Searching for Home Between Laughs, Deadlines, and the 1 Train

By Sara Hamdan

I didn’t set out to write a novel.

Not at the start.

My first piece for The New York Times was about the rise of stand-up comedy in the Middle East. I was on assignment in Dubai, wearing my journalist hat—sleuthing out the funniest voices across the region, asking serious questions like, “How do you structure a punchline in Arabic?” and “Have you ever accidentally insulted someone’s grandmother on stage?”

What I didn’t expect was to meet my husband. He was one of the producers I interviewed—charismatic, charming, devastatingly funny. I’m not the only one who thinks so – his TED Talk on the subject has over 1 million views. He made me laugh so much I forgot to take notes. I remember thinking, Well, this interview is going off the rails. Maybe in losing myself for a moment, I found what I was looking for.

Our love story didn’t make it into the final piece, but it found its way into my debut novel, What Will People Think?, in spirit, in tone, in heartbeat. It was the beginning of a journey—romantic, creative, and cultural—that helped me finally answer a question I’d carried for years: Where do I belong?

I’m Palestinian American. I have lived all over the world, raised between cultures, time zones, and conflicting dinner table expectations. On the one hand, I grew up eating knafeh and listening to Fairouz. On the other, I made questionable fashion choices for school dances, played tennis competitively, and relied on a steady diet of sitcoms like Friends and Gilmore Girls. My parents taught me to be proud of who I am, but also cautious. There was always a quiet undercurrent of worry about how we were perceived because of the one-note narrative forever in the news.

And so, like many children of immigrants, I became an expert shapeshifter. I could blend into work meetings in California and nod respectfully through long lectures from my aunties at weddings. But I often felt like a guest at both tables. I was fluent in many languages, but unsure in which one I truly expressed me.

It wasn’t until my year at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism that things started to click. Living in Manhattan was like living in a fever dream of possibility. I fell in love—with the city’s unapologetic ambition, its sourdough bagels, its energy that gave you every reason to stay awake and appreciate life. I shared a shoebox apartment with three roommates, filed stories under deadline from coffee shops that smelled like burnt espresso, and walked the streets feeling like I was finally somewhere I belonged.

There’s something about New York that embraces contradiction. Everyone’s from somewhere else. No one’s just one thing. You can be a broke student and still feel like the main character in your own movie. It was in that chaos that I found clarity. I didn’t have to choose one version of myself. I could be all of them.

Years later, as I sat down to write What Will People Think?, I wasn’t sure if anyone would care about a story like mine—a warm, funny tale about a Palestinian American woman in New York who moonlights as a stand-up comedian. But I couldn’t not write it. The story came pouring out of me, like it had been waiting patiently this whole time.

The main character, Mia, is not me, but she’s definitely of me. Like me, she’s navigating identity, ambition, and Auntie Whatshername’s unsolicited relationship advice. Like me, she’s in love with Manhattan, but haunted by questions of heritage, home, and how to make her parents proud while also staying true to herself. Like me, she processes life through humor—because if you don’t laugh at the awkwardness of being a hyphenated human, you’ll definitely cry.

Writing this novel was an act of rebellion and reconciliation. It was a way of saying: our stories matter. Our communities are not just defined by struggle or trauma—we’re also funny, ambitious, romantic, hopeful. And we deserve to see ourselves on the page in ways that reflect the full spectrum of our humanity.

I wrote much of this book in the quiet hours between journalistic assignments and toddler meltdowns. I’m a mom now, which has added a whole new layer to the identity soup. I think about how to raise children who know where they come from, but also feel free to become who they want to be. It’s the same thing I wanted for myself all along.

I’m grateful for the women writers who made space for voices like mine—authors like Zadie Smith and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Their work gave me permission to be specific, to write unapologetically from my own point of view, and to trust that readers would connect, even if they didn’t share my background – and especially if they did.

And they have. I’ve been moved to tears by messages from early readers who said, “Mia is just like me,” or “This captured how I felt when I introduced the love of my life to my family.” The majority of them aren’t even Arab. Some have never set foot in New York. But that’s the magic of books: they collapse the distance between us.

So, no, I didn’t plan to write a novel at first. I planned to write a feature on comedians. I planned to file it and move on. We plan, but real life happens; instead, I fell in love, found a story I needed to tell, and wrote the book I wish I’d had growing up.

What Will People Think? is for every woman who’s ever straddled cultures, chased a dream, or laughed her way through heartbreak. It’s for the women who felt like too much and not enough at the same time. It’s for anyone who’s ever asked, “Can I belong to more than one place?”

The answer, I’ve learned, is yes.

With love and laughter from this Palestinian-American-New Yorker-turned-novelist—thank you for reading.

—

Sara Hamdan, a Berkeley and Columbia graduate, is a former Merrill Lynch banker, New York Times journalist, and editor at Google. After winning a Netflix short story award in London for an excerpt from her debut novel What Will People Think?, she received the First Chapter: Emirates Literature Foundation Seddiqi First Chapter Writers’ Fellowship for the novel. Sara is Palestinian American, raised in Greece, and has called Dubai home for twenty years. When she’s not typing away at her laptop, she loves to spend time at the beach with her husband and two kids. You can find her at www.sarahamdan.com.

WHAT WILL PEOPLE THINK?

Mia’s secret comedy career, forbidden office crush, and a long-guarded family secret take center stage, threatening her newfound confidence and her one shot at fame in this hilarious, heartfelt coming-of-age story perfect for fans of Curtis Sittenfeld and Etaf Rum.

Mia Almas has a secret. By day, she works at a respectable job as a media fact checker―a position her conservative, Arab grandparents approve of―and, by night, she takes to the stages of New York City comedy clubs. She holds herself back in a lot of ways, especially in the romance department, but being on stage lights her up and makes being a wallflower the rest of the time more bearable. That is, until Phaedra, her stylish and bold new neighbor, inspires Mia to take a few risks.

As Mia pursues a forbidden romance with her boss, her standup gets better and bolder, leading to a surprise spotlight that exposes her secret gig. Horrified and worried that her rebellious act could mean big consequences for her reserved Palestinian-American family, Mia frantically dives into damage control. But all of her efforts to pull back from the spotlight expose a family scandal from the 1940s that could change everything…

Equal parts funny and tender, What Will People Think? is a heart-bursting exploration of what it means to discover and embrace the hidden parts of yourself, and how love in all forms can make you whole.

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing