mean, there’s also just there’s kind of two different Arabics, like, so there’s a lot of dialects first of all, but there’s also the there’s something called formal Arabic, Fus’ha. And that Arabic is the one that’s kind of the standardized Arabic, that’s the Arabic that all Arabic speaking countries use for like newspapers or news reports or whatever, like, you know, education or whatnot. And that Arabic is virtually unrecognizable, from spoken Arabic in like for me, like it was like Levantine Arabic, so the Arabic books spoken in like Lebanon and Palestine and Syria, like that’s the that’s the Arabic that I speak like, you know, it’s- I mean, it’s not like, completely unrecognizable, but like a lot of the words are different. So like words for, you know, like commonplace items are different, or the way that you structure sentences different so, it’s like not just that you would need to know the alphabet. I know the alphabet, I can like, sound out a word. But it’s like, even once you sound it out, that word might mean something completely different than what you usually associated with that thing.

Traci Thomas 19:05
And that’s like what she talks about in her poem Vocabulary, where it’s like the Arabic word for ‘hawa’ means wind, the Arabic word for Hala means love. And so she’s talking about, you know, you left me holding wind in my hands, or you left me holding love on my hands. And I mean that stuff is-

Hala Alyan 19:23
Arabic words can mean so many different things. I think like Arabic is also such an incredibly poetic. Like just I’m trying to find that one- And so if you look at the Arabic word next to it, like the Arabic writing, do you see how it’s just slightly different? ‘hawa’ ‘hawa’, ‘hawa’, ‘hawa’. Yeah, you know, like two slightly different things, and then they mean something completely different.

Traci Thomas 19:50
I mean, I think what’s so fascinating about being a poet who is bilingual or trilingual or what you know, whatever it is that you’re really thinking about words, and men using words in a way that people who have one language like me or people who maybe aren’t poets don’t- like bilingual people who aren’t poets don’t necessarily think about, but I was like, wondering as I was reading this, like, are people in your family who are bilingual, do they also have these kinds of thoughts and like, struggles with language? Or is it something that you think is unique to people who are writers, poets?

Hala Alyan 20:24
Interesting, that’s interesting. I mean, I think like, there is a code switching in terms of language, and even emotional code switching that happens, for most people that are bilingual, you know what I mean, and most people that are bilingual and bicultural were like, you are probably having some sort of, like, tension point with the different languages in different ways. And there might be, you know, like, I very much feel like my parents’ daughter when I speak Arabic. And so I think you don’t need to necessarily be a poet, but I do think there’s something- I do I agree, like, I do think there’s something to be said for, like, if you are already interested in language, you’re probably going to be you know, like a musician, like, you’re probably going to be unpacking and breaking language in a different way. And then like, again, like seeing how you can put it back together.

Traci Thomas 21:12
Yeah, cuz I’m just thinking, like, I know, there are words in English that like, have multiple meanings that are different, but I never think about those things. I’m never like, oh, there’s this, like, I can’t even think of one off the top of my head. You know, like, I can only think of homophones or whatever. Like, I can’t think of like, read and read. Like, those are the same. Yeah, but like I can’t, because I just don’t think about language in that same way. And I’m sure people listening who are writers are like, here’s 20 words that are like that in English. And so she’s thinking, like, if you’ve got multiple languages and multiple uses of words. And like all the idiosyncrasies of language, and that’s your medium? Like, that’s a lot to work with.

Hala Alyan 21:57
100%. Yeah, no, I think there is something to be said for like, then you’re diving in even more, like, you just you have I mean- it’s like anything, it’s like, you have a larger surface area of things to cover, you know, and you have even more tools in your arsenal to reach out and like, like, often in Arabic, where she does this a lot, like pop it in Arabic word in a poem, you know what I mean? Like that. But like, the vocabulary, one of the multiple choice format of it is brilliant, because it does kind of show you how like, yeah, this same, this word that seems the same sounds the same, etcetera, can completely change the context of like the use of it. Okay, really change the context of the of the of the sentence, depending on the use of it, and depending on which one you’re kind of leading into.

