By Alaina Leary
Today we’re pleased to welcome Adiba Jaigirdar, S.K. Ali, Leah Johnson, Maurene Goo, Aminah Mae Safi, and Hannah Moskowitz to the WNDB blog to discuss their work in young adult romance.
Adiba Jaigirdar, author of The Henna Wars and the forthcoming Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating
The Henna Wars features the rivals-to-lovers trope, and in this book. Have you always been a fan of this trope and what drew you to it? Do you have any favorite media that uses this trope?
Honestly, I’m a fan of tropes in general, and I’m a big fan of the enemies-to-lovers/rivals-to-lovers trope in theory. Unfortunately, most media explores popular romantic tropes with only straight white characters. So I guess with this book I really wanted to take a popular trope and apply it to queer brown characters and see how the dynamics of that work out. For rivals-to-lovers, I really love Jake and Amy from Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and for enemies-to-lovers, I love 10 Things I Hate About You!
This book also talks about cultural appropriation and the nuances, and what it means to appreciate a culture versus appropriate something from it. Why were you drawn to including that and why are conversations about cultural appropriation important?
I was really drawn to exploring cultural appropriation because as a person of color, it’s something that is familiar to me. As a South Asian person, I’ve definitely experienced the ways in which people look down on certain aspects of my culture, but then pick and choose the “pretty” things like henna or our clothes, to use.
When I was younger, things like that made me very wary of accepting or loving my own culture for what it was. Sometimes it felt like I had to perform the “acceptable” parts of my culture and disengage myself from the parts that weren’t considered acceptable, in order to fit in. Now that I’m older and have studied in-depth about the history of colonialism, along with aspects of race and cultural theory, I have a much better understanding of history, culture, racism…all of the things that have played a significant role in shaping my life from a young age and continues to shape my life now.
But when I was a teen, I didn’t have the language to speak about these things or my discomfort about how my friends or classmates spoke about my culture or interacted with that aspect of my identity. I definitely wish I had more of this language when I was younger because it could have helped me accept myself and my culture at a younger age, instead of grappling with self-hate for a long time.
I think that’s exactly why it’s important to have conversations about cultural appropriation, especially for teens. Because we all need to be more aware of the history of different cultures, and the power dynamics that exist in our world. And teens need to love and critique their culture in a space where it doesn’t feel like they have to perform culture to fit in.
What are some of your favorite romance tropes and are there any you absolutely avoid?
My favorite romance trope of all time is probably fake dating. It’s just such a fun trope, and it can also seamlessly include a lot of other fun tropes like enemies to lovers, or love triangles. There aren’t really any tropes that I absolutely avoid. I think all tropes can be well-executed and badly-executed, so there are some that I’m not a fan of because of the ways I’ve seen them executed. But I’m sure in the hands of the right creative, I can also love them.
You have said in other interviews that you feel like the public perspective on Muslimness and queerness almost never intersect. How did you approach The Henna Wars and your main characters’ romance with this in mind? Are there any fictional characters you love who are both Muslim and queer?
I really had to be aware of the narrative I was writing into as I wrote The Henna Wars. We live in a time where Islamophobia is rife, and there are many negative stereotypes about Muslims in the media. One of the things Islamophobes love pointing out is homophobia in Muslim countries and communities, which is presented without any kind of nuance, or without the global context of homophobia around the world.
So, as I was writing the book, I really had to be aware of this context and write in a way that hopefully allowed for all the Muslim characters to be nuanced and layered, particularly in regards to their relationship with queerness. I think the first queer Muslim character that I ever saw in media was Adena from The Bold Type, and I really appreciate the existence of her character!
What was one of your favorite scenes to write between Flávia and Nishat?
I really enjoyed writing the wedding scenes towards the beginning of the book, where Flávia and Nishat meet for the first time in the story. Bengali weddings are very hectic, so it was nice to write about something that was very familiar, but then also add that dizzying kind of fluster of seeing your crush in this situation, making everything feel a little unfamiliar.
