Book 4 in The Reader Berlin’s ‘New Fiction By Women & Non-Binary PoC’ Summer Reading Series by Divya Ghelani

the things i am thinking while smiling politely by Sharon Dodua Otoo - a novella

This is the story of the slow disintegration of a marriage and the consequences for friends and family. Ama loses her sista; Kareem learns to distrust a good friend; the siblings Ash and Beth have to struggle for their mother's attention; Till and his partner slip away from each other. Sensitive, relentless, and told with subtle humor, this is the tale of a multi-faceted narrator who ends up revealing a darker side.

https://www.edition-assemblage.de/buecher/the-things-i-am-thinking-while-smiling-politely/

Otoo was the 2016 winner of the Bachmann Prize for her story ‘Herr Gröttrup’. Having published two novellas and edited several collections, she is now writing her first novel in German.

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan: “Repost due to dyslexia: I was both nervous and delighted when I saw that @sharondoduaotoo was on the @thereaderberlin Summer reading list that @divyaghelani commissioned me to illustrate. There is something particularly inti… — Rowan Hisayo Buchanan: “Repost due to dyslexia: I was both nervous and delighted when I saw that @sharondoduaotoo was on the @thereaderberlin Summer reading list that @divyaghelani commissioned me to illustrate. There is something particularly intimidating about painting someone you’ve had the pleasure of meeting. We were on a @wordfactoryuk panel together. I miss live events! If you go online there are many photos of her laughing beautifully but, I particularly enjoyed the few that had a gentle raised eyebrow. This quote is from a really smart @writersofcolour interview she gave a few years ago about politics, motherhood, Germany and writing. Oh and slide over for a little U-bahn sign for the area lived in by the protagonist of the things i am thinking while smiling politely. Those of you who’ve read the book will understand the stickers on it!” #illustration #watercolor #thingsiamthinkingwhilesmilingpolitely. Follow **@rowanhisa** **on Instagram**

**Otoo’s Gifts (What We Discussed In Our Book Club)**

Otoo’s unnamed narrator feels increasingly liminal and this has repercussions for her relationships and choices, both in her childhood and the present. Our Book Club considered the ways in which friendship and love are assessed and critiqued as a result of this, as well as the theme of ‘frenemies’ and friendships.

Readers spoke about how their allegiances shifted in response to characters’ behaviour towards one another. They felt safe within the narrator’s perspective as a Black British woman in Berlin, until she revealed her big secret. It was as if the author was causing our relationship with the narrator to become estranged, and in doing so asking important questions about power and privilege among people of colour: How is our empathy for the narrator affected when she chooses to hurt a woman of colour in a more precarious position than herself?

A couple of readers showed Agatha Christie-levels of detective flair by studying the text forwards and then backwards, after which they proceeded to decode its secrets for the rest of us. We discussed the deliberate rupturing of time’s flow within the story, and felt excited by the writer’s structural prowess, her sense of playfulness within the tightly knit architecture of the novella form (also evident in Otoo’s second novella-in-flash, Synchronicity).

We agreed the conversations around veganism and customer service were ‘so Berlin’ when viewed from a non-German perspective, and the racist micro-aggressions were ‘so Berlin’ from a Black or POC perspective. (We also talked about the ways in which the city had changed and remained the same from the moment in which the novel was written.)

Readers loved the theme of naming in the things i am thinking while smiling politely. What does it mean to feel unnamed, trapped within a name, caught between names? And what does it mean to want to make a name for oneself? What is lost and what is gained in the process? We discussed the subject of intergenerational trauma, how it is processed by characters in the novel, and the ways in which it plays out in the narrator’s relationship with her daughter Beth. Themes of identity and belonging are present throughout this tale, including what it means to be seen as exotic and then cast aside. We admired Otoo’s many beautiful images on these topics: Auntie’s thrifty squishing together of old bits of soap, the stopping of the water clock at the Europa Centre, the narrator’s bleeding foot, the misplaced yet highly creative decision of an eight-year-old British-Ghanaian girl to choose her place in the world.

Those who could read in both English and German (as well as readers who were bi or multilingual in other languages) felt enlivened by Sharon Dodua Otoo’s decision to move between languages in her creative work. This, alongside her evident joy in structural play, made readers want to take more imaginative risks.

Here’s a great consideration of Sharon’s writing to date.

Here’s a link to her recent Bachmannpreis speech (for German speakers only).

Writing Exercise

You have a single day to plot a little story and then write it backwards. Begin writing at the end and work your way to the beginning. Pay particular attention to the question of time. How does this theme change the structure of your story, if at all? What happens to your story when you read it from front to back? And how about from back to front?

I highly recommend you visit @RowanHisa on her Instagram page to see her specially commissioned paintings in response to this Reading Series (ongoing experimental works).

For our next Book Club we’ll be reading both Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata and When I Hit You by Meena Kandasamy. I can’t wait to tell you what we discussed!

Claire Adam, Emily Devane, and Divya Ghelani at Waterstones Piccadilly - Writers in Residence 2016

On May 1st my fellow Word Factory apprentices and I joined the politically charged Writers of the World Unite! Festival as Writers In Residence. It was full of Russian revolutionary poetry, debates on identity politics and globalisation, Caribbean literature, and looked at the radical potential of graphic novels with writers from across the globe.

I ran a weekend-long Write In! as part of the #WOTWlitfest, with the aim of encouraging passersby to write about issues of injustice and social change. I asked myself, “How might storytelling by everyday people differ from political/media narratives?” and “How might such storytelling challenge indifference to injustice and promote human rights?” These questions were at the heart of the festival, as well as part of the Word Factory’s 2017 theme of Citizen: the New Story. My challenge was to incorporate the big questions of our day into little creative writing tasks. But would people want to engage?

I enticed passersby towards our Embertons Cafe Word Factory desk by offering up black boxes filled with writing stimulus labelled Characters, Desires, and Disruptions. They chose something from each box, chatted about it with Claire, Emily and I, after which they sat in silence, writing a new piece of flash fiction with us. If “hands on” stimulus wasn’t their bag, they chose a book from our Citizen Library (a brilliant list of political writings, recommended to us by the Word Factory team). I told them, for example: “Turn to page 74, line 6, and start writing!”

The results were fantastic! I don’t just mean the wonderful flash fictions people came up with. I’m talking about the fact that everyday people were sitting with strangers, chatting freely or writing quietly, whilst engaging with big topics of the day, in ways that felt accessible, fun, and creative.
We weren’t Suited Politicians, Media Moguls, or Famous Authors. We were readers, sometimes writers, everyday citizens, reclaiming narratives for ourselves, learning to take risks by trying on new ideas and characters – stepping out somehow.