18 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY JULY 27-AUGUST 2, 2023 www.montereycountyweekly.com Global Truths Author Ava Homa is a storyteller, but also an educator—her books convey harsh realities. By Agata Pop˛eda FORUM Can you imagine speaking Kurdish at home your whole life and having to learn Persian in first grade just to participate in society? Can you imagine being a playful 7-year-old girl who is suddenly told to put on a hijab? Americans are well aware of how badly a mass shooting can affect a community. What about the effect of genocide? Ava Homa is a Kurdish, Canadian, and now American writer, who lives in Pacific Grove. She has published two books so far—a story collection, Echoes from the Other Land, and the novel Daughters of Smoke and Fire, a riveting portrait of standing up to oppression under the Iranian regime. Homa’s writing is educational, as she said on July 6, addressing an audience at The Press Club in Seaside in a conversation with me. “I wanted to give my readers a chance to travel to Kurdistan from the safety of their home,” she said. “I wanted them to know what Kurdistan looks like and smells like. But also to answer questions: What is Iran like? What is it like to be a Kurd living in Iran?” In Daughters of Smoke and Fire, the characters are fictional but the events are factual—protests, morality police, imprisonments. Readers learn about real historical events, such as the Halabja chemical attack on the Kurdish population in 1988. Homa was a writer long before she had a cause. As a child she loved words and would weave tales to tell siblings and cousins. But more than anything, she was interested in finding joy despite being surrounded by adversities. How is it that some adults around her carried trauma that manifested as depression, anger and resentment, while others were able to “transform hardship into compassion”? Homa spoke of her early literary hero, Anne Shirley, the red-haired orphan of The Green Gables series, created by author L.M. Montgomery. Shirley is the ultimate survivor— supposedly ugly and unwanted, she succeeds despite all odds, relying on her vivid imagination. “I learned early on that my mere existence was subversive since my people had been repeatedly targeted,” Homa says. “Harsh realities like that impact the consciousness of young minds. You start to wonder, what’s wrong with my community? Why are we targeted?” As she began to read Indigenous, Black and Jewish literature, she discovered the global pattern of scapegoating. One topic of our conversation was the Kurdish-inspired Iranian Revolution of 2022. Despite quieting down, it gives Homa hope. That’s because 44 years ago, Kurds were alone in their protests, while these days other members of Iranian society, including Persians, understand no one is safe. Homa’s dream is to be able to say her activist friends’ names one day in public: “These unsung heroes do not seek recognition, yet they can inspire the rest of us.” Homa is now working on her second novel, devoted to the fate of Yazidis, victimized by ISIS. The main character, Kani, lives among us, in Monterey, struggling with trauma and looking for her lost love. “Our pain is intertwined, our freedom interdependent,” Homa says. Agata Pop˛eda is a staff writer at the Weekly. She hosts the series Mic’d Up at The Press Club at 12:30pm the first Thursday of each month. OPINION “My mere existence was subversive.” PRESENTED BY
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