Let Her Collect Stamps Author Note - 01/21/25
So a few months ago I got my story Let Her Collect Stamps published in Apex Magazine. It's my first professional publication and I'm kinda super proud of myself. The link is here if you haven't read it. I wanted to post a few thoughts about it because I love talking about myself and my stories.
Here's how this story came about. I was at dinner with my friend Winter (hi love!) and I've already forgotten how it came up but one of us said the phrase "she better have a stamp collection". That sentence wormed its way into my heart and I went *oh shit i need to use that in a story*. Apex's flash fiction theme of the month was obituary and I made an immediate connection. In 2023 I was in a production of the play The Last Croissant by Veronica Tjioe, in which a main character writes obituaries. The show closes on this beautiful obituary for a woman that's not even relevant to the show, none of them know her, but the play memorializes her with such beauty and care for her mundane life. So talking about stamp collections made me start pondering the beauty of the boring parts of life.
I wrote it the next day, revised it a few days later, and sent it on to Apex on a whim. The idea was that it'd probably get rejected and then I could do what I do with my other stories - give it a few months, revise, give it a few more months, revise, send it out.
And two weeks later I got the email that they'd like to publish it.
So Let Her Collect Stamps was a weird story to be my first publication. I have a bunch of stories I've polished that haven't gotten published, but this one that I wrote spontaneously made it out there. Maybe there's a lesson to be learned from it - that first draft can contain so much excitement and energy and while revision is great, if I sand down a story too much it'll lose some of that spark. I think there's truth to that - my upcoming micro in hex literary, Actually My Experiences Are Universal!, had a similar development. The reception to the story has been great! I'm extremely lucky to have been featured on Alex Brown's list of best speculative stories from Nov 2024, and I've gotten lots of kind words about the story. My parents sent it to all their friends and mortified me by bringing it up at parties. It made all of my housemates cry and honestly that's what made me feel the proudest, that I could inspire that much emotion.
I want to talk about the story itself now. When I started writing, the basic idea was "mom teaches her daughter how to have a daughter through some magic spell that involves writing the story of her life". And then I decided to have the mom use Arabic words, and then got into Jidda fleeing to America, and-- okay. So here's the thing. My maternal grandfather is Palestinian, and I'm white other than that. For a really long time I dismissed my Palestinian heritage, because my family passes as white and I wasn't raised with much Arab culture and my grandfather wasn't the kindest person or the most involved in my life. But the current genocide in Palestine prompted me to start considering my race more seriously. Because I have an insane amount of white privilege and ALSO being mixed Arab has had an effect on my life. It's a part of where I come from and how people treat me. And the biggest thing that got me to realize this was a phone call I had with my mom.
It was a few months after the genocide began. A protest was being organized at my school, but I felt like I was falling apart - being overworked, recently traumatized, dealing with some scary social circumstances, and watching a genocide unfold on Instagram will do that to you. So I called my mom and cried to her about how rough I was doing and how I felt like I couldn't go to the protest but I felt horrible about it.
And my mom told me: "As a Palestinian, the best thing you can do right now for Palestine is to take care of yourself." I had to put on my oxygen mask first - I AM Palestinian, it lives in me, I need to keep myself safe so that I can continue a Palestinian life in the world. By all means, I should go to protests when I can (and the next summer I got into a fight with some Zionists at pride), but I need to be my own priority, because my mundane life has value as a woman of Palestinian descent.
So this is a story about my mom. It's for her. This one goes out to Amana, who works to help refugees who've endured torture get asylum, who raised my brother and I in a household where habib(t)i was the kindest word, who nudges me when she sees an Arab person and says "he's one of our people!", who likes scary movies and Archie comics and swears at the top of her lungs on roller coasters. It's also a story for my brother, who is currently learning Arabic in Jordan and has been my inspiration for so many things, especially accepting my heritage as something that matters.
I still have an INSANE amount of imposter syndrome. I'd like to thank my best friend and writing partner Haven for encouraging me to take my mixed experience seriously and my girlfriends for adopting some Arabic into their vocabularies and loving those parts of me - and I'd like to thank both parties for enduring me fretting over if I really count. Seeing this story gain recognition and praise when I worry I shouldn't be allowed to speak to the diasporic Palestinian experience has been a weird guilty experience. This story was definitely me dipping my toes into identifying as Palestinian, and I feel guilty for, say, using the image of the key as a symbol before reading Palestine+100 or Returning to Haifa, which make fascinating points about the need for the Palestinian diaspora to stop clinging to the past instead of fighting for Palestine *now*. At the same time, that image of the key is so powerful still - Haven reminds me when I'm feeling guilty that I'm writing from my family's own experience, and my mom and I have had emotional conversations about keys and my Jiddo's home in Safad. I don't have a good resolution - this is still something I'm figuring out, but writing this story was necessary for figuring myself out, and watching it get published has made it even more useful in my self-discovery.
I think what I'm scared of more than anything is that my story will be interpreted as a liberal Don't Worry About Trying To Resist Racism and Imperialism, Living A Cozy Life Is Punk! message. Go to protests. Take action. Donate. Find local activist groups. SUPPORT THE ARABS YOU KNOW OH MY GOD!! ASK US HOW WE'RE HOLDING UP! And don't stop screaming! Don't stop yelling about Palestine, don't stop caring, even if the genocide stops don't stop screaming until Palestine is free. Live your cozy lives to keep yourself safe and sane enough to go out on the streets and march when you can. Love yourself so that you can extend that love to Palestine.