Poured Over: Wajahat Ali on Go Back to Where You Came From

“If you aren’t writing your story in America, your story is being written for you. And if you’re not telling your story, your story is being told to you….I was able to create my own superhero origin story when I was 10 years old.” Left-handed, lactose intolerant, wisecracking Wajahat Ali joins us on the show to talk about his first book, Go Back to Where You Came From, growing up brown and Muslim in the Bay Area, his parents’ time in jail, trading his law degree for the writer’s life, becoming a playwright with help from Ishmael Reed (and what Toni Morrison said to him after Ishmael Reed introduced them) and more in this very funny and fast-moving episode. Featured Book: Go Back to Where You Came From by Wajahat Ali. Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and engineered by Harry Liang. New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and wherever you listen to podcasts.

Full transcript for this episode of Poured Over:

Barnes & Noble: Wajahat Ali, thank you so much for joining us on Poured Over. Dude, you’re lactose intolerant, you’re left handed. It’s a really good thing you can write. Your first book is Go Back to Where You Came From. Where did this start? How did this start? When did you decide to write this book?

Wajahat Ali: Yes, lactose intolerant, IBS, flat footed, I learned two months ago, inherited OCD from my father, awesome. You still are Husky pants as a kid, those who know who know. So I apologize for those who used to wear Husky pants, you know, left handed, which anyone who’s Asian or comes from South Asian families knows that the left hand is only used to do one thing. And they tried to literally beat us out of our left handedness. And I was oftentimes the only token Muslim and token brown person and my parents decide to name me Wajahat is still a winner of a name. And it’s 2022. And there’s still no coke bottle with my name on it yet. So all this basically, is to say that I grew up a winner. And I grew up as the archetypal protagonists of the American narrative. And it’s one of those situations where you can either cry, or you can laugh, and I’m not one for a crier. So I choose to laugh and embrace it all. And it’s absurdities. And that’s kind of the genesis of the book, right? And I think for the rest of us who are in the margins on the outside, who are the sidekicks, the goofy sidekicks, the villains of the American narrative, this book is about loving a country that always doesn’t love us back. It’s an elegy for the rest of us. And it’s about how hopefully, we can connect the dots and move forward as a multiracial democracy. And hopefully, I’ve done it with some hope and humor.

B&N: It’s a really hopeful book, you end on an impossibly hopeful note, which is exactly what I needed when I finished reading this, but I want to start in Fremont, California.

WA: I grew up in the kind of sleepy suburban town of Fremont in between San Jose and Berkeley with a whole bunch of brown folks and Indian folks and Sikh folks and white folks and black folks. And I went to school at James leach elementary school, and I went to Harker in Saratoga, where oftentimes, I was the token Muslim and the token brown guy. And the funny thing is, I think you find out your place in the American hierarchy, you find out your, your place in the caste. It’s school. When you go to school. You think Wait, doesn’t everyone have turmeric stands? How come no one else is speaking Urdu? Or how come no one else has green stuff in their mom’s kababs? And that’s when you realize, oh, I’m not the hero. Oh, I’m the other. Oh, mama, can you make meatloaf and mom’s like, we will never eat meatloaf in this house.

B&N: And you’re a comics nerd. You’re a Star Wars nerd. You’re a Lego nerd. They’re references to Indiana Jones their references to Marty McFly. I mean, you’re an American kid. You learned to tell stories at a really early age and you realize this is what you want to do. And dude, you’re first generation American, we don’t really do that we become doctors and lawyers and accountants and consultants. Yes, the dreaded consultant.