Are you a plotter or a panster?
Neither! I’m a plantser, which basically means I plot a little and pants a little.
In other media, such as TV and movies, are there any romantic relationships you’ve strongly connected with? The movie or show itself doesn’t have to be romance-focused, but just a relationship that has stayed with you.
I’m a big fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender, but when I was watching it I was a little too young to be particularly invested in the romantic relationships there. But when its spin-off The Legend Of Korra aired, I was old enough to seriously root for Korra and Asami. I also used to be a big fan of Clarke and Lexa in The 100, and I was rooting for Annaliese and Tegan in How To Get Away With Murder pretty much since Tegan and Annaliese began interacting.
Do you have any favorite romance novels (YA or otherwise) or romance writers?
Yes, so many! I’m a big fan of Sandhya Menon, and I especially love From Twinkle, With Love by her. I’m also a big fan of Amy Spalding, and I really love The Summer Of Jordi Perez. I love the entire To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before series, and I absolutely adore Love From A To Z by S.K. Ali. More recently, I’ve loved You Should See Me In A Crown by Leah Johnson and The Life And Medieval Times Of Kit Sweetly by Jamie Pacton. I’m also a big fan of the upcoming More Than Just A Pretty Face by Syed M. Masood!
What’s one question you wish you were asked more often (and the answer)?
I wish I was asked more about crafting romance, so for example, what is the most difficult thing about writing romance?
For me, the difficult thing about writing romance is how to get people to root for your characters and their relationship. Getting them to connect with the romance in the story, and feel the tension between the characters. It’s kind of where the crux of a romance book lies, and it’s difficult to achieve. The way that I usually go about it is I try to ensure that the romance works for my characters, that it’s specific to who my characters are. I figure if my characters are connecting with each other in a meaningful way, I hope my readers will be able to connect with the romance too.
S.K. ALI, AUTHOR OF LOVE FROM A TO Z and the forthcoming Misfit in Love
Love From A to Z is both a romance and a coming-of-age novel for both Zayneb and Adam, who discover more about themselves during the process. How did you balance each of their personal lives with the romance between them?
I set out to tell two stories so that meant mapping out two story arcs, two character journeys, two worlds, and then I proceeded to envision these two tales as they would look fully realized, as though each story stood on its own.
I plotted out points of intersections between Adam and Zayneb’s individual journeys—starting with the meet-cute of course—and made sure that these intersections were at enough intervals for each story to be accorded the respect it deserved. All this to say: this book entailed a lot of planning and plotting to make it work!
What were some of your favorite scenes between Zayneb and Adam to write? What about favorite scenes where they aren’t directly interacting?
My favorite scenes include the one where Zayneb drinks copious amounts of “tea” while trying to avoid talking about Adam’s mother, who Zayneb had just learned passed away when he was young. I also loved writing the scene on the bus when Adam was texting Zayneb tentatively. He imagines her to be into animals like him and sends her a picture of a lizard, and she, looking around and realizing there was nothing interesting around her, sends him a picture of an empty desert, leading him to believe she really is into nature (when she isn’t); I liked examining how when we’re interested in someone, we make them work in our heads first. Also, I would be amiss here if I didn’t mention the “water” scene on the beach—with its huge metaphorical cringe-factor.
Favorite scenes when they’re not interacting would be Adam and His Mom and the Making of French Fries (sob!) and Zayneb, Hosting the Visiting Emmas, While Wrapped in Blanket.
In most romances (real and fictional), there’s a moment when a person realizes they’re thinking about the other when they aren’t around, that this person has captured their attention. What was this moment in Love From A to Z? Was it different for Zayneb and for Adam?
For Adam, it was early on—when he doesn’t get a chance to talk to Zayneb much on the plane and he realizes he really wants to. And so he gets pleasantly surprised when she comes up to him at the luggage carousel, but then…she leaves the airport, and it dawns on him that he won’t ever see her again. He tries to tell himself it’s okay because first impressions are not what he bases his perceptions on, but this self-talk is really a way to grieve the missed opportunity to connect with someone he wants to learn more about.
