Holly Mason Badra, Sleeping in the Courtyard: Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora (University of Arkansas Press, 2025).
Jadaliyya (J): What made you edit this book?
Holly Mason Badra (HMB): I see this collection as the antithesis of erasure. Sleeping in the Courtyard compiles creative work by contemporary Kurdish women and nonbinary writers living in Kurdistan and in diaspora.
The project began in 2019 when Western media brought attention to Kurdish oppression through coverage of the Turkish military attacks on Kurds in Rojava. The mainstream coverage of this event led to North American and English-reading writers asking me where they could find Kurdish poetry and literature translated into English. I took on the task of spotlighting and sharing what was readily available online, but at that time, there was not yet a vast overflow of Kurdish literary work translated into English and also highly accessible online, especially compared to translations of other languages from the Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) region, like Arabic, Turkish, or Farsi. Moreover, most of the Kurdish translations available and the few anthologies in existence at that point predominately offered space to male writers. So, I became interested in reading and highlighting more work from Kurdish women writers. Then, putting these works together in a single collection allowed the pieces to speak to each other in significant ways that further illuminate Kurdish lives and experiences beyond stereotype. Moreover, bringing us all together under one metaphorical roof, around the table, starts to connect our work and construct meaningful threads, which develops deeper understandings and strengthens solidarities across the diaspora.
So, I began researching, connecting, and recruiting writers to this project. Since I started this project, there have been some other great collections published showcasing the work and voices of Kurdish women writers and translators in English (like Houzan Mahmoud’s Kurdish Women’s Stories; Farangis Ghaderi, Clémence Scalbert Yücel, and Yaser Hassan Ali’s Women’s Voices from Kurdistan: A Selection of Kurdish Poetry; and The Purple Color of Kurdish Politics: Women Politicians Write from Prison, edited by Gültan Kışanak). We have seen some great movement in this area of representation, and I am so excited for Sleeping in the Courtyard to join the party.
What I gained from this book project has been powerful—and that is deep friendships more like sisterhood. We are now all connected and able to support each other’s work and lives. That is a beautiful thing to me and a great product of this collection.
J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?
HMB: I really wanted to bring together a group of outstanding and diverse writers within the same space. I also really wanted to showcase an array of styles and topics.
Through fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and graphic novel, this collection showcases a wide range of Kurdish voices and experiences. Some themes that emerge and flow throughout the collection: discovery, familial complexities, cultural suppression and exploration, gender-based violence and oppression, displacement, memory, resistance, and resilience. Beyond those threads, there are also: strong female friendships, community, motherhood, parenthood, isolation, loss, empowerment, sexuality, desire, love, bodily autonomy, immigration, exile, questions of “home,” technology, music, art, legacy, lineage, ancestral meditations, complex and hyphenated identities, anger, fear, pursuit of education, familial struggles, familial bonds, sibling care, mental health, politics and political engagement, social critiques, feminist ideologies, travel, rootedness, fragmentation, epiphany, state violence, military occupation, genocide, lies, truths, artifacts, inheritance, food and feast, autumn foliage, summer heat, winter’s breath, spring’s perfume, dreams, magic, barriers, boundaries, war, liberation, rituals, intergenerational trauma, and intergenerational joy.
The book spans a wide range of geographies, fragmentations, fractures, and displacements. Many of the women in this book are writers in exile. They are exiled simply for being women and being writers (the two coexisting at once posing a threat). The fact that the intersectional identity as a Kurdish woman daring to write, in some instances, means risking one’s safety also proves that there must inherently be power in writing, if these women are seen as a threat just for doing it. Sleeping in the Courtyard is really dedicated to all writers in exile.
J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work?
HMB: Sleeping in the Courtyard is in harmony with a lot of my recent nonfiction work that aims to highlight Kurdish women writers and translators. It is also in tune with decades of work focused on spotlighting women writers and artists. As for alignment with my poetry and nonfiction, this collection continues to explore some of the themes that come up in my creative publications around identity, diaspora, hyphenation, sexuality, gender, familial intricacies, amongst others.
J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?
HMB: I want everyone to read this book! I am hoping that Kurds in the diaspora will read the book. I am hoping Kurds in Kurdistan will read the book. I am hoping we have an audience within the SWANA community at large. I hope intersectional and transnational feminists will read the book. I hope that people who have heard of the Kurds and those who have not will read the book. May this book be widely read across the literary landscape, in houses, on the metro, under trees, in coffee shops, at celebrations, in classrooms.
