Holly Mason Badra, editor of Sleeping in the Courtyard: Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora was interviewed by Holly Smith in the Washington Independent.
For many of us, our introduction to “the Kurds” came during the Gulf wars, when the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq was referenced in the news. Obviously, those reports painted an extremely limited picture. What do you hope readers of Sleeping in the Courtyard come to know about the Kurds as a people and Kurdistan as a place?
I’m glad you frame this question with the point of Kurdish exposure connected to war because this was one of the catalysts for the book. It seemed to me that what many in the Western world thought of when thinking of the Kurds and Kurdistan, if at all, was connected to war, devastation, genocide, displacement (or oil). When I started the book in 2019, it was at a time when Kurds were in mainstream media in the West because of Turkey’s attacks on Rojava, and writers were asking me about Kurdish literature in translation. I think it’s a reality that society, writers, and readers often are keen to read more about a culture (and from its writers) when injustice is taking place.
I’m interested in offering a picture of not only Kurdish suffering and grief but also the joy, beauty, delight, and bounty within Kurdish experience. I want readers to be keen to know about our art, our culture, our lives beyond just themes of war and suffering. These themes are important, too, no doubt, but we are more than the valleys and pain. I want readers to see the beauty of Kurdistan’s mountains, gardens, city life, architecture. May they marvel at the landscape. May they shake their head at the state violence that fragments and fractures the region. I want readers to understand the varied, complex, and nuanced lives of Kurds in the region and in diaspora, and especially to gain a fuller picture of Kurdish women’s lives and experiences.
Read the full interview at the Washington Independent.