Traci Thomas 22:38
Yeah. And like, it makes them I mean, the meaning is totally different. Right, because she goes on to say, Abdel Halim was left was left empty or was left full.

Hala Alyan 22:47
Exactly. That’s like the multiple choice. Yeah, exactly. It was Ferooz is looking for vehicle or Ferooz is looking for fuel.

Traci Thomas 22:54
Right. Yeah. I mean, I loved this poem. I was this was a poem. I was like, Okay, I think I can hang out here a little bit. I feel like I’m in already, page 2.

Hala Alyan 23:04
Yeah, it’s gorgeous. It’s gorgeous.

Traci Thomas 23:06
And then of course, like language ties to home and like feeling like belonging, feeling like if you have a mastery of a language you belong to at least, like at least the language but a group of people a community. And I think like, you know, like we said before, she’s really, I feel like she feels sort of out at sea a lot in this book, like, in between places, like less displaced and more just, like, out of place.

Hala Alyan 23:33
She I resonate with that, because I think she does, I think in reading her book, it’s like, she’s often Speaking of things, not within them, but she’s speaking of things as witness to them.

Traci Thomas 23:45
Yeah, like, she’s like, outside your-

Hala Alyan 23:48
I was just gonna say exactly, like, in order to witness you have to be outside of a thing. You know, and she’s kind of doing that in multiple ways around multiple, like, and again, around multiple places, like we looked earlier, we’re talking about, like, you know, like her as someone that like is in Sudan and her as someone that’s in like, Maryland, you know, like both like in both places when she’s writing about either or, or both. It’s like you do get the sense of, I mean, this is what I think it is to be multicultural or bicultural anyway, right is to like to be inhabiting Borderlands so fully that like you, you maybe are never fully in a thing. Your mind maybe always like reading from the vantage point of the person like observing.

Traci Thomas 24:25
Yeah, that’s really interesting. I’m mixed. So my mom is white and my dad is Black. And I think like for a lot of people who are mixed like me, like in America, we there’s something about feeling like being between two places as well. It’s different because, like, I’m Black American. So my family has my black family has been here longer than my white family, but still feeling like you’re kind of there are these borders that are different than they’re not governmental, but borders, but you know, the difference as soon as you step into a store or a neighborhood or whatever. And I think that maybe that’s like part Another reason that I’m, I resonate so much with this collection, but also your collection of like, trying to find where you fit in and like where you can drop in more fully, or where you remain out and kind of observe and I think that’s like a, I’d never considered my own, like racial duality in conversation with sort of like this physical, like-

Hala Alyan 25:25
Totally, I mean, like, I think that makes perfect sense. I’m not mixed. I’m not part black. I’m not part white. But I can imagine that like, yeah, there are certain places in this city, there are certain places in this country where you enter it is like entering a different country, there are different, like they’re talking about, like code switching, right? Yeah, there are different, like, there’s different language for different things. There’s different ways of expressing emotion, certain ways of expressing emotion. I mean, like, that’s the trope of like, the, you know, the angry black woman, right? It’s like, like, there’s like, these are these sort of, like, micro aggressive, like, you know, ways of enacting violence against people is like whittling them down to these sort of things is, like, there are certain spaces where if you go in and you show a degree of emotionality, you know, like, that’s like, Oops, you just broke some unspoken code about what it’s like to be in that space, you know? And if you’re in like, I’m so it’s like, yeah, I think that’s the thing about any sort of demarcated identity is that, like, if you inhabit it, only, in some ways, you know, or only partly, or only whatever, or if it’s like, or if you would have it fully, but you’re also inhabiting another one fully, which I think is probably a lot of people’s experience, and like you are going to move through it in a very different way.

Traci Thomas 26:36
Yeah, I think it’s just, it’s so interesting, I have never thought about my own, like, mixedness in relationship to people who like are immigrants or like, come from another place to American feel like that whole, but for so I think like just this conversation and these collections, and reading them sort of back to back and thinking about them, not something that came up for me for the first time of like, you know, and I think maybe like, again, totally different experience, but also something you could pull from as, like people who are queer and like, are kind of like, it’s all the same sort of code switching, trying to figure out where you fit and don’t fit. But it’s different kinds of communities for different reasons. But I do think, like, I think it’s just like, probably a really human feeling to regardless of identity of like, feeling pulled between two things, in its most broad, basic settings. You know, not to like, be like, this is universal, because that’s not what this is at all. But I do think that that like, pull.

