The Language of Baklava: Diana Abu-Jaber

"The late afternoon swirls in the house with shadows, and in the kitchen it smells like onions frying in butter. There have been some changes at home since I've started school. For one thing, there's a new baby in the crib, grumbling, a big, loud complainer. One-year-old Monica has a special way of rocking her crib so it chugs through the room on its wheels like a train engine. And the other baby, my sister Suzy, has been displaced. She's nearly three, barely able to amble around, but she frequently points to the second baby and says, 'Get that kid outta here!'" From THE LANGUAGE OF BAKLAVA

ROBERTA: Today JRW welcomes writer Diana Abu-Jaber, one of the speakers I heard at the Key West Literary Seminar on food writing in January. She has written three well-received novels (one a mystery, ORIGIN) and a lovely memoir called THE LANGUAGE OF BAKLAVA. She is a writer-in-residence in the English Department at Portland State University in Oregon. Welcome Diana!

There are so many amazing moments in your memoir--your visit to the
Chinese restaurant with your grandmother, the desperate suicide
attempts by Mr. Basilovich, the lesson in pastry, adolescence, and
world peace given by another grandmother, the visits to your
extraordinary relatives in Jordan...I had to wonder as I read how you
could remember all these events in such detail? Are you a
journal-keeper?

DIANA: I've kept journals all my life, which helps enormously--especially when it comes to details. Beyond that, the truth is that I only tell the stories that I can actually remember-- the hazy stuff doesn't make it into my narratives. I think that the more funny or dramatic an experience is, the more clearly you're going to remember it, and the more you'll want to re-tell it in some fashion. In my case, that's especially true if there's some food component to it: that's such an important filter for me.

ROBERTA: In one of the sessions at the seminar, you were on a panel of writers discussing the process of writing a memoir and your families' reactions to what you'd written. I believe you made the comment that writing fiction doesn't work as a "cloak"--could you talk a little about how you manage to write your own story without impinging on the lives of relations and friends? How did your family feel about what you'd written?

DIANA: If you're going to tell your life story, unless you're a hermit, it's virtually impossible to do so without some sort of portrayal of others and interpretation of their experiences. And yes, even fiction tends to spring from the details and memories of real life experience. Once you accept that, you see the only way out is through, so to speak. You've got to go for it or risk shutting down completely. When I write in the memoir form, I strive to be emotionally honest, respectful, and to try and stay inside my own head. I might report on what others say and do, but, if possible, I try not to wildly project what I imagine they're thinking and feeling. I try to stay the butt of my own joke-- if that makes any sense. When I was writing The Language of Baklava, a therapist told me, "Everyone has the right to their own story. If they don't like yours, let them write their own!" I returned to those words frequently while I was writing.

ROBERTA: One of the themes in THE LANGUAGE OF BAKLAVA is how your
father and his family felt torn between their two countries, the US and Jordan. Your father came to the US impulsively, married an American woman, and moved you and your family to Jordan and then back to the US over the course of your childhood. Remarkably, you seem to
have been able to adapt to living wherever you moved. Could you tell us something about that experience. (And is this related to your two places of residence now??)

DIANA: When I was younger it wasn't too bad. My parents weren't the sort to "check in" with the kids a lot. They just kind of made their plans and then sprung them on us. One second we'd be living in Syracuse, the next, surprise! We'd be on a plane to the Middle East! I didn't have much choice but to swing with it all. And for a while it was even kind of fun--I was up for anything when I was 8, especially if ice cream was involved. But after I hit adolescence, the fun started to wear off-- I wanted to stay in one place and go to one school and I had a lot of fights with my parents about that (which I lost.) It is funny that once I grew up, I seem to have inherited some of that fever from my folks, though. I moved a lot as an academic and now I spend the fall in Oregon where I teach at Portland State University, then retreat to Miami for the rest of the year. I have to admit, it does keep things lively: my husband says that I'm a "genetic bedouin."

ROBERTA: I don't want to hog all the air time, but I would love to hear a little more about your mother. Your father is such a dramatic, expansive character. She must have been a remarkable woman to choose him and agree to follow him through some amazing adventures!

DIANA: Mom has the patience of an Irish-Catholic saint. She's patient and thoughtful where Dad is impulsive and zany, and I think my father was just really smart and/or lucky to have married someone who could keep him from spinning into outer space. Mom was the one who taught me to love books and the importance of listening. If you're always talking (like my father) you never really make very much progress. Dad was supposedly the creative genius in the family but Mom was the attentive audience-- which I believe is its own form of genius.

ROBERTA: And one last question, what's coming next?

DIANA: My next novel, Birds of Paradise, is coming out this September from Norton. I'm very excited about it because it brings together several of my own literary obsessions-- French pastry, the lushness of Miami, and a family mystery-- a vanished daughter. And as for work in progress, I'm working on a follow up to The Language of Baklava, which I may call Cooking For Grace. It's about my own journey as a writer and the struggle to hang on to a creative life while taking my first steps into new motherhood. Baby steps.

ROBERTA: Thanks so much Diana! You all really must read this book. And now--your questions! (And come back tomorrow for part two, which involves shish kabobs...)