Sarah Aziza on Trying Not to Disappear
In Conversation with Jordan Kisner on Thresholds
This is Thresholds, a series of conversations with writers about experiences that completely turned them upside down, disoriented them in their lives, changed them, and changed how and why they wanted to write. Hosted by Jordan Kisner, author of the essay collection Thin Places. Thresholds is a co-production between Black Mountain Institute and Literary Hub
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Sarah Aziza sits down with Jordan to talk about the eating disorder that almost took her life in 2019, and the search into her family’s history in Palestine that she undertook in a bid for her own survival.
Mentioned in the episode:
• the Nakba
• transgenerational trauma
• José Muñoz, Cruising Utopia
• ghurba
Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!
Sarah Aziza is a Palestinian American writer, translator, and artist with roots in ‘Ibdis and Deir al-Balah, Gaza. She is the author of The Hollow Half, a genre-bending work of memoir, lyricism, and oral history exploring the intertwined legacies of diaspora, colonialism, and the American dream. Her award-winning journalism, poetry, essays, and experimental nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Best American Essays, The Baffler, Harper’s Magazine, Mizna, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and The Nation, among other publications. Previously a Fulbright fellow in Jordan, she is the recipient of numerous Pulitzer Center grants for Crisis Reporting, a 2022 resident at Tin House Writer’s Workshop, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and a 2023 Margins Fellow at the Asian American Writers Workshop.
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For more Thresholds, visit us at thisisthresholds.com. Original music by Lora-Faye Åshuvud.