For impact, my desire is that Kurds and especially Kurdish women will come into the foreground and no longer be viewed through a monolithic lens. That people will recognize the rich lives, stories, and tapestries of Kurdish experience. That there will be an understanding, appreciation, and celebration of Kurdish culture, lives, and art.
Before the book was officially picked up by the University of Arkansas Press, it went through a review process from press partners. One of the responses from a reviewer (anonymous to me, even still) is, in part, exactly the type of response I had hoped this book would elicit. He says, “Thank you very much for putting this anthology together. As a Kurdish man who was born and raised in Turkey, I feel privileged to read this before it is published. It made me cry, laugh, remember the genocide, remember my childhood, remember the fear of speaking in Kurdish, my inner child (the innocent light brown kiddo whose only aim was to play but what about genocide). Most importantly it made me remember the joy, beauty and wholeness of being Kurdish. Thank you very much for creating a space like this.” I have printed this out and put it up in my office.
This is exactly what I hope for… that the book will speak to Kurds in meaningful ways; that the book will speak to experiences specific to and also beyond gender; and that the book will offer moments and reflections for non-Kurdish audiences as well. To that first point, the British Kurdish public figure Payzee Mahmod, whose landmark work on honor killings and child marriage laws is well known, said about the book, “Sleeping in the Courtyard moved me in ways I didn’t expect. As a Kurdish woman, so much of what’s in these pages felt like home. Each piece carries the weight of memory, exile, and identity, but also the beauty of our language, our stories, our resilience. This collection doesn’t just speak to the Kurdish experience—it honours it.” Again, this type of response makes me feel joy that the book is singing in the way I wished it to sing.
On the wish that it speak both to and beyond the Kurdish soul, Lana Salah Barkawi, Executive and Artist Director of Mizna, wrote that the collection “is a site for urgent collectivity, a welcoming home to Kurdish stories and Kurdish readers, and in its specificities, a window into the condition of being human.” Similarly, Etaf Rum writes about the book’s ability to transcend: “As a Palestinian American writer, I have long searched for reflections of my own fragmented lineage—this anthology gave me that and more.” These are also the types of responses that I desire as a transnational feminist, that the pieces in this collection will be viewed both within their own specific, distinct contexts and also offer spaces of connection for all.
J: What other projects are you working on now?
HMB: I am working on a nonfiction essay collection that includes and is growing out of an essay I published in The Rumpus’ “We Are More” series for writers of SWANA heritage. That essay is titled “Sustenance,” and it weaves together and unpacks a number of identity-related complexities in my life. The essay collection also includes an essay in progress about Kurdish humor and creativity as resistance mechanisms (both implicitly and explicitly), as well as essays on drag shows, the fertility process, gender, and sexuality.
In the way of another exciting project I have become a part of, I want to mention a new Kurdish-owned and operated publishing press, Henar Press, of which I am on the board. Henar is a US-based press dedicated to publishing and promoting Kurdish literature and translation (in English). I am glad to be involved in the incredible work that Arian Sorani is doing to center contemporary Kurdish writers, including offering a public access, comprehensive Kurdish Literary Database that is an absolute game-changer.
Excerpt from the book (from the Introduction, pages xv to xvii)
Being Kurdish American, in my experience, means that I was born in the US to a Kurdish mother and a white-Southern-Nashville father. My mother was born in Kirkuk (Southern Kurdistan) and grew up in Baghdad. Her family escapedSaddam Hussein’s regime in 1975 (yes, he was persecuting the Kurds and “running the show” even before he was officially in a presidential position of power). They fled, packing one suitcase for ten, going on horseback through the mountains, and coming to the United States as war refugees. What this means is that my experience as a Kurdish American was one of distance and displacement from Kurdistan. But it was also growing up around my Kurdish family; hearing them speak a mixture of Arabic, Sorani, and Kurmanji; hearing stories about their lives before they immigrated to the US; and hearing them laugh in the kitchen together as they prepared a feast of Kurdish foods. Even though there was a displacement from the land, there was an immersion in Kurdish culture. At a young age, I could recite the details of my family’s journey to get here: hiding in caves, the bomb that didn’t detonate, the steep and thin mountain paths. And, in awe, I have learned about their experiences as refugees building a new “home” in America. Through connecting with other Kurdish writers and reading their work, I have been able to see my family’s stories reflected and crystalized. More than that, as a daughter of diaspora, I have started to see my own world and experiences reflected as a queer, Kurdish American woman spanning various colliding spaces. That reflection has been incredibly—and unexpectedly—nourishing. I didn’t know how much I needed to talk with others who have similar intersecting identities. It’s been life-altering to be reflected in these ways, to be so understood. Connecting with other Kurdish writers and artists in this process has been uplifting and heart-healing—and I know I am not alone in those sentiments.
