“A lot of people are saying I’m brave for writing this,” Hollay Ghadery tells us, grinning through the screen. “But I wish it wasn’t seen as so brave. I wish it was the way everyone was, or felt comfortable being.”
Brave is just one of the words that Ghadery’s memoir Fuse has been called since its publication by Guernica Editions in May 2021. Other words include: edgy, powerful, raw, and profoundly honest. Written in short, thematic vignettes, Fuse follows the experiences of a young woman of Iranian and British Isle descent growing up in a biracial and bicultural household in small-town Ontario. Ghadery is as honest as her prose is lyrical, unpacking her mental health journey and lifelong struggles with substance abuse, eating disorders, and anxiety. The memoir jumps back and forth through time as Ghadery tells powerful stories from her first (and only) night in a brothel to being unable to fluently communicate with her Farsi-speaking aunts and living with OCD. Meditating on the complexities of the biracial female body, Ghadery challenges traditional, clear-cut ideas about identity, motherhood, and family.
Ghadery studied English Literature and holds a Master’s of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. For several years, she worked in freelance and corporate writing but now, as a mother of four, she devotes her time to writing creatively. Her poetry, short stories, and non-fiction have been published in various literary journals including The Malahat Review, Grain, Understorey, The Antigonish Review, The Fiddlehead, and Room. She has also written for White Wall Review, publishing a review of Anna Van Valkenber’s Queen and Carcass in April 2021 that you can read here.
We were fortunate enough to sit down with Ghadery over Zoom this summer and chat about writing authentically, navigating Biracial Identity Disorder, and defying categories. Much like her memoir, she was open and honest and so willing to share.
White Wall Review: Can you tell us about your journey to becoming a writer?
Hollay Ghadery: I don’t think I ever wanted to be anything else, and like most writers I was a reader first. There is no other life for me, really, and I always knew I’d do something in the arts—like acting or writing—and I wasn’t a very good actress so writing it was. I wanted to be a writer all throughout university, so I studied English Lit and then when the Master’s program [MFA in Creative Writing] at Guelph came up, I applied for that…Then I started freelancing and…doing a lot of corporate writing. The creative writing just happened when more and more people started actually telling me they believed I could do it…[It was] a slow dawning over time that this might actually work, I might actually be able to do this. So it wasn’t a sudden realization really; I always wanted to be [a writer], but you know, I also always wanted to marry Paul Newman. I’ve had a rich life but that doesn’t mean all my desires became reality, unfortunately.
WWR: When did you decide to write a memoir, and how did you settle on the genre of creative nonfiction?
HG: I wasn’t going to, actually. Fuse’s first incarnation was a book called Jump Track. It was my MFA thesis and it was fiction, a novella. I just didn’t really want to deal with anything head on: through my Master’s I was really not mentally well, which I guess if you’re doing your Master’s in Fine Arts and Creative Writing, nobody really notices. Or they do but you’re a writer so your oddness is accepted. Maybe I was quirky and out of it all the time, and sure, I was definitely drinking too much, but [that was the] status quo, for many university students, really…The point is I didn’t want to face anything or didn’t even know how to. I always wanted to be a poet, and I never pictured myself doing any kind of creative nonfiction, but…then my son was born, and as he got older, he started asking a lot of questions. I wasn’t really mentally there either, at first; I was still struggling a lot then, too. So I started making up stories about my life to try and help him make sense of why I was the way I was, make sense of the strange things that he couldn’t understand, like my obsessive behaviours. I started to do that, and then I started to think, “Why am I making up these stories, why aren’t I just telling him the truth?” And part of that was because he was a little kid…and then part of it was that I realized I just didn’t want to face it. So I started to.
I didn’t think a full book would come of it…but then more and more started coming and forming into a book. And then I was really worried about my family, so I just thought “Oh, I don’t want to write this, I don’t want to do this.” And then I did it anyway, because the only reality greater than this fear was the fact I was really tired of being told to be quiet my whole life. The more I wrote, the angrier I got. And I know that women “aren’t supposed to be angry,” but I was angry…at the world, and at myself. Why do we always have to be quiet, why are we always encouraged to be silent, how come nobody is fucking talking about this?! I felt so silenced, and I know other people might feel silenced, so I gained momentum the angrier I got and then the rest of it just came out very, very quickly…A lot of people are saying I’m brave for writing this…but I wish it wasn’t seen as so brave. I wish it was the way everyone was, or felt comfortable being.
