5 Questions with Jumaana Abdu
Jumaana Abdu is a Dal Stivens Award winner and an alumnus of the Wheeler Centre Next Chapter program.
Her work features in Thyme Travellers (Roseway Publishing), an international anthology of Palestinian speculative fiction. She has been published elsewhere in Kill Your Darlings, Westerly, Griffith Review, Meanjin, Liminal, Overland, Debris and New Australian Fiction 2024.
During the day, she is a medical doctor.
(Credit: Aidan Day)
No.1
To my knowledge, Translations was a manuscript that you developed after winning the Dal Stivens Award last year and receiving a Wheeler Centre Next Chapter Fellowship in 2022. How did the storyline evolve over time, and what did it look like bringing the novel to completion?
When I wrote the first draft in 2021, I was socially and creatively isolated. I’d given up on being published, so I wrote for the love of it. Looking back now, that was a gift.
Since I figured no one would read it, I was able to countenance truths I’d found otherwise overwhelming. The Next Chapter fellowship was life changing; Hannah Kent’s mentorship transformed the novel, and it was huge to be taken seriously, given discipline. At points, I was hiding behind an ambiguity that was more like vagueness, and with care and generosity Hannah helped make space for readers without sacrificing the privacy of my characters.
[Later,] on the advice of my friend, Suzy Garcia, I engaged early readers from various backgrounds to get community feedback before entering the publishing whirlwind. With the help of so many, the book was fairly polished by the time I approached an agent. In the end, my publisher and editor were the opposite of all my fears heading into the industry, and [they were also] well-resourced when we came upon sensitive territory. We homed in on the real work: elevating the literary rigour of the novel.
No.2
You’re also a medical doctor. In your opinion, do you see any relation between that and your literary practice at all? How do the two vocations intertwine for you?
Medicine is the art of constructing narratives, guiding people to understand the complex forces affecting their lives, all the signs and symptoms they don’t have the language to describe. You could say the same about writing a novel.
No.3
In another interview, you say that you wrote Translations in your penultimate year of medical school while studying for major exams and attending hospital placements full-time. Do you have any tips for aspiring or emerging writers in terms of juggling writing a book and embarking on major life events such as your own, or even simply a day job?
Creative routine is a luxury but not a necessity. My ‘process’ was frantic and unglamorous. I didn’t have a desk or schedule. I wrote on the couch, in bed, on the floor, while running.
Initially, I used that tip of writing 300 words a day; I’m sure all those words have been deleted now but they got my pen flowing, and then the passion became self-sustaining.
No.4
You also occasionally write nonfiction, and your essay “A Manifesto for the (Diverse) Writer” remains a must-read. Looking back on that essay alongside the publication of Translations, what else would you say now?
My intentions with that essay were firstly to make space for what I wanted to do, and secondly to hold myself accountable to my ideals. The former goal, I think I achieved; readers can judge the latter. The essay is already the product of two years’ ruminating and chafing, so there’s nothing more I can think to add.
No.5
You have such a unique style of writing, often utilising a prose style and voice uncommon in contemporary fiction, particularly in so-called Australia. Who are some of your literary influences?
I’ll mention only what influenced Translations: Charlotte Brontë’s novels gave me prickly, passionate, lonely women fighting for the dignity of their souls. I also used [devices from] Gothic Romance to heighten the spiritual realism of my book.
Elena Ferrante and Nella Larsen taught me how to wield love between women, the blurriness of identity, a spoken word, a comma. Henry James gave me the scaffold of a character study and a wild ending. [Ursula] Le Guin and [John] Steinbeck radicalised my approach to the novel as [a] philosophical, ambiguous manifesto. [Thomas] Hardy taught me musicality, characterisation. Zora Neale Hurston modelled self-illumination. I weaved in the tragedy and monologues of Anouilh’s Medea; Emily Dickinson’s syntax…
And my cinematic influences—don’t get me started! Even the X-Files’ exploration of belief and the unsayable. I’m not just listing things I love; I could pinpoint the major presence of all these texts in my book. I used it all. I was making my own curriculum.
Find out more
Amid a series of personal disasters, Aliyah and her daughter, Sakina, retreat to rural New South Wales to make a new life. Aliyah manages to secure a run-down property and hires a farmhand, Shep, an extremely private Palestinian man and the region’s imām.
During a storm, she drives past the town’s river and happens upon a childhood friend, Hana, who has been living a life of desperation. Aliyah takes her in and tries to navigate the indefinable relationships between both Hana and her farmhand. Tensions rise as Aliyah’s growing bond with Shep strains her devotion to Hana.
Finally, all are thrown together for a reckoning alongside Hana’s brother, Hashim, and Aliyah’s confidante, Billi—a local Kamilaroi midwife she met working at the hospital—while bushfires rage around them.
Get it from Amplify Bookshop here.