A Q&A with Bushra Rehman, author of Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion

Bushra Rehman with her book, Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion

We are excited to host Bushra Rehman, author of Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion on Saturday, March 16 at 6:30 at Hugh’s View. Prior to hearing from her in person, we had the opportunity to ask a few questions:

Q: Would you tell us a little about Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion and what you hope readers will get out of it?

A: Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion is a story about female friendship and queer desire in a Pakistani-American community. The main character, Razia grows up amid the wild grape vines and backyard sunflowers of Corona, Queens, with her best friends by her side. As she and her friends get older, they embark on a series of small rebellions: listening to scandalous music, wearing miniskirts, and cutting school to explore the city. 

When Razia is accepted to high school in Manhattan, the gulf between her and her world in Queens, between the person she is and the daughter her parents want her to be widens. At her new school, Razia meets Angela, an Italian-Greek girl, and is attracted to her in a way that blossoms into a new understanding.

Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion is a book for anyone who’s ever had to leave the world they grew up in to be who they needed to be, anyone who’s felt different or struggled with limiting expectations. It’s for those who remember what it was like to be queer and not have the words to express it at first.

Razia is a character I’ve always wanted to see in literature: a young Muslim woman experiencing both her Muslim spirituality and her queer desires. I’ve rarely seen three-dimensional portrayals of us as Muslim women or of our families: our love, resilience, and humor. I hope Roses lessens that void.

Q: For you, as a poet and a fiction writer, what do you feel your work as a poet brings to your fiction?

A: The seed of Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion was a series of poems I wrote about the beauty of Corona. I wanted to share both the danger and the joy of what it felt like to grow up there. As the poems started to become a novel, the character of Razia Mirza emerged. Even when the poems morphed into fiction, I treated each sentence as a line of poetry. This is probably why it took forever to write this book.

Q: Sense of place appears to be incredibly important to your work (the New York Public Library named Corona, your prior novel, one of its favorite books about the city), what do you find yourself noticing or paying attention to about other places as you travel?

A: I love to travel, and I treat all travel like a journey. I love going to oceans, mountains, rivers and forests. When I travel to towns, I love visiting bookstores and public parks.  Wherever I go, I like to spend time walking, observing and journaling. And what I love about Key West is it’s an adventure of a walking island with deep literary history.

Q: And on a similar point, what are you looking forward to doing or seeing in Key West?

A: I’m excited to see the sunsets in Key West, to eat food at local restaurants, to soak in the sunshine (it’s been a grim winter in NY!) and to meet up with old and new friends. I’m so honored and excited to meet readers at Books & Books @ The Studios of Key West and to join in the literary world of Key West.

Thirty years ago, ago, when I was much younger, I used to spend time in Key West with a friends who lived here. I used to get on the Greyhound from NYC! I even wrote a story in which Razia is on the way to Key West. Perhaps this trip will inspire the chapter of what happens next. I’d love to weave in Key West’s distinctive literary history into this story.

Q: Is there anything you’d like to share about works in progress or upcoming publications?

A: I’ve been writing about the adventures of Razia after the ending of Roses. The Key West story is one of these stories. There are also stories that take place at a Puritan village in Salem, Massachusetts, and in the Strand bookstore in NYC. In the Strand story, Razia has just returned to NYC and gets a job at the Strand. The year is 1989 and The Satanic Verses controversy is raging. While other stores stop carrying the book, the Strand continues to sell it. Razia is swept up into protests, counter-protests and debates on freedom of expression that are marred by Islamophobia. She finds solace in her mentors at the Strand, including the iconic bookseller Ben McFall.  

Q: What are you reading and recommending these days?

A: I’m currently reading and recommending Ibtisam Barakat’s A Palestinian Childhood, Kamilah Aisha Moon’s She Has a Name and Starshine & Clay, Noor Hindi’s Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Yellow, Mosab Abu Toha’s Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear, the collection A Light in Gaza, and Lamya H’s Hijab Butch Blues.

I also love recommending books which influenced me early on: Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Toni Morison’s Song of Solomon, Audre Lorde’s Black Unicorn and Sister Outsider, Vijay Prashad’s Karma of Brown Folk, Sharon Olds’s The Dead and the Living and Satan Says, Dorothy Allison’s Bastard out of Carolina and of course Judy Blume’s books especially, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. I related so much to Margaret who has her own relationship with the divine. I saw myself in her. I hope readers will feel the same about Razia.

Roses, In the Mouth of a Lion – Bushra Rehman

“A beautiful coming of age story set amidst the Pakistani community in Queens. About family, community, not belonging and finally finding a different home. Moving and remarkable. A great read!” – Anna, Store Volunteer

Click here to visit the event page for information on the 3/14/24 author reading with Rehman.