So, Adam got bit with the intrigued-by-someone bug fast.
Although she thinks he’s cute at first sight at the airport, for Zayneb, it’s only when she meets his friends at a party and senses he’s distinct from them and notices how even though he grew up with these people, it’s like she and Adam have more of a connection—maybe because both are Muslim—that she gets drawn to thinking about him. She also senses that there’s something elusive about him, which makes her want to find out more. And that’s the moment she starts to really dissect her feelings for Adam.
What drew you to writing a romance novel after publishing Saints and Misfits?
I wasn’t seeing the kind of love story that was familiar to me and my family and friends. Muslim romantic storylines in popular culture tend to be focused on marriages arranged by parents (even if that’s not the romance in the story, the main character is often presented as grappling with the expectation of arranged marriages) and that wasn’t my experience and isn’t an intrinsic part of Islam. Muslim cultures vary widely and so how relationships develop vary. I just wanted to tell a story familiar to me but that I wasn’t seeing on shelves: two Muslims meeting serendipitously and falling for each other.
What is your favorite YA romance trope to read in books, and do you have any that you avoid?
The trope of miscommunication/misunderstandings often shows up in stories—Pride and Prejudice may have led the way for this, perhaps?—and I’m okay with it because it so often happens in real life. I’ve written another romance and it hinges a lot on this.
I know a lot of people like enemies-to-lovers (and maybe Pride and Prejudice is a (subdued) example of that too?) and I think I used to but now that I’m older, I find myself dissecting it; like, is there an element of mistreatment and contempt in that sort of relationship which in real-life could mean an abusive one? I try to write true-to-life so tropes that signal unhealthy irl relationships bother me. But at the same time, I’m writing speculative fiction right now which may have this trope…so we’ll see if my understanding of enemies-to-lovers is changing.
Writing craft-wise, are you a plotter or a panster, and why?
I, a sworn pantser previously, have become enamored with the plotter-lifestyle ever since I embraced it to write Love from A to Z. However, I still allow myself to pants by working lots of spaces into my outlines so that I can happily follow my whims.
I became more of a plotter in order to save time and in order to not get lost in the wilderness of my stories.
Are there any authors who have inspired your work, including authors outside of kidlit?
I love “clean” writers. Writers who write simple, “truthful” sentences that get to the heart of things. I greatly admire E. Lockhart’s writing style (and also her story prowess!) as well as Rebecca Stead’s and Erin Entrada Kelly’s. There are so many more authors whose work I find so easy to fall into due to the sparse eloquence of the prose—which is what I mean by “clean” writers.
An author outside kidlit who really got me thinking about writing painful topics in beautiful ways is Arundhati Roy. When I read The God of Small Things in my twenties, I was exploring writing my own truths growing up Muslim surrounded by a society that doesn’t want to see you as fully human, and everything I wrote came out raw, tinged with anger. And with Arudhati’s work, I discovered there’s a way to share painful truths with poignant and sharp observational offerings that let readers come on their own to understand these truths (which may differ from their ways of seeing the world).
What books do you think Love From A to Z is in conversation with? And do you have any recommendations for published or forthcoming kidlit books?
Love from A to Z works with The Hate U Give in that they both explore social justice issues of our times while letting readers live the lives of the protagonists and their families and circles of care/support (which both books focus on as well). I’ve seen many reviewers connect the two books for these reasons.
A book I’d love to recommend is Black Girl Unlimited by Echo Brown, which was released earlier this year. It has stunning writing and an immersive story that is at turns harrowing and hopeful. I cried and smiled huge, on and off, leading my husband to remark on my reading face—when that happens, when someone observes your face going through palpable emotions, it means you’re in the hands of an excellent storyteller.
LEAH JOHNSON, author of You Should See Me in a Crown and the forthcoming Rise to the Sun
You Should See Me in a Crown features the rivals-to-lovers trope heavily. Have you always been a fan of this trope and what drew you to it?
