Today we’d like to introduce you to Gemini Wahhaj.
Hi Gemini, so excited to have you on the platform. So, before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
I have always written stories, and everyone I knew always told me I would be a writer, but somehow, I kept doing other things. I studied engineering, worked in New York as a consultant, worked in Bangladesh in development, then got a master’s degree in public policy, always doing what I thought I was expected to do. It wasn’t until I came to Houston, admitted to the creative writing program at the University of Houston, that I finally made space in my life for writing. I wrote my novel The Children of This Madness in a few months. Publishing was another matter. I wrote this book in 2003 and published it in December of 2023, 20 years later. The novel is set in Houston and focuses on the Bangladeshi community in the city, moving from city locations to the suburbs of Houston. Perhaps it is a good thing that it took 20 years. In the meantime, I have gained a great deal of perspective on the city. I hope to write another novel about Houston in the future, one that encompasses more of its inhabitants and neighborhoods and delves into the transformative process of becoming an American and raising kids in America.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
No! I was querying agents for a long time, with many almost moments. I gave up many times, wrote other novels. But the impulse of being an immigrant and feeling alienated from other people in your community would not leave me. Finally, during the pandemic, I sent out my novel to publishers, and I got accepted. I feel very, very lucky. I can finally write what I want to without trying to write to get published and constantly thinking of my writing in terms of the market.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am a writer. My novel The Children of This Madness was published by 7.13 Books in December 2023. There are very few Bangladeshi authors who have been published in America. Our stories are different from other immigrant narratives, especially Indian stories. I have more novels in the pipeline, and my short-story collection, Katy Family, will be published in 2025 by Jackleg Press. In The Children of This Madness, Gemini Wahhaj pens a complex tale of modern Bengalis, one that illuminates the recent histories not only of Bangladesh but also of America and Iraq. Told in multiple voices over successive eras, this is the story of Nasir Uddin and his daughter Beena and the intersection of their distant, vastly different lives.
As the US war in Iraq plays out a world away, and Beena struggles to belong to Houston’s tony Bengali American community—many of whom serve the same corporate masters she sees destroying Iraq—recently widowed engineering professor Nasir Uddin journeys to America not only to see Beena and her new husband but the many former students who make up the immigrant community Beena has come to view with ambivalence. With subtlety, grace, and love, Wahhaj dramatizes this mingling of generations and cultures and the search for an ever-elusive home that defines the Bengali-American experience.
“The elegant, twined narrative of The Children of This Madness offers the reader an intimate view of a complicated familial and geopolitical drama. I’ve always found fiction the best, most compassionate, and honest resource for learning about the real world. Wahhaj’s novel is a wonderfully useful addition to my own education. I really enjoyed reading this; the author made a very complicated situation lucid and moving.”
-Antonya Nelson, author of Bound and Funny Once
Here is the link for my book. The Children of This Madness https://a.co/d/2eDqSHN
What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
I think ultimately, it is thinking independently and embracing my own ideas, creative process, and journey. If I had judged myself by the framework of the publishing industry, what it deems commercial, I would never have published. It is more important to write and to get your work out there than to be validated by a six-figure deal!
Pricing:
- 19.99
Contact Info:
- Website: Geminiwahhaj.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/geminiwahhaj?igsh=NmtjYTJ1c2NrZnN2
- Other: https://a.co/d/bVuXaXk
Image Credits
Alban Fischer
Arif Rahman
