5 Questions with Yumna Kassab
Yumna Kassab is a writer from Western Sydney. She studied medical science and neuroscience at university. Her first book of short stories, The House of Youssef, has been listed for prizes including the Victorian Premier's Literary Award, Queensland Literary Award, NSW Premier's Literary Award and The Stella Prize.
(Credit: Tiger Webb)
No.1
To me, Australiana is an even greater accomplishment than The House of Youssef, your debut collection of short stories. Not only does it explode form, there’s an element of risk-taking in your prose which I found very exciting. And instead of Western Sydney, your focus is now on regional Australia. Can you tell us how the book was first conceived?
What interests me the most as a writer is the experiment. Perhaps this also explains my attraction to science as a discipline. In both areas (literature and science), I care for innovation, for taking risks.
Any form that doesn’t involve risk-taking is dying. One may occasionally lament how language changes with the times but in its essence, language is a tool of expression, and if the language is acquiring new words, it is in a good state. If it is not, the language is in decline, and the same principle can be extended to any discipline.
These are turbulent times and we need writing that is brazen and audacious. This is not a time for shyness or for settling into comfortable forms. The world requires freshness, it requires new ideas. It is a time to consider what is useful from the past and then to walk into the darkness if we must.
How does this relate to Australiana? I did not want to write The House of Youssef 2.0, just as I now have no intention of writing Australiana 2.0. I am greatly affected by the places I find myself in. I tend to go through life with an attitude of curious expectation, and if one pays attention, the stories are there to be had. They are poised and waiting for the writer to pluck them from the metaphorical air. That is how Australiana was written. That is how everything is written.
No.2
You are one of the most experimental writers in Australian letters. What would you say to someone who would like to pursue experimentalism in a literary landscape that has traditionally been conservative both in form and identity?
As artists, we should be aware of conventions but we shouldn’t let them trouble or confine us. Go forward. Own the words, own the language, own the form.
One of the most interesting essays I have ever read is ‘The Argentine Writer and Tradition’ by Jorge Luis Borges. It is an essay I reference again and again. Borges makes a compelling argument for people who occupy two languages. We have many migrants here, people who live across languages, and such people live in the border world of possibilities and they can pick and choose what suits them from each world.
There is a great advantage to such a position, and Borges states that these borderland writers who can move freely between two worlds are not so confined by conventions, thus freeing them to innovate as they please.
If you are such a writer, you stand on the precipice of possibilities. If the writing is strange, if it refuses to conform to the structures that dominate the literary landscape, then let the writing be.
I think of literature as a world conversation and experimental writing expands humanity’s possibilities.
No.3
Who or what inspired you while in the process of writing Australiana?
Australiana draws heavily on the landscape in and around Tamworth. To my eye, it’s a vivid landscape and as soon as I arrived, there were lines and people that impressed themselves upon me.
I use the example of the bushranger of Captain Thunderbolt. If someone had predicted I would write a sequence about a bushranger, I would have laughed. I am not sure I understand the interest in bushrangers and having written about Captain Thunderbolt in Australiana, I am no wiser than I was in the past. I am also aware that by writing about a bushranger, I have contributed to the preoccupation with these mythologised figures.
Why did I write about Captain Thunderbolt? I wrote about him because there were many references to him across the New England region. He is an inescapable presence, and the same could also be said about the other parts of Australiana. Pilliga started with a line: ‘You don’t go into the Pilliga at night.’ When this was said to me, I immediately wanted to know the why, how, when, where? The details recounted sounded like an urban legend.
There is a lot of variety in Australiana. There are fables, fairytales, ghost stories, there are poems, and I like to think of the book as an act of layering in order to cycle freely and tell the story of the community.
No.4
When I read The House of Youssef, one thing that interested me greatly was that some characters seemed to move from one single story to the next, creating a world in the book that had the effect of organically seeing snippets of someone’s life come together. You do this too in Australiana, albeit in a more wide-ranging sense. I wonder if you will tell us about your world-building process?
I write in a continuous way. I believe that one day when my stories are stacked up, they will tell one continuous story. I write constantly. There are links between the stories and they speak to each other in a sense.
I try to find freedom in my writing, to write what I wish and then decide later where the pieces belong. If a group of stories share a similarity (a theme and/or setting), [then] I will put them together.
If a story is a true individualist and is an outlier, I simply let it be. I believe the stories themselves dictate their form and how they’d like to be presented, and my function as a writer is that of a scribe, i.e. to be as true as possible to the stories that I write.
There are two schools of thought when it comes to the process of writing. The first school starts with a plan and then as carefully as possible, the writer tries to unfold their plan. The second school starts with a line and goes off on an adventure to find out what happens next. There are many possibilities and few expectations.
I belong to the second group, and it is useful to know where your allegiance lies. One school is not better than the other but each writer will find their natural form within these two schools.
The other point I will add is that I think in tangents. Our writing reveals us in the most personal way. My thinking is very much a web, so detours and tangents are natural to my way of thinking, and that expresses itself in the writing as well.
No.5
What do you think are some responsibilities novelists have, if at all? What are some good writing habits to cultivate, whether directly related to the act of writing or not?
What responsibilities do we have? One expects courtesy and respect from all human beings towards all other human beings.
Beyond that, the responsibility of the writer is to their vision: to choose their words carefully, to exercise discipline and creativity, and to write with an eye towards humanity. Maintaining an attitude of peace in one’s personal and daily life does also aids the creativity.
Useful habits? Pay attention to the world around you. Write daily. Don’t judge the words. This is your universe. Protect it with silence and be kind to it. Also, sit in your chair and write what needs to be written. If you don’t do it, trust me, no one else will.
Find out more
From the acclaimed author of The House of Youssef comes this extraordinary and unique novel shining a light on Australian rural life.
This could be any small town. It aches under the heat of summer. It flourishes in the cooler months. Everyone knows everyone. Their families, histories and stories are interwoven and well-known by one and all. Or at least, they think they are. But no-one sees anything quite the same way. Perceptions differ, truths are elusive, judgements have outcomes and everything is connected. For better or for worse.
This is a version of small-town Australia that is recognisable, both familiar and new, exploring the characters, threads, and connections that detail everyday life to reveal a much bigger story. A tapestry that makes up this place called home.
Get it from Ultimo Press here or at all good bookstores.