There’s so much tension inherent to that trope that I think it makes the perfect jumping-off point for a novel. From a craft perspective, the story almost outlines itself. In that way, my writer-brain is drawn to the way you can further complicate and toy with that simplicity and tension. I’m a huge reader of fanfic, and one of my absolute favorite conceits has always been, “These two could probably be a great pair, but oops! There’s a massive, life-changing thing that necessitates they be enemies! How will they manage!” It’s my lifeblood.
Every time I think about your book title, I think about the Billie Eilish song. Are you a Billie Eilish fan? Who are some of your favorite musical artists?
I hate to shatter the illusion that I think the title of the book might create, but I actually haven’t listened to much Billie Eilish! From what I understand though, the title of the song was pulled from the show Sherlock (with Hot Priest from Fleabag), which is slightly more up my alley. As far as music is concerned, my taste is all over the place. While working on Crown, some of the artists I had on repeat were: Chloe x Halle, Wallows, Conan Grey, Clairo, Hippo Campus, Maggie Rogers, and Hayley Kiyoko.
What are some of your favorite romance tropes and are there any you absolutely avoid?
Fake dating is almost always an instant-buy in for me. I also believe enemies-to-lovers is truly a God-tier trope. There’s Only One Bed will never not be absolute gold in my eyes. As for avoidance, I think there are a number of tropes out there that aren’t inherently bad or harmful but have been misappropriated so frequently and in such harmful ways that I’m automatically cautious of them. But for the most part, I love a good ole tropey novel. Give me all the tropes!
To celebrate Crown’s launch, you took Prom Queen style photos outside your high school. Were you anything like Liz or Mack when you were in high school? Do you think you’re like either of them as an adult?
I say often that while Crown is in no way autobiographical, there are almost too many ways that Liz’s experiences in the book overlap with my own in high school. Liz’s relationships with her friends, her feelings of outsiderness, the way the performing arts are a form of escape for her—those are all things that I identified really clearly as traits pulled from my own adolescence.
Much like Liz, I’m also a really family-oriented person. Mack and I, I think, are similar in that we often speak before we think and are deeply, deeply invested in how our favorite bands have the ability to speak to the way we move through the world with a type of clarity and articulation that we aren’t always able to do. But I am a lot like both of them in that when I love someone—whether platonically or romantically—I love hard. And that is, perhaps, the shared trait I’m most proud of.
What kind of research did you do for YSSMIAC? What was one of your favorite things you learned from your research?
One of the funniest critiques of the book to me is when people are like “this seems a little far-fetched,” because most of the stunts that you see in the book are things I pulled from real high schools across the country. The drunk driving simulation, the powderpuff football game—these are actual traditions for a lot of high schoolers in America. I just happened to turn them up to eleven.
Not to get too in the weeds on this, but one of the things I’m attempting to do in Crown is both queer and critique the nature of prom. Like, let’s use this story about a Black, queer, deeply anxious girl who is being raised in relative poverty as a means of examining how sexist, how heteronormative, and how classist this rite of passage is. And past that, let’s look at how many resources we pour into perpetuating the ideals that this institution represents.
I’ve said all that to say, one of my favorite parts about researching these prom customs is that it’s allowed me to identify tenets of prom culture—this “All-American” ideal wherein the straight, cis, white girl is often hailed as the most enviable among us—and infuse them with all of the things I rarely saw growing up. That doesn’t quite answer your question, but it was definitely my favorite part.
What were your favorite parts about writing Liz and Mack’s relationship—their meeting, their interactions, different points of the development of their relationship?
These are such great questions! I love talking about building out the relationships in the book—particularly the one between Liz and Mack. The thing I love most about writing through their relationship was that I could give them all of the pure first time moments that queer girls have historically gotten to experience so rarely on the page. At each of the milestones in their relationship, in edits, we were able to look at the pages and say, “That’s great, make it sweeter.” It was just so fun. They get to fall in love largely free from angst. It was so freeing to explore queer love and desire without trauma and do it intentionally.