New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice * An NPR Best Book of the Year * A Padma Lakshmi Book Club Pick

For fans of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, an unforgettable story about female friendship and queer love in a Muslim-American community

“Stunningly beautiful.” —
The New York Times Book Review

“An unforgettable voice that moves you from the start.” —People Magazine

Razia Mirza grows up amid the wild grape vines and backyard sunflowers of Corona, Queens, with her best friend, Saima, by her side. When a family rift drives the girls apart, Razia’s heart is broken. She finds solace in Taslima, a new girl in her close-knit Pakistani-American community. They embark on a series of small rebellions: listening to scandalous music, wearing miniskirts, and cutting school to explore the city. 

When Razia is accepted to Stuyvesant, a prestigious high school in Manhattan, the gulf between the person she is and the daughter her parents want her to be, widens. At Stuyvesant, Razia meets Angela and is attracted to her in a way that blossoms into a new understanding. When their relationship is discovered by an Aunty in the community, Razia must choose between her family and her own future. 

Punctuated by both joy and loss, full of ’80s music and beloved novels, Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion is a new classic: a fiercely compassionate coming-of-age story of a girl struggling to reconcile her heritage and faith with her desire to be true to herself.

Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange

A TIME MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK • The Pulitzer Prize-finalist and author of the breakout bestseller There There (“Pure soaring beauty.”The New York Times Book Review) delivers a masterful follow-up to his already classic first novel. Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family in a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous.

“For the sake of knowing, of understanding, Wandering Stars blew my heart into a thousand pieces and put it all back together again. This is a masterwork that will not be forgotten, a masterwork that will forever be part of you.” —Morgan Talty, bestselling author of Night of the Living Rez

Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle,where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.

In a novel that is by turns shattering and wondrous, Tommy Orange has conjured the ancestors of the family readers first fell in love with in There There—warriors, drunks, outlaws, addicts—asking what it means to bethe children and grandchildren of massacre. Wandering Stars is a novel about epigenetic and generational trauma that has the force and vision of a modern epic, an exceptionally powerful new book from one of the most exciting writers at work today and soaring confirmation of Tommy Orange’s monumental gifts.

Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley

One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Year: TIME, The Washington Post, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Publishers Weekly, Paste, The Millions, Kirkus Reviews, Lit Hub, Real Simple, Nylon, BookPage, The Story Exchange, Sunset, and Zibby Mag.

Disarmingly witty and poignant, Sloane Crosley’s memoir explores multiple kinds of loss following the death of her closest friend.

How do we live without the ones we love? Grief Is for People is a deeply moving and suspenseful portrait of friendship, and a book about loss that is profuse with life. Sloane Crosley is one of our most renowned observers of contemporary behavior, and now the pathos that has been ever present in her trademark wit is on full display. After the pain and confusion of losing her closest friend to suicide, Crosley looks for answers in philosophy and art, hoping for a framework more useful than the unavoidable stages of grief.

For most of her adult life, Sloane and Russell worked together and played together as they navigated the corridors of office life, the literary world, and the dramatic cultural shifts in New York City. One day, Sloane’s apartment is broken into. Along with her most prized possessions, the thief makes off with her sense of security, leaving a mystery in its place.

When Russell dies exactly one month later, his suicide propels Sloane on a wild quest to right the unrightable, to explore what constitutes family and possession as the city itself faces the staggering toll of the pandemic.

Sloane Crosley’s search for truth is frank, darkly funny, and gilded with resounding empathy. Upending the “grief memoir,” Grief Is for People is a category-defying story of the struggle to hold on to the past without being consumed by it. A modern elegy, it rises precisely to console and challenge our notions of mourning during these grief-stricken times.

The American Daughters by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

A gripping historical novel about a spirited girl who joins a sisterhood working to undermine the Confederates—from the award-winning author of We Cast a Shadow

“A genius conceit . . . thoughtful, courageous, exciting . . . a splendid work.”—Robert Jones, Jr., author of The Prophets

Ady, a curious, sharp-witted girl, and her fierce mother, Sanite, are inseparable. Enslaved to a businessman in the French Quarter of New Orleans, the pair spend their days dreaming of a loving future and reminiscing about their family’s rebellious and storied history. When mother and daughter are separated, Ady is left hopeless and directionless until she stumbles into the Mockingbird Inn and meets Lenore, a free Black woman with whom she becomes fast friends. Lenore invites Ady to join a clandestine society of spies called the Daughters. With the courage instilled in her by Sanite—and with help from these strong women—Ady learns how to put herself first. So begins her journey toward liberation and imagining a new future.

The American Daughters is a novel of hope and triumph that reminds us what is possible when a community bands together to fight for their freedom.

Birding to Change the World by Trish O’Kane

In this uplifting memoir, a professor and activist shares what birds can teach us about life, social change, and protecting the environment.

Trish O’Kane is an accidental ornithologist. In her nearly two decades writing about justice as an investigative journalist, she’d never paid attention to nature. But then Hurricane Katrine destroyed her New Orleans home, sending her into an emotional tailspin.

