Sarah Thankam Mathews, ALL THIS COULD BE DIFFERENT: A Novel
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[0:58]Sarah Thungam Matthews is the author of All This Could Be Different, a novel.
[1:03]Sarah grew up between Oman and India, immigrating to the United States at 17.
[1:08]Her work has been published in Best American Short Stories, and she is recipient of fellowships from the Asian American Writers Workshop,
[1:14]and the Iowa Writers Workshop.
[1:16]In 2020, she founded the Mutual Aid Group, Bed Stye Strong.
[1:19]All This Could Be Different is her first novel, and it is shortlisted for the National Book Awards,
[1:26]she will take place on Wednesday, November 16.
[1:29]So stay tuned to see if Sarah ends up taking home the National Book Award.
[1:34]Welcome, Sarah.
[1:35]Thank you so much for coming on Momstone.
[1:37]Have time to read books to discuss.
[1:39]All This Could Be Different, a National Book Awards, shortlisted candidate.
[1:44]So congratulations.
[1:45]Thank you so much.
[1:46]It's so lovely to be here and be talking to you, Zivi.
[1:49]You too.
[1:50]Okay.
[1:51]So for listeners who don't know yet, what is your book about?
[1:55]All This Could Be Different is in some ways like a classic coming of age story.
[2:01]But it also does, you know, interesting and like slightly different things with the form.
[2:05]In a sentence, it's the story of Sneha, this young Indian woman who's fresh out of college,
[2:10]who moves to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a city where she knows nobody,
[2:14]and reckons with over the course of a year, and then some, but mostly over the course of a year,
[2:20]she knows what she means with her first job, her first love and her first real friends.
[2:25]Wow.
[2:26]I have to say, Milwaukee came across as a pretty small town.
[2:29]After this book, everybody, she meets, she kind of sees again or not everybody.
[2:34]I've never actually been to Milwaukee.
[2:36]So this is really interesting for me.
[2:38]How did you pick Milwaukee?
[2:40]Well, I think there were sort of multiple pieces at play for me.
[2:43]I think one, you know, I lived in Milwaukee after undergrad.
[2:47]And it was a really important and formative time in my life.
[2:51]And one that at the time when I was writing this book in my late 20s,
[2:55]I finally felt like I had perspective on.
[2:57]So I think part of it was just like autobiographical inspiration.
[3:01]But I also really wanted to in some ways write a love letter to the city that I think is often underestimated
[3:09]and passed over like much of the Midwest is when it comes to, I think East Coast summations of the middle of the country.
[3:16]And then finally, you know, the Milwaukee is a very interesting political history and a radical political history.
[3:21]And that's something that comes up in the novel as well.
[3:24]How what made you move there after undergrad? What were you doing?
[3:28]I took a job that required that I moved there again to stay vague about it.
[3:33]Yeah, I mean, I think that, I mean, that is the answer, you know, I think that there are many things in my novel that are drawn from an inspired by real life.
[3:45]But at the end of the day, it isn't a memoir.
[3:48]And so I'm thoughtful about how I talk about it in so many ways.
[3:53]I really approach this novel, which is not the first novel I've ever written.
[3:57]It's just the first novel I've ever published.
[3:59]I've approached this novel with this question of what do I want other people to think about?
[4:05]You know, what do I want readers to think about much more than I thought about here.
[4:09]Let me tell some facsimile of my story.
[4:12]Yeah, I moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to work much like my protagonist.
[4:18]A, you know, contract fall as a consultant.
[4:22]Nice. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cry.
[4:25]It doesn't matter.
[4:26]And of course, it's not a memoir.
[4:27]It's a wonderful novel.
[4:29]And we can get back to that.
[4:31]I was just curious.
[4:32]It's just totally curious.
[4:33]I went to business school and a bunch of people graduated and went there to work.
[4:37]So I was just, anyway, doesn't matter.
[4:39]Your novel deals a lot with relationships and sort of the hunt for love, acceptance, connection, and all of that through many means.
[4:48]Be it Craigslist or dating or walking for an hour to go to a bar that might be the right kind of bar.
[4:55]Tell me a little bit about this sort of quest for belonging when you are a character of a certain, I mean, it's honestly it's not just her age.
[5:03]It's we all really look for love and belonging and such a human thing.
[5:07]But of course, there's the overlay of her sexuality.
[5:11]And she keeps it someone hidden at the beginning at least and so much said that her good friend Tom is shocked by the news.
[5:17]Tell me about that and how how you wrote about it, how she navigates it and all that.
[5:24]Yeah, it a lot of ways all this could be different is the study of sort of an essential paradox at the heart of one very specific person, right, which is.