There are two scenes of theirs that always come to mind when I think about the gentle way their love is able to bloom. The first is the moment where they’re standing in the crowd at their favorite band’s concert, surrounded by people, during the peak of one of their most iconic songs holding each other’s hands and Mack turns to Liz and says, “Do you feel that?” and Liz replies, “Feel what?” and Mack just smiles and answers, “Everything.” It feels strange to call a moment I wrote myself beautiful, but there was something really beautiful about that small exchange to me. So much being said about where their relationship was going to grow into.
Another one of my favorite moments to write was their second kiss, which takes place in a parked Jeep, next to a cornfield at sunset. It was just such an Indiana moment, that one holds a special place in my heart.
In other media, such as TV and movies, are there any romantic relationships you’ve strongly connected with? The movie or show itself doesn’t have to be romance-focused, but just a relationship that has stayed with you.
Are you asking me for my on-screen OTPs? This feels like an OTP question! Okay, let’s do it. Some of my favorite relationships are: Ben and Leslie on Parks and Rec, Simon and Bram in Love, Simon (since this is a screen-specific question), Katniss and Peeta in The Hunger Games, Bellamy and Clarke on The 100 (I don’t care if it’s canon, we all know the truth), Shawn and Angela on Boy Meets World, Lucas and Peyton on One Tree Hill, and Pacey and Joey on Dawson’s Creek.
Do you have any favorite romance novels (YA or otherwise) or romance writers?
I can’t talk about my love of YA romance without invoking Sarah Dessen’s name. I have been a voracious reader of her work for most of my life now, and to this day when I am in a reading slump and need to return to something that I know is going to bring me joy, I always return to This Lullaby, one of her earlier novels. I have similar feelings about John Green (who I’d argue rarely writes romance, but is always classified as though he does).
Right now, though, I have to say, of course, that I look to Nicola Yoon, Amy Spalding, Becky Albertalli, and Nic Stone—specifically Odd One Out—as staples of the genre. In that vein, if you’re not reading Emma Mills, I’m not sure what you’re doing. The way she writes banter and deals with platonic intimacy within her books with just as much care as she does romantic intimacy is masterful. Kristina Forest’s I Wanna Be Where You Are is such a wildly sweet love story that I have bought at least ten copies since it came out just to give away. Everyone should own it. And not for nothing, Kristina is the most well-read reader of romance I’ve ever met. It’s actually incredible.
I recently loved The Henna Wars by Adiba Jaigirdar and can’t wait to read (and be destroyed by) You Don’t Live Here by Robyn Schnieder, whose previous books I’ve always been incredibly moved by. I’ll Be the One by Lyla Lee just came out, and I’m waiting for my copy to arrive, so I’m super excited about that one. I could truly do this all day, but those are the names that come to mind!
What’s one question you wish you were asked more often (and the answer)?
I find that I rarely get asked craft questions, which is a bummer because I love to talk about the machinations of a story. I’d probably ask myself: “Leah, how do you know when the first kiss should occur?” To which I would answer: “If you’d like a formula, you can pretty safely default to: Kiss at the end of the first act. Break up in the middle of the second. Make up near the end of the third.”
But the real secret is: There is no formula. Whether your characters kiss early and kiss often or they slow burn-it until the very last chapter, a romance is nothing without a protagonist for us to invest in. You build a character we care about, and we’ll wait until page 348 of 350 pages for them to have their kiss in the rain, and we’ll weep with joy and relief once it finally happens. Once a reader trusts you to give them the satisfying moment they’ve earned, I’m of the mind that they’ll follow where you lead.
MAURENE GOO, author of Somewhere Only We Know, The Way You Make Me Feel, I Believe in a Thing Called Love, and others
AMINAH MAE SAFI, author of Tell Me How You Really Feel and more
You’ve often said that Tell Me How You Really Feel was inspired by the friendship between Rory Gilmore and Paris Geller in Gilmore Girls—and the romance that never developed there. What drew you to the Paris/Rory ship and why do you think enemies to lovers is such a compelling trope?
