Ayelet Tsabari’s SONGS FOR THE BROKENHEARTED is out this week in North America, and I’m so thrilled for the opportunity to talk to her about this beautiful book, which began as a story about Yemeni Jewish mothers and daughters and became ever richer once Tsabari came upon the long tradition of Yemeni women’s songs—she even found her own voice by joining a choir! But long before she knew these songs, there was Arundhati Roy’s THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS, the very first novel Tsabari ever read in English, and a novel that opened up the world for her in many different ways.
In this conversation, Ayelet explains how learning about Yemeni women’s songs shaped her novel, talks about how fascinating it was that so many of these songs (written and sung by women in arranged marriages) were about passionate love, and recalls how inspiring it was to encounter Arundhati’s novel in which the writer tells the story of her corner of the world in all its complexity. She also discusses how she had to find her voice in English by writing nonfiction first, and how—before she was ready to write this novel—she’d had to rediscover the faith she’d had as a child.
About SONGS FOR THE BROKENHEARTED:
A young Yemeni Israeli woman learns of her mother’s secret romance in a dramatic journey through lost family stories, revealing the unbreakable bond between a mother and a daughter in the debut novel of an award-winning literary voice
1950. Thousands of Yemeni Jews have immigrated to the newly founded Israel in search of a better life. In an overcrowded immigrant camp in Rosh Ha’ayin, Yaqub, a shy young man, happens upon Saida, a beautiful girl singing by the river. In the midst of chaos and uncertainty, they fall in love. But they weren’t supposed to; Saida is married and has a child, and a married woman has no place befriending another man.
1995. Thirty-something Zohara, Saida’s daughter, has been living in New York City—a city that feels much less complicated than Israel, where she grew up wishing her skin were lighter, her illiterate mother’s Yemeni music quieter, and that the father who always favored her was alive. She hasn’t looked back since leaving home, rarely in touch with her mother or sister, Lizzie, and missing out on her nephew Yoni’s childhood. But when Lizzie calls to tell her their mother has died, she gets on a plane to Israel with no return ticket.
Soon Zohara finds herself on an unexpected path that leads to shocking truths about her family—including dangers that lurk for impressionable young men and secrets that force her to question everything she thought she knew about her parents, her heritage, and her own future.
AYELET TSABARI is the author of the memoir in essays The Art of Leaving, finalist for the Writer’s Trust Hilary Weston Prize and The Vine Awards, winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for memoir, and an Apple Books and Kirkus Review Best Book of 2019.
Her first book, the story collection The Best Place on Earth, won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for Jewish Fiction.
The book was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, was nominated for The Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and has been published internationally.
She’s the co-editor of the award-winning anthology Tongues: On Longing and Belonging Through Language. Ayelet teaches creative writing at The University of King’s College MFA and at Guelph MFA in Creative Writing. Her debut novel, Songs for the Brokenhearted is forthcoming with Random House and HarperCollins Canada in September 2024.
Season Two, Episode 2: Ayelet Tsabari