Q AND A WITH AYSER SALMAN

In her dynamic debut, The Wrong End of the Table:  A Mostly Comic Memoir of a Muslim Arab American Woman Just Trying to Fit In, Los Angeles writer and producer Ayser Salman traces her unlikely journey from Baghdad to Hollywood, by way of Ohio, Saudi Arabia and Kentucky. First comes Emigration, then Naturalization, and finally Assimilation—trying to fit in among her blonde-haired, blue-eyed counterparts, but always feeling left out.

We’re delighted to feature an interview with her!

Thank you so much for joining us on WWWB, Ayser! 

Tell us about your beginning, where are you from?

I was born in Baghdad, Iraq and grew up in Kentucky and Saudi Arabia.

How did your childhood impact the writer you’ve become?

When I was 3 years old, my family moved us from Iraq to Columbus, Ohio. We spent the next several years moving neighborhoods and school districts – first to Lexington, Kentucky then a long stint overseas in Saudi Arabia and back to Kentucky just in time for junior year in high school.  I was constantly the new kid in school and I hated it. But all the moving around gave me an appreciation for different cultures and customs. In my constant striving to fit in, I became a chameleon, and through that I developed an appreciation for different types of people, particularly those who are considered ‘The Other.’

Beyond that, my family had their own quirks, which lent themselves to comedy. At some point in my early twenties I decided it was better to laugh instead of cry and thus my comedy writing career was born.

When did you decide you wanted to be a writer?

I didn’t actually call myself a writer until my early 30s. I went to college with the idea that I would be a journalist – figuring I could apply my multi-culturalism to world news and be a Christiane Amanpour type. A short stint working in local news changed that and I decided to go to film school to be documentarian. Out of that, grew a desire to make up stories using my family as inspiration and I suppose it was then that I realized the thing I loved most was sitting at my computer and …well, writing.

How has writing changed you as a person?

It has allowed me to find my voice. Previously the most authentic I allowed myself to be with strangers was giving my real name at Starbucks. Now my whole life is in print. To a Muslim girl from Iraq, that’s a big deal.

Could you tell us a bit about your memoir The Wrong End of the Table ? What made you decide to write it?

I had been writing scripts loosely based on my colorful and spirited Iraqi family and writing a blog with vignettes about my real life experiences on the side.  I had toyed with the idea of putting these vignettes into a book for a while but it was on the back burner. It wasn’t until a dinner with a mentor sparked me to move this up on my list. Then Donald Trump began campaigning (and later won the presidency) on a rhetoric which seemed intended to create fear about those who were ‘The Other’ and I figured it was time for me to tell my story.

What is the most important lesson you’ve learned from your road to publication?

Be authentic. You can’t go wrong if you’re being true to yourself.

What would be your 6-word memoir?

Would The Wrong End of the Table count?

What is the best writing advice you’ve ever had, and the worst?

I honestly can’t remember the worst advice I ever received – probably because I blocked it out.

The best writing advice came from my former professor Jeffrey Davis, who instilled in me the importance of always coming from character and writing from ‘inside out’ instead of the other way around. This advice has never led me astray – your characters will always show you where your story will go and help you define the narrative. I teach short film writing and it’s the one thing I drill into my students over and over.  

What is your writing process like?  Are you a pantser or a plotter?

Probably a mixture of both. Working in news made me realize I hate deadlines enough to want to give myself enough time to plot things out. But sadly, aren’t we all motivated by deadlines?  I seem to do my best work when I’m up against it…

Also I’m not one of those people who writes a great first draft of anything, so just getting it ‘on the page’ is a big achievement for me and then I spend several more drafts tweaking and revising. But I do obsess over the beginning and ending until I get them right – kind of like a sandwich, and then using an outline I can fill in the middle part. And I like to write immediately after waking up when I’m in that lucid phase between sleep and awake, when the ideas flow best and I don’t overthink anything and just put it on the page.

Are you part of a writing community or a writing group?

The Binders groups and subgroups on Facebook have been an amazing resource and supportive community that I turned to as I was writing and during pre-publication. I’ve found and met many talented, amazing women and writers through this community.

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Ayser Salman was born in Iraq before it became a curiosity and moved to America as a toddler. She is a writer and producer/editor for companies like Universal Pictures, Miramax Films, Disney, FX and Lantern Entertainment. Ayser lives in Los Angeles, California.

Find out more about her on her website https://www.aysersalman.com/

Follow her on Twitter @aysersalman

THE WRONG END OF THE TABLE, Ayser Salman

An Immigrant Love-Hate Story of What it Means to Be American

You know that feeling of being at the wrong end of the table? Like you’re at a party but all the good stuff is happening out of earshot (#FOMO)? That’s life—especially for an immigrant.

What happens when a shy, awkward Arab girl with a weird name and an unfortunate propensity toward facial hair is uprooted from her comfortable (albeit fascist-regimed) homeland of Iraq and thrust into the cold, alien town of Columbus, Ohio—with its Egg McMuffins, Barbie dolls, and kids playing doctor everywhere you turned?

This is Ayser Salman’s story. First comes Emigration, then Naturalization, and finally Assimilation—trying to fit in among her blonde-haired, blue-eyed counterparts, and always feeling left out. On her journey to Americanhood, Ayser sees more naked butts at pre-kindergarten daycare that she would like, breaks one of her parents’ rules (“Thou shalt not participate as an actor in the school musical where a male cast member rests his head in thy lap”), and other things good Muslim Arab girls are not supposed to do. And, after the 9/11 attacks, she experiences the isolation of being a Muslim in her own country. It takes hours of therapy, fifty-five rounds of electrolysis, and some ill-advised romantic dalliances for Ayser to grow into a modern Arab American woman who embraces her cultural differences.

Part memoir and part how-not-to guide, The Wrong End of the Table is everything you wanted to know about Arabs but were afraid to ask, with chapters such as “Tattoos and Other National Security Risks,” “You Can’t Blame Everything on Your Period; Sometimes You’re Going to Be a Crazy Bitch: and Other Advice from Mom,” and even an open letter to Trump. This is the story of every American outsider on a path to find themselves in a country of beautiful diversity.

“Romantic struggles and strict immigrant parents inform a journey toward self-acceptance in this fast-paced, funny memoir by an Iraqi-born film editor and producer. . . The chronological structure wears away as Salman gets older, leaving space for philosophical musings and slices of life: a heartfelt open letter to President Trump, a questioning of her Muslim practice, and a meditation on how long Iraqis take to say goodbye. . . . Always funny, this enjoyable and heartfelt book is great for a plane, the beach, or a free afternoon.”—Publishers Weekly

BUY THE BOOK HERE

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