Hala Alyan 27:39
Yeah, and also, I think, what is universal? Is that all um, she writes this in one of her early poems, I’m gonna try to find the, there’s a line that’s really beautiful. Oh, yes, it’s the first poem. At the very end, a woman died in everything wants a home, like everything wants a home, you know what I mean? Like everyone, like, even if not everybody knows what it is to code switch or like, what it is to move through neighborhoods or move through cities or whatever, like, everybody knows what it is to want to belong. And to be safe and to feel like people like you’re in a place that is yours, you know, the halls view that you belong to, like, like, I think that’s that’s a that is maybe the most human thing in the world. It’s the probably the most animalistic thing in the world. Yeah. You know, like, that’s what we all are seeking. And that’s what we all want with each other with places, etc. So, so yeah, I think on that level, I think it is there is a universality to it.

Traci Thomas 28:32
You say it much better than me. Did you know who he was before you read this collection?

Hala Alyan 28:48
Yeah, he’s like an Egyptian. He’s like a famous-

Traci Thomas 28:50
So I had never heard of him. And I put the music on immediately as I was reading the collection because I just wanted to get the vibe. I was really into it. I liked it. I listened to a live recording; the crowd was so in! I was like, wait I’m into this.

Hala Alyan 29:03
Very, yes. I love watching old Arabic recordings of like live music.

Traci Thomas 29:08
Yeah, I mean, I, for me, these poems are my favorite part of the collection. Because I only Liberty worship culture. I’ve been living in LA. Like, I just I love this idea. Because I grew up my dad was much older, like had an old dad. And he always was having us listen to like old school music. And so I also related to her, like having this crush on this man who was dead like 10 years before she was ever born. I don’t even know if it was an actual crush. But like this idea of being obsessed-

Hala Alyan 29:43
Yeah, the way you kind of love- Yeah, it was a sort of love.

Traci Thomas 29:46
It kind of reminded me of like, have like this Al- Do you know the Al Green story where his like wife threw grits at him. It’s a very famous story. He was like a monster of a husband and she threw hot grits at him. But it was like also like Marvin Gaye story where like his father killed him very tragically very tragic story, but like still these like lores around these-

Hala Alyan 30:08
Yes, the mythology around the person-

Traci Thomas 30:10
Around the person from our parents’ generation, right like that you become obsessed with the things that your parents play, and like-

Hala Alyan 30:19
Yeah, because they’re exposing you to it all the time.

Traci Thomas 30:22
Yeah, and you pick up these little things and you’re like maybe I’m sort of in love with Marvin Gaye, like, his voice is beautiful, like, and he has this tragic story and people loved him. And his version of the national anthem is like, that version, the national anthem. I hate the national anthem. But his All Star national anthem is like one of my favorite songs of all time.

Hala Alyan 30:39
Can I tell you, I’ve never heard it.

Traci Thomas 30:41
Oh, it’s he did it for the NBA All Star game in like 1981. Maybe make a note of that. It’s really good. I will link to it in the show notes. It starts off a little you’re like a little bit like what’s going on. But by the end, he like hits it and the crowd starts clapping. Like it’s like, and the national anthem is America’s national anthem is truly a dud of a song. Like I am not in like it. This is not my personality. But this is one of my favorite songs of all time. And we only on Fourth of July, a holiday that I love because I love hot dogs. I do nothing less than Americana, except for listen to that song and eat hot dogs. Like for me, but I it is the one time I feel like I’m like, I want to wave a flag.

Hala Alyan 31:21
And I love the image of you just being like this is what this country is to me.

Traci Thomas 31:25
Yes, it’s hot dogs and this version of the song. But so I could totally relate to her. Like, and I don’t know, she just in the poem. I don’t maybe you can explain what’s going on. But it feels like she feels really young in the poems like it feels like it’s from a younger voice almost like a child. Like or at least you can feel the child’s longing.