Enter a scrappy cast of feathered characters—first a cardinal, urban parrots, and sparrows, then a catbird, owls, a bittern, and a woodcock—that cheered her up and showed her a new path. Inspired, O’Kane moved to Madison, Wisconsin, to pursue an environmental studies PhD. There she became a full-on bird obsessive—logging hours in a stunningly biodiverse urban park, filling field notebooks with bird doings and dramas, and teaching ornithology to college students and middle-school kids.

When Warner Park—her daily birdwatching haven—was threatened with development, O’Kane and her neighbors mustered a mighty murmuration of nature lovers, young and old, to save the birds’ homes. Through their efforts, she learned that once you get outside and look around, you’re likely to fall in love with a furred or feathered creature—and find a flock of your own.

In Birding to Change the World, O’Kane details the astonishing science of bird life, from migration and parenting to the territorial defense strategies that influenced her own activism. A warm and compelling weave of science and social engagement, this is the story of an improbably band of bird lovers who saved their park. And it is a blueprint for muscular citizenship, powered by joy.

March is Women’s History Month

Background is various stylized faces of women with the text overlaid, "March is Women's History Month"

Find books that showcase women’s history online and in store. Here are a few new, recent and notable titles.

The Women by Kristin Hannah

50 Years of Ms. edited by Katherine Spillar

Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song by Judith Tick

Good Books for Bad Children: The Genius of Ursula Nordstrom by Beth Kephart, illustrated by Chloe Bristol

The Women of NOW: How Feminists Built an Organization That Transformed America by Katherine Turk

Letters from Cuba by Ruth Behar

The First Ladies by Marie Benedict & Victoria Christopher Murray

Judy Blume Will Curate Baby’s First Library

Do you need a special gift for a new baby, expectant family or toddler? Author and store founder Judy Blume will curate a Starter Library especially for your little one.

She will choose books that she loves and knows your baby or toddler will too. Start by filling out our personalized gift form.

You tell us your price point and we’ll gift wrap and send with a personal note from Judy.

Please note that Starter Libraries are intended for children 2 years and under. For gift recommendation for older children please email or call the store. booksandbooks@tskw.org 305-320-0208

End of Story by A.J. Finn

For fans of Knives Out comes a spellbinding thriller from the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Woman in the Window

“I’ll be dead in three months. Come tell my story.”

So writes Sebastian Trapp, reclusive mystery novelist, to his longtime correspondent Nicky Hunter, an expert in detective fiction. With mere months to live, Trapp invites Nicky to his spectacular San Francisco mansion to help draft his life story . . . while living alongside his beautiful second wife, Diana; his wayward nephew, Freddy; and his protective daughter, Madeleine. Soon Nicky finds herself caught in an irresistible case of real-life “detective-fever.”

“You and I might even solve an old mystery or two.”

Twenty years earlier—on New Year’s Eve 1999—Sebastian’s first wife and teenage son vanished from different locations, never to be seen again. Did the perfect crime writer commit the perfect crime? And why has he emerged from seclusion, two decades later, to allow a stranger to dig into his past?

“Life is hard. After all, it kills you.”

As Nicky attempts to weave together the strands of Sebastian’s life, she becomes obsessed with discovering the truth . . . while Madeleine begins to question what her beloved father might actually know about that long-ago night. And when a corpse appears in the family’s koi pond, both women are shocked to find that the past isn’t gone—it’s just waiting.

Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg

From the bestselling author of The Power of Habit, a fascinating exploration of what makes conversations work—and how we can all learn to be supercommunicators at work and in life

“A winning combination of stories, studies, and guidance that might well transform the worst communicators you know into some of the best.”—Adam Grant, author of Think Again and Hidden Potential

Come inside a jury room as one juror leads a starkly divided room to consensus. Join a young CIA officer as he recruits a reluctant foreign agent. And sit with an accomplished surgeon as he tries, and fails, to convince yet another cancer patient to opt for the less risky course of treatment. In Supercommunicators, Charles Duhigg blends deep research and his trademark storytelling skills to show how we can all learn to identify and leverage the hidden layers that lurk beneath every conversation.

Communication is a superpower and the best communicators understand that whenever we speak, we’re actually participating in one of three conversations: practical (What’s this really about?), emotional (How do we feel?), and social (Who are we?). If you don’t know what kind of conversation you’re having, you’re unlikely to connect.

Supercommunicators know the importance of recognizing—and then matching—each kind of conversation, and how to hear the complex emotions, subtle negotiations, and deeply held beliefs that color so much of what we say and how we listen. Our experiences, our values, our emotional lives—and how we see ourselves, and others—shape every discussion, from who will pick up the kids to how we want to be treated at work. In this book, you will learn why some people are able to make themselves heard, and to hear others, so clearly.

With his storytelling that takes us from the writers’ room of The Big Bang Theory to the couches of leading marriage counselors, Duhigg shows readers how to recognize these three conversations—and teaches us the tips and skills we need to navigate them more successfully.

In the end, he delivers a simple but powerful lesson: With the right tools, we can connect with anyone.