Bookwild - Palestinian Joy, Stand-Up Comedy and Secret Family History: Sara Hamdan's What Will People Think

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

This week, I talk with Sara Hamdan about her journey from finance and journalism into fiction, and how writing What Will People Think became a way to explore identity, belonging, family history, and the freedom to define yourself outside of expectations. Through conversations about comedy, Palestinian representation, women’s choices, historical memory, and the many forms of love, the episode explores how fiction can create connection and make complex experiences feel deeply human. Listen to hear about: How moving from finance into journalism—and eventually fiction—helped her discover storytelling as both a craft and a way to explore her own family history and identity. Why stand-up comedy became central to the novel, including Sara’s real-life experience taking comedy classes to overcome public speaking anxiety and how humor can deliver difficult truths with softness. Code-switching, compartmentalizing identity, and the pressure many women feel to justify life choices—while emphasizing the importance of autonomy and becoming comfortable showing up as your full self. Fiction as a way to preserve cultural memory and show everyday life beyond headlines, using family stories, historical detail, and personal experiences to create empathy. Check Out Author Social Media PackagesCheck out the Bookwild Community on PatreonCheck Out My Stories Are My Religion SubstackGet Bookwild MerchFollow @imbookwild on InstagramOther Co-hosts On Instagram:Gare Billings @gareindeedreadsSteph Lauer @books.in.badgerlandHalley Sutton @halleysutton25Brian Watson @readingwithbrianMacKenzie Green @missusa2mba 

This week I got to talk to Sarah Hamden about her book, What Will People Think? Which is a really, really fun contemporary fiction that works in identity but also stand-up comedy. Here is a little peek at what the story is about. By day, Mia Almous is a dutiful fact-checker living up to her Palestinian-American family's expectations. But by night, she secretly performed stand-up comedy. Until a risky romance and a sudden career breakthrough threatened to expose the double life she's carefully hit. As Mia scrambles to protect her family from the fallout, she uncovers long-buried secrets from the 1940s that could upend everything she thought she knew about herself, her family, and the life she's been afraid to claim.

This book is really fun because it incorporates some of like typical contemporary fiction. It has the stand-up element, which I really enjoyed if you listen to audiobooks. It was narrated by a comedian. I learned that from Sarah. and it was a really, really, really fun listen, but it also really kind of dives into the immigrant experience in America, especially the Palestinian immigrant experience in America currently. And the kind of conflicting things about identity when you still feel connected to one place, but you're also very much living in another place. So that being said, let's hear from Sarah. I am super excited to talk about what will people think, but I do always like to get to know a little bit about you first.

So I know you've been a journalist in some ways. I mean, you've done a lot of stuff, but what was your journey to writing like in general? I just always grew up reading and I loved writing and I didn't know that I could do it, like make a living that way. I was always told that it was a tough career choice. And I think I talked myself out of it at the beginning and I tried to do the right thing. I studied finance. I worked at a bank.

And then I was terrible at it. I was so bad. Whereas my colleagues would be really excited. And like during their lunch breaks, they would be looking up stock market prices. I would be there with a Jane Austen novel. So something wasn't working. Yeah.

And then I moved into journalism. So I became a financial journalist at first because I had some background in that. So it was an easy in. And journalism is a wonderful way to just get that training because you interview people, you seek out stories for a living. And then especially with newspapers, which I worked for for the majority of my career, you have to turn out a lot of content quickly. And this was before, you know, the chat GPT days.

Like we had to write all right, write it fast and it needed to be factually. accurate. And so it was just the most wonderful training. So I did it for a living. I always wanted to write a novel. I think it's just a dream that I had. And I'd never read something that had some nice Arab representation that was also a little bit lighthearted. And I just wanted to honor Palestinian heritage, even though I've never been there, but my family's from there. And this was a nice chance for me to look into my own history and ask my grandmother about her experiences. So that's how it kind of all came together. I was very scared of putting this book out. And so I'm really happy to see how it's been received, especially in this time when everything just,

the world feels really upside down. I think we just need more messaging around love and connectedness. Yes. Yes, absolutely. It, I mean, even the title, the what will people think really plays into even what you're saying, where like you were even nervous to kind of publish this and put it out there yourself. And the main character, Mia, is, there's all kinds of, there are multiple aspects of her life where she's wondering what certain people will think. And I loved, I loved the comedy aspect. So, like, I love standup in general.

