“I grew up obsessed with this alternate version of myself”: A conversation with Safia Elhillo
and Leanne Francis
Safia Elhillo’s work has been recognised internationally for its originality of form and capacity for tenderness. Listed in Forbes Africa’s 30 Under 30, Safia’s work gives her homeland a body to speak from. As both a written and spoken word poet, she engages with identity and belonging, blurring the boundaries between fiction and poetry and dancing in the space between the two. In this interview, Safia tells us about her verse novel Home is Not a Country and writing a world that reflects the one she grew up in.

Home is Not a Country is such a powerful story about grappling with identity and belonging in the west. Do Nima’s experiences mirror your own in some way?
I actually wanted to allow myself to relish the freedom of fiction. It was fun to not talk about my own life for a little bit. In the rest of my work as a poet, my “I” is often read as autobiographical and there is a set of responsibilities that come with that, so I was excited to get to make things up for this project, such as time travel and spirit visits! That being said, much of Nima’s emotional arc mirrors the way my own feelings about home and belonging have grown more nuanced over time. I myself had to realize that I needed to release myself from this need to belong to a country, any country, before I could walk Nima through that process.
Your style is so refreshing, knitting together time travel and culture through the fluidity of poetry. Did you always intend to write a novel in verse?
To be honest, I’d never planned on writing a novel. I’ve been a poet for years and kind of don’t really know how to do anything else. All my eggs are in this one basket. But I was having a conversation with Christopher Myers, who runs Make Me A World at Penguin, and he asked me if I’d ever considered writing a novel. It’s funny because I think borders are fluid and genre is fake, but in that moment, I was like, a novel? I am a poet. And to be clear: it’s not because I’m snobby about only writing poetry, it’s not about purity. I am terrified of doing anything I feel like I’m not already good at, which I recognize as a huge character flaw. After I said no, Christopher asked me what my favorite book of poetry was. I immediately started talking about Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson to which Chris responded, “you know that’s a novel, right?”. As it turned out, I had accidentally been studying this forbidden form for years. It was very easy after that to convince me to sit down and try.
You’ve spoken about being obsessed “with the idea of alternate or parallel selves, especially in the context of diaspora.” The idea of our parallel versions existing, or waiting to exist, is so fascinating. Have you ever had an encounter with the supernatural world?
Like Nima, I was almost named Yasmeen. That was the name that my mother had already picked out before I was born. But then an older relative, maybe a great-aunt named Safia died. I was named after her instead. I’ve known forever that I almost got this other name, so I grew up obsessed with this alternate version of myself which went hand-in-hand with this other life I thought I could have had if I hadn’t grown up outside of the country of my origins. I wondered what I’d be like if I’d grown up there instead of elsewhere. I come from such a spooky culture! Everyone is always seeing ghosts and spirits and jinn and just talking about it casually. The presence of the spiritual has always been a profoundly casual thing in my world.
The presence of the spiritual has always been a profoundly casual thing in my world.
Home is Not a Country depicts immigrant communities in a warm light. We meet vibrant characters who are full of laughter, song, and hope despite the weight of the discrimination they face. How important was it for you to represent us in this way?
I wanted to make a book for my communities, complete with the aunties and uncles that taught me Arabic on Sundays, and their children who I grew up believing were all my cousins in that particular kind of diasporic sibling-hood. I wanted to write it in the language we invented together. That’s what the world I grew up in looked like, and I have loved books for what feels like my whole life, without seeing that world reflected in any of them. I wanted to carve out a little space for us, and to have that space be celebratory and funny and complicated and not just entirely traumatic, because I feel like my people are only ever being depicted as suffering.
If you could go back in time and give advice to your 14-year-old self, what would you say?
The books you love are wonderful and important but try to spend a little time out in the world. Books aren’t a replacement for actual people.
What else would you like the world to know about you?
Because I exist in this strange dream where my hobby became my job, I feel like I am constantly in search of a new hobby. I am learning how to sew these days. I’ve got a real sewing machine and everything!
Do you have any advice for young writers?
So much of my writing life feels like it’s been shaped by Toni Morrison’s wisdom: “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” All I can ever suggest is to read, and then read some more to figure out your voice by figuring out your taste and what you respond to in other people’s writing. And then try to name what it is that you are still looking for in these books, that you still haven’t found, and fill in those with your own writing.
SAFIA ELHILLO is the author of The January Children, which received the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets and an Arab American Book Award, Girls That Never Die, and the novel in verse Home is Not a Country. Safia is a Pushcart Prize nominee (receiving a special mention for the 2016 Pushcart Prize), co-winner of the 2015 Brunel International African Poetry Prize, and listed in Forbes Africa’s 2018 30 Under 30. Find her on Twitter and on her website.
LEANNE FRANCIS (she/her) is an English Literature and Creative Writing graduate from North East England. Being of South African and St Helenian descent, she is keen to pursue a career in publishing and poetry whilst pushing for representation across both. Find her at @leannekfr on Twitter or @leannekerenza on Instagram.

Published by Make Me A World on 2 March 2021
Genres: Novel-in-verse, YA
Pages: 224
Nima doesn't feel understood. By her mother, who grew up far away in a different land. By her suburban town, which makes her feel too much like an outsider to fit in and not enough like an outsider to feel like that she belongs somewhere else. At least she has her childhood friend Haitham, with whom she can let her guard down and be herself. Until she doesn't. As the ground is pulled out from under her, Nima must grapple with the phantom of a life not chosen, the name her parents didn't give her at birth: Yasmeen. But that other name, that other girl, might just be more real than Nima knows.
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