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THEME MUSIC

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Welcome to This Being Human, I’m your host Abdul-Rehman Malik. On this podcast, I talk to extraordinary people from all over the world, whose life, ideas, and art are shaped by Muslim culture. 

 

Marguerite Richards: Memoir can actually be elevated and beautiful writing, you know, that exposes the vulnerabilities of our lives and who we are as people and connects us. I think it’s very valuable.

 

MUSIC

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Today, we’re diving deep into the transformative power of storytelling with editor and writer Marguerite Richards. Marguerite is the editor behind The Ordinary Chaos of Being Human, a stunning anthology that weaves together stories from writers from across the Muslim world, each offering a unique perspective on the human experience at the intersection of Muslim identity, faith, and culture. In our conversation, Marguerite opens up about how she discovered that helping others tell their stories has become both her calling and passion. We explore her unique approach to working with writers, often forging deep and personal relationships, and how this helps bring out the most powerful and authentic stories. We also delve into some of the broader themes that run through her work: identity, belonging, and the universal search for home. Marguerite’s life has taken her across continents, and her own journey gives her a profound understanding of what it means to live between worlds, and become a careful observer and advocate for understanding between cultures. Marguerite joined us from her home in Sri Lanka to talk about the power of memoir—why it resonates so deeply with readers, and how personal storytelling can be a vital tool for connection and understanding in a fractured world. Whether you’re a storyteller yourself, a lover of books, or just curious about the human condition, this episode is full of insights and inspiration.

 

MUSIC RESOLVE

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Where I’d love to begin is that I’m always fascinated, you know, to read the bios that writers and authors and editors put out. But there was something in your bio that really caught my eye. You started your career writing, and yet you talk about finding your love and your happy place in publishing. Now we always hear about people’s passion for writing and self-expression, but a passion for helping to present the writings of others is something we don’t hear so much about. Tell us why this has become one of your loves and passions. 

 

Marguerite Richards: That’s such a wonderful question. Thank you so much for asking that question. I think even before I finished college that I just, this a-ha moment that I knew I had a job to facilitate some people who may be artists of some kind, that I wanted to help them. The people who had a vision, but didn’t exactly know how to express it. I always had that feeling that I should be of service, so figure out a way to help them bring that into the world. I think that developing a book is such a long process. You know, from the beginning of the first concept, up to finding who might want it, the designing of the book, the printing of the book. And there’s so much beauty in that whole thing, start to finish. And helping people to create that book that they envision and also helping them figure out how it’s possible and giving them that cheerleading sort of motivation to realize that it is actually possible. People have such a love and passion for books, but they feel like it’s such an impossible feat and the publishing industry is so specific that when you start to learn and then you can about how it works and then you give people the tools, there’s so many lightbulb moments for the writers and being part of that process with them is just, I mean, it’s golden. I would do this work for free, if I could. I would totally do this work for free. 

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: I’m hearing the shine in your voice as you’re delineating process, and this process of working with writers. But I want to take you back to that early realization. Tell us a little bit about how you grew up and your relationship with words and literature. It sounds like you were someone who was, who was immersed and surrounded by words, literature, and books. Am I hearing that right, Marguerite? 

 

Marguerite Richards: Yes, definitely. Well, first off, my father was an ad man. My father is like the classic Mad Men character. He definitely knew how to convince anyone of anything. And he was always doing it with his words. And he had so many passion projects, his love for books. And I had so many teachers who inspired me with my first reading, with my first books. I think some of my first writings, real writing was in these short poems when I was really young. And then I think, when I had arguments with my parents, I would write them letters to convince them, you know, try to convince them why I, why I wasn’t in the wrong, which didn’t really work out in my favor! [laughter] I was always sort of writing and really fell in love, kind of also with grammar, and  I always looked at grammar as the math and the science of writing. 

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Oh, I love that. I love that conceptualization of it! Grammar as the math and science of writing. Yeah, unpack that for us a little bit. I love that image. 