Hala Alyan 31:50
Right, right. Right. I mean, I think she I think she is sort of like I think she I mean she I think she probably actually was quite young when she was writing these poems because this was a while ago and I think she started working and publishing pretty young. But yes, there is a there is a part of it. That’s also just like, how do you like one of the things that she’s also doing in speaking to Italian or like in in kind of speaking, like in whatever in referencing him in these different pieces is like also speaking about her like blackness, you know what I mean? And also speaking about brownness, and also speaking about what it is to, like, live in these different spaces. It’s so like, I mean, I remember the like, would you care like this? This piece on page 18? It’s from callback interview for the position of optim hypothesis girl, and it goes, would you care to address the treatment of Nubians in Egypt and in the Arab world at large look, black as I am, I still feel like the girl from the song. I mean, I remember walking through Cairo, kind of Khalili, you know, the big bazaar. Anyway, I remember the men were calling from their shops. Hey, Nile girl, hey, Aswan Dam, and I never got the context. So I’m not sure if they were taunting, but I mean, they looked at me and thought of water. Does that answer the question? Like there’s something about like her like, the way she writes about, like, she’s writing about him, but she’s using him as an entry a portal into all of these other things around like, her her skin color her the story of her parents the story of loves the like, like, it’s just, it’s brilliant. It’s really brilliant.

Traci Thomas 33:20
And you and you said that he was known for like liking or like talking about darker-skinned-

Hala Alyan 33:26
Well, I think there were a lot of songs of his that were addressed to like Ahsmarani, like so it was just sort of a generic whatever term for dark skins.

Traci Thomas 33:36
Interesting. And she does she does talk a lot about like, also being Black, but like maybe not being Black. Like, she has that again, duality between the two, like, not NOT being Black but being Black, but not in the same way as like other people. Like there’s like- she’s definitely-

Hala Alyan 33:51
She’s also navigating Arabness versus Africanness and like, the ways that that overlaps and the ways that like, the versus is really something that’s put upon like, like, the positioning of those two things as being different than each other is something that’s like, placed upon that dichotomy from something outside of her. She’s not doing it. She’s just like, kind of like, you know, dealing with the fallout of the fact that that’s happening.

Traci Thomas 34:14
And like trying to figure out where she fits in between.

Hala Alyan 34:20
Exactly. Exactly.

Traci Thomas 34:21
Yeah, I really liked all of those poems- the singer poems. I did. I think so. Again, I like repetition. I like yes, getting to come back to this thing. I liked seeing how she changed it and like how she kind of goes on the journey through the story. And then honestly, I had to look up his death because he died pretty young have like, some like liver disease from like a paradise or something. It was something he had been sick his whole life. It sounds like from like a some sort of parasite. I think you get in like water, and he was diagnosed ya And then he died in his 40s. And then people were killing themselves over his death.

Hala Alyan 35:05
Yeah, it was really he was like, I mean, it’s like the sort it’s I mean, talk about celebrity worship, like the like, it’s like Elvis or the whatever. Yeah, it was really profoundly-

Traci Thomas 35:16
Yeah. And I think it was in 77, I think was the year? I did look it up and now I can’t remember. When he died. I think he was 47 or 48. And he died in the 70s. He was young. He was young. It’s funny when you like, look back at pictures, though. Because everybody like in the 70s looks like way older than now.

Hala Alyan 35:39
That’s so funny. I know!

Traci Thomas 35:41
I’m always like, wait, you look like 60 but I think that’s just like the look like ladies like women, their hair is old-school.

Hala Alyan 35:48
I was just gonna say the bouffant. Yeah, like the hair.

Traci Thomas 35:50
And the big glasses and stuff. But she that I guess we should go there. She talks about love and romance. And then like gender roles and like obligation to gender. There’s the poem about the last night but like Marvin Gaye plays. Speaking of Marvin Gaye, yes. The last night Marvin Gaye’s her the last time Marvin Gaye was heard in the Sudan. And as she’s like, refers to her mom as my mother might not yet mother and then her father as before, he is my father, which I love.

