The Black-Marketer's Daughter Book Tour & Giveaway
"Mallick offers an impressively realistic depiction of a woman caught between tradition, family, and her own sense of empowerment." ~ Kirkus Reviews
"The Black-Marketer's Daughter is a key-hole look at a few things: a mismatched marriage, the plight of immigrants in the U.S., the emotional toll of culture shock, and the brutal way Muslim women are treated, especially by men within their own community. Titling it—defining the heroine by her relationship to a man rather than as a woman in her own right—suggests how deeply ingrained that inequality can be." ~ IndieReader Reviews
"The Black-Marketer's Daughter is the portrait of a woman who endures violence, intimidation, xenophobia and grief, and yet refuses to be called a victim. In this slender novel, Suman Mallick deftly navigates the funhouse maze of immigrant life in contemporary America—around each corner the possibility of a delight, a terror, or a distorted reflection of oneself." ~ Matthew Valentine, Winner, Montana Prize for Fiction; Lecturer, University of Texas at Austin
Interview
with Suman Mallick
What does your perfect
writing spot look like? Is that what your ACTUAL writing spot looks like?
I write at home (no Starbucks for me). As a
self-imposed challenge, I did try writing in cafes while on a week-long trip
to Argentina, but eventually gave up. I’m a pacer when thinking through
something about work or writing or life in general, and it’s easier to do that
in my own home without drawing strange stares or generally pissing people off.
Apart from my MFA years, I’ve always had a day job in an unrelated field, which means I only write at night in my home office after my child goes to bed, or on weekends when I can make time. Occasionally I’ll take a pause to listen to music while working out the next section in my head, but otherwise I write without distractions and try to save the music and perhaps a drink to calm down from the rush of finishing something.
Naturally, it’s important that my writing spot is a sanctuary. It’s the first room that I set up in my house, and probably the only place where I know how to find everything in it.
What cultural value do you see in books?
In 2012, in an article bemoaning a decision by the
Pulitzer Prize Board that no winner was selected for the fiction prize that
year, the writer Ann Patchett said about the importance of reading fiction that
“it is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn
makes us more empathetic beings.” I am living testament to that statement.
Reading books written by authors whose origins and subject matters are
completely unfamiliar to myself has taken me to a place in life where I no
longer view any person and their way of life–no matter how peculiar it may
be–with disparagement, but only with curiosity. It’s what made me, an
Indian-American man, to dare to write from the point of view of a Pakistani
woman.
What do you like to
read in your free time?
Almost anything and everything: apart from fiction
and poetry by writers from the world over, I read a lot of history, religion,
politics, economics, books, and articles about writing and writers, interviews
and book reviews, general nonfiction, and memoirs, parenting, psychology,
philosophy—you name it. In fiction, I used to read mostly novels, but that’s
changed somewhat over time and I’ve come to love and appreciate short and flash
fiction more and more over time. Lately,
because the pandemic has forced me to read a lot more work-related documents,
I’ve focused my writing (and therefore naturally my reading, too) on shorter
pieces of work. I’m not going to name any names though as far as my favorite
writers go because I’ve learned that in the world or writers, that’s an easy
way to get in trouble these days.
Who are some of the authors, you feel were influential in your work?
I’ll limit the answer to this question to this
particular book, because I really stopped reading most of what I usually read until
that point and started reading other things in order to gain the perspective
that I felt was needed to write from a woman’s point of view. So over the course of a year when I first wrote this book, I read about sixty books by
primarily women authors and with female protagonists, all the way from
well-known stalwarts to younger and perhaps a little lesser-known writer. A few names that jump to mind right now are:
Alice Munro, Renata Adler, Lydia Davis, Willa Cather, Elena Ferrante, Bapsi
Sidhwa, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Claire Messud like Téa Obreht, Jennifer Dubois,
Diana Abu-Jaber, Sue Kaufman, Shanthi Sekaran, Shilpi Somaya Gowda, Sadia
Shepherd.
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1/6/21 |
Promo |
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1/7/21 |
Review |
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1/7/21 |
Guest Post |
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1/8/21 |
Review |
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1/8/21 |
Author Interview |
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1/9/21 |
Review |
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1/10/21 |
Excerpt |
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1/11/21 |
Author Interview |
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1/11/21 |
Review |
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1/12/21 |
Playlist |
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1/13/21 |
Review |
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1/13/21 |
Scrapbook Page |
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1/14/21 |
Author Interview |
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1/15/21 |
Review |
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1/15/21 |
Review |
Some excellent author recommendations from Mallick in here. Thanks for the post!
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