 

Marguerite Richards: Well, people feel, I think that writing and languages is such a mystical, magical thing. But actually, if you break it down and get into it, there really is a science to the way that language works. So it’s really interesting to see how you can break it down and you can really, there are rules that you can follow and it’s manageable for people to learn if they use it and study it, just like you would maths or science. There’s also, I mean, besides the math and science of it, there’s also there is a magic to it. That language really communicates feeling in a way that you don’t even necessarily understand all the time. These concepts and these emotions get passed to you, even if you don’t understand the actual logic of it. I’ve been trying to communicate that idea for a while lately because it’s a, it’s a reason sometimes why I picked certain stories that go in this book or I choose to appreciate a certain poet or a writer. In poetry, sometimes you can see it, actually, where you might read a poem and you might not exactly understand the logic of what’s happening or, you know, what was being communicated exactly. But it’s impregnated with this emotion that is just, you feel it in the rhythm, and what it is. So there is a magic there. And then yeah. And then to know that there’s actually a science to the way that that was built, it’s just the whole thing. 

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: You’ve spent so much of your career, Marguerite, living and working internationally, you know, in France and in Chile and now in Sri Lanka. And, you know, you’ve written about travel, food, and culture. Here you are traveling the world and being an outsider, being an observer, and yet writing about them—because I’ve read your pieces, Marguerite. They sing with intimacy and carefully observed detail. And I guess, I want to know first, how you do that, as someone approaching a culture anew, but also how do you build trust with the people and the places that you find yourself in, in order to do that?

 

Marguerite Richards: Well, first off, I love meaningful conversations. I just don’t have the energy for small talk. And I think I immediately want to dive into deep conversations with people. I really gravitate toward that. I think that I naturally sort of, you know, want to learn about people. I’m very curious. And I think it’s a benefit. I mean, in terms of, you know, how I created this book, how I want to work in memoir, how I want to talk to people and get to know people. I mean, understanding people is just so crucial, I think, when I think about what the world’s problems, you know, I think that the world’s problems are really based in relationship problems. It’s that we just don’t know each other well enough. And once you’re able and open to get sincere with people, you know, and push past the sarcasm and the facades that so many people are creating for themselves, you know, for me, it’s not really an effort. I just kind of just naturally go there, you know? But if you can get other people to go there and then you learn about each other, and you put two major rivaling world powers in the kitchen together and tell them to cook a meal. They’re not allowed to talk about politics. They’re not allowed to do anything but just work out this, you know, paella or whatever they’re supposed to try to learn how to make together, something will happen with that relationship. And once they know each other, they trust each other, respect each other on that really human level. I mean, I really believe that people can move mountains after that. 

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: It seems, Marguerite, that you are comfortable with a fair measure of discomfort. Because everything that you’ve talked about involves a certain type of discomfort, being an outsider, being new to a situation, negotiating with someone who may not speak the same language, who may come from a different cultural background or sensibility. Are you someone who leans into discomfort?

 

Marguerite Richards: I think it has something to do more with just like, learning and understanding and the appreciation for that. But I would say that I don’t really look at some of the uncomfortable things as uncomfortable. I would say…I’m trying to come up with a way that I can describe this notion of sort of happy-sad. 

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: I love that. Okay. Now you’re going to have to unpack that for me! [laughter] 

 

Marguerite Richards: Well, sometimes when somebody creates something really beautiful, you know, whether it’s a piece of art or a poem or something like that, or a story in the case of this book, and you can feel that emotion that comes from that, it moves you. And often that will come from things that they have created that might come from some anguish or it might come from some discomfort. But it all leads to transformation. You know, when you go through something and you learn something about yourself and your life or about another person, I mean, when you’re learning about other people, you learn so much about yourself because we’re all mirrors. You know, everything that I might feel uncomfortable about with you is actually a reflection on myself and everything I think that is beautiful about you is also a reflection on myself, that we are, you know, mirrors to each other. And yeah, I think about that all the time. 

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: You actually placed that phrase, “tat tvam asi,” at the beginning of, of this extraordinary book of memoirs that you that you’ve edited, The Ordinary Chaos of Being Human, and like you’ve talked about, Marguerite, it does take a certain kind of person to work with writers, and also to have them trust you as an editor and as a collaborator. And when we approached you for this conversation, from the very beginning, you were insistent that the voices of the authors that you collected in this volume be heard by our readers. So I want us to hear a passage from one of these remarkable stories that you’ve collected in this incredible book. And you’re going to read something to us from a story entitled “Love and Ruin in Aida” by the journalist Noreen Moustafa. Why don’t you read that for us, Marguerite, and then we’ll jump into the deep end of this book together, okay? 