I think it's such a cool, it's such a cool art form. And you can convey so much with humor, like you're even kind of saying, like, having a book that had some levity to it. So what drew you to kind of talking about this stuff through, there are multiple lenses, but through the lens of comedy? So comedy has a bit of a special place in my heart because I used to be terrified of public speaking. I used to get, you know, the clammy hands, the whole, the work. When I was a journalist, and I'd get invited to moderate panels, the idea of getting up on stage just terrified me. And there are just little insecurities, I think we all have.

For me, I'm really soft-spoken. So I was like, nobody's going to hear me if I'm up on stage. So my husband forced me to take a stand-up comedy course to get over my fear. And so we'd go together and it was six Saturdays in a row. And there's nothing scarier than getting up in front of people than getting up in front of people and trying to make them laugh. Yes. When I went through that exercise a couple of times and realized, oh, okay, it didn't kill me. Like, I'm still alive.

We could. then I think it just helped me build a little bit of that confidence and then I began to moderate panels and now I love getting on stage and I love doing people speaking and is great so I managed to kind of break through this thing and actually the way that my husband and I met was because my very first story for the New York Times

was about the rise of stand-up comedy in the Middle East and he was a producer he was working at a cable network here and TV putting comedians on TV Oh, wow. And so, I don't know, comedy brought me love. And so I wanted to read that little theme in the novel. And like you said, it's exactly what you said.

It's a way to speak truth. And it's kind of packaged in a nice way with a smile. Yes. Yeah. I can't imagine, like, trying to make people laugh to your credit. There's, like, so much that goes into it. There's also, like, to get way into comedy, but there's also, like, once you an established comedian. It's obviously easier to get people, like, people are kind of primed to laugh at you

because they like you and know you already. But that like beginning in stand up has to be absolutely terrifying. So I kind of, I see like, that's like such a functional way to get over public speaking, because you're like, I don't have to make these people laugh at least. And it was, you know, humor is really subjective. What I think is funny someone I think is really cringe. And there are a lot of reviews where readers said publicly on all these different forms, how much they hated the comedy and it was dreadful and funny. But I don't think, I think it's really hard for something to be laugh out loud, funny on a page. You're not seeing it delivered.

There's no like, on a voice or, I don't know, they can't. It's exciting. It's exactly that. Yeah. And at the beginning, she's meant to be kind of a, a, struggling comedian and then she gets a better and better. But yeah, it was really tough. There are some people who loved the comedy and some people who was awful, but I got a reaction. And I think that's really good. And at the end of the day, I think it's just about profiling her as this Palestinian-American

comedian, which she doesn't have seen a lot. Yeah, yeah. I, so I listen to it. And I think that I highly recommend that if people if you listen to audiobooks at all as like a form of your reading i thought it was so great because even that open the opening chapter is her like she is on on stage doing stand-up and even like i mean it's the first chapter i'm not trying to spoil it too much but even some of the um like the accents some of the jokes that were related to like like if she spoke in a certain accent she was perceived as a different ethnicity or even the like George Bush style southern American accent. I like immediately I was like this is literally so much fun and I do think the audio brings it

to life too but I was like my husband really like stand up to you I was like you have to listen to this first chapter like this is such a like really like a really fun first chapter. did you how did you approach writing the stand-up bits because it is like an art form that like you even kind of said feeds feeds off of feedback so much or like workshopping is like a big thing that comedians have to do too so how did you approach writing it this was a hard one but first I have to say I'm so happy to hear you say that about the audiobook because my publisher made an incredible effort to audition about eight different areas. American female starved comedians and I got a chance to listen to them perform basically

excerpts from the very first scene and I remember just closing my eyes and listening to the different ones and when I heard read me down she was just so spot on and then when I looked her up I did a little bit of Instagram stalking and she was just full of life and she's she's genuinely hilarious and she just seems like a really kind person yeah we've become friendly and she's just wonderful and I feel so lucky that she narrated the book. It's gotten the most incredible reviews largely because of the way that she expressed the material through her own voice. I loved it. Yes. She was a female comedian and in that space. What was the question that you asked me? How did you approach writing the stand-up pieces? Yeah, for this one, I think