WA: But as long as a consultant makes six figures, no one cares. See, this is you touched upon something when you are the child of immigrants, especially the immigrants who came after 1965 The Immigration Nationality Act right, which made discriminate against someone on national origin illegal and basically lifted. That completely hateful and restrictive immigration quota that was placed in the 1920s Because at that time, the invaders weren’t Mexicans and Muslims at that time the invaders were wait for it, the Italians and the Eastern European Jews and everyone from Asia. So now you get the 1965 Immigration Nationality Act. You know, our parents were young men and women who like hooray, America, the Willy Wonka ticket, let’s go. And let’s work hard. And we you know, we can build ourselves up. And you get there as a first generation American born and raised, and your parents generation, because like all parents, they want to take care of you. They want security, they realize they came here and people mock them for their eyes and their nose and their hair color and their goofy accent. They’re like Don’t rock the boat. Here’s the checklist of success, we took the lumps so you don’t have to. You go for the holy trinity of occupations doctor, engineer, dubious businessman who makes somehow a lot of money and gets a BMW or Acura or nice house, you know, marry someone who’s like seven or eight on the hotness scale, you keep your head low, you don’t cause too much trouble. And that’s the recipe of success. We don’t have, you know, become an artist and a writer. I didn’t leave my country in India and Pakistan and Japan and China for my son to go to UC Berkeley to become a writer, and also show me models of success. There’s no models of success, whereas the South Asian or brown or Muslim storyteller who makes money, do you want to be a loser? Who’s single and poor? Of course not. So that gets drilled into your head very early from not from my parents, but in the communities that were raised. And plus, we don’t have those models of success. Like you mentioned all those 80s action movies. I saw Chuck Norris killing scores of brown people, and I was rooting for him and then you get older and you’re like, holy shit, this is really racist. And but it kind of without realizing it, you are told on a daily basis. You don’t matter. Your story doesn’t matter. You are not the protagonist at Most you will be poor. You will be a punch line and a sidekick. That’s, you know, that’s what you’ll be looking at John Hughes movies, Sixteen Candles. You know, what’s the guy’s name? Luck Dong Duck.

B&N: Long Duck Dong. Oh, it’s close. You are very close.

WA: But you remember it right? And he when I was young, I saw that I’m like, this ain’t right. And even Indiana Jones if you see the movie again, we used to watch Temple of Doom like 45 times we used to love that movie. But even then we’re like, Yo, we don’t eat monkey brains. What’s happening, right? So you sit there and you absorb all of this. And if your story if you aren’t writing your story in America, your story is being written for you. And if you’re telling your story, your story is being told to you. I remember, I was able to create my own superhero origin story when I was 10 years old. I was a shy kid too. I was also very Sikh. And my teacher Miss Peterson said write a creative story one pager. This was the year of 1991, Robin Hood was coming out where Kevin Costner was playing this British Robin Hood with an American accent. I couldn’t care less about him. But Morgan Freeman, the voice of God was his sidekick, a badass Muslim named Asim. And we’re like, This is amazing. There’s a Muslim and he prays in a way if you watch the movie, Asim prays in a way that no Muslim has ever prayed in the history of the world. So that’s Hollywood for you. They could spend $40 million on a movie, they can’t literally ask one Muslim yo, how do you pray, but we didn’t care because it was so badass. So I did a 10 page with Wajahat Ali rendition of Robin Hood. And my teacher liked it so much. That she said you have to recite the story in front of the homeroom class, the same homeroom class that used to make fun of me, because I was the fat kid. And for those who are listening in the 80s and 90s, there were two categories of kids: normal, fat. And if you’re fat everyday was World War Three. So Sikh, shy, brown kid, sweating, left handed, lactose intolerant, and fat kid. And so I got up and I read the story was a 10 minutes read, I was so scared. But I had them. They laugh at all the right parts that were wrapped with attention. And that’s when I discovered I might be on to something and I went home gave the story to my father, my father read it, drank his chai, and said you have a talent, you should think about becoming a writer and my mom ran from the kitchen, he said, but first become a doctor.

B&N: I don’t know that sounds like a reasonable compromise.

WA: I mean, it is yeah, yeah. So my parents are very lucky in this regard that they’re very traditional, but very radical. They’ve always nurtured my artistic talents and supported me. My mom, though, and my dad also, and I think it’s right there, like, you know, but also just have insurance. But keep at it until you make it. But you know, it’s good to have multi talents, you could pay the bills that that was my parents approach.

B&N: And you are a lawyer. I mean, technically you could practice law, if you felt like it.

WA: I literally tomorrow, have it on my calendar to give my annual State Bar of California dues. And so yes, if I decided tomorrow that I want to start practicing law and probably get disbarred, because I haven’t practiced in 10 years and would probably have malpractice, then yes, I could do it. But I did. I went to law school, took the bar exam, passed it. And I practiced law for about two, three years. While I was hustling and trying to create my writing.