WWR: In the forward you discuss “[prioritizing] the thematic connections over chronology until gradually the links between thoughts, feelings, and experiences began to reveal themselves.” What was the writing and editorial process like for Fuse?
HG: I look back on it now at a glance and say “Oh, it just kind of pulled together really naturally,” but it didn’t, at all. There were a lot of cutting pieces out, a lot of refining and refining until I got down to what I meant. I had all these layers of stories I’d created surrounding my illness and who I was so I could live with who I was. It was really just taking them down and saying “Okay, no, thank you, that’s not it, do it again, do it again, do it again,” until you get it right. It was a lot of perfectionism.
For instance, the part where I admit to my fatphobia. First I would say “I had this problem with people being okay with being overweight because of [this or that]” but then I finally admitted to myself “no, you’re not okay with it, because by them being okay with being overweight, they are being okay with denying the system you’ve been killing yourself to be a part of your whole life and that’s what pisses you off: they’re freer than you.” It has nothing to do with fatness; it is all about control. And that’s what OCD is. Until you admit all the very ugly things about yourself that you don’t want other people to know, that’s when you know it’s the truth, because it’s not pretty. It’s who I am, and that’s it.
WWR: How did you decide which parts of your life to write about, and which to hold back?
HG: I definitely shared where I thought telling the story would benefit other people…I asked myself, “Is this going to benefit somebody else or is this going to just be therapeutic for me?” And if it was just for me and it wasn’t going to serve any other purpose, then I didn’t include it. There were actually a lot of things I left out. If I was telling something about my family or a family member, where I was telling their story and it had nothing to do with mine, I left it out. There are some things I just left out anyway because I want my family to still talk to me. It may have added to the story a bit, but I could get my point across without having to add everything. You can share yourself without having to give everything away.
WWR: Were there any moments that you were really worried about?
HG: Anything about my parents, anything about my family. I’m not worried about me at all, I’m not worried about admitting that I thought I wanted to be a prostitute or that I went to this brothel…I don’t mind sharing those parts of myself because I was so desperate for a story like that: where somebody just says it, admits to the messiness of it all. But the things about my family I was a bit reticent to share because some stories aren’t mine. I didn’t want [my family] being upset with me, but I also wanted to tell the truth, and I feel like as much as I love my parents…if I wasn’t going to hurt them, if it was just humiliating for me, and the worst thing my parents would be told by someone who read the book is that “wow, your daughter’s really messed up”—well that’s fine, because your daughter is really messed up. If it was going to tell their life story and who they are, that’s not my place to talk about. I just stuck to how the way I was raised affected me, and even then, I was cautious about my interpretation of my parents’ motivations. As a parent I realize how my children often do not understand why I do or say something…but as a parent who has learned from her own childhood, I also try to explain myself to my children so they aren’t left wondering so much.
WWR: Did you tell your family you were writing about them? How did your relationships change, first after writing about them, and then after they read it?
HG: After I told them I was writing [the book] my mom was definitely nervous. My father just asked that I never write about him again, so I’m not talking about him anymore. Actually, [none of my family] has read it. Not one of them. I don’t feel angry or upset by it. In a way, I feel relieved. I’m a mother of four andI can understand how it’d be really difficult to read these things. Even just excerpts that I’ve shared on Instagram that my mom has seen, she said “I never knew that happened, why didn’t you tell me that happened?” I was taught to shut up, and not to talk about these things. I was taught that it was taboo, I was told to be quiet [because] that’s not how good Muslim girls act and that’s not how good Western girls act. So I didn’t say anything; I shut up. For me, [it was all about] balancing the relationship I wanted to have with my parents and my family and the relationship I wanted to have with myself. What I want to teach my children about mental illness is to respect themselves and to give voice to who they are and to not be ashamed of who they are.
It was definitely a challenge, and reading the book I asked “what am I going to be okay with saying thirty years from now?” There are certainly parts I’m glad I cut out, because it didn’t come from a place of love. I was angry, I was very angry, so when I finished writing this as a mom of many little people, I’m glad I had that compassion. Parents aren’t perfect—our parents are very human and maybe I could be a little more gentle with them.
WWR: Have your children asked to read your book, and would you like them to?