Hala Alyan 36:26
My not-yet mother.

Traci Thomas 36:28
And then she ends it with through the final notes of the song, and tonight my parents do not meet which I also love. I love a twist ending of a poem. You think It’s gonna be like they kiss, and it’s just like, yeah!

Hala Alyan 36:40
I was just gonna say, You think they’re gonna come together!

Traci Thomas 36:42
Yeah. This is how her parents meet. This is the beginning of her story. She’s like, nope. But tonight, they don’t meet.

Hala Alyan 36:47
There’s a lot of the mythologizing of the family. You know what I mean? Like, I think there’s a lot of that of like, she there’s a lot of poems that touch upon. Yeah, the grandmother, the parents the story of the Father like leaving, but like it’s just, yeah, it’s so- aw, man.

Traci Thomas 37:07
There’s a poem. The poem about her grandmother called Bride Price where she talks about Married off at 17. Married off at 17 to a man who saw her in a photograph- my grandmother hair heavier than night, cream-colored girl spilled from her mother’s lap. thinks I’m taking too long. And then this is the line where I was like, Oh, we’re talking about like gender and all this stuff where she says we outlive our beauty. This currency we trade with men for their names, for a house for someone to belong to. So good. So good. I feel like what I also like about this poetry collection again, it’s because I think I understand some of it, but be I don’t feel like she’s trying to do more than is necessary. Sometimes I feel like poets, I get caught up because I’m like, they’re doing too much. And I feel like you can just say somewhere to belong to, and I’m like I’m with you girl.

Hala Alyan 38:03
And that’s it. We got it. I mean, my favorite is- one of my favorites is Self Portrait with Yellow Dress. Can I read it?

Traci Thomas 38:10
Yeah, what page is it on? I like to read along.

Hala Alyan 38:12
It’s on 29. Okay, self portrait with yellow dress. And sometimes we do not die. We are born to a body dressed in black and do not wear it to a funeral. We live forever. Our mouths open and a song falls out thick with the saxophone syrup. And all our dead in the ground make the land ours and all our missing fathers make us everything’s child. Today I am not dressed for a funeral. I wear the yellow dress and laugh with all my teeth. And my last ones are not lost to me. They live in the wind that gathers my skirt. Today. This is my country. I say their names and all the holes left behind, shaped like black girls and black boys are lit up by hundreds of faraway stars. Today I woke up and was not dead. And tomorrow might be different, but tomorrow does not yet exist. So I hold my mother’s hand and kiss the brown valley between each knuckle. My brother opens his mouth to laugh and the light pours in through the gap in his teeth. I press my body to a man that I find beautiful and sway to a song that knows us. I live forever with my feet in my grandmother’s lap. I live forever by the water with the sun spilled over me. Remember me this way. And when they come for me play the song I love into the space I leave behind.

Traci Thomas 39:36
Why do you love that one?

Hala Alyan 39:38
It’s so musical. I love how you have no weird- there’s something about like when when writers, you know how you’re saying earlier it’s like my dashes sort of told you where to take a breath? I love how you kind of don’t know where to take a breath in this one, like you could go by the line breaks but that doesn’t always work so it’s like and all our dead in the ground make the land ours? No, you’re gonna say and all the dead in the ground make the land hours and all our missing fathers and all, you know. But yeah, it’s just the movement of it and how like, it just moves into the most granular details and then swoops back out into this beautiful like- Ah, I love it.

Traci Thomas 40:19
Yeah, we went back and forth a bunch to pick poetry collection to do. And you sent over so many titles, and I was like, nervous that I wasn’t gonna understand anything that you said, because some of them seemed, one of them was about nature. And I was like, I can’t do nature because I’m early. Yeah, I was like, I gotta so I don’t do you know, Nate Marshall and Jose Olivarez.

Hala Alyan 40:41
Yes. Okay, I know Jose. I don’t know Nate Marshall.

Traci Thomas 40:44
Okay, so they’re best friends. But I have invited myself to their friendship. So I joke that we’re the three poets because they’re real poets. But I was I was sending them all the collections you were sending being like, Will I understand these? Will I understand these?