B&N: You have an undergrad degree from Berkeley in English.

WA: Yes. I just like how you’re like this Asian Auntie just like, publicly.

B&N: Nope. It’s not that because you and I have very similar stories. Dude, I did not take the consulting route. And I became a bookseller. And yes, there was a lot of conversation in the house about that.

WA: Yeah, yeah. Do you have a sibling though? Who became a doctor at least?

B&N: No, no, no, no, my little brother ran away with the circus. And now he’s a photographer. And I’m really not kidding about ran away with the circus. He was aroused about with Cirque du Soleil for like six months.

WA: Oh, that’s, I feel so bad for your parents. Because usually when they have one, usually when they have one Miwa there’s like another one that like just balances it out as long as one of them balances it out right now. Yep. Yeah. So so I you can empathize with me because I’m the only child which makes it so much worse. Right? Because all hopes were on me. So I went to UC Berkeley. And again, credit to my parents. I think they knew their son in the way like, they knew if they pressured me, I would rebel. Like, I’d be like your brother, I literally would run away to the circus. So they kind of let me do my own thing. I was undeclared until my senior year. I always knew probably like you knew or like your brother knew that we were going to reject the Trinity. We were going to reject the checklist, but you can’t articulate it. Especially in our communities. You just can’t say it. You have no allies. So you just go along and say okay, I’ll become a consultant. Oh, okay. I’ll take economics oh, I’ll just go do law. That’s safe. That checks the box. But I think the back of my head, if I’m to be really honest with myself, I always knew I would be doing this something like this. And it was my senior year UC Berkeley, 9/11 happened. FML, as the kids say, I was a member of the Muslim Student Association, dark humor. If Muslims knew that 9/11 was gonna happen, I would have joined the Indian Student Association and learn how to Bhangra but no, I was so happy to see other Muslims by my fourth year then they elected me to be part of the board. And then overnight, as you knew it was like the baptism by fire right. Overnight, a pre-9/11 and a post-9/11 overnight tag. You’re it. America’s microscope is on you and you and 1.7 billion Muslims in this city. called Islam or smeared and you have to defend your civilizational capacity and worth. While that was happening, I was also in Ishmael Reed short story writing class. And that’s one of those sliding door moments that this guy was undeclared on a whim, decides to take a short story writing class, taught by V right professor who saw a talent in me and encouraged me during this moment of collective madness and hazing of 911. And he said, You know what, stop wasting your time writing short stories. You’re really good at dialogue and characters. You should write a play. All these plays are ethnic. No one considers an ethnic right. Eugene O’Neill, Irish, ethnic, right. Arthur Miller, Jewish, Lorraine Hansberry, Black. Why don’t you write an American traditional kitchen drama but from the lens of your family? Pakistani Muslim. Okay, you have two months, give me 20 pages or you’ll fail by. And that was the start of my writing career.

B&N: And you also produced it all over the Bay Area. I mean, that was kind of cool reading how you just got in there, did the grassroots outreach, talked people into serving dinner while you read your play? It’s terrific. But this is also a tricky moment for you and your family. Because your parents have gone to jail. That was not a piece of the story I was expecting at all.