I needed the beginning to be funny enough that there are these glimmers that she, she, she, has some good material, but I needed it not to be like slaying amazing so that that character arc. So she gets aggressively better. But I also, I needed to explain a little bit about her and her background. So there are some lines where she's describing her looks, for example, which maybe if it was a real set, I wouldn't have done that. But I needed to give the reader a way to visualize her, for example. So I approached it from this point of view. Like what's the thing that people need to know about her right off the bat. It's where she's from, what she kind of looks like, why she's doing this. Yeah. And then we just kind of wrote a few lines, tried to spitball with my husband, see what landed,

tested out with some friends. But yeah, but like I said, it's tricky. And yeah, these scenes were fun to write. Yeah, it felt like you were having fun writing them as I was listening. the other thing that you really established so well in the first chapter two is she like you're saying there's some details in there helps you like get to know like what she looks like who she is and then like she does step off stage and like takes off her makeup I think she's wearing heels takes off heels and kind of like transforms into the version of her that her family expects or is used to from her um And there's a lot of cultural code switching for her.

Like you have her, she has her like very corporate job. You have her with her family. You have her in stand-up clubs. Yeah. So how did you know kind of from the beginning that you wanted to really like show how how very different she would be in all those situations? Yeah. I think a lot of us compartmentalize our lives a little bit and we show certain sides of us

or hide certain sides of us, depending on where we are. Like at work, I'm not going to be the same as the mom Sarah, and the mom Sarah is not the same as the one who's doing something that's fun as a creative outlet. Like, I play drums on the side for fun, you know, just cool things that are just creative outlets. So I think part of it is just showing sometimes you tend to be cautious with how you let people in or how you're seen.

And yeah, you're right there. It's a code switching there. But I think the resolution towards the end of the book is just that we should be free to be ourselves. And part of it was the pressure she was putting on herself. And part of it was a society thing. It's really, I think part of it was the novel is an ode to New York in a way. And I wanted to address this kind of Arab-American feeling of what it's like to be there in a post-9-11 world. but you still all carry a lot of those same feelings of home for this incredible city, you know?

So it was complicated and the only way that I could do that well, I thought, was to compartmentalize a little bit and then show it the, you know, you are one person. Yes. Yeah, I think that's important kind of for everyone, obviously. It's also like the Arab or Palestinian experience. it's going to be more elevated because of how some people in America think about immigrants. Or not even immigrants. I mean, sometimes it's literally citizens. But where was I going with that? Oh, I think most people in general, though, kind of what you're saying can also relate to the fact that like sometimes you are different in different situations or settings. And it doesn't mean you're being disingenuine.

necessarily either. And so it is a really cool character arc where we get to see her kind of accept that like all of like we she can contain multitudes and that's okay too basically. Yeah, it's exactly that. And it's just, I think for me, I've lived in so many different countries in the world and gone to know so many different kinds of people. And it just comes back to this idea that we really are all human and we have a lot of peers and desires. But it took a while to get there. Like I'm in my early, you know, where I feel like I am myself with in many different settings. But when I was in my early 20s, that wasn't the case. And I would just kind of, to see what's the situation I'm dealing with and then present certain sides of myself.

Yeah, totally. And it sounds like I think you said that you kind of ended up learning more about your family or some of your family's past as you're writing, as you were writing this. And Mia has that same like experience where we get this other timeline where she's kind of learning about her family's past and some of like the secrets and pain and all of that. So what was it like kind of building out that that other timeline as well and like touching on some of those historical like events? Part of it for me was I always thought of myself as American and then when I was living in the U.S. people would ask where I'm from from and then I began to

what that meant and dig into that little bit. And then as I got to know my grandmother's stories from her youth, I just found it really interesting because it's a version of Palestine that we never get to hear. So she always talks about it with this soft quality. You don't see lines that you see in the news, but I'd hear about wedding traditions or how she used to meet with her siblings, the kind of fish they used to eat. small little details that are absolutely lost. And I just thought this would be a nice way to honor that.

So, you know, interviewing her in a way and then talking to other people her age, but then the journalist and me, of course, doing a lot of like going to the library and reading some history books to just get factual accuracy with some of the other perspectives. Like there's a British soldier who's, because at the time, Palestine was a British mandate. So the color of their uniforms, what money they use. These are the kind of details that can bring life. So it was a fun exercise for me to discover more about who I am. Yeah.