Hala Alyan 40:56
And they picked this one?

Traci Thomas 40:59
Well, a few of them I knew for sure I couldn’t do. I was like, I feel like I’m not going to be ready for that. And I, you had sent to a camera what the other one was. And I was like, What do you guys think between these two, and they were like, well, have you read Safia before? I was like, Well, I’ve read some of the first book, they’re like, Well, if you like that, you’ll probably like this one. So that’s why I picked it. But I want to know why you wanted to do this one.

Hala Alyan 41:20
I think it’s so it’s a book I’ve taught before, it’s you know how like, there are books that let like, just leave an imprint on you. And then that’s they’re just one of the first ones that come to your mouth. You know what I mean? Like, or to your lips. And like it, this is one of them. Like, I think she I think she touches on so many of the themes. Part of the reason I picked it is because I knew we were going to be talking about some of the stuff that was in the poetry collection that I had just published. And just in general writing, like what it is to write about identity and what it is to write about plays and what it is to write about, like, moving between different kinds of liminal spaces, both literally and sort of emotionally. And, and this felt like a, like a perfect addition to that conversation, because she’s like writing about that stuff so brilliantly.

Traci Thomas 42:03
Yeah, I think, oh, like something that I think, you know, in this moment, and 2024 that, you know, cannot be ignored is like this conversation around Palestine, and what’s going on there, and the genocide and also like, the ways in which the Sudan has been sort of like, is going through similar things, and it’s been erased and like, not are beautiful, you know, are throwing it in as an afterthought. And so for me, I think, I don’t know, there’s no point there. But that is something that like I was thinking about a lot as I was reading both of these collections, right, like in conversation and in the ways that like, being from a place that is auditioning for empathy, as you might say, impacts the way that the artist writes, you know?

Hala Alyan 42:54
I like the urgency of writing about that space, you know what I mean? And like getting eyes on a place and keeping eyes on a place. Like that what’s happening in the Sudan is like it yeah, I mean, there’s, it is barely getting any airtime. And to your point, it’s often tacked on as an afterthought, you know. And that actually is a really good example of somebody who’s such an excellent ally, and who really models what it’s like to be able to speak to the causes that are sort of like, near and dear in that, like, this is a place where she’s from her family’s from, but also like, never forget that it’s all intersectional. You know what I mean? So when you’re speaking about the Sudan, you’re speaking about policy, you’re speaking about these other places, like your, that it’s all really one thing, you know, and that then that what we have to do is be consistent in our like, discourse around these different causes.

Traci Thomas 43:37
Yeah. A few weeks ago, on the show, we did this book called The Unclaimed, which was about dead bodies that are unclaimed in the United States and in Los Angeles. But one of the it’s two sociologists, and one of the guys his work is about the hierarchy of death. And how like, some deaths are, like Princess Diana, right? Everybody cares. Everybody cries. Yeah. versus, you know, there are people who, you know, people who are unhoused to die, and nobody thinks of them at all. And, and I asked him a little bit. It was like, Does this also apply to like groups of deaths, like, like wars, right, like, the ways that we think about whose deaths are valuable politically, right? And he was like, Absolutely. Like, yes, definitely. And I’d never really thought about that. But now I can’t think about the news of what’s going on in Gaza, or the Sudan, or the Ukraine or whatever, and think about who does get the attention and why and how to write about there. How do we write about and how do we feel about it as the consumers of this writing like how do do we feel implicated? Do we feel like we’re the good guys because we feel badly for these people?

Hala Alyan 44:46
Exactly, exactly. And is it just like the perfect victim? Is it one of those things where it’s like, you know, that the correct victim is the is one that can be pitied? You know, what I mean, like versus one like, Yeah, I think there’s a lot of stuff around that and I think Also just around like, you know, how do we speak of like, you know, are do people die? Or are they killed? Yeah, you know what I mean? Are they young people? Or are they children? Like, there’s like, there’s really like, I mean, this is a lot of stuff is being done around this and research is being done around like headlines and how people are spoken of when they belong to different groups and how that contributes to dehumanization?