 

Marguerite Richards: Yeah. So Noreen Moustafa, she’s, so she grew up in Southern California, but then she was always going back to Alexandria, Virginia, where her parents are from. Every summer she would go back. And so she experienced some of her first love, you know, her first romantic experience with romantic love as a teenager at the seaside in Alexandria. And the issue that’s going on in this story is that she feels like this place, this heritage landscape, is getting destroyed. It’s getting destroyed in the name of progress. But she feels like that means that all of the history is getting erased. And I found this story. I decided to put it at the front of the book because I feel that there’s, this particular passage I love is a testament to how powerful personal storytelling can be in order to write our current collective history. So, she says, “There may be something about being Egyptian that always has us looking back, a wistful longing for the past hangs heavy in the air, a deep rooted nostalgia stemming from the pride in our history. But our cultural inheritance also weighs heavily. Does our greatness exist only in the past? Must it? A new museum in the capital has been built to showcase Egypt’s ancient artifacts. Yet no structure exists to honor our desire to be free. If the recent past is to have its place in the grander story of Egypt, we need to share and record the truth of our lives and assign agreed upon meaning and value to these experiences and places that shaped us before they vanish. We are walking monuments crumbling in our own ways, holding on to the unspoken. I want to leave a trace, my mark on Aida, to honor young love that wasn’t given public space to thrive. There isn’t even a tree left here at this beach on which to carve my name. So instead, facing the water, I write my name in the sand and step back. Welcoming its erasure by the waves. For as indifferent as it is, the sea is at least a steady witness to love and ruin in Alexandria.”

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Wow, it’s a stunning passage. 

 

Marguerite Richards: I think so, too. I just think it’s so…personal stories are just so important. I think people love reading memoir. Some people also feel like it’s not, like it’s not valid somehow? Like it’s not real literature. And sometimes I think it can be, you know, like tell-all garbage. But sometimes, I think memoir can actually be elevated and beautiful writing, you know, that exposes the vulnerabilities of our lives and who we are as people and connects us. I think it’s very valuable. 

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik:  I think in some ways, Marguerite, our culture has depicted the editor-writer relationship really in two dimensions and sometimes as a caricature. You know, I’m thinking back to literary and film depictions, right, of the editor-writer relationship fraught and angry and imposing and egos battling, you know? And yet, I hear none of that from your descriptions. Describe for us what the relationship between editor and writer is for you. Take us into that relationship. What is going on between the two of you that creates and allows such magical passages as you’ve just read to come to us through books? 

 

Marguerite Richards: So it’s really beautiful. And what’s so beautiful about it is that every relationship is completely different. It’s like a partnership. It can be like a marriage that can end in divorce. You know, it can be actually, I haven’t had any of those. But before I really got into this role I asked myself that question, what is the relationship supposed to be like? You know, and then I realized that there really are no rules, you know, that it can be any it can be anything. And it is up to me, actually, to create the boundaries, because we are getting into some stuff that’s so personal, you know? And so, I’m working with a writer right now who’s writing about her father’s passing, and he passed away really very recently. It’s only been a couple of years and she’s really wanting to get into it, you know? So, that’s so personal. And it’s also very, very challenging to get into those discussions about the chapters when I’m also looking at it from a technical point of view and she’s emotionally in it, you know? So I have to be really very sensitive. But I also have to be like, I don’t want to say brutally honest, definitely not brutal. But it’s very honest. Because if I am not honest where I need to be critical, then they won’t trust me when I also am cheerleading them on because it’s fantastic. I don’t know. It’s like, it’s like a parenting role, I’d have to say now, just as a parent, you know, it’s in some way or another, you have to like, you know, say, I don’t care whether you love me or not, but this is what I need to tell you, you know? 

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: I mean, there’s something about The Ordinary Chaos of Being Human that hits you right away. And it is, for a lack of a better word, a tome. 

