Stay ConnectedWelcome to The Diverse Bookshelf. I’m Samia Aziz, celebrating the power of literature and the voices of authors and change makers from the global majority. Join me as we explore the stories that inspire, connect, and transform our world. Each week I interview an inspiring guest about a whole host of themes and issues while focusing on diverse literature.
Let’s uncover the stories that truly matter—together.
Copyright: © 2025 The Diverse Bookshelf
On this week’s show, I’m speaking to Palestinian-American writer, Sahar Mustafah about identity, writing, survivor’s guilt, and the current war on Gaza which has led to the killing of over 14,000 Palestinian men, women and children. Her book, The Beauty of Your Face is a stunning family tale of a young woman finding herself and her faith, as she explores her own identity.
The daughter of immigrants, Sahar Mustafah explores her Palestinian heritage in her writing. She earned her MFA in Fiction from Columbia College where she was a Follett Graduate Scholar. Mustafah is a Willow Books Grand Prize Winner for Code of The West, was named one of the 25 Writers to Watch by The Guild Literary Complex of Chicago, and is a member of Voices Protest and Radius of Arab American Writers. Her debut novel, The Beauty of Your Face, was named a The New York Times Book Review Notable Books of 2020 and a Finalist for the 2021 Palestine Book Award. It was long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Award and chosen for Los Angeles Times “United We Read.” Mustafah writes and teaches outside of Chicago.
The Beauty of Your Face tells a uniquely American story in powerful, evocative prose. Afaf Rahman, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, is the principal of a Muslim school in the Chicago suburbs. One morning, a shooter--radicalized by the online alt-right--attacks the school. As Afaf listens to his terrifying progress, we are swept back through her memories, and into a profound and "moving" (Bustle) exploration of one woman's life in a nation at odds with its ideals.
Buy The Beauty of Your Face, here: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-beauty-of-your-face-shortlisted-for-the-palestine-book-award-2021-sahar-mustafah/1261005?ean=9781789559736
As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on this episode. Come, connect with me on social media:
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On this week's show, I'm speaking to Dina Nayeri about the truth. In a growing age of false news, propoganda, smear campaigns and cancel culture, the sanctity of the truth and who gets believed is increasingly important. There is a difference between those who speak the truth, and those whose truth is believed, as sometimes it is the case that those who speak their truth are not believed, and the consequences are dire. We have seen this play out worldwide for centuries for women, refugees, people of colour and black people, among other minority and vulnerable groups especially.
On this week's show, we unpack why some people are more believable than others, the role of the media, and the state's eagerness to push out certain narratives, even if they are not true. This has especially been the case recently since the increased attacks on Gaza, where news outlets have recalled harmful and incorrect statements.
Dina Nayeri is the author of two novels and two books of creative nonfiction, Who Gets Believed? (2023) and The Ungrateful Refugee (2019), winner of the Geschwister Scholl Preis and finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Kirkus Prize, and Elle Grand Prix des Lectrices, and called by The Guardian “a work of astonishing, insistent importance.” Her essay of the same name was one of The Guardian’s most widely read long reads in 2017, and is taught in schools and anthologized around the world. A 2019-2020 Fellow at the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris, and winner of the 2018 UNESCO City of Literature Paul Engle Prize, Dina has won a National Endowment for the Arts literature grant, the O. Henry Prize, and Best American Short Stories, among other honors. Her work has been published in 20+ countries and in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Granta, and many other publications. Her short dramas have been produced by the English Touring Theatre and The Old Vic in London. She is a graduate of Princeton, Harvard, and the Iowa Writers Workshop. In autumn 2021, she was a Fellow at the American Library in Paris. She is currently working on plays, screenplays, and her upcoming publications include The Waiting Place, a nonfiction children’s book about refugee camp, Who Gets Believed, a creative nonfiction book, and Sitting Bird, a novel. She has recently joined the faculty at the University of St. Andrews.
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This week on the show, I’m joined by two book-lovers, book bloggers and activists to talk about some really important issues: Ola Abou and Ilham Essalih. We're talking about what books we should read to further understand the war on Gaza, and the war in Syria, and how the movements for liberation in Palestine and Syria are intertwined.