A fiction. And now I feel like that's done and I feel good. And we could put that to bed. I always say that writing a book is cheaper than therapy. So I get to learn about that. And this way I get to leave something behind so that my children then feel proud of their heritage and understand a little bit more. and maybe I'm a soul searching to do.

Because again, I mean, I feel very Palestinian by, I'd say culturally in terms of the foods that we eat, some of the wedding traditions that we have. But I'm an American citizen and I grew up in. And, you know, it can be hard to have all of these different threads and then figure out where I belong. And this is feelings that I kind of put into the book and put into Mia. Yeah. It's very much a work of fiction.

I'm not a comedian and my grandmother not have an affair with a British soldier, you know, because of fiction gives you license to play a little bit. Yeah, yeah. Did you, I know you lives in multiple places. Did you grow up in New York when you said it was like kind of an ode to New York as well? Was that kind of coming from some of your experience? I went to grad school in New York, so I lived there for about two, three years. Yeah.

I absolutely loved it. And I think it matched, like, it has this incredible energy. It just makes you want to do a million things at once and like that. So I just felt like I was plugged into an electric socket when I was there. And it was just difficult. But the tricky part for me was how do I write about this place that's in every, you know, movie and TV show. Right.

You know, it's just been, it's been covered so well through so many different angles. And this is where writing about it through the eyes of a Palestinian-American comedian is quite fresh. And I mean, this book came out at a time when anything Palestinian-American, especially was Front and Center in the News. And the grad school that I went to was Columbia. There were all this stuff happening with the encampments there, you know, so suddenly it was just, I'll just say, very, very timely. But I think a lot of people just want a bit of context.

They're curious about why this is such a controversial thing to talk about. I think there are a lot of really beautiful works of fiction and nonfiction and memoirs that go into the detail of, I'd say, the harder topics around the genocide and all of that. And I'm trying to come at it from a bit of a softer angle where this novel, you do get the diary scenes of the grandmother, and it does talk about her displacement. It is essentially the story of a young woman who's forcibly displaced from her. home and how that shattered the family and have this ripple effect generations later, which is why Mia, the main character, is trying to understand her history. So it's just a little bit softened. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's kind of what you're saying. Like, I think I've, I've had conversations with different authors who talk about how like, so in your case, there could be a

temptation to just talk about the horrors that have happened in multiple cases in your but in your or in multiple places but in your case in Palestine um but i think there's also there also needs to be space for what you're talking about where it's like well can we also talk about how wonderful it was like before before the genocide began or however we even want to kind of talk about that But it, like, it is important to still have the parts that are like, this is what it was like. And that this isn't the, like, the headlines version that we are seeing is not, is not what it always was. It's exactly that because the headline version is the only one that you see. And it's really hard.

And I find it, a lot of people can't even relate to it because it just numbers. Like, oh, you know, 100 people died today. And you just think, oh, well, that's normal for that part of the world, but it's not. This is, let's take it back down to the story of one person and get to know that person. And that person is someone's mother or daughter or it is. And then I think this is home a little bit differently. Yes. I just wanted to bring that emotion into it a little bit because we've all become so desensitized.

You know, if that, if it was happening in Palestine today was happening in any other city, I think people would be absolutely shocked. And we just kind of say, oh, yeah, you know, another day. But it's, it's not every single person is a human being with a heart and a family. It's just, you know, just some of what I'm saying sounds cheesy, but it's just, I mean, in a very long way and we all deserve a little more. Yeah. I think it's fiction I talk about sometimes on here how fiction is like a really accessible way for people to kind of act. like I said accessible, now I'm going to say access, but to get to see stories and kind of like experience things that maybe you're not, I mean, we aren't in America learning about like in history classes. And it's a different location. But the Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali was I had kind of a similar experience reading that one where I was like, Oh, like all of the imagery that I had seen about kind of like that area in general. Like I'm trying, I'm not, I'm trying not to say Middle East basically because I know that's also still like very like London centric.

