Dear friends,
My debut novel, AN IMPOSSIBLE THING TO SAY, is out today. To celebrate, I wanted to recognize ten books that held my hand as I stumbled towards my own.
BRAND NEW ANCIENTS by Kae Tempest
We start with a legend. The work of Kae Tempest is an endless well of inspiration. BRAND NEW ANCIENTS is the one that first captured my imagination and never let go. Originally produced as a play with music at London’s Battersea Arts Centre (in 2013, the same year PigPen closed our first play with music at NYC’s The Gym at Judson), it tells a contemporary story in a certifiably ancient (read: epic) way. Kae reminds us of our timeless vulnerability and our most mythic selves through the blending of theatre, rap, and rhyme. In my book, Omid is a sophomore in high school in 2001 just starting to discover that power, that magic. Fast forward 15 years and I’m sure he’d be standing up front at a Kae Tempest show, mind melting and mesmerized. At 47 pages, this is the shortest book of the ones I’ve chosen to share. You can find a copy and read it (aloud) in a couple of hours. It will stay with you a lot longer than that.
DARIUS THE GREAT IS NOT OKAY by Adib Khorram
There will be a handful of books on this list that directly changed my life, not only by influencing me as a writer, but also by opening doors in publishing for me to walk through. They are the big beautiful elephants in the room I’m now standing in. DARIUS THE GREAT IS NOT OKAY is one such book. Perhaps the most successful YA novel ever written about an Iranian American kid, I read this book in my early thirties and finally realized what all those people talking about “the power” of representation meant. Wait, you mean, books could be about my experience too? I kid you not when I tell you I truly did not consider that a realistic commercial pursuit… even with my years and years and years of arts training. (Or perhaps because of it? A thought for another time.) Iranian American kids in pop culture were just not a thing. We were grouped in as others with other others! We didn’t even have a reliably unique stereotype to combat! We were unacknowledged, or maybe, unseen. But that was all before Darius. Darius was kind, thoughtful, funny, a whole human who loved star trek, had trouble talking to his dad, who asked real questions, and his best friend… was Baha’i! My mom is Baha’i! It felt surreal to be so immediately close to a fictional character. I wanted to make something that might make other young readers feel that way. I’ve thanked Adib many times over for writing it and he is as gracious as one could ever hope to be. An inspiration, in every way.
DATE & TIME by Phil Kaye
Phil Kaye writes his poems with a tenderness that blossoms into wisdom right before your very eyes. Then, when you’re least expecting it, he surprises you with a line that makes you LOL hard. He writes friends and family in a way that makes them feel like your friends and your family. I’ve lost count of all the beautiful moments in this book but I’ll never forget the opener, where he tries to choose a movie to watch with his seven year old self, or a later stunner, where he compares his grandmother’s mind to a ballroom. It’s poems like these, and some incredible conversations with Phil, that made me want to jump back into adolescence and try to find the words to describe it, no matter how impossible it felt. Thanks Phil, for all of it.
THE POET X by Elizabeth Acevedo
THE POET X is a giant. A giant with strong enough shoulders for dozens of novels-in-verse to stand on, revitalizing an entire genre. Before reading X, my experience with novels-in-verse was limited to Karen Hesse’s 1998 Newbery winning OUT OF THE DUST. It told the thoughtful story of a girl trying to survive her family’s dust bowl depression but, appropriately so, it all felt a bit… dusty. It made the free verse form feel old, maybe ancient, certainly from another time… not mine. But Elizabeth Acevedo ripped me from that notion as Xiomara’s incredibly contemporary trials and tribulations, her family, friends, and beliefs, landed me squarely in the now. Acevedo comes from slam, which brings urgency and honesty to the writing, a sense of each line wanting to be spoken out loud - which I tried to bring to the poems in IMPOSSIBLE. But Acevedo also takes the time to set up the written form early on with rules she breaks beautifully later on - in ways that would be impossible to do on stage. This book won pretty much every award there is to win but the real (and shared) reward is all the people (young and old) it inspired to write their own poetry. That is a truly wild and powerful thing. I’ve since read dozens of other stunning novels-in-verse but this was the one that pulled me back in and I’m very grateful.