 

Marguerite Richards: It totally is! [laughs]

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik:  It is. I mean, I’m holding in my hands right now. It’s, you know, 570 pages. It’s over 40 stories. Which come from every corner of the world. I imagine there were all kinds of negotiations around language and translation and sensibility that went into this. You know, I think there would have been editors, Marguerite, who would have been happy with a book half this size and would have felt that they did the job. But you clearly didn’t. Why? Why did it end up like this? And so rich? 

 

Marguerite Richards: I couldn’t, I couldn’t stop. Okay. So this is the first book, actually. 

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Oh, is that? Okay, so you’re, right now you’re holding up and I can see that you’re holding up the first edition of it. 

 

Marguerite Richards: Yes, and so the first edition was actually published by Penguin in 2019. 

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Okay. 

 

Marguerite Richards: And you can see, I don’t know if you can see when I open it up, but this is a piece of art. It’s a woman’s spine. So it’s…

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: It’s beautiful. What a beautiful cover.

 

Marguerite Richards: It’s very different. And this was the first effort on the book. And it was published first by Penguin. But we had, it came out during the pandemic, actually. And so we had such problems with distribution. And so this is I don’t want to get into the tangent about how the publishing industry works, but Penguin, because they have trouble, also, with anthologies, they wanted to move on. I couldn’t give up. This was 35 stories and I and so I decided I wanted to put the book out again. And I didn’t want to give up on the writers that were currently in the book. So all of the first edition are in the second. But I took the opportunity to find more stories and also to offer the writers, now that it was a few years later, if they wanted to replace their story with something new. So some of them have put in a new story. And I just, I couldn’t stop and I couldn’t give it up. I really wanted to cover the world. I really, I want to cover the world. And I still didn’t cover the world. We have 35 countries among the 41 stories. And I don’t know, I just couldn’t stop. 

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: That’s actually kind of a crazy story.

 

Marguerite Richards: Yeah.

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Because editors kind of do their work, publish their work, get the anthology out there, and then move on to the next one. But what kept you there? What kept you with this particular project? 

 

Marguerite Richards: I couldn’t stand the idea of so much work and effort that had been put into writing each of these stories. And also the belief that all of these writers had in me, that we had something good, that we had something beautiful. I couldn’t stand the idea of that concept and that book, just sitting and collecting dust. I just couldn’t stand it. It had to go out into the world! I mean, one thing that a lot of people don’t realize about publishing is that you think that all of the work is done once the book is out. But actually, that’s the beginning. It’s like birthing a baby. Then you actually have to take it out into the world. So I feel like it didn’t get its chance to shine. And that’s so important to me. I mean, that was the whole point of it, was to get it out. So I had to do it again and I had to make it better. And I had to learn from what I did in the first one. And also I learned so much and I just had to share. I have to share, I had so much to share, so. 

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: I’m glad you did, Marguerite, Because I’ve only experienced the book in its most recent and current form. And it is…it’s dizzying. And that, in a way, brings me to this question, which, I have to be really honest with you, Marguerite, that I also have struggled with a little bit. And I’ll tell you why. In the conversation around publishing, who publishes, who gets to publish, which stories are heard. There has been this criticism from writers of color and marginalized writers that often there’s a tendency to push writers like that towards memoir. There’s an appetite for their stories because they’re stories of pain, there’s almost an appetite for personal stories of pain and trauma. I want to know how you navigate this difficult ground, especially as an editor who is approaching the cultural and spiritual ecosystem of writers that may not be your own ecosystem, and yet you’re working with them so intimately. How do you navigate this difficult ground? 

 

Marguerite Richards: I mean, I asked myself that question a lot. You know, how can I call myself the editor of this? What if I’m representing this place wrong or whatever? And then I decided that that wasn’t my place at all to even ask that question. I’m asking this person because she has beautiful writing to tell me a truth about her life. And I want to feel steeped in where she’s from, her personal culture, whatever that looks like, whatever that story is, because I want to get to know her because that’s a place I’ve never been to before and I don’t know her or her personal culture. And there are hundreds and hundreds and thousands and millions, billions of readers out there who also don’t know her either. And we all need to sit together and have a dinner table conversation, you know, and get to know each other on a personal level. That question is just one of so many that I’ve been confronted with and tried to figure out how to navigate the answers to. And the only thing I just keep coming back to is that I just was looking for stories to try to get to know people, you know. And it’s really as simple as that. 