[5:34]This is someone who for many reasons of personality and personal history and values that she was raised with.
[5:46]Really moved moves through the world with this feeling of investment in what I call masculinity, you know, I think that she is somebody who struggles with a certain kind of emotional openness.
[6:00]She talks at various points early in the novel about believing things like sex, you know, are like private matters, you know, like basic functions of the body at some point.
[6:13]And that compares it, you know, to like using the bathroom.
[6:17]And, you know, she basically because she doesn't want to be known and in some ways like associates like real danger and pain with being known and being emotionally intimate.
[6:28]She really walls herself off.
[6:30]At the same time, the paradoxes she deeply wants to be known and wants to be loved.
[6:35]And in the course over the course of the novel, I think you see the ways in which deep abiding relationships and honesty first and foremost with oneself and then with the people close to you, I think really.
[6:51]It's just like force of change in her life and you see all the ways in which she ends up a really different person, a changed person because of it.
[6:59]So I think that yeah there are a variety of ways in which you see say the main character move when it comes to this question around connection right like when she's going to the dyke bar when she's deciding to, you know, try out the new fangled invention at the time because it's set in 2013.
[7:19]That's dating apps that aren't Craigslist, you know, like the stupid and whatnot, you see her like trying this really flailing way to connect, you know, and I think in many ways she's just I think acting on desire more than she's acting on our human need to connect and be emotionally intimate, but then you sort of see her change over the course of the novel.
[7:40]What do you think makes people feel more comfortable sharing right like do you think it was her how she grew up I mean, I know she's a fictional character, but let's say go analyze her why not.
[7:52]What is it that makes you know some people feel like they have to put up these boundaries to our good friends versus not.
[8:00]I think there are many pieces of it right, I think the biggest determinant factor is do we feel safe do we feel seen by certain people can we count on their continued witness can we count on them to show up for us.
[8:17]I think the reality is that as a novelist i'm a little bit wary of like a certain kind of really really pat or like causal like psychological you know like psychological view of characters, especially when it comes to trauma, I think that while in so many ways i'm really glad that we live in a world that compared to 10 years ago there's a lot more openness and mainstream awareness of trauma.
[8:45]I think that it can lead in life and infection to a certain kind of like one to one a to be you are this way because of exactly this thing that happened to you, you know way of thinking which I think flattens people so I think that.
[9:02]I think that with that being said, there are many ways in which snare my protagonist really deeply needs to heal and you see parts of that healing in the book and I think you have to make inferences at some of the healing that happens our stage during the parts of time period that that's not talked about.
[9:22]But ultimately, you know the novel's title is all this could be different and it is one that sort of functions at a macro and structural level, but it's also speaks to the main characters desire to.
[9:35]And like reckoning with changing internally with leaving a certain kind of like shame behind with leaving a certain kind of loneliness behind.
[9:43]And I think that has to do with choices, you know, I think that we as adults moving through the world moving through you know a really like deeply capitalistic society with a great deal of loneliness are are asked to.
[9:57]Make some choices, you know and.
[10:00]or some questions for ourselves.
[10:01]What are the relationships we want to have with other people?
[10:04]What does friendship mean for us in our individual lives?
[10:08]You had a really powerful scene where she walks in
[10:12]and her friend Tom sort of having sex
[10:14]with some woman who's laying down to stand against.
[10:16]This is now getting very explicit, so whatever.
[10:21]And she uses it as a referendum, for an example
[10:26]of like all that is problematic, right?
[10:29]and that she rejects that the submissiveness of women
[10:32]and getting lost and sort of loss of identity
[10:36]sort of as a consequence of an overpowering relationship.
[10:40]Can you talk about that?
[10:41]Yeah, of course.
[10:42]So for those who haven't read,
[10:44]it's not a huge spoiler.
[10:46]It's like a tiny scene, so I'll just talk about it.
[10:48]But basically, there's this big, very fun to write for me.
[10:52]I'm saying he's of a house party in Milwaukee,
[10:56]right before Christmas.
[10:57]And a lot happens at this house party.
[11:00]Sneha eventually meets somebody who becomes her love interest.
[11:04]But before that, or independent of that,
[11:07]she has this big fight with one of her two best friends,
[11:11]whose name is Tom.
[11:11]And Tom is like straight white dude
[11:16]bro, a little bit of a Bernie bro will.
[11:19]And she has this massive fight with him.
[11:22]And it's not something that's reconciled.
[11:24]And then later she comes back to the house looking
[11:26]for her keys.
[11:27]And she happens to catch a glimpse of him
[11:31]having sex with his girlfriend.