HANNAH MOSKOWITZ, author of Sick Kids in Love, 3, Invincible Summer, and more
Sick Kids In Love breaks the mold as a romance that focuses on two protagonists with chronic illnesses/disabilities where neither of the love interests dies. Why did you want to write this and why do you think a book like this is so necessary for the canon?
I’d just finished a book where one sick character dies to teach the other one a Very Important Lesson, and as I closed the book I realized what really bothered me about it. I felt like no one, from start to finish, had considered that a sick person might read it. It was written entirely for healthy people. So I wanted to create something that was by, for, and about. Healthy people could feel free to read it, but they weren’t the target audience. And I don’t think there are a lot of other books like that about chronic illness.
At its heart, this book is about two people falling in love. What were your favorite parts about writing this—their meeting, their interactions, different points of the development of their relationship?
Sasha’s speech after the Snow Ball was definitely my favorite scene to write, when he confesses his love to Isabel. I’d been writing bits and pieces of that speech as I went because I was so excited to get to it, and actually getting to piece it all together was really fun.
Sasha and Isabel openly talk about the challenges facing people with more visible disabilities and invisible disabilities. Why do you think these conversations about privilege, ableism, and oppression are important for characters to have, even in (especially in) a romance?
We need to get comfortable working those conversations into our relationships, whether those are family relationships, friendly relationships, romantic relationships, sexual relationships…the status quo thrives in silence, so any time I can show, look, you can talk about ableism or symptoms or insecurities and still be loveable and sexy, I’m gonna do it.
What are some of your favorite YA romance tropes in books, and do you have any that you tend to avoid?
Big fan of star-crossed lovers, arranged relationships, and anything about polyamory or open relationships or otherwise untraditional set-ups. I’m really not interested in cheating plotlines.
Why do you think narratives of disability/chronic illness and Jewish identity written by authors who share those experiences are important?
No one’s ever going to get it the way that we will. Chronic pain is something so visceral and so all-consuming but at the same time so everyday and boring, after you’ve lived with it for a while, and that’s hard enough for me to be able to write about in a way that makes sense. I can’t imagine an outsider imagining it and nailing it.
Writing craft-wise, are you a plotter or a panster, and why?
In-between, but more of a plotter—I have like a one-sentence summary for each chapter that I’ll keep updating as I go so that I always have the next three or four chapters planned. And I have to know the big events before I start, and how it will end.
Are there any authors who have inspired your work, including authors outside of kidlit?
E. Lockhart, Jaclyn Moriarty, Melina Marchetta, John Irving are my big ones.
What books do you think Sick Kids In Love is in conversation with? And do you have any recommendations for published or forthcoming kidlit books?
I just name-checked her, but I would say it’s in conversation with E. Lockhart’s romances because they’re about what it’s like to feel undesirable while you’re being desired, which I think is how Isabel feels. I haven’t read any arcs lately so I don’t know much that’s forthcoming, but I just bought Slay by Brittany Morris and am really excited to dig into it!
What’s one question you wish you were asked more often (and the answer)?
It’s not really a question, but I’d love to babble on about where I get the names for my characters because I’m such a name geek. Isabel was from Grey’s Anatomy, though her nickname Ibby is from someone I knew in middle school. Sasha was a character in a book I wrote ages ago and never published that I repurposed for this.
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Alaina (Lavoie) is the communications manager of We Need Diverse Books. She also teaches in the graduate department of Writing, Literature, and Publishing at Emerson College and is a book reviewer for Booklist. She received a 2017 Bookbuilders of Boston scholarship for her work in the publishing industry. Her writing has been published in New York Times, Teen Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Refinery29, Allure, Healthline, Glamour, The Oprah Magazine, and more. She currently lives in Boston with her wife and their two literary cats. Follow her @AlainasKeys on Instagram and Twitter.