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Marguerite, your answer makes so much sense. And I think you approach it with a clear sense of humility because, you know, I can feel that. In a way, we can see it, right? We can see it from the stories themselves. But there’s something that emerges out of this for me. And I know you also wrestle with it in your introduction. All of the writers of this anthology, similar to all of the guests on This Being Human, emerged from some relationship with the Muslim experience, right? So ecosystems of culture, and spirituality, and politics, and all of those things that make a cultural ecosystem. How do you, as someone who isn’t Muslim, make sense of Muslimness?

 

Marguerite Richards: Mm. So this is probably one of my most wonderful learning experiences, and that is this question of identity and understanding. I mean, I don’t, I’ve never studied identity politics or even sociology, you know, to that extent. But I, through this project, I really learned how multilayered our identities are. And I think that that was probably the most beautiful thing, was recognizing how being Muslim, for every one of these writers, is absolutely 100% unique. It is just a different layer of their own identity. It’s so personal, and I think that’s so gorgeous that some writers really didn’t want to bring up, you know, Islam in their lives and their relationship to it. And some felt that it was really important to mention and people felt that they had the freedom to. You know, I had one writer tell me, just something so beautiful. She told me that she had grappled with this idea of labeling herself as a Muslim for a long time and then now, being part of this anthology, she felt more just comfortable even identifying herself as having, you know, a Muslim background in some way or another, even though she didn’t necessarily feel like she was practicing. But it was something part that she felt proud to feel and just express. And I thought that was such a beautiful thing.

 

MUSIC

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: I have a small favor to ask you. If you enjoy this show, there’s a really quick thing you can do to help us make it even better. Just take five minutes to fill out a short survey. This is the Aga Khan museum’s first-ever podcast and a little bit of feedback will help us measure our impact and reach more people with extraordinary stories from some of the most interesting artists, thinkers, and leaders on the kaleidoscope of Muslim experience. To participate, go to agakhanmuseum.org/tbhsurvey. That’s agakhanmusic.org/tbhsurvey.  The link is also in the show notes. Thanks for listening to This Being Human. Now, back to the interview.

 

MUSIC OUT

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: You recently wrote a poem entitled “Sri Lanka is Loud.” And in this poem you describe the rush of sensation that a day in Colombo brings. And at one moment it’s loud and cacophonous and then it’s quiet and serene and then it’s loud again. And you close the poem like this: “And then Sri Lanka is loud again, and it’s raining and it’s washing everything clean. And it feels welcoming to me, as foreign as I am.” And, Marguerite, this is the fault line. And you’re right in the middle of it. It’s your home! It’s the place that you’ve made home. And yet, you’re deeply aware of your own foreignness to it. And yet you’ve made a home in that gap, haven’t you? Explain that to me. I get the feeling from your story that you’ve ended up in Sri Lanka because your husband is Sri Lankan and you’ve decided to settle there. And this is the journey that you both have taken together, and yet you still occupy this liminal space. Would that be true? 

 

Marguerite Richards: Definitely. Yes. Thank you for finding that poem. It really means a lot to me that you recognize that and that feeling I have. Yes. I mean, I will forever be different here. I’ve lived in other countries where I think I made an effort to blend in. And here it’s just not possible. So…so, and I think that it’s like an ongoing process of discovery, you know, just trying to figure out how to make this place feel more like home. And the way that it opens up to me, I don’t know how to explain it better than I did, I think, in that poem. And, I don’t know, it just, it’s a wonderfully interesting place to live. There’s definitely a magic here. And it’s something that you recognize more, or I recognize more when I go back to the West and I find it missing.

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: I want to return back to something before we conclude. And I guess it’s the lingering question for me. And I want to thank you for your incredible insights and the unvarnished way that you’ve really explored your process as an editor, as a writer, and as someone who is so dedicated to memoir. I still come back to this question of motivation. Because this led you on this incredible multiyear journey. But what was that kernel? What was the kernel of motivation that started it? 