WA: No, I don’t think anyone’s expecting that piece of story. Right. And I don’t think we were expecting that piece of the story. I think that’s why that cut that piece of the story comes I think towards the middle and kind of gut wrenches a lot of folks, which coincides really with my life and this charting in the last 30-40 years in America because there was two crises that happened one on a national scale was 9/11. And anyone, it’s not just those who are Muslim or those who look to Muslimy. But let’s not forget a few days after 9/11 the first hate crime was against, this sounds stupid. Bigotry is right, It was against a Sikh man in Arizona. So there’s 19 foreign hijackers, 15 from Saudi Arabia, two from, I think Lebanon, one from UAE, one from Egypt, who bring down the two towers, and a white supremacist says I’m going to go attack a Sikh man in Arizona. It was madness. It was so mad that for a while we didn’t eat french fries. We used to eat freedom fries. Okay, just give me an example for those of you are young or forgot. With that type of national crisis and scrutiny. A few months later, I had applied for law school, I turned 21. I’m a senior. I had finished this 20 pages of the play, has passed the class and I’m at Shalimar restaurant in the Tenderloin ain’t nothing tender about the tenderloin. And I get this call from my aunt that saying you should come home your parents have been arrested. I don’t know what’s happening. But the FBI came and there all these people with guns and they drag them out in the morning and you’re the only child and you have two grandmothers at home. So you should come home. And my parents got arrested in something called Operation Cyberstorm, which at that time, was apparently like the biggest anti-piracy bust. Right? It was Microsoft teaming up with the FBI. Even Robert Mueller, who at the time was the head of the FBI came down. My parents, along with nearly two dozen people, their names are on the front page of the FBI. And my parents though this the bad luck, or the dark humor here. My parents had nothing to do with the piracy ring. Instead, my parents were in the same office as the people allegedly doing the piracy ring. And when it comes to Microsoft, my parents two years prior, had done a different business with Microsoft, some educational resale program. From their perspective, the business was good. They made the money they moved on. So now my parents just from my parent’s perspective and the book, I tried to be very fair, I was critical. I interviewed them. They have their regrets, right. But from my parent’s perspective, and my father, middle aged Pakistani men in his Ross pajama suit, and he was praying and he you know, he watches his 2020 and my mom, you know, was reading her magazine they go to sleep to does an armful folks come in the morning, drag them out, like what the hell is happening. They read the 31 count indictment and they almost pass out. They’re like what? A story becomes flattened overnight. All they see is scammers fraud, and they only read the headlines in the complaints and in the complaint. Microsoft said, alleges, you defrauded us to the tune of $100 million. So everyone thought I had $100 million. So I come home. My parents are in jail. You got a business to run, I got bills, I gotta get a lawyer and I have two grandmother’s take care of and about to graduate and have to go back and do these two finals, which I somehow did. And thankfully my English senior thesis Professor Susan Shrike, coincidentally read about the case, said I had no idea. They’re your parents. I’m so sorry. If you can give me the senior thesis by next December, I can give you an incomplete and you could still graduate. And that’s how I was able to graduate. So all this was happening in that moment.

B&N: Another piece of that part of your story is the fact that the community walked away from you. The Pakistani American community and that’s shocking to me. People just walked away and left you without resources. I mean, as you said, you’re a 21 year old kid. There is no money. There are no grandparents to tap for money because we’re taking care of them. I mean.

WA: You know, I remember a phone call this takes me back, right? Because used to I used to sit there all day. And I used to get that robotic voice from jail, which I still remember, you have a collect call from and then used accept and it used to be my mom. And then after I just finished talking to my mom, used to be my dad. And I remember early on, I talked to both of them. I said, you know, listen, I’m not going to judge you. I don’t know what you guys have done or haven’t done. But if you have this 100 million dollars, I could really use it. But there was nothing and two things happened with the community. Number one, post-9/11 There was a chilling effect. People were terrified. If you are Muslim, a Muslim charity, a Muslim organization and Muslim leader, you are a target. And so in that climate, people were terrified, Miwa. And I remember an attorney told me this a box any Muslim attorney who was a family friend, he said son, people are terrified. People are afraid of what’s in their own laundry, taxes, immigration, maybe they did something, no one’s gonna come out and help. Number one. The second thing that happened and I think anyone who comes from communities, ethnic community, religious community doesn’t matter. Community politics. People love stomping on the shining star that falls. My parents early on my father and my mother had a very good marriage. He was the first one early on to make it. He was the first one to get the big house. And there was just something like the Ali’s. They have the big screen TV in 1986, where they watch Top Gun, the Ali’s, look at the look at the mom. She’s always skinny, we have love handles, the Ali’s look, somehow they’re able to tolerate their mother in law and they haven’t divorced look at their son goes to brick there just something there. There’s like a target. And we love bashing this idea of the people who have success. There was a viciousness and cruelty I did not expect, that just got unleashed in that year or two years.