[11:33]And what she says in that moment is,
[11:36]she sees this, again, glimpse.
[11:38]She's not watching for 10 minutes.
[11:40]She sees this instant of a moment with her dear friend
[11:45]and the woman he's dating.
[11:47]And the woman is really passive and really quiet.
[11:49]And he's certainly the more active participant.
[11:54]And she just feels this deep pain.
[11:56]And what she says is like, this is what everyone wants
[11:58]from me to be laid out before a man's hunger,
[12:03]to be taken, to be quiet.
[12:05]I think that it's not that the novel thinks
[12:08]that heterosexual sex or sex where a woman
[12:15]is submissive is added anyway.
[12:17]But it's more that you see in this moment
[12:22]this character is piercing pain at a lifetime
[12:27]of being a gendered subject.
[12:29]And so he has not, she's not super woke
[12:33]in any sense, positive or negative.
[12:36]She is very much in every man, in a lot of ways,
[12:40]other than I think her queerness and her immigration status.
[12:43]She just wants to live a regular life
[12:45]and have some peace and be left alone.
[12:47]That's how she moves through the world.
[12:48]And I would argue that's on average
[12:50]how the majority of people move.
[12:52]But I think that she had this true moment
[12:55]of thinking about her parents and her family
[13:01]and her culture and large parts of the culture
[13:03]that she's come into American culture
[13:06]that aren't okay with certain things
[13:08]about what she desires and how she wants to move in the world.
[13:12]And that's really what you see in that scene.
[13:14]Yes, he's some that I've a lot better than I did.
[13:16]But I didn't even know what I was talking about at least.
[13:19]It's totally a thing, right?
[13:21]And I mean, I think the part of what the book is interested in
[13:26]is the reality that we all have specific desires, right?
[13:30]Like Snae has desires are not going to be identical
[13:34]to her friend takes desires or not going to be identical
[13:37]to your desires.
[13:39]And I think that the part of what the book,
[13:42]I think cautiously argues is that in paying attention
[13:45]paying attention to the specificities of our desire,
[13:49]that can be part of the like the sharp edge of the wedge
[13:53]to finding a larger freedom.
[13:54]I think that's Snae, over the course of the book,
[13:57]leaning more deeply into her queerness
[13:59]and not as this like hidden, you know,
[14:03]functional and almost like shameful thing.
[14:05]I think allows her to take certain kinds of like risks
[14:08]and engage in certain kinds of acts of imagination
[14:11]that are I think bigger and push against society
[14:13]and some like other bigger ways later down the line.
[14:17]So interesting.
[14:19]So you mentioned earlier that this is your first published novel,
[14:22]not your first novel.
[14:24]I think many people can relate to that.
[14:25]Tell me about the journey to getting here
[14:27]and what happened with the other ones
[14:29]and when you started writing novels and all of that.
[14:32]Yeah, I'll try to keep it short.
[14:34]I mean, I think that I have always loved writing, you know?
[14:37]I didn't necessarily, I grew up in a very particular place
[14:41]in context.
[14:42]I grew up in Musketo Mon.
[14:44]I certainly, you know, like always loved books and reading.
[14:48]I didn't have like a ton, you know,
[14:50]as much access to books as I would have liked,
[14:52]but they really were this like portal for me
[14:55]of a like quiet, shy, you know, kid
[14:59]to learn about the world, to learn about people, you know?
[15:02]And so I've always loved books.
[15:04]I've always wanted to write,
[15:06]but I never necessarily thought about it as a career
[15:09]for until like maybe my mid 20s.
[15:12]And you know, a lot of it has to do with sort of like
[15:15]immigrant child of immigrants things, you know?
[15:17]And the sort of my own relationship
[15:20]with like certain kinds of risk and ambition for myself.
[15:24]But you know, I wrote my first like complete novel
[15:26]when I was like 16 and like showed it to like my three
[15:29]best friends at the time.
[15:30]And like we all like, I really never thought about
[15:33]getting it published or what have you.
[15:35]I wrote it because I wanted to read it.
[15:36]And I think that's sort of fundamentally how I have
[15:39]continued to approach writing at some level.
[15:42]But at some point, I thought, okay, I actually wanted to
[15:46]write a book that other people could read.
[15:48]And for seven something years, you know,
[15:51]over the course of my 20s, I worked on this like big
[15:54]door stopper immigration novel.
[15:56]And in many ways that novel like showed me
[15:59]how to write a novel in the sense that I made every kind
[16:03]of mistake one could possibly make while writing it.