 

Marguerite Richards: You know, there’s always many, there are many things that come into place. Like, when you start a project, you can’t just say that it just happened in one moment. I really do always come back to this idea that the world’s problems are relational. And I think that that’s what was happening for me in 2015. I mean, I was, I was aware that we had problems with racism. I was aware that there were many issues with perception and misconception about Muslims in the world. I was aware of all of that after 9/11, but I didn’t really know what my place was or how I could manage or even recognize, like, my impact in the media. And I think that I knew, I didn’t also realize that editing could be my contribution. And I think that there were a couple of different a-ha moments, but probably it was in 2015 when the terrorist attacks started coming back again. And in Paris in particular, there was one event that happened in a restaurant that I had been dining in just the previous summer and during the same month. And also a friend, a Muslim friend living in Paris who felt, after those events, that she couldn’t go pick up her child at school…and these different kinds of things that were coming in my mind that I just, I just was thinking about, you know, and I think I looked up on Pew Research Center and found out that there are 1.8 billion Muslims in the world. And that’s the, only the people who are actually ticking the box on the census, you know, form. That this is so many people, you know, that are, that there is some sort of, you know, idea about, you know, this monolith, you know, of the idea of what Muslims could be and what their lives are like. And so that, I mean…and also, this idea of what you see, you know, this image of, you know, on the book cover of this, this requirement like you were talking about. The Muslim has to be pushed to tell a true story about the hardships of their lives. And then she’s forced to be wearing a hijab on the picture on the cover. There are so many, I mean, so many questions and so many issues that have come up in my camp about representation, how I manage the fact that, you know, am I, is this Orientalism, you know. How can I be the white editor representing? Why don’t I have a Muslim editor? Why isn’t it a Muslim editor who’s doing this? And my only answer can always be, should I not have done the project, in that case? Should we not have put out this book? And even, you know, Muslim editors that I have discussed this project with, you know, they would tell me, but, you know, who am I, you know, coming from Bangladesh to represent all of the Muslims in the world? Because that’s impossible.

 

 Abdul-Rehman Malik: Exactly. Agreed, agreed.

 

Marguerite Richards: So what’s the difference? You know, I’m another human. And so I’m going to, you know, put out stories from a whole bunch of other humans. And that’s what we did!

 

MUSIC

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Marguerite, tell me about a joy or a meanness that came to you recently as an unexpected visitor. 

 

Marguerite Richards: A joy or a meanness that came to me as an unexpected visitor. So yesterday was my son’s birthday and he was getting together with his cousins. So the two of them, my two sons, they’re playing together all the time and they have their own rules and the way that they do things. They have their other cousins that are a little bit older and they’re very, very sweet. And my boys were being so rough and awful with them. And there was this moment that the two other boys were so shocked. My boys, they ganged up on them and jumped on them and started attacking them. The two boys, the two cousins, were looking at them in awe, you know, and I was able to stop my boys and have them look at the other two and say, look at their faces, look at their faces. How did they feel? And they actually had this moment of recognition that these two cousins had no idea what had happened. And it was just a moment of connection, that between these four tiny boys that, you know, you recognize all of this meaning in this learning that happens at such a young age. And it’s just incredible. So that was a moment.

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Marguerite Richards, it’s been an honour and a pleasure to have you on This Being Human.

 

Marguerite Richards: Thank you, thank you for having me. I loved this conversation. Thank you so much.

 

MUSIC

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: To learn more about Marguerite’s work, including her book The Ordinary Chaos of Being Human, you can visit margueriterichards.com. This Being Human is presented by the Aga Khan Museum. Through the arts, the Aga Khan Museum sparks wonder, curiosity, and understanding of Muslim cultures and their connection with other cultures. This Being Human is produced by Antica Productions in partnership with TVO. Our senior producer is Imran Ali Malik. Our associate producer is Emily Morantz. Our executive producers are Laura Regehr and Stuart Coxe. Mixing and sound design by Phil Wilson. Original music by Boombox Sound. Katie O’Connor is TVO’s Managing Editor of Digital Video and Podcasts. Laurie Few is the executive for digital at TVO.