B&N: And I think it is really important to stress that, you know, 9/11 was only 20 years ago, I was living in New York when it happened. I lived downtown. We now have a generation of kids who were not on the planet when 9/11 happened. It’s wild. Part of why I’m coming back to 9/11 beyond the fact that it’s this pivotal moment in American history and the American flags man, they were everywhere, everywhere. They were everywhere. You were an improv troupe at Berkeley. And I bring this up because clearly you didn’t get the memo about debate club. I love the idea that you were in an improv troupe, and you did this in high school, too. But I also remember that everyone was saying, oh, Schumer said, we can’t be funny anymore, where the whole world has changed. And that lasted for what? 77 seconds. I mean, Saturday Night Live didn’t go that weekend, I remember, was a Tuesday and they didn’t go and we were all walking around sort of holding our heads. But the idea that you get up as captain in improve, in a costume and everything.

WA: I think the way you respond right in life, like I said, some people cry, which is fine, but I choose laughter. I think humor, if done wisely and strategically, can help sweeten the medicine. It can make us understand things were otherwise resistant to but sometimes it also just acts like you said, like a catharsis, which is a release, a release provides relief. And in that in those days, and I remember there was such tension, fear, also shock, permission to laugh or not laugh, like, people needed this release. And they didn’t know, we were part of the GLAAD squad, which was our sketch comedy troupe that we had created at UC Berkeley. And we were like, we have to postpone our show. Now, I think was like two weeks after 911. Should we do it? Should we not do it? Is it bad taste? Will we be disrespectful? So we made the decision to do it. And not only that, I said, Why don’t I do this skit, where I’m Captain Islam, this brown dude, a student by day, but then I wear like a towel behind my back, I put an eye on a piece of paper on my chest, and I’m Captain Islam, and I save the day. And, you know, it’s a way of kind of breaking the tension. But also it’s a subversion, right, because at that time, Islam and Muslims are the Boogeyman. I come in to save the day, literally, my troop was down with it. And then we did it and people just howled with laughter and applauded. And that’s when we knew we could, this is a humor, if done wisely, if done well can provide that release and catharsis and it throughout my entire life. In fact, I’ve relied upon I think humor in a way to booby trap to dismantle, to take on haters take on bullies to survive, to make sense of the world, to comment about the absurdity of our current reality, to sweeten the medicine for for people to actually understand and listen, as a release. People cannot reconcile that a person could be a practicing Muslim, and be jovial.

B&N: Yeah, I don’t think in a strange way. I think it is deeply subversive because people have assigned a label to you. And it happens so frequently. I mean, hi, not a member of the model minority. Anyone who knows me in real life will tell you I swear like a sailor.

WA: You swear a lot. Even before this.

B&N: I just have to get it out and then I can do the podcast and not swear. But that’s part of it. I didn’t get the inscrutable gene like that is not a factory preset that came with this. It just, I don’t know where they left it My brother didn’t get it either. It’s pretty funny, but put us in a room with the cousins and they’re all just, they can do it. And we’re just like, Hi. The settings busted.

WA: You play wordle. You just play Wordle. See, the thing is, you and me are like I said this in the book, like, I felt like we were like, God took his eye off from the molding process for just a second. And we were the ones with the head like the dents and we were just shipped out. And there was no recall. And then like, I just joke in the book of like God’s like, let’s see how this one plays out. That factory preset is broken on me. And it always was.

B&N: I’m okay with having the busted preset, I really am. But I liberating in a way. It makes it easier to coach switch because we’re still doing it. You grew up with parents with an accent my mom had an accent that I couldn’t hear. I remember people pointing out to me that my mother had an accent. It’s like what are you talking about? No, she doesn’t? She did. I just never heard it because she’s my mom.

WA: Yeah, but it’s one of those things you know, like we don’t, it’s the accidents which are, and I write about that in the book also is like, you know, the accents really are seen as a scar is the sign of a scarlet letter if our parents generation or immigrants who if you really think about it, instead of mocking them. These people came from another country, another culture without resources, leaving their family behind, learned this language English mastered it to the point where they were able to succeed financially. And they know the other language. If anything, we should celebrate these people. My parents didn’t care. They’re like you’re learning or though you’re not learning English. That was the opposite extreme. My parents couldn’t give a shit. They’re like, I don’t care if they mock you, you’re not eating meatloaf, you’re eating biryani. I don’t care if you don’t know English or five, you learn. They literally dropped me off at preschool. I only knew three phrases of English. I said this in the book Shut up, idiot. And oh SpaghettiOs. And I’m like, maybe you should have taught me more. And they’re like, Yeah, you did fine. And so there’s the opposite extreme. I literally came home one day because you just absorb it, you realize your place. And you realize because of your accent, your language, your eyes, your skin color. You’re not the mainstream. I went home. I was six. I told Ami, I said, you name me Wajahat. Can you give me an American name? Can you name me, Wilbur? Because I think I was reading Charlotte’s Web. Can you call me Walter and my mom’s like your name is Wajahat. You will be Wajahat.

