Seed for thought: Literature is a language for when we don't have the right words.

It's a noisy time, friends, and this is a post about love (with free books and a small appeal for action).

I just got home from Iowa, where I gave eight events in four days and talked to a heart-filling number of generous and thoughtful students and book allies. Meanwhile, a lot has been happening in the world. More on that in a moment; though if you are reading this behind an emotional firewall, it’s okay—you’ll have the option to read a heartwarming story about literature and then stop. Mostly this is a Substack about why I love writing so much.

If you do read the whole email, here’s a teaser image of some books I’ll be giving away at the end:

Teaser: A Small Contest for a Common Cause

Now, back to this idea of occasion and literature. I visited the Iowa City Book Festival, the University of Northern Iowa, Wartburg College, and the University of Dubuque during the week of National Coming Out Day. Coming out is nonlinear and perpetual—wherever someone might be in their journey, it takes courage, self-inquiry, and saying yes to community over and over again, in different ways. It looks different each time, for everyone, depending on their level of safety and what kind of relationships are at stake.

I shared this short version of my own coming-out story.

Compared to many others, I came out late. I was twenty-eight. My now-wife, Erin, and I were in love from our first date. We’d moved in together after a month or two. Family is an important part of our lives, but ever since I’d moved from Pittsburgh to Portland, I had kept my heart secret from everyone back home. I realized that now was the moment I had to finally tell my parents.

And I did. They were surprised (shocked!), but all-told, they took the news in stride. They took it way better than ten years earlier, when I’d come out as an aspiring writer.

I’m a first-generation college student, so they didn't know how anyone could make a living with a creative writing degree. But they did understand love. And they saw how happy Erin and I were together. My mom wrote a letter to my aunts and uncles, asking them to support and accept us. The only thing was, they all asked me NOT to tell my grandmother.

My grandma and I were always close. Even after I’d moved away, we talked regularly on the phone—we continued to talk. And late in life, deep into the final years of her dementia, we kept up our tradition, though the chats were shorter and more limited. But Grandma always signed off the same way: she said, “I love you. And tell your FRIEND, Erin, I said hello and I love her too. Enjoy yourselves.”

Oh, she knew about us all right. I never came out to her, exactly, never said the words. And hey, maybe in the afterlife our energies will twirl up to one another and I’ll discover that actually I’m wrong and she hadn’t the slightest notion I’m gay. But it feels like she knew, and when I remember Erin and I making our last visit to Grandma’s room in the assisted living facility, I remember us visiting her as wives.

Literature is one of the few places in life that allows for these either/and truths.

Fiction and creative nonfiction are a place to hold contradictions; a way to tell the truth when “truth” in fact contains many arrows all pointing in different directions. I think humans, as a species, need storytelling as a strategy for holding that space. And I believe there will always be hunger in the publishing industry for stories that allow readers to recognize in the characters the full ambivalence, ambiguity, moral complexity, and mystery of being alive in a world beyond comprehension.

NOTE: This isn’t a normal Substack, but it’s not a normal time. If you just want to read about literature publishing, or if the last week has been too much and you are guarding your energy, you can stop here (albeit without a chance at six free books). Instead, do things that help you stay well, stay connected, and stay grounded, and I’ll see you next time.

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Still with me? Thanks.

I reflected on these thoughts about literature and complexity almost every waking moment of my free time in Iowa, because I was reading from and discussing my novel about queer Palestinians during a week of astonishing violence in and around Gaza. My heart was breaking along with the hearts of so many people I care about.

I keep not finding the right words to simultaneously (1) be the ally my Palestinian and Arab American communities need and (2) also be the friend and supporter that my Jewish friends in solidarity deserve. We are all grieving, angry, and wrestling with old, unspeakable traumas; all of us seeing the people we respect most in our communities wrestle with even greater pain. I’m sure what I’m saying isn’t quite right or quite enough, and if so, please forgive me. I love you all, and this is what I came here to say:

Donate $100 to MECA, PCRF, Anera, or UNRWA and get a chance to win six books, including a signed first edition of The Skin and Its Girl.

Organizers and community groups that labor every day to end systemic injustice often see more room, resources, relationships, and ways forward than most people do—and maybe they feel more hopeful because of these nuances. But for everyday folks not elbows-deep in the work, the U.S. is an impossibly hard place to talk about Palestinian history, let alone a shared and peaceful Israeli and Palestinian future: it’s “too complicated” and “too volatile” and “confusing.” Stranded between a few essentialist positions and the risk of bad-faith interpretations that end friendships, people disengage; they stay safe, don’t call their reps despite the looming genocide, and don’t express a public opinion. That’s human behavior. I also know that nothing will improve if folks who do have the resources nevertheless unplug, stop listening, and stay comfortable.

So, if you have some resources, are feeling uncomfortable with the situation, and want to contribute something, I am offering an incentive to donate to one of these Charity Navigator four-star, apolitical charities that are working to make aid available to people currently experiencing a humanitarian disaster.

• The Middle East Children’s Alliance team and partners are providing emergency assistance to families who have fled their homes to seek shelter with relatives as well as procuring emergency medical supplies for hospitals and clinics.

• The Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund’s mission is to provide medical and humanitarian relief collectively and individually to Arab children throughout the Levant, regardless of their nationality, politics, or religion.

• Anera is working to further respond to what is likely to be a large humanitarian need in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem.

• UNRWA USA lifts up the voices, experiences, and humanity of Palestine refugees to secure American support for resources essential to every human being, for the promise of a better life.

Click on any of the above to donate. For a sense of what helps: “$30 can provide the Central Blood Bank Society in Gaza with 16 blood bags; $80 can provide a hygiene kit to two displaced families; $100 can provide a displaced family with a food parcel that will meet their nutritional needs for 7–10 days” (from www.anera.org). Helping human bodies not die, for about the cost of an urban date night, is a vanishingly modest request.

Although donating is a good thing to do for its own sake, here’s the bonus and/or book recommendations. If you donate at least $100 by October 29, send me a screenshot of your receipt (DM on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X, or just reply to this Substack with an email attachment) and I’ll pick two donors at random to each get a gift box of six books.

• Atef Abu Saif’s The Drone Eats With Me: A Gaza Diary (view on Bookshop)

• Isabella Hammad’s Enter Ghost (view on Bookshop)

• Hala Alyan’s Salt Houses (view on Bookshop)

• Colum McCann’s Apeirogon (view on Bookshop)

• Ibtisam Azem’s The Book of Disappearance, trans. Sinan Antoon (view on Bookshop)

• One of my author copies of The Skin and Its Girl, a signed first-edition hardcover (view on Bookshop)

This is completely my own thing—none of these publishers, other authors, or charity orgs are involved. So: donate however much you want, but donate $100 or more and send me your receipt, and you could get $100 worth of books. Do it now so you don’t forget about it. And if the random-number generator picks the date/hour you donated, I’ll get your details and mail the books to your U.S. address in early November. Keep them for yourself, share them in a Little Free Library, or gift them to people who will enjoy them—whatever feels right. Winners are anonymous unless you want to post about it.

Thanks for reading this, and take care of your hearts, friends.

Prayers tied to a tree in Cappadocia, Turkey, 2022 (Image Copyright © Sarah Cypher, 2023)