At the time of recording (16th October), we were on day 9 of Israel’s war against Gaza, with the official death toll having reached nearly 3,000, 700 of whom are children and babies. For 9 days, the besieged Gaza strip has faced relentless attacks and a total land, sea and air blockade, cutting off its supplies of water, food and fuel to 2.3 million people. The situation is beyond horrendous, as hospitals struggle to cope with the injured amid a lack of medical supplies and doctors, and communities are being ordered to leave their homes due to imminent attacks. Even while leaving, passages that were previously declared as safe, have been attacked, sparing no one. There are also increasing reports on attacks in the occupied West Bank, and arrests of over 70 people.
The death toll has now exceeded well over 4,000 people, and schools and hospitals have been ruthlessly attacked.
Unfortunately, Palestine is not the only place impacted by Israel at the moment. Israel has been bombing Syria, which since 2011, has been in a devastating state of war and crisis. Twelve years after protesters in Syria first demonstrated and rose up against the four-decade rule of the Assad family, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed and nearly thirteen million people—more than half the country’s prewar population—have been displaced. Amid war, the Syrian people are suffering an economic crisis, and a massive earthquake at the start of 2023 cast much of the population in the north into further despair.
Follow Ola and Ilham on social media:
Ola: www.instagram.com/slowreadingola
Ilham: www.instagram.com/ilhamreads
Books mentioned in this episode:
Palestine:
Classics
Non-fiction/memoirs:
Palestine writers:
Jewish writers:
Contemporary:
Syria:
-In Praise of Hatred, Khaled Khalifa
-What Strange Paradise, Omar El Akkad
-The Middle East Crisis Factory, Iyad El-Baghdadi and Ahmed Gatnash
-We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria, Wendy Pearlman
-Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War, Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami
-You Have Not Yet Been Defeated, Alaa Abd El-Fattah
-The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy by Yassin al-Haj Saleh
-The Book Collectors: A Band of Syrian Rebels and the Stories That Carried Them Through a War by Delphine Minoui
On today’s show, I’m speaking with powerful story-teller and writer, Etaf Rum. Etaf has written two powerful novels, A Woman is No Man, and most recently, Evil Eye. Her work is an intricate look into the lives of immigrant Palestinian families, dealing with serious themes of inter-generational trauma, identity, mental health, belonging, family, motherhood and so much more. Her work has connected with readers all over the world, evoking deep emotion, and shedding light on the traumas held and lived with every single day, of one of the world’s most persecuted communities – Palestine. I’m so glad she’s my guest today.
We talk about the importance of Palestinian stories, intergenerational trauma, mental health, healing, identity, and so much more.
While this conversation is not in light of recent escalations of violence in Palestine, I hope it helps inform and educate, giving insight into the lived reality of Palestinian families.
The daughter of Palestinian immigrants, Etaf Rum was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She has a Masters of Arts in American and British Literature as well as undergraduate degrees in Philosophy and English Composition and teaches undergraduate courses in North Carolina, where she lives with her two children.
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On today’s show, I’m speaking with journalist and historian, Lucy Fulford about her non-fiction book, The Exiled.
In The Exiled, Lucy delves into understanding the Asian expulsion from Uganda in 1972, which saw 80,000 South Asian Ugandans being given just 90 days to leave the country, by the dictator, Idi Amin. She goes way back, uncovering how the British empire led to so many South Asians finding home in Uganda, but how it also impacted the structure of Ugandan society and the impact on black Ugandans. The book is a mixture of Lucy’s own family history, interviews she has undertaken, and copious amounts of research. The book takes us from pre-1972 Uganda, to the expulsion itself and beyond 1972, as countless families in the UK and elsewhere strived to build a new life. This is a really thorough and nuanced exploration of that part of history, also sprinkled with Lucy’s own musings on race, identity.
Lucy is an experienced multimedia journalist and filmmaker whose work centres on migration, conflict and climate.
After graduating from the University of Bristol with a first-class honours degree in History – writing a dissertation on the Rwandan genocide – she studied media law, shorthand and reporting with the NCTJ and worked as a senior reporter and acting editor of a press agency, covering breaking news, crime and courts for the national press in London. Growing up between cultures has led to an interest in exploring identity and in her book, The exiled, she explores the generational legacy of forced migration, inspired in part by her family history.
On this week's show, I’m speaking with Kevin Jared Hosein about his novel, Hungry Ghosts. Hungry Ghosts is a remarkable novel set in the 1940s in Trinidad, following the story of two families, vastly different from one another, but whose decisions and actions have devastating consequences. In his book, Kevin explores so much, from race, class, religion, wealth and human dignity, to huge questions around one’s pursuit of escaping the life they don’t want to lead; whether we are the saviours in our own stories, and how the actions of one person or group of people, can have long-lasting impacts on others, spanning generations.