But all the imagery we see is what you were even pointing out is like, oh, it's always been war torn. And bombs dropping is like totally normal over here. oh, their culture is repressive toward women. Our culture, like American culture does it too. There's so many cultures, especially like when we get into like fundamental fundamentalism in any religion. Like it happens in so many cultures and it's not just the imagery that we were seeing. And that book was like shocking to me because I read that one right as we,

right before the election. basically. And I was like, this is, it brings it home so much that like there were women thriving and like had careers. And it very suddenly changed overnight. But then like that's the only version that a lot of American kids are like growing up and hearing about in in history books. So I do, I just think it is so powerful. When we can kind of connect to characters like like Mia or like, the girls in line women of Tehran where you're like, oh, they had like whole, whole, like even like very normal lives. Just like very mundane things.

Exactly. Typical things that were happening. Yeah. It's just exactly what you're saying. This was my hope and my takeaway, you know? And yeah, growing up and being such a bookworm and always visiting libraries, the books that

are always considered the gold standard. just see the same, you know, it's the Jane Austen's and the Bronte sisters and the, right, a lot of male authors and they're usually the white male. So it's great to have a little bit more, I guess, more publisher is taking on board different voices because there are many different stories. And then it goes back to what I was saying at the beginning. A lot of us have similar challenges and desires. And it just makes you feel less alone. I mean, yeah. Some of the, aside from the reviews where I got people telling me that the comedy wasn't funny. There was a wonderful, really heartfelt note from somebody saying,

oh my gosh, I've never been able to voice some of these feelings before. And I was a person on the subway who, when my mom would speak to me in Arabic, I would just kind of feel a little bit like bristling and these things matter. They just make us feel. Totally. The small little details, just like you said. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think it reminds us that like all of us, all of us could be living that, that kind of a life that's just like the day-to-day stuff.

Obviously, there's a lot of like diving into her family history. Also, even just like the family that she's living with, the characters feel very fleshed out and feel very real. So how did you approach writing like the family system that essentially birthed her in lack of in a sense? I can't speak today. In the book, I have this setup where she lives with her grandparents because both of her parents have passed. And I wanted that to be a nice little way to package why her family is very guarded and cautious and kind of they worry about her. She's the only grandchild. They've been through so much loss. So it sets it up in a way to make her feel like she's quite sheltered and she's lived this life

where she has to think twice about every decision. So that's why I set it up that way and just this dynamic between what her grandparents have been through and what she's experiencing now and everything that they've done to give her a better life. This is why I did it that way and their closeness and, again, understanding the heritage a little bit. So there is a lot of finding joy despite loss, that kind of thing. Yes. And then just some of the geography at play. So I have her parents, her grandparents living in a basement apartment in New York,

and they're not very well off. And the grandfather is, he's older, but he's a superintendent, like he's still working, even though he's in his 70s because they've got to make ends meet. And then she travels downtown every time she's going to the comedy shows. And even just like the geography of it becomes, you know, how New York is, how the street names come in. And there are all these zigzag streets instead of that like grid system at the top. So I just use some of that to portray how she is. So she's kind of stiff, suicide and everything's proper.

And then downtown she kind of loosens up. Well, that was fun. I just, I enjoyed writing the different characters. I feel like there's a lot going on in the book. I really packed it in. And part of it is because I spent 10 years writing this. I mean, I started this when I was, you know, just in stolen moments while I was working. And then I had one child and then another child.

And then there are all these reasons not to keep going. But something just drew me back. And I think because I was going through so much change, The story went through a lot of change as I went. And actually, at the very beginning, I had written it just as the Palestine scenes. So the diary entry were just one complete story. But a lot of the feedback I was getting was, oh, this might be too niche. Could you make it?

Could you add a contemporary angle? And that's where the Mia's stuff angle was born. And then I began to just read the stories together. And it became this. So I do feel like there's a lot. a lot packed in, but it's rich in that way. Maybe this will encourage someone to read it twice and listen to it twice. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, and there is, that's what I noticed. There's, there's like the comedy angle. And then there is the like family history angle. And then there's

also some romance in it. So was that something that kind of just like developed as you were kind of bringing in Mia's contemporary part of the story. Yeah, I mean, I love a good romantic comedy. So part of it was me just wanting to create work that featured an Arab American front in a romantic comedy setting, but still that emotional depth that comes with all of history and all of that. And I think it's part of what pushes her to break out of her shell a little because you have to be vulnerable before you can be open to being with someone in any real.