As children, my mom and her siblings not only learned both Arabic and Kurdish but also learned (sometimes the hard way) where they could or couldn’t speak each language. Regrettably, I do not speak Kurdish fluently. This is also the case for many Kurds though, due to language oppression, suppression, and criminalization—intentional linguicide. This shows up in Kurdish and Kurdish diaspora writing. I say all this to point to the importance of collections like this not only as a way to showcase Kurdish stories but also to give space to Kurdish writing in translation. For diasporic Kurds who read in the English language, like myself, it’s been electric to be able to read Kurdish stories, essays, and poetry thanks to the art of translation. I am grateful to the translators who are doing this difficult work. These translations offer a window . . . or more like a door to walk through, an entryway.
Most translations in this anthology are from Kurdish—and mostly from the Sorani dialect. There are many Kurdish dialects—to name a few: Kurmanji, Sorani, Gorani, Zazaki, Badini. However, it is important to note that linguicide has often made it impossible, if not criminal, for Kurds to learn Kurdish. To be clear, we still see this today. In January 2022, for example, Zahra Mohammadi was sentenced to five to ten years in prison for teaching the Kurdish language and literature to her students in Eastern Kurdistan (the Kurdish region of Iran). So, it is important to recognize that not all Kurds speak Kurdish and that this is deeply rooted in systemic oppression tactics to divide and conquer. When you cut off a group’s ability to communicate in their mother tongue, you take away their capacity for connectivity. You take away their ability to share and preserve culture, to thrive. Or at least you attempt to. However, the Kurds remain resilient. Even in the face of these intentions to fracture, Kurds have remained some of the most tight-knit, friendly, warm, and welcoming people. We want to feed you. We want to hold your babies. We want to make sure you have what you need to be comfortable. A Kurd will give you the shirt off their back if you say you like it.
Given the fractured linguistic context described above, the other translations in the book are from Kurdish writers who do not write in Kurdish but rather are writing in Arabic, Turkish, Persian, or even Swedish. This was important to me to be as inclusive as possible in the collection and to recognize this complex web of physical and lingual displacement. Much of the writing in the book was originally written in English, but for the work that was translated into English, in reaching toward a decolonial praxis, it was important to me and the translators to find a publisher that would include the original Kurdish dialects to honor the Kurdish language, to recognize this history of linguicide, and to push against oppressive attempts to strip away Kurdish language.
My goal in this work was to be as expansive as possible in my approach and as transnational as possible in representation. We have in the book writers from and living in various parts of the world: Australia, the UK, Norway, Kurdistan, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, France, Sweden, Greece, Germany, Austria, the US, and beyond. It was important to me that the writers included in the anthology also represent varied intersectional identities. The book had to be an open space for writers who also identify as queer and nonbinary; who are situated within various religious groups and belief systems; and/or who see themselves within the disability community.
At the university where I work, I am the faculty advisor for the Kurdish Student Organization. A few years ago, I asked the KSO’s president, Ala, what she wanted the group to accomplish. She said, among other things, that she wanted people to know that “we aren’t just sitting around eating dolma all the time.” We all laughed. What Ala was getting at is what I hope this anthology will also achieve. A breaking of monolithic ideologies about Kurds . . . or, an opening. To enhance understanding around the varied lives and experiences of Kurds globally. This collection resists confinement. This collection resists the appropriation of Kurdish cultural production. This collection resists the idea that Kurds are victims to be rescued by Western saviorism. It was important to me that the writing in this book moves beyond stereotypes. Yes, much of the writing, no doubt, conveys struggle—this is the reality, and especially related to the intersectionality of being a Kurdish woman. With these themes represented, I also wanted to offer a range of poems, stories, and essays that go beyond what some audiences may think of when they think of the Kurds. The writing in this book showcases a variety of representations, voices, points of view, identities, intersectional experiences, geographical contexts, as well as a range of styles and genres.