B&N: I also have an uncle who chose Nelson as his English name. I’m sorry, what?

WA: That name is so white that even white people are like, Yo, you can do better than Nelson.

B&N: But here’s the thing. You talk about this in the book, too. I mean, for a while, there was no designation for Muslim or Central Asian. You know, Pakistan. We don’t even have names in the census. Now you can say, you know, I’m Muslim, but for a while you were doing what I was doing was checking the other box. Yeah, you’re an other like me, I was an other because my dad is actually white, which makes things a little more complicated. But I was looking at this going well, I’m not technically completely Asian. And so I was other until I could finally fill in Eurasian on the Census.

WA: I was other, too. And when you don’t have the box, and I write about this also so many immigrants, they’re like, Hmm, I’ve come to this country. I’m the other. Who is succeeding? Who is on top? Who are the heroes? Who are the models? Who are the billboards? Who does America like? These blonde white folks? Who does America hate? Who is hunted, who is jailed? Who has beaten up poor Black folks and brown folks? Hmm, I need to survive. What am I going to chase Blackness or whiteness? I will chase whiteness, I will move towards whiteness, I will think and believe I’m white. And maybe one day, one day, if I click my heels, I’ll be accepted as white. And this has happened throughout US history, for safety for security. People have chosen whiteness, and the you mentioned the model minority myth. It is a myth. And it’s dangerous myth. And oftentimes the people who bought into the model minority myth didn’t realize they were actually being enforcers of white supremacy. Because the model minority myth and specifically us quote unquote, Asians to this day are used by whiteness to say, How come you blacks and browns can’t be like these good minorities who play Wordle and have good spelling, and get good jobs and good degrees, right? And so it’s one of those situations that I think our parents generation, many of them unconsciously, if you ask them about it, they don’t say they’re like, What are you talking about? We just came to survive. But unconsciously they came in for all the reasons we mentioned their accent, their skin color, their religion, they’re like, Dude, we gotta just survive. Chase whiteness, and 911. At least for many, not all, many Muslims was that wake up call that you’re not white. You’ll never be white. This country will turn on you on a dime. And for those Muslims were like, no, no, this will pass. Then the election of Donald Trump came and woke them up. And that’s kind of you know, it’s one of those interesting, painful situations where it was unnecessary rude awakening, for people to realize their place in the American society and what type of alliances we’re really need to build to create a multiracial democracy.

B&N: And it’s not just alliances to create multiracial democracy, we also need to talk about mental health in POC communities. And it’s really important that you talk about your OCD, and you talk about your dad’s OCD, which his was exacerbated when he was in jail, because there are no services for that. And you’re really fortunate that you could have treatment for your OCD, but you look at communities of color, and either the resources aren’t there to begin with, which is the majority of the stories are, the resources aren’t there. Yep. But then too, we have this idea in the community. And when I say, I’m using community in the larger sense of Black and brown people. BIPOC is a strange phrase.

WA: It’s a robotic MC from the future center destroy the rest of us. BIPOC.

B&N: Yeah, it’s it’s weird.

WA: I don’t like it.

B&N: I’m not a fan. But at the same time, we do have a crisis, especially in Asian communities, whether we’re South Asian, Southeast Asian, East, Asian, where we’re not talking about this stuff, and we’re not getting help for the people who need it. And that is going to become more and more of an issue. I think, as people are coming to terms with the idea that there are systemic issues in America, that include them in ways they don’t want to be included and exclude them in ways that they are desperate to avoid.