Traci Thomas 45:20
Yeah, I mean, and like, kind of, to the beginning of this conversation is sort of like a journalistic poetry, right? What words are we choosing to use? And I catch myself using a word that is less accurate, because I’m trying to like very up my vocabulary, you know, like, sometimes I’ll be like, oh, you know, like, So and so was killed, like JFK was killed, or like JFK died? And I’m like, well, I actually mean he was assassinated. Yeah, it’s like, sometimes you just like use the word that comes easier as a person, and so you feel you don’t notice it when someone else does it, necessarily.

Hala Alyan 45:59
And you don’t notice it when like a massive entity like a publishing entity does it. Like that sort of thing is actually very mindful. Like there that’s being done, like with intent.

Traci Thomas 46:10
Right. But we forgive those things sometimes, I think, because we’re like, oh, well, I would make that mistake. And it’s like, right, but I’m not the New York Times. Like, I’m Traci and I’m just like, trying to talk about JFK for a long time. And I just said ‘assassinated’ three times in a row and my English teacher was using the same word, I’m trying to vary the vocab. But I do think about like, all like, another thing that speaking about like the perfect victim. Or like the, you know, the one who deserves the empathy. A friend of mine, she just visited LA, and bought this book about Latasha Harland, and that’s one of my personal obsessions. And she was the young girl who was killed by a Korean shop owner that predates the Rodney King riots, but was one of the things that was like very pivotal in LA to escalate to that point, but a lot of people don’t remember that story. And I was saying to her, what’s so interesting is that Latasha Harlands really was the perfect victim. She was like a teenage girl. And she was paying for her juice, and the woman thought she was stealing it. And she pulled out a gun, and she shot and killed her. And I was thinking about all the ways that like, black women are the perfect victim like Breonna Taylor, and they still don’t get the attention that a quote, I mean, and I’m saying perfect victim, all this air quotes, but like a non perfect victim like George Floyd, who does get the attention, even though he’s like a less sympathetic person like that. It doesn’t always follow, you know, narrative that, yes, the narrative that we’re taught the rules that were tested like that she was an EMT, they went into her house, she was asleep. She should be a more perfect victim!

Hala Alyan 47:41
Exactly, there could not be more of a victim. By definition of victim. Yeah, yeah.

Traci Thomas 47:46
And so I think, you know, all these things. I mean, it’s why I love reading. It’s like all of these separate things that I think about coming together, like through these poetry collections.

Hala Alyan 47:55
Exactly, exactly. Yeah. No, I think and I think that Safia does that. I mean, she’s doing that around, again, Blackness and brownness. And she’s doing it around America. And she’s doing it around Sudan. And she’s doing it around, like, intergenerational. Like, all the things we carry intergenerationally, the things we lose the things we inherit, the things that we basically, like, passed down to one another. I mean, she it’s really like remarkable, actually. What she’s doing.

Traci Thomas 48:19
Yeah, yeah, I think so. And I again, like, I feel like I got a lot of this collection, but it also felt like I was working too, like, it didn’t feel easy. You know, like, I felt like I had to think and pay attention, but also that it was within my grasp.

Hala Alyan 48:34
Right? It feels accessible, actually, yeah. Because she’s also just a story. I mean, she’s such a good storyteller. So a lot of the poems are her- Like, yes, she plays around with like, no punctuation. And so you maybe have to like kind of like reread a few lines every now and then but a lot of them are like, relatively straightforward, like just narratives and sort of like family mythologies that are being told.

Traci Thomas 48:54
Yeah. Okay, we almost are out of time. But before we get out of here, we always talked about the title and the cover. What do you think of the cover? What do you think of the title? We didn’t really talk about what the January Children are, but for folks who haven’t read the book yet, it’s a generation of Sudanese men who were lined up by their lovely colonizer- a shout out, shout out to the colonizers for doing it wrong every single time. And by height, and they were given ages based on their height, and everyone’s birthday was assigned as January 1, and then the year depended on your height. So this generation was known as the January Children. That’s right. Um, so what did you think of the title and the cover?