[16:06]And so at some point, I think I was faced with the reality
[16:11]that I needed to like started like throw it away
[16:14]and started again from the beginning in order for it
[16:16]to make it work and that didn't feel like a great idea
[16:20]for me partly because that sort of moved on
[16:22]from the emotional questions that I was holding
[16:25]most deeply at the time I was writing the novel.
[16:27]So I decided to put it away and work on something new.
[16:30]And that's something new became all this could be different
[16:33]which I kind of like wrote in this like wild
[16:36]fewer dream, you know, mostly over five months in 2020.
[16:40]And I felt very, I felt obsessed with all this
[16:44]would be different when I was writing it.
[16:45]It felt more real to me than my real life.
[16:48]And I also felt, you know, I wrote that novel
[16:50]while on pandemic unemployment, you know,
[16:52]because I had lost my income because of COVID.
[16:55]So it really, I think came from this place of urgency as well.
[17:00]And how did you go about getting an agent
[17:02]and getting it published?
[17:03]What was that like, I think that,
[17:05]sorry, I had like a moment of being like,
[17:06]how did I do that?
[17:07]Like how did I ever feel this way?
[17:10]But it feels like ever for me ever since the pandemic
[17:13]in particular time just as a weird lava lamp
[17:15]where I'm like, yes, what did happen?
[17:18]And yeah, but basically I came to the end of, you know,
[17:25]writing this book.
[17:26]I showed it to a bunch of my like friends
[17:29]and close people, you know, to get their feedback.
[17:32]And I thought, I think what felt so notable to me
[17:36]was like how much I loved the manuscript.
[17:38]It had been such a long time since I've written something
[17:40]that I loved and felt proud of.
[17:41]It's like not a feeling that it comes super easy to me.
[17:44]And so I just, you know, at the same time
[17:47]that I was incorporating the sort of first round,
[17:50]so like feedback from my people, like people in my life,
[17:53]my first readers.
[17:55]I thought, okay, you know, my like savings,
[17:59]which are not substantial to start with
[18:01]because I had recently come off of two years of an MFA,
[18:06]which is like possibly one of the only graduate degrees
[18:09]like blowers, you're earning potential.
[18:13]And yeah, so I just felt like I had like a very short runway.
[18:17]And so I was just like moving as fast as I could,
[18:21]in all these ways.
[18:21]And so I had made a list of agents.
[18:24]And while I was making, you know,
[18:27]like incorporating my friends's feedback,
[18:29]I feel like I was reaching out to everybody.
[18:32]I knew through the internet in some way
[18:35]or through my MFA program to ask if they liked their agents.
[18:39]And one person, you know, was like,
[18:42]I really, like really love my agent bill.
[18:45]And I think you should consider talking to him.
[18:47]And so I reached out to him.
[18:49]And you know, I also talked to like a couple of other people,
[18:52]like a couple of other agents.
[18:54]And I really felt a deep connection to Bill, who, you know,
[18:57]is, is and was my agent.
[19:00]And I think really cared as cared for this book
[19:03]and believed in it.
[19:04]In a way I needed, you know, I think there were so many ways
[19:06]in which I was like really lonely in my writing life
[19:09]because of, I think, feeling a sense of failure
[19:12]around the past project for so long.
[19:15]So yeah.
[19:16]And then Bill and I worked to edit the novel over three weeks
[19:19]and then he was like, let's go.
[19:20]And he, you know, took it to a bunch of publishing houses
[19:24]and then it got bought by Viking right before, right
[19:28]before Christmas of 2020.
[19:30]So it was really this like wild.
[19:32]Wow.
[19:33]That I think, you know, only was made possible
[19:37]by so many circumstant, like circumstantial things,
[19:39]you know, everything from COVID to this huge worry I had
[19:45]about paying my own bills, you know,
[19:47]like I think all these things like really contributed
[19:49]to me trying to like write as fast as possible.
[19:53]I'm so glad that worked out.
[19:54]That's such a great success story.
[19:55]I love it.
[19:56]So efficient, I mean, it's complicated.
[20:00]talk about, you know, because I think it's totally true for me to say that it took me like eight
[20:06]years to write all this could be different because there's no way I could have written it without
[20:10]the like previous, you know, the previous project and everything it taught me and just like
[20:15]informed so many decisions I made. Yeah. It's almost impossible. I feel like anyone who writes
[20:21]a first novel, you should just be like, this is your practice, Ron. Like what makes you,
[20:27]you wouldn't like try to play a whole tennis match without playing tennis a little bit.
[20:31]Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. You need a little, you need a little practice.