WA: That’s exactly right. First and foremost, the pandemic has flattened us but flattened us unequally so to the first point you’re witnessing right now, this desperate need for resources, and outreach to people of color who are suffering, not because they don’t want to take the vaccine, not because they want to protect themselves is because they’re they live miles away from a healthcare facility, because they’re mired in economic poverty because they don’t have the resources like the rest of us. And then the tragedy of America is that those who have the resources are rejecting it for urine and dewormers. So that’s where we are at number one. But number two, I think, in the book talks about this point about within our communities, addressing mental health is seen as weakness. Mental health is not discussed, you’re supposed to grit it out, toughing it out. You’re not spoiled, you’re not privileged, not weak, like those other Americans. We we we gritted it out, we came here with nothing. And this is just spoiled person talk. And this is Western decadence, and you have to pray it away and just pray harder and work harder. That’s it. What do you mean depression? What do you have to be depressed about, you have nothing to be depressed about, you have food on your table, you have a roof over your head. That’s the old school mindset that many of us from these quote unquote, communities were raised with. And the one really beautiful and brilliant changes that I’ve seen this young generation, we never talked about self help, or self love or self care. 2001/2002 That’s when our communities needed it. This is a new phenomenon. These young kids are like, Yeah, I’m going to invest in myself. I’m going to invest in joy. I’m going to take a break, I’m going to make sure I don’t burn out. We’re like what, this is revolutionary. Like the fact that these kids are the young generation is doing this gives me hope is because so many of us chose martyrdom. Our success was through masochism. And I’m at that age now where my parents generation, right 60s 70s are going older, some are dying. My mom says that so many of her friends, especially the men are basically low key depressed, and have been for years. But they just never like admit it. And then you sit there and think about it. I’m like, That’s why that uncle has behaved that way his entire life. He suffers from massive, like there’s like a light bulb that goes out like, oh, but that’s bipolar. Of course. Oh, oh, and then my friend, my age now who’s in that community in the Bay Area, South Asian Muslim. He says most of his clients are Muslims and South Asian folks who smile that fake plastic smile, but are drowning in anxiety, and especially not exclusively, and it happens with Asian American women. Also, you guys have seen the data about this, the amount of pressure they put on themselves, but there’s no release. There’s no place to go. You can’t admit it. And so in the book, I decided to talk about my OCD which I inherited from my father, which has an anxiety disorder, you just don’t realize sometimes you share something which you think is so trivial. And you get so many people emailing you saying thank you. Because you’ve given a voice to something and only given a voice or something, you’ve given me permission. And when more and more people come out and say it becomes less of a stigma.

B&N: Exactly. One of the biggest moments of joy that I got from this book, and there were plenty I mean, this is this is really a laugh out loud experience for me. And obviously, I’m not Pakistani. I didn’t grow up, I know, shocking, right? I didn’t grow up in Fremont, California. But you and I have so many points of intersection. I grew up on the East Coast, you know, a lot of time running around the states, but there are so many points. It’s the specifics of your story that I think people are going to key into which is exactly your intent. But one of the great moments I got from this is when you’re talking about Ishmael Reed, and putting on your play, the domestic Crusaders. And this is the play that Ishmael Reed encouraged you to write. You finished it, you turn it in, you get it produced in the Bay Area. You bring it to New York, with Ishmael’s help and his wife’s home. And he introduces you to Toni Morrison. Oh, yeah. We need to talk about this moment. Because I love the idea here at the New York and poets cafe, this play is being staged. I mean, this is a moment in a young playwrights career that is like, this is amazing. And Tony Morrison looks at you and says very cool.

