PIEN HUANG, HOST:
Betty Shamieh is the author of 15 plays, but when she sat down to write her first book, she set out to create something really different, what she calls a Palestinian American "Sex And The City." The result is her debut novel, "Too Soon." It's a funny, sexy romance novel about women falling for the wrong men. The book follows three generations of Palestinian American women, and their lives echo each other, even as they're shaped by the different times in which they lived. It also has elements of a tragedy written as a comedy. Betty Shamieh joins us now to talk more about it. Welcome to the show, Betty.
BETTY SHAMIEH: Thank you.
HUANG: So, Betty, I love a good love triangle. And your main character, a woman named Arabella, finds herself drawn to two very different men. Tell us a little bit about Arabella and the dilemma that she faces.
SHAMIEH: Arabella is in love with two men at the same time and trying to decide between two very different futures. Her grandmother, who's very feisty, sets her up with Aziz, who's a medic serving in Gaza. This is 2012, so it's a very different Gaza. And he's kind of everything she's supposed to want to marry, which is a doctor from her culture. She's very attracted to the idea of him, but she's also very attracted to Yoav, who is an Israeli American theater artist who she's known for 20 years and who she works with and is kind of her chief champion in American theater. So what she's basically choosing is the future of what kind of family she's going to make and what that's going to look like.
HUANG: Yeah. Like, she's at a crossroads. Like, she's sort of got these two different versions of herself that she could be.
SHAMIEH: Right. And it will impact future generations. And I think that that is one of the reasons why the book pulls back and starts to show you the different generations 'cause for me, it was difficult for me to show a Palestinian American making their way in the world without contending with how the people before her lost their home. And I want to say, she's very much an antiheroine. And I love that she's very aware of all her darker impulses, and I think that that's where the comedy of the book really lies.
HUANG: Right. Like, Arabella actually starts the book off saying, like, you can't hate me more than I hate myself.
SHAMIEH: (Laughter) And it's funny. There's a truth-telling to her that I think that people are really responding to. But she's very in touch with what she hates about herself.
HUANG: Yeah. And what would you say are Arabella's - like, the flaws that she wears on her sleeve? Like, I mean, you know, she's got thoughts that are not necessarily kind all the time. But, like, what is...
SHAMIEH: (Laughter).
HUANG: What about Arabella is she sort of playing with here?
SHAMIEH: Well, I think the thing that Arabella is dealing with is the idea of assimilation and access and proximity to power. And so she doesn't want to be seen as a Palestinian because she thinks that that will make her less powerful in this culture. That push and pull between trying to be universal but also trying to represent is something she's not interested in engaging at the start of the book.
HUANG: Yeah. I mean, this is a tension that seems, you know, very real and very considered. I'm wondering if this is something that, you know, you've felt, you know, now or at various points in your career.
SHAMIEH: I definitely think being a Palestinian is always politicized. And sometimes, it's easier to just not engage with things that are hot-button issues all the time. I mean, I spent 20 years writing plays about Palestinian issues. And I actually did not want to write this book. This book erupted out of me. You know, I've spent two decades writing about these issues. I'm the first Palestinian American to be produced off Broadway. This is, you know, something that - I did my duty to my people. I'm going to go to LA. I'm going to try to make a lot of money in TV, and then kind of the last thing my soul wanted to do was to confront these issues head-on.
And, again, I started this book 10 years ago. So the Gaza of 2012 is very different than, you know, the devastation that is right now. So this is not a book or issue that I felt like I really wanted to delve into. I felt like I had to write this book, and I had to write it in a way that was three generations of Palestinian women behaving badly and betraying each other and themselves.
HUANG: Yeah. Well, let's talk about those three generations of women. I mean, you know, the story is not just about Arabella. It's also told from the perspective of her grandmother and her mother, both of whom were born in Palestine and left in the 1960s. But their lives really do seem to echo each other in some important ways. Like, what is it that kind of stays the same between these generations?
SHAMIEH: Well, they are all salacious women, and they are all going for what they want, and that's where the love triangles come in. So that is something that I really wanted to highlight, the humanity of Palestinian women, that we are and do and feel just like everybody else.
I mean, one of, I think, the funnier moments in the book is when the grandmother, you know, who is in love with a man who visits her, finds out she has to leave her home because of war. And all she's worried about is this man who's sitting at - you know, she's married and has seven children, but she's in love with him. And that's the thing that's human about our experience, that no matter what is going on, you know, we still want to be loved by the people we love. We still want to be attractive. We still want to be powerful and interesting. And you don't lose that just because you're in the midst of a war or in the midst of displacement.
HUANG: In the book, Arabella's approach to theater is described as staging comedies as if they were tragedies and vice versa. I'm wondering if you think that applies to your own work.
SHAMIEH: Absolutely. I like to surprise an audience, you know? And I think comedy is the one way to humanize. But also, like, I write books and I read books because I'm so in love with life that I'm not content to only experience what I can experience within my own skin. I need to know and feel what other people feel. And so to me, what is really, really exciting about telling stories is that ability to give people an inside view into these experiences that they would never know unless they, you know, pick up a book by someone who's vastly different from them.
HUANG: That's Betty Shamieh. Her debut novel is "Too Soon." Betty, thank you for joining us.
SHAMIEH: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