Hala Alyan 49:35
I think the title was wonderful. I think it helped frame something- like it helps frame, like immediately it’s like not a fact that I knew so immediately it like I learned something and it helped frame that the book was always going to be like, you know, that it was going to be held up by the history and the narratives around Sudan and how and how this poet like intersected with them. And I love the cover. I don’t know who the artist is.

Traci Thomas 50:00
I do, so I looked it up. They’re on the back. Their name is Dar al Naeem. And they are a Sudanese artist. Their Instagram is fantastic. I will link to it in the shownotes. Their art has changed a lot since this. They were doing like a lot of like black and white brushstrokes more recently. But like I was scrolling through and seeing like, some of the older stuff. And it was really cool to find them. And they seem to be young-ish, like maybe in their 30s or 40s. Yeah, so I do really like this cover.

Hala Alyan 50:39
It’s very striking.

Traci Thomas 50:40
Yeah. What I don’t like about the cover actually is just the the heading that’s like African poetry book series. I’m like, I don’t like the yellow block at the top. But I do love the art. And I do love the title, I think it’s super evocative. As soon as you understand what it means you’re like, Ooh, this is juicy. And I think it, you know, obviously ties in to what we were talking about before about, like, the generational parts of this book. Like, because I think her grandfather was a January child.

Hala Alyan 51:10
I think, yes, yes. Also like, yeah, like I’m saying, like, it’s sort of frames it. So it’s like, that tells you something about what this you know, what happened to these people and this place under the occupation of the British, and then you like zap forward to the future where there’s this like diasporic daughter of this place. You know what I mean, having all sorts of experiences in Cairo, in America, in Sudan, etc.

Traci Thomas 51:34
Yeah, yeah. This was so great. Do you have anything else you want to say about this before we are done?

Hala Alyan 51:40
No, just I really recommend the book. If you haven’t read it, please read it.

Traci Thomas 51:43
Yeah, I recommend it to for all of you people scared of poetry like me. You can do this one, I believe in you. I think you can do it, do it. It’s gonna scare you. And for those of you who hate long poems, these poems are not that long. Some of them are very short. Because last year we did Ross Gay, and a lot of folks, myself included, struggled with the length of some of the poems.

Hala Alyan 52:04
They’re very lengthy. That’s fair.

Traci Thomas 52:07
Like 100 page book with like seven poems. Some of us were struggling and by us, I mean, mostly me. So everyone, January Children, if you haven’t read it yet, read it. If you have read it and you want to read more, Safia’s book that came after is called Girls That Never Die. We have Hala’s book, The Moon That Turns You Back that just came out. She’s got four other poetry collections, two novels. She’s working on a memoir that she hates writing. Hala, thank you so much for being here.

Hala Alyan 52:39
Traci, this was a delight! Thank you so much for having me. I really, really had a great time.

Traci Thomas 52:43
Me, too. Everyone else we will see you in the stacks.

Alright, y’all, thank you so much for listening. And thank you again to Hala Alyan for joining the show. I’d also like to say a huge thank you to Nina Leopold for helping to make this conversation possible. And now our announcement of our May book club pick. It is No Name in the Street by the one and only James Baldwin. 2024 marks James Baldwin centennial year and we want to commemorate that by reading one of his books. And for this one, we’ve picked a memoir about his childhood in Harlem and his subsequent experiences throughout the country. You will have to listen on May 1st to find out who our guest will be for our May 29th book club episode. If you love the show on one inside access to it, head to patreon.com/thestacks and join the stacks pack. Make sure you’re subscribed to the stacks wherever you listen to your podcasts and if you’re listening through Apple podcasts or Spotify be sure to leave us a rating and a review. For more from the stacks, Follow us on social media at thestackspod on Instagram, threads and tik tok and at thestackspod underscore on Twitter and check out our website thestackspodcast.com. This episode of The Stacks was edited by Christian Duenas with production assistance from Lauren Tyree. Our graphic designer is Robin McCreight. The Stacks is created and produced by me Traci Thomas.

Cherie Marquez https://www.cmediacollective.com/
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