Traumatic tale helped author heal
In ‘Like a Bird,’ Fariha Róisín hopes to show what survival looks like
When Fariha Róisínwas 12, the idea for whatwould eventually become her first novel came to her in a dream. She didn’t have all thewords for all that she wanted to say, but she started anyway.
Nowshe is 30, with a body of poetry, personal essays and other writing that has delved deep into her ownexperienceswith abuse, violence and shame, and her book, “Like a Bird,” was recently published by Unnamed Press. Writing it over these many years has been part of her recovery, she said in a video interview, and a response to the absence of stories about what happens after someone is abused.
“I think a lot ofmywork has pivoted toward writing about healing just primarily because I need to heal and I’m processing it in real time,” Róisín said. “I need to believe I can survive. I need to believe that there’s a future for me. And I can’t guarantee that if I can’t see that page, if I can’t visualize it.”
“Like a Bird” tells the story of Taylia Chatterjee, a youngwoman growing up in relative affluence on Manhattan’sUpperWest Side but with parents who are both repressive and remote. She feels invisible to those around her, with the exception of her loving older sister, Alyssa.
After Taylia is sexually assaulted, her family disowns her, and she is left to find her ownway, emotionally,
physically and financially. Guided by the spirit of her grandmother, and with the help of new friends and lovers, she gradually comes to terms with what she has experienced and what it means to heal. Róisín dedicated the book to survivors.
“I feel like Iwas able to synthesize something outside of me, outside ofmy own experience,” she said.
Róisín, whowas raised in Australia and Canada by Bangladeshi parents, has explored themes such as ancestral trauma and spirituality in her previous work, including her debut poetry collection, “Howto Cure a Ghost.” “I have so much to learn frommy ancestors. I have so much to learn from the history of my faith, fromthe history ofmy people, the history of our regions,” she said.
Those roots go deep into
Róisín’s love for India— or, as she calls it, the greater India, before colonization. The writer Tanaïs, who came across Róisín’swork five years ago, was struck by howit— because of Róisín’s kinship with Bangladesh and her writing about sexual identity— feels both part of and a challenge to South Asian fiction writing, which tends to be dominated by Indo-centric, upper-caste, Hindu narratives.
“It’s really interesting to be part of a vast diaspora but also never feel like anyone’s writing about Bangla queer femininity in a very specificway,” Tanaïs, who uses one name, said.
The two writers have since become friends. After reading an early version of “Like a Bird,” Tanaïs suggested that Róisín revise passages she wrote when shewas younger that felt like a different voice— feedback that helped her see the discrepancy more clearly and gave her confidence to fix it. “It kind of liberated her to trust herself,”
Tanaïs said.
Zeba Blay, another friend of Róisín’s who sawa draft, was impressed by her dedication to thework. “She’s someone who kind of goes off into the mountains and then comes back down with amasterpiece,” she said.
When she started writing the book, Róisín said therewas much she didn’t know. She devouredworks by authors like Audre Lorde, Susan Sontag and June Jordan, who explored healing in their writing. But not onlywas the language of the early drafts more simple, but therewere also things she didn’t understand she could even write about, like her sexuality.
“Looking back at old pages, I’m just like, wow, evenmy conception of storytelling is so skewed,” she said. Therewas initially amale love interest, for example, before Róisín changed Taylia’s arc to one in which she finds fulfillment through community, not romance, something
that felt more true to the queer communities where Róisín herself has found support.
“Itwas a part of me that was being erased because I sawit as no other choice,” she said. “Like, howcould I be so audacious to write aboutmy queerness or about a character that maybe isn’t as digestible?” Rewriting those portions and being able to give names to forces like xenophobia, white supremacy and racism helped bring the book into its final form.
“I think the greatest gift of this book is breaking through silences that have long plagued our communities,” Tanaïs said. “Having a young person voice their pain and trauma and move through it is a gift for young people, and people who have healed fromtrauma, and survivors of trauma, likemyself, who need that.”
Oneway Róisín depicts trauma is through ghosts and spirits. In the novel, Taylia’s grandmother manifests as a spirit who guides
her when she is most vulnerable. The reason is rooted in Bangladeshi culture and the jinns of Islam. Hearing ghost storieswas common for Róisín when shewas a child.
“The spiritworld is something that I’m implanted in; we all are,” she said.“We all have language or faith or conception of it. It’s just about howmuch do youwant to believe it and whether you are invested in howto coexist.”
Having written this book for so long, Róisín said she has a vested interest in shifting society. “I think there’s an anti-intellectualism to healing that I really want to reverse,” she said. “There’s so much thatwe could gain fromhaving more conversations about what it looks like to heal. I want people to come away reading this book and understand sexual abuse more holistically and complicatedly and also believe in survival— like, look at the possibility of what that is.”