On the show we talk about morally ambiguous characters, learning about stories through gaming, colonialism, class, race and so much more.
Kevin Jared Hosein is a teacher and writer from Trinidad, where he lives and works. He won the Commonwealth writers’ prize in 2018 for his story Passage and he has written two novels for young adults, The Repenters and The Beast of Kukuyo. His first novel for adults, Hungry Ghosts, is set in 1940s Trinidad and concerns the wife of an overseer who goes missing and the attempts by one of his employees to move up in a highly stratified society.
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On the show this week, I spoke with the super creative and wonderful, Laila Woozeer about her memoir, Not Quite White. Born to a Mauritian father and white mother, Laila often felt like she didn't belong and struggled to see herself represented in the world at large. In her memoir, she details the complexity of mixed racial identities, how difficult it can often be to navigate all the ways we are often othered, and the importance of learning to accept ourselves and all the different parts of our identity.
In this conversation, we talk about creativity, expressions of self, racism, growing up feeling like an outsider, mental health, intergenerational trauma and so much more.
Laila Woozeer is a British author, performer, musician, and activist. Woozeer's 2022 book, Not Quite White is a memoir described as "primarily focused on mixed-race identity and also looking at representation, structural racism, intergenerational trauma and interracial family relations."
I hope you find some healing, community and hope through this conversation.
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On today’s show, I’m speaking with Jaspreet Kaur, a woman I really look up to. We talk all about being a brown girl, and the challeges we face, journeys we go on, and all the beauty that lies within it all. Jaspreet’s book takes an inter-generational look at what it really means to be a brown woman, and what issues we really need to talk more about. On this episode, we talk about microaggressions and how harmful they are, the importance of our names and saying them correctly, body image issues, body hair, periods, fertility, being vulnerable, healing and so much more.
Jaspreet Kaur, also known by her online handle 'Behind the Netra' is an award-winning spoken word artist, history teacher and writer from London. She is the author of Brown Girl Like Me. She is passionate about gender issues, taboo subjects and encouraging positive social change in both the Asian community and wider society. Her work tackles issues related to gender discrimination, mental health stigma, the postcolonial immigrant experience, and more. Jaspreet is a regular on the BBC and Sunday Morning Live and worked with the UN on the HeforShe campaign. She is currently a Research Fellow at Birkbeck University's Centre for British Political Life. She is a force to be reckoned with, and I’m so glad she's with us on the show today.
As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode. Please do get in touch with me on social media to keep the conversation going :)
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This week's episode is a little different. Usually I interview a super-inspiring author, and we dig deep into the themes and issues they explore in their writing. But this week, there is no guest, and it's just me. I wanted to take some time to reflect on the past year, and all the wonderful conversations that have taken place on the show.
The Diverse Bookshelf podcast is now one year old :) With over 40 episodes out in the world, I wanted to sit back and think about the space we've created, what my intention and drive really was, what sort of conversations have taken place, and where we go from here.
I hope you enjoy this slightly different episode, and we'll be back with inspiring interviews soon!
I love to connect with listeners, and LOVE to hear what you think of the show. Connect with me on social media here:
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On this week's episode, I chat to the wonderful Faiza Shaheen, author of Know Your Place, which is part-memoir, and part-research-based analysis about class in the UK. In the book, Faiza discusses her own working-class background, and the effects of austerity on her family, especially her mother who was relying on benefits due to her health. She breaks down the very many things in society which helped her to graduate from the University of Oxford, including a state-school system with good teachers, a welfare state system, and free universal healthcare. But she also breaks down how a person from a working class background has to work up to 4,000 times harder to succeed, due to the structure of our system.
We explore some big questions about social justice, social mobility and equality and fairness in the UK, talking about Faiza's political career, research and insights. We break down what we really mean by social mobility, and what really matters when it comes to representation in government.
Dr. Faiza Shaheen is an economist, writer, and commentator. She is the author of a range of materials and publications covering the most salient social and economic debates of our times, including inequality, austerity, immigration, youth unemployment and social mobility. Faiza has over 15 years of experience researching the trends and consequences of inequality, as well as designing policies and campaigns to address the causes of inequality and exclusion.
In 2017, Faiza was named the Observer Rising Star for Campaigning, nominated as Asian Woman of the Year and included in the Top 100 Influencers on the Left list in the UK.
As always, I'd love to hear what you think of this conversation! Please do follow, rate and review as it helps more people find the show.
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