Shelf Reflection: Amani Haydar

Shelf Reflection is a monthly series where we explore the bookshelves and reading habits of our featured First Book Club authors.

This month’s reflection is from Amani Haydar, whose debut memoir The Mother Wound (Macmillan) is a powerful story of female resilience and the role of motherhood in the home and in the world. Read Ellen Cregan’s review, and stay tuned for more on our website and podcast later in the month!

What are you currently reading?

I’m currently reading The Other Half of You by Michael Mohammed Ahmad. Following on from Miles Franklin-shortlisted The Lebs, it’s a story about masculinity, family and relationships set in Western Sydney. It explores the ways in which familial expectations, cultural pressures and stereotypes shape the world and life of Bani Adam, the Lebanese-Australian Muslim male protagonist. I attended the launch of the book and particularly enjoyed Ahmad’s commentary on diversity in literature; true diversity is complexity. Some stories are messy and resist clear moral binaries, but add to the literary landscape in a beautiful, nuanced way.

What kind of reader are you?

My preference is to finish one book at a time and I’ll usually consume a lot of literature around one topic or issue before moving onto another set of subject matter. As a young person I read a lot of fiction but I’ve been leaning into non-fiction more recently, especially memoir. Juggling work and raising children can make it a bit difficult to commit to always finishing a book—and I definitely don’t finish as many books as I used to—but it’s a practice I’ve been working on.

People are surprised to find that I often enjoy reading academic writing—there is something about taking a deep-dive into a topic that can be so stimulating and, in my experience, doing so enriches my writing.

Juggling work and raising children can make it a bit difficult to commit to always finishing a book, but it’s a practice I’ve been working on.

What does your book collection look like?

My book collection is spread over two large bookcases and they are arranged aesthetically. I love a well-styled bookcase as a feature within an interior, so mine have pot plants on the top and ceramics as well as books on them. One of my bookcases is arranged by colour and the other by genre.

My collection is a mix of preloved books, classics I collected in high school and university, Islamic books and a collection of feminist literature. I am known within my family for my habit of holding onto books for a long time. I’ve kept a collection of children’s Little Golden Books that I grew up reading, which I have recently handed down to my children. I’ve also kept a sizeable collection of Goosebumps books, my first scripture book and a collection of books that I recovered from my mum’s place after her death.

What’s one book you found critical to the writing of your own book?

There are so many books that have informed the way I think about writing; when I first started reading memoirs written by women, books such as Roxane Gay’s Hunger, Bri Lee’s Eggshell Skull and Meera Atkinson’s Traumata opened my eyes to the ways in which women have been exploring their worlds through creative non-fiction. The possibilities suddenly seemed endless! But, writing from the perspective of a Muslim woman, I definitely want to acknowledge the ways in which the imagery in the Quran (the first book I encountered in Arabic as a child) shapes the symbolism, dialogue and imagery in my book.

Writing from the perspective of a Muslim woman, I definitely want to acknowledge the ways the imagery in the Quran shapes the symbolism, dialogue and imagery in my book.

What book/s are you constantly recommending other people read?

I’ve been recommending books from the Sweatshop Literacy Movement to my friends and family. I think the work that Sweatshop is doing to empower writers in Western Sydney will encourage an array of new perspectives and experiences onto the literary scene. Authentic, own voices stories such as those found in Sweatshop Women Volumes 1 and 2 (read our reviews) are essential in terms of reflecting the diversity of our communities and are a delight to read.

If you had to pick one book to live in for the rest of your life, which would it be?

Most of the books I have read as an adult are too tragic and or too dystopic to want to live in! I won a book when I was a child (which I have handed down to my kids) called I’m Taggarty Toad by Peter Pavey (Puffin Books). Reading it as a child, I was so taken by the beautiful whimsical illustrations depicting Taggarty Toad encountering beasts in forests, sailing over oceans, and even riding down the rainbow that I would imagine that I too was adventuring through a mysterious landscape.

Amani will be discussing her book in an online event with Bri Lee on 29 July, and in conversation with Alice Pung and Susan Carland at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne on 2 August.

The Mother Wound is available now from your local independent bookseller.