way. So I was kind of a bit of a catalyst. And it just shows you the different connections that you make with people that you might not expect. I'm just curious about your taste in books as well. And whether you're like, are you drawn to, is it humor or comedy or do you just read everything? Lately, I am reading a lot more. So I started off reading a lot of thrillers. And I still do. mystery and thriller is like very engaging for me um but what i've also like historical fiction has gotten more interesting to me in like multiple different ways i i kind of tell people like even selfishly reading diversely means like you get to experience lots of different things and if you read a lot it's nice to like hear unique perspective

basically. And I think that's kind of where historical fiction, I really got into historical horror on like the other side of things where I was like, this is like a really engaging way to kind especially with historical horror talk about like systems or like events that really were horrific but kind of do it in the abstract. But I have been liking or enjoying more what I'm kind of starting to learn is maybe not like a straight romance, but I've seen some authors making the distinction between like a love story and romance. So like something that similar to yours where like you're kind of you're getting this history that that shows you kind of like why a person is the way that they are. And then there's maybe familial love like platonic like friendship love,

which we definitely see there too. And then romantic love can kind of be mixed in there with it. And I think that is, I'm pulled more and more towards stories like that. Because I think it's kind of like giving you like a full perspective on like life has all of those different kinds of love stories in them. Yeah, it does. And sometimes they all kind of feed off of each other like in this book. because she's got a colleague and a best friend named Katie,

who's a little more like sexually adventurous and she'll date different guys. She feels very prude in comparison, and that kind of pushes her to say, well, maybe I should try this or maybe I should try it, like test her own boundaries a little. Yeah. Having that safe space with a friend,

you trust telling them everything. I think in my own case, a lot of my girlfriends are some of my soulmates. Yes. It's just a different kind of relationship that you have. It is. So, yeah, I just wanted to have a little bit of friends love there and then family love is very important. And I was trying to draw all these different elements in. Yeah.

When you were saying that about your girlfriends, when I was, I did a lot of therapy in my 20s. And my therapist used to say, like, if you distill it down, you basically need like two people in your life. This is a sweeping, sweeping generalization, but it's like your spouse or your partner and then your friend who you can talk to about your spouse and your partner. If you have like both of those covered, like you can actually like really cover a lot of your life with even just like those two relationships. And obviously I think you can have multiple women or men that are that are not your spouse that can kind of help you in that sense.

But I think it is it's so important to still be able to have. like a perspective outside of the people that you live with you've been too yeah sure and i just find again it's kind of like what we're saying before with compartmentalizing life a little bit so my husband is my love and my best friend but then i also have like two or three really solid girlfriends that are just you know right or die yeah and then the colleagues who have become one or two who are super close at work um yeah magazine editor by day so it's just the different, you know, and then there's the mom friend who understands when kids are baby and you just need to vent.

Each, like, area of my life has about one or two. Yeah. People. Yeah. Yeah. It makes things better, more enjoyable, more livable. I mean so do. Yeah.

There's, there's also a big, I think one of the big conflicts for Mia is the, like, personal freedom and like individuation and like being able to be her own person and be okay with who that is versus wanting to like be in community and have like a sense of belonging whether it's the cultural and historical one or even like in stand up like wanting to to be a part of that community as well so did that theme kind of emerge as you were writing or was it kind of like all there in your head from the beginning too. Not really. I think with her, I just really wanted to have somebody who seemed like on stage they were

one person and offstage they were another. And then I needed to figure out what that offstage persona was like. And I think contrast creates really nice tension for a story. She was equally just funny and bubbly and very outgoing. It wouldn't be as interesting. So I tried to make a little bit of contrast and then, and then played that up with the culture. And the fact that she leaves with her grandparents

and this is quieter, sheltered life. And she just feels like she has to do the right thing. And they've sacrificed so much for her. So she's trying to be really good for them. So there was a bit of that element. And then part of it was just shattering some stereotypes. You know, I think like what we were saying earlier about headlines. So there's an idea that we will have of what an Arab woman is like.

But Arab women are many different things. said earlier. Some can be very conservative, some can be very open, and everything between. It's a spectrum. So I try to have different examples of those in the books. There's a neighbor who moves in, who's a, I think she's a pianist in the novel. Her name is Fadra. And she's very outgoing. So Mia sees that. And she's like, oh, okay, it's almost like she didn't know that that would be okay. And then she's to test her own boundaries a little bit. So it is understanding how you can be your own person with what you're given. Yes.