WA: So what happened was our play got rejected by everyone. And Carla Blank, who was Ishmael’s partner was the dramaturg and Ishmael and me we literally did DIY to the point where my mom used to cook the food. I used to drive the U-haul, we used my living room set to dress the set. I sat there using the internet and social media at that time to do the outreach. I made my own press release. I mean, this, this is literally how we got the play made and it went from Marathon Pakistani restaurant to a special showcase of Brooklyn rep to San Jose State. And then everyone rejected the play. They said this play is too ethnic, the mainstream will not like this play. That’s what was told to us. And so I waited a couple of years. And then my Muslim brother Barack Hussein Obama was about to get elected. And I’m like, maybe now’s the time to put on the play. So about five years later, in 2009, on 9/11 2009, we decided to premiere the play at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in Lower East Side, New York, which at that time, was also hugely controversial, because people said, How dare you put on a play on 9/11? Think about it. What does that mean? Oh, because I’m Muslim. You see, I’m saying so somehow, I had the audacity to do this. But again, you take a risk, and it worked in the audience that showed up. We put on a five week run at Nuyorican, the last showing of the play. Ishmael said, Guess Who’s Coming to see the play? I’m like, Who Toni Morrison, I’m like, what? Yeah, finally convinced her. And two hours before the play’s premiere, there was a French Cafe two stores down to Nuyorican. And I’m sitting there with Toni Morrison, Ishmael Reed, eating cake and the whole time, like 29 years old, mature and 29. I’m like, don’t say anything stupid. Don’t say anything stupid, stupid, Don’t say anything stupid. And I’m like, want to talk about Toni Morrison about writing and all this stuff. And then she, meanwhile, had just seen Wanda Sykes’ comedy special. And she wants to tell us the Wanda Sykes jokes. And she’s trying to tell these dick jokes, but she keeps laughing and interrupting herself. And I’m like, wow, okay, I’m sitting here with Toni Morrison and Ishmael Reed, and they’re talking and then she turns to me. And she goes, but you know how it is with us writers. You know how it is with the artistic process. It just starts in the back of our brain and grows and takes a life of its own. That’s the most fun. And I was like, wow, she’s referring to me as a fellow artist.

B&N: Who are some of the other writers besides Toni Morrison and Ishmael Reed that are in your personal canon. I mean, I know you’ve worked with Dave Eggers. I know you think very highly of his work. And Gary Shteyngart has blurbed your book, but also, I mean, honestly, there’s a lot of Little Failure here. I mean, his his memoir is really charming. But it’s not dissimilar in that you’re using humor to say hey, listen, this is slightly extraordinary. These circumstances, this is not Sunday in Columbus kind of thing.

WA: Gary, and you know, he blurbed the book, which is he’s a Russian Jewish immigrant and I think you said something which was a huge compliment to you that I really appreciate you talking about the intersections and the connections and the specificity and how you found, you were able to attach yourself onto the book to the specifics and I think that’s what’s key is the universal is often taught to the specific and we are told,we as minorities or BIPOC or marginalized communities to remove the specifics. Remove the merch and the masala, remove all the ethnic stuff, the mainstream will not tolerate it right and so these authors that you mentioned they put on all the merch in the masala Toni Morrison did Ishmael Reed does. Most of Muhammad when I saw him like a Pakistani writer, this is amazing. Gary Shteyngart does. Dave Eggers, at least you know, he’s a white dude, but he does his work. And he goes in reports. These are some of the things that I read and I was reading I also read comedians memoirs, I read Ta-nihisi Coates, I read Trevor Noah, I even read Carrie Fisher. And I think that kind of mix and match reflects within the book, right? It’s like a mixture of humor. Tell-all, also serious stuff, some blunt truths. Connect the dots, you know, Ismail, I think and I connected because we he used to make these pop cultural and historical references in our in our class. And I used to be the one to get it. And I remember early on he used to like say, okay, I can talk to Waj, you know, I’m saying like, there’s a kind of connection, so that, you know, and his work. He merges everything. He doesn’t care. It’s like a Bouillabaisse. And so I feel like that’s why those artists and writers were able to dance around in genre and use humor and mix history with politics, those are the ones I’m kind of attracted to. And I think you can see reflections of that in this work.

B&N: What do you want readers to know about Go Back to Where You Came From?

WA: I want readers to know that we aren’t going back. Number one. That we’re here to stay. And I want readers to know that we’ve heard a lot about the elegy of some folks who are considered mainstream rustbelt, real electable. But there are others who are also real and rustbelt and electable. They just haven’t been given the lead role. And we don’t want to replace you. We just want to be the co-protagonist of the American narrative. We just want to add a verse. And I think, if you really want to enjoy delicious food, and great music, and live on a vibrant street corner, it is in your interest to stretch and expand this country to accommodate the rest of us. And that’s my hope with Go Back to Where You Came From.

B&N: And the book does end on a very hopeful note. I want to be clear about that. The humor and the helpfulness are really a treat. So, Wajahat Ali, thank you so much. The new book is Go Back to Where You Came From, and it is out now.

WA: Thank you.

WA:

B&N:

WA:

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