I needed to reorient myself and the way I understood the world and and and my body and

things like that. And, you know, I had to build this whole map, right? This web, you know, over a hundred,

you know, different thinkers and writers, you know, and like years of therapy and listening to

my body and all of these like somatic things. I'm like, I wish I had been given any of these tools or any of these frameworks or a different way to think about myself or my body. So I really wanted to share as much of that as a resource just to be out in the world. It's just like one more place that somebody might stumble upon and like learn a little bit. Like maybe, you know, take some, you know, solace and comfort or

like wisdom, you know, without having to earn it the way I kind of paid for it.

Welcome to The Stats, a podcast about books and the people who read them.

I'm your host, Tracy Thomas, and today I am joined by author Sada Aziza to discuss her debut memoir, The Hollow Half, a memoir of

bodies and borders. This book traces the haunting parallels between Sada's struggles with

anorexia and trauma and her Palestinian family's history of displacement and erasure.

And on this episode today, Sada and I talk about why she left

writing, what made her come back to it, and how she has felt about taking this book out into the

world. As a reminder, our book club pick for November is We the Animals by Justin Torres. We will

discuss the book on Wednesday, November 26th with Mikey Friedman. Everything we talk about on each episode of The Stacks is linked in our show notes.

And if you like this podcast, you want more bookish content and community.

Consider joining the Stacks pack on Patreon and subscribing to my newsletter unstacked on

substack.

Each place offers different perks like community conversations and virtual book clubs on Patreon

and my writing and hot takes on the

latest literary and pop culture news on Substack. Plus, in both places, you're going to get

monthly bonus episodes. And joining makes it possible for me to make this podcast free to all every

single week. So head to patreon.com slash the stacks to join the stacks pack and check out my newsletter at tracythomas.substack.com.

All right. Now it is time for my conversation with Sada Aziza.

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