Yeah. The other thing that I feel like I hear about, whether it's in fiction or like even like TV, is kind of what you were touching on. It's not always from a toxic or really negative place, but the pressure to succeed a certain way or like, even like live a certain way is is really present especially for daughters even in situations like Mia's and hers is obviously like it's with her grandparents but there is she feels the pressure to like make them proud because of like everything they did to give her this life and

what was kind of like important to you about kind of showing that like it's not even always that it's like guilt being put on her, like actively. It's just, that's kind of there when you hear those stories. Yeah, I just feel like it's something that's so universal among women in general. And just at every stage in my life, you know, who you marry or how many, if you want children, how many children you're going to have, how you're raising them, whether you're going to work or not when you have kids. So it just feels like women are required to justify themselves so much more with the decision

they make. And I wanted to bring in an element of that, you know, it's, I wish that

we could just be a little bit more free. We just want to do what we want. Yeah. So I think

part of it was just that universality and this is why the book also did well because it's not just like that

Arab woman experience. It is really just every woman. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if you face the same,

but just basically being challenged every time you're making a big life decision on but is this right for you yes yeah when you were talking about it earlier was making me think of how there I think there's some women if we talk about feminism or womanism whichever one you even really want to call it there are some who are like or I've had some conversations before where they're like but I love staying home with my kids and that's what I want to do and like that's what matters to me and I'm like the point is still that you get to choose to do that.

Like the point is just that like women can, you know, see take or like see other women doing something kind of maybe they even want to try that out. And then they're like, no, that wasn't for me. Like, but this is. And I think it is. It's so important to be able to like represent that when we're talking about like women and women's rights and stuff. Like the point is just to have more choice and autonomy, not not to.

not to say either, like, either side of the spectrum is the right one. Yeah. Just not to have to justify it. Like, if you're really being at home and you don't have kids, you want to be, you know, we just made to justify our decisions I find a lot more. I agree. It would be great to just have that freedom to just do a lot and not have to explain. Yeah.

Yeah, I totally agree. In my own case, I'm an author, so I have the books, which, as you know, in publishing things take a really long time. So, like this book deal that I got, it took two years for the book to come out. It's a two-book deal, so there's a second novel that's coming out next year. This is such a long, you know? Yeah. And I used to work in journalism and newspapers and daily, and there's that hustle, and I worked in tech. So I also have a day job where I'm a magazine editor.

I know my mom with two kids. Wow. People always ask me like, oh, that sounds like a lot and how do you do it? But this is my pace. Like I know what I can do. I'm also not like a brain surgeon or my capacity, you know? So I just find that I face it at different stages. Yeah.

And yeah. Yeah, it's just about, yeah, knowing what works for you and what you enjoy and what you want to do. Yeah. Because to your point, I don't have kids and I do, I mean, I do work from home, but I do love to be at home too. Like just by nature of being introverted even. I love to be at home. Yes. It's literally the best.

I do like going out and, you know, seeing, especially like book events. Like, that's been really fun. It's like a good version of like finding your people really. Like, okay, so I do enjoy going and doing this. But I'm absolutely. a home body. Yeah, I mean, I'd say half my career was work from home jobs and tech. I love being at home. There's a bit of that introvert quality. Like, I love to read. I love to cook and be with my kids. But there is that social element as well that I do sometimes because that's where you get inspiration.

Like to write means that you're observing stuff and then sing it, you know. So I do like to get out there. Yeah. I love, I love being at home. I love my couch. I love a good snuggle in. I love tea. Yes. Yes. I'll see you and be really happy. Yeah. Yeah, I'm exactly the same way. Well, I really enjoyed the book, as you can probably tell. And I think a lot of the listeners would really enjoy it, do especially if you just enjoy stand-up comedy. It was interesting. I read this one around the same time that I read a book called Into the the blue that just came out. And it is like improv and stand up too. And I was like, I'm just having a very like stand up heavy month, which is fun because like I enjoy that a lot outside of books. So if anyone else enjoys, enjoys that as like a like not a subplot, but like a part of the story. I think they'd really, really enjoy this as well. And obviously I really liked the audio. So I definitely recommend that for everyone listening. But since you did say you always, you don't

also love being at home reading books. I do always ask if there are any books you've read recently that you really loved or if there are books that like you recommend all the time to people. There are books I recommend all the time. I mean, I love Handmaid's Tale. I think that's just a good classic and I loved it way before they did the show. Right. So that's a good one. I'm reading a book now that I actually really like. It's called Bittersweet by I think Hattie. Williams. It's about a, she's a publicist who works for at a publishing house and her literary idol is the author that they have in house and he has a new book coming out and he's older. He's like 20 years older than her and she gets placed on his new book to do the marketing for it and then

they have this torrid love affair that's really, really inappropriate. Yes. And it takes place in London. Oh, nice. But it's interesting, and it's just, you know, I'm always intrigued about these characters that make very bad decisions and watch them going through it. You're just watching someone kind of fall off a cliff and it's fascinating. But you empath.

