We had the pleasure of chatting with author Safia Elhillo about Home Is Not A Country, which is a mesmerising novel in verse about family, identity, and finding yourself in the most unexpected places–for fans of The Poet X, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, and Jason Reynolds.
Hi, Safia! Tell us a bit about yourself!
Hi! I am a Sudanese-American poet, Sagittarius sun and moon, eldest daughter and older sister currently living in Oakland, California.
After the chaos that was 2020, have you set any goals for this year? If so, how are they going so far?
Mainly I hope to spend this year recovering from 2020—so far it isn’t working, but I recently bought a hammock so I think that will help. I’d also like to finish drafts of the two new books I’m working on at the moment!
Quick lightning round! Tell us the first book you ever remember reading, the one that made you want to become an author, and one that you can’t stop thinking about!
I remember reading a book called “The Baby Dinosaur” to my baby brother when he was very tiny, so I might have been around 5 or 6 years old? Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson is what keeps me coming back to writing—I want to write something that makes my brain feel the way reading that book makes it feel. And I can’t stop thinking about the chapbook “Enumeration” by Sadia Hassan—those poems are so precise and haunting and they will sit with me for a long, long time.
When did you first discover your love for writing?
I remember a school assignment, in either the sixth or seventh grade, where we had to summarize a chapter of The Odyssey as an original poem (mine was about Nausicaa). I hadn’t really done a whole lot of creative writing up until that point, and it was the first time I’d ever felt like I was good at something. So I think that first spark of love was then, but for a while I didn’t really follow up on it. And then around my sophomore year of high school, a friend convinced me to join an online poetry website, like a message-board style website, with her, and that was my first experience with a poetry community and getting feedback and edits on poems. And later that summer I joined a youth poetry slam team, and I think that was when poetry became something I thought about every day in some way.
Your YA debut, Home Is Not A Country, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Time travel; Arabic pop music.
What can readers expect?
It’s a novel in verse about how thin the barriers are between possibilities, between our world and other worlds, our lives and other lives. I think of it as set in the real world even with all the magic and the journey through time.
What was the spark that made you want to write Home Is Not A Country?
The idea at the heart of Home Is Not A Country was originally a single poem, called “yasmeen,” a contrapuntal poem about my obsession with the name I was almost given. I’ve been obsessed for a long time with the idea of alternate or parallel selves, especially in the context of diaspora—who would I be if I had only grown up back home, how would I be different, that sort of thing. And once I’d finished the one poem, I realized I’d only scratched the surface of everything I wanted to say about this.
What do you hope readers will take away from Home Is Not A Country?
That countries are made up and belonging is about something more intimate, more active, more like love and less like a flag.
What’s the best and the worst writing advice you have received?
The Toni Morrison quote “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it” has shaped my whole life. And the worst advice was more about performing or reading poems rather than writing them, but I remember being told once that I should stop dressing so loudly when reading my poems because my outfits took away from the sadness or seriousness of the work, apparently. I think the specific item of clothing was a pair of bright orange, high-waisted satin pants which I absolutely loved wearing.
What’s next for you?
I’m finishing up a book of poems called GIRLS THAT NEVER DIE which is forthcoming from One World/Random House, and also working on a still-untitled second YA novel in verse!
Lastly, do you have any book recommendations for our readers?
I know I already talked about Autobiography of Red but it’s seriously so good—I loved it even before knowing it was a novel in verse, when I just thought of it as a book of connected poems. It’s so beautiful and so strange and surprisingly funny.