BOOK OF RHYMES: THE POETICS OF HIP HOP by Adam Bradley
Adam Bradley’s BOOK OF RHYMES: THE POETICS OF HIP HOP is simply one of my favorite books ever written. It’s part love letter part genealogy record part masterwork of artistic analysis. As a kid who loved rap and poetry but had no real community to talk to about either, this book became my best friend late in life. I carried it on me for like 18 months straight back in 2016, when I committed myself to taking my own writing more seriously. Bradley lays bare the shared virtuosity of writers like Poe, Nas, Eliot, and Wayne, sometimes in the same breath, not in a way that feels supremely cheeseball, but in a way that feels powerfully true to those of us who felt that connection in our bones before we had the language to articulate it. My time spent with this book made the storytelling tenets of rhyme, rhythm, and style all the more graspable, universal, and brilliant. I read it several times over then went and bought the new edition just to read Bradley’s thoughts on Kendrick. Annnnd now I’m off to read it again…
THE LIMITS OF WHITENESS by Neda Maghbouleh
THE LIMITS OF WHITENESS gets the George Washington spot on my Mt. Rushmore of books about being Iranian American. Its strength is that it’s an easily readable and meticulously researched sociology text. Its weakness is that it made me ugly cry. Or maybe that’s my weakness? Or maybe that’s not a weakness at all. This book isn’t about just one or two of us, it’s about all of us. It’s about our displacement in America and our redefinition of America. It’s about the fights we have with our parents over what color we are, what name to call ourselves, what language to speak. There are reasons for those fights, that stem from misguided Iranian thinking and misguided American lawmaking, and Maghbouleh has done the wildly important work of sifting through history to lay it all out here. This book made me feel less alone, and to be very honest, less crazy. It provided a framework to build upon when I think of my own Iranian American identity and the confidence to write a story that hopes to examine the consequences of America’s Black and White binary. There’s a poem in IMPOSSIBLE that is a direct nod to LIMITS, but LIMITS feels like a direct nod to my whole life, so it was inevitable really.
GO AHEAD IN THE RAIN: Notes to a tribe called quest by Hanif Abdurraqib
Hanif Abdurraqib’s love is considered and contagious. He’s a brilliant poet, essayist, and critic with an unsurpassed ability to contextualize culture. Whenever I read a piece by Hanif about something he cares about, I am suddenly reading about something I care about too? But when he chooses to write about something I’ve long loved… it’s special. My introduction to his writing was GO AHEAD IN THE RAIN, perhaps the greatest piece of fan mail ever written. I was enthralled by his “love letter”, not only because it’s a kaleidoscopic ode to a seminal rap group, but because Hanif seems to have somehow x-ray visioned himself into the collaborative creative process. I read this book in hotel rooms and in the van on tour with my own band, another group, of another sound, of another era, and it was deeply gratifying. It made me want to explore my own relationship with the music that moved me and put me on my path towards the arts. That exploration lead to my first novel. In IMPOSSIBLE, Omid gets into lots of the bands and rappers I was into, but his love of Tribe is a tiny tribute to Hanif’s love.
LONG WAY DOWN by Jason Reynolds
LONG WAY DOWN by Jason Reynolds is my favorite novel in verse. It’s a word for word weight in gold storytelling wonder. It’s got that concept album execution (the majority of the book takes place in a single elevator ride) with one of my top 10 final lines of all time. But more than anything, the language is spare and stunning. In a book of Very Good Poems featuring a Healthy Dose of Magic… Will feels incredibly REAL. You are so drawn in by his story, you forget about the form. And when the form is this good, that’s saying something. I can flip to any page and find something to aspire to. I won’t say more because I don’t want to ruin the ride. Read this one, friends.
EVERYTHING SAD IS UNTRUE by Daniel Nayeri
EVERYTHING SAD IS UNTRUE is the book I waited a whole life for. When I finished reading it, I immediately bought ten copies to send to my closest friends. I needed them to hear an Iranian American story told so… perfectly. Daniel Nayeri is a master storyteller. His ease is evidence. He understands the form and function of story in a way so few do, in a way that assures his place in the literary canon. Combine that with wit, wisdom, and an unbelievable (true) story and you’ve got something special. It has been the joy of joys getting to know Daniel. It’s still surreal that his quote appears on my cover and I’m so grateful to be in conversation with him in LA on Oct 3rd. This masterpiece won the Printz and made so many of us unbelievably proud. Read it if you haven’t, friends.
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM by William Shakespeare
Before I wanted to be a writer, I wanted to be an actor. Before I wanted to be an actor, I just wanted to be Nick Bottom The Weaver. Before my book was called AN IMPOSSIBLE THING TO SAY, my book was called THE WEAVER. The name changed but every thread remains. I’ve been sifting through my thoughts surrounding A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM since childhood. It was the core story of my life during my formative years. I played Bottom twice. Once in middle school, then again in high school. I’ll never forget that feeling of instant connection. But what took me longer to figure out is why I had that feeling. Bottom taught me so much about performance and friendship and hubris while Shakespeare was quietly teaching me how to build worlds and test assumptions and love language. As I was finishing the final draft of my book I flew myself to The Globe in London and just sat in the theatre, overwhelmed and in awe of what stories can do. AN IMPOSSIBLE THING TO SAY is out now. I am wildly grateful. I hope you enjoy it.
With love,
Arya Shahi