Yeah, you can just, you can't look away, but you're like, I'm glad this isn't my life. Yeah. Yeah. What about you? So I just finished one called Heather by Caitlin Mullen. it comes out in July or August. And it's like a really, really good literary mystery. And it's like a small town cop basically gets assigned to a case and she learns a lot of secrets about her small town.

It's kind of the best spoiler-free way. Yeah. But I can say it. But it definitely like really examines what women get blamed for. in cases where often it's men who've actually like caused the problem. So it was like very emotional and very good. And then well into the blue, I can't stop talking about that one. That was that one was really good. I read that one recently. And then also good people by Pet Mena Sabit just came out, I think in February. It's a story told all through transcripts.

And so in this community, there is a teenage girl who dies under maybe mysterious circumstances or like unsure circumstances. But you can't, you don't know. And so it's all of the community talking about this Afghan family who's living in Virginia. And so like every I listened to it instead of like read reading it like every like 45 minutes, like your own opinion is changing. So like she just like yeah, she just keeps like rotating it back and forth. And I think I think it was a book of the month pick too here recently. But I was hooked and like you just like you'll hear you kind of hear like. people from like their Afghan community who are like who they kind of think that they've gone

too American and they're too lax with their daughter but then like the white Americans in the community are like they were so restrictive with her and like didn't let her do anything so you're getting like these very different perspectives and it like I I still don't know totally what I think happened which is the point of the book and like those two good people into the blue, I think will be in my top five of like 26. And I read them back to back. And I was like, I'm going to have like the worst book hangover. They sound like, I'm going to have to look that up.

There are a lot of novels that keep coming up on Instagram a lot lately. Like there are some, a lot of buzzy books I haven't picked up. Yeah. Here and correspondence. So those are on my two. be read list as well yeah i want i need to read the correspondent yesterday years is wild yeah you read it yes i i had an arc of it and i read it back in february um and like i'm a pastor's kid who very much grew up around very performative evangelical christianity and so to me there was a lot that i was like

I'm like, I relate to, I don't relate to the main character. It's one of the most unlikable characters I've ever read. I relate to being around women like her was how I felt. But it's divisive and I understand why it's divisive. And so, yeah, it's, you are, you are just seeing it all over Instagram right now because people have such conflict and feelings. Yeah, exciting. But it's nice.

I love to see people getting worked up over books. Yes. That's exactly. I'm always like, please like keep books in the zeitgeist as much as we can. Yeah. And that's why what you do is so important. I mean, thank you for having me. It's so nice. I could talk about books and writing for hours. Yes. That's what it means so much to me. I just we, my husband and I like, we produce podcasts for other people. We basically do contact creation for our job. And I got to a point where I was like, wait, like, I love reading. I have all. the equipment for this like could I start a podcast and I started it back in 2021 um and I was like this is so fun um exactly what you said like talking to other people who love books as much as I do and it's like in my day to day life I wasn't always running into people like that yeah so it's so fun to like get to connect with people especially like because the internet means like we don't have to live in the same state yeah yeah it's awesome it's amazing yeah

Well, where can people follow you? Because I am excited to hear there's another book coming out, but where can people follow you to stay up to date? On Instagram, my handle is at by Sarah Hamden. And I should be more active on TikTok at the same handle, but I'm not. It's okay. I lurk for the most part on TikTok. I'm a scroller, but I don't post as much. Yeah. Well, that's awesome. I will put those links. and the show notes and thank you for coming on and talking about it and like writing a fun book that has some stand up in it. Thank you. Thank you for reading it and just for saying all these beautiful things and I'd love for you to read an arc of book too that should hope for us coming out in about six months. Perfect. Yeah. Well, I'll have you back on.