HG: I know there are a lot of parents who are very cautious with writing about their children. I was at a creative nonfiction workshop and they talked about writing about your children, you know: should you, shouldn’t you [since] this is going to be out in the world. My kids know what I wrote about them, they haven’t read the whole book…but it’s not a conversation I shy away from having with them. I think we have to strip away this constant gatekeeping that’s everywhere: what you can say, and when you can’t say. Yes, you should always be careful of what you say and be mindful and be compassionate…but I really think this policing of our stories and policing of who we’re allowed to talk about in our lives, even though these people affect us deeply, I think that has to stop. I think we should just tell our truths [ideally] from a place of love and compassion.
WWR: There’s a section in “Sepaz Gorezam” (I’m Grateful)” where you self-correct and offer some internal dialogue. Could you tell us about this narrative moment? Was it a planned writing technique, or an active thought process?
HG: It’s just the way I think, I guess. It’s me constantly correcting myself and saying: stop bullshitting, stop bullshitting. [Hollay pans the camera down to reveal her shirt which reads “Hey colonizer”]. It’s constantly calling yourself out. You can’t call anybody else out until you start calling yourself out on your own bullshit. Everybody, of every race, in every ethnicity, of every age group, we have our own bullshit we need to call ourselves out on. So, it wasn’t like a conscious narrative technique; in fact, there was so much more of that internal correction going on in the first draft, and my editors were like: you have to be a little bit more reliable…So, we actually took a lot of it out, and just left it in a few parts where we thought it was digestible and it made sense, instead of me doing it constantly.
WWR: I had never heard of Biracial Identity Disorder before your book. Can you tell us a little about discovering this term and what it means to have a non-fixed identity.
HG: The only article I could really find was by George Kitahara Kich—who I thank in the acknowledgments—and then that one therapist who…was trying to broaden my mind about what I was going through. I was very interested, but I was also very embarrassed by everything she was telling me. [I thought] okay, yes I recognize myself in this, [but] I don’t like it…It’s such a personal experience [and] it depends on the person. [Having no fixed identity means] you can move back and forth between one identity and the other depending on who you’re talking to.
Sometimes if I’m talking to someone who’s of a certain demographic, I’ll just say my name is Holly because I don’t want to get into it; I don’t want to deal with the correction of names. Another time, I’ll say my name is Hollay and sometimes somebody will ask what I am and I’ll say I’m Persian. But I’ve noticed [that] I’ll never just say I’m white. I might say I’m biracial and I think that’s not because I have any particular shame of my British Isles background. I just feel like I’ve never been treated as a white person, so I can’t act as a white person.
Sometimes I can be funny about it, but it is very, very confusing. I remember one interview somebody said, well, how can you consider yourself biracial when you’re white passing? That’s what this person saw when they looked at me but it’s not what other people have seen…It’s infuriating to be treated as an Other my whole life and to be discriminated against as someone who is Other, and then be denied a platform for which to talk about it.
You’re not enough of either to be considered anything and it’s a really unsettling experience. Who am I and what am I standing for? In writing this book, I arrived at more of a feeling of being undivided in the way I feel about myself, if not what my racial identity is or what I am externally, [but] I’m at least more at peace with who I am internally.
WWR: What do you hope young women, or someone struggling with mental health, will take away from this book?
HG: You’re not alone. I think it’s very easy to feel alone. I wanted to get as raw and honest as I could with myself, and, I mean, I don’t think I could possibly get anymore honest. Every time I ask myself, “could you have gone deeper?,” [I think] no, that’s about it, there’s nothing else. I hope that people who are struggling with mental illness get that there’s nothing they can say or think that is too shameful to talk about. Just talk about it; nothing you can say or do is that abnormal. These diseases need to be talked about [because] silence is just so deadly…There’s nothing in you that’s too horrifying to bring to light—just do it. You don’t have to write a book about it, but talk to someone.
WWR: What’s your next project?
HG: I have a collection of poems, Rebellion Box, that’s pretty much done. It pivots around rebelling against our bodies, our roles, our impotence in the universe–all that fun stuff. Now, I’m getting into writing Widow Fantasies, a collection of flash fiction surrounding the idea of using fantasies to escape feeling trapped in who or what you are; you know, your life. Some of the stories are in the fantasy and some of them are negotiating the fantasy, and some are out of the fantasy completely. “Fantasy” is the operative word here [because] you can fantasize about so many things, but you wouldn’t actually want to live there and that’s what I’m exploring.
Read more about Fuse here! You can also check out Hollay’s consulting, writing, and editorial services on her website (www.riverstreetwriting.com) and find her on Twitter and Instagram.