[20:34]Yeah. No, I think it's so true. And I think that they're really, I do agree that that's something that we
[20:38]should tell people more because I think that there's something very painful about letting a first
[20:45]novel go. And I think a lot of that for many people has to do with like the emotional investments,
[20:50]like often we start writing novels because of things we hold very closely and deeply. That's true.
[20:58]There should be like a special word file for just the first novel. It's a different color or something.
[21:03]Totally. But you know, I say all that. I think it's like also good for me to remember the way
[21:08]that it's good to not over extrapolate from one's own experience. You know, the fact that
[21:13]matter is like there are a ton of like incredible debuts from people who, you know, like they
[21:20]they did publish the very first novel they wrote, you know, that's true. That's, that's amazing.
[21:26]We will try not to hate them.
[21:30]I love that. Are you working on a new book now or do you have another one coming out soon or what's
[21:36]the deal? I'm not under contract for anything. My, you know, my personal beliefs, I need to like
[21:41]write something that I like enough before I let anyone else see it. I've gotten a little bit more
[21:46]like superstitious with writing some working on what I hope will be a new novel. But it doesn't,
[21:52]you know, I'm not sold it or anything. Well, because I need to finish writing it.
[21:56]And then just what was it like finding out you were nominated for the National Book Award?
[22:01]I said, I mean, I cannot express enough like like I can express sufficiently how shocked I was.
[22:13]And I don't mean that in like a sort of like fake combo way, you know, I think that I had
[22:19]dreamed big for this book in certain ways, you know, I hoped for certain kinds of reviews. I
[22:24]hoped for certain kinds of attention for it. And I think that maybe as far as like price stuff,
[22:30]I think I'd maybe hoped for some like small stalwart like first novel like appropriate awards.
[22:37]And so yeah, there were all these ways in which like the National Book Awards really not on my radar.
[22:42]And so yeah, I came back from, I have a little like balcony garden and I came back from like
[22:48]pruning these like roses that I'd planted, you know, in memory of my grandfather who I lost
[22:53]last year and who was, you know, really important to me and who taught me how to read. And I came
[22:59]back, you know, to my phone inside my apartment and just saw like a bunch of Miss Pauls. And
[23:06]it's very revealing in a comical way of how my brain is constructed that I thought, oh, my God,
[23:12]something terrible has happened. And so I called my agent Bill and he was, and my first question was
[23:18]what's wrong? You can tell me. Yeah. He told me, you know, what he said was, oh, you don't know.
[23:25]And then he said you're longlisted for the National Book Award. And I just burst into tears.
[23:32]You know, it was a very clearly like, having to do like some shh,
[23:36]you know, it's on. So yeah, it was pure comedy, pure clonery on my part, but also it was a very
[23:42]neat way to respond to the news and find out about news. Oh, who would have seen
[23:50]I can go in your next novel. There you go. Let's start jumping off for it.
[23:55]Well, I'm so excited for you. And I will actually be there, but you'll be the bell of the ball,
[23:59]but maybe I'll wave from that. I think I would love to, you know, meet in person.
[24:03]Yeah. Well, I'll be reading for you and just what an honor and so exciting and
[24:08]I really know. Yeah. I mean, I think I spent a lot of time just talking about like the shock of it
[24:14]and the, you know, sort of like their near device piece of all this, but, you know, what I feel now
[24:20]is that it's an intense honor and like crushed with gratitude. And I really like, it's so cool.
[24:27]Like I'm saying this like very genuinely, like it's so cool to be part of this particular cohort,
[24:32]both of longlisted and shortlisters. Like I have not read every single book on the longlist
[24:38]like a few of them. And I'm, you know, en route to read more and they're all so insanely talented.
[24:45]Like it just, it feels very cool to be in this company. I think it's a big part of what I feel.
[24:50]And I don't know. It's also not lost on me that, you know, it's been rare to have this many like
[24:58]South Asian finalists. And, you know, like no South Asian writer or writer of South Asian
[25:05]everyone, the National Book Awards. So I just feel like there are all these ways in which, you know,
[25:09]regardless of what ends up happening, you know, that the night of the announcement,
[25:13]it feels less like this individual achievement. And I feel more aware of like, you know,
[25:20]this is one more, this is one more move on the part of a certain kind of like collective
[25:26]of writers and people. And it's one that I feel happy and, you know, proud to be part of.
[25:31]Wonderful. Well, you should. It's great.
[25:34]Well, thanks for chatting today. Thanks for a lovely conversation. Thank you. Okay. Bye-bye.
[25:41]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[25:45]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[25:50]Also sign up for my newsletter at zibi Owens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and
[25:54]meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at
[25:59]Texture Sound for the Sound Editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing
[26:03]this fantastic intro and outro music.