Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.

This episode is brought to you by Boombox Gifts, memory boxes filled with personal messages

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I'm thrilled to be interviewing Rima Zaman today. Rima is an award-winning author, speaker, and actress.

Born in Bangladesh and raised in Hawaii and Thailand, Rima moved to New York to pursue her dream

of acting while also working in child care before writing her debut memoir, I Am Yours, a shared memoir.

Her work has been published in Vogue, Shape, HuffPost, Salon.com, and Ms. Magazine.

Rima is currently partnering with the International Rescue Committee and Girls, Inc.

to serve crucial causes and empower the next generation of leaders.

She currently lives in Oregon, where she is an Oregon Literary Arts, art writer of color fellow from 2018. I'm so thrilled to be here with Rima Zaman. Welcome, Rima.

Thank you so much, Sivie. It's an honor to be here. I feel like I'm now living the conclusion

of your book. Like I'm like in the sequel now that you're here. I know what happens after.

Because you caught me in the middle of book tour. Exactly. Well, any, welcome. I'm so excited. You've spilled your whole life out on these pages in such a beautiful, profound way. I mean, and I really mean that the words that it was so poetic and the stories you told, the pain, the way you turned it all into such a gift. I was like, oh my gosh, she's like the nicest person in the last. Thank you. So I have some specific questions, but I just really wanted to get to know you. So there's this powerful scene at the beginning of I Am Yours, a shared memoir, when you're four years old and you structured it by age as you went through, which was great. Your dad is at the dinner table with you when you have a fever and a cold, and he doesn't want you to cough for whatever reason. And he says, why is the child coughing? Stop it. And you say, Papa uses his hard voice. It sounds like the ground. I order my throat to stop. The cough pushes against it, making it burn, and my eyes wet. The place where my heart lives starts hurting.

The hummingbirds fly faster, but I don't cough.

So I wanted to know, start with that, about how you felt in that moment, and then how you think your dad's relationship with you affected your relationships with men.

And I'm starting with this because I feel like that's the basis of most of the

stories. Exactly. So go ahead. Thank you. That's one of my favorite scenes because, you know, when

you're a memoirist, you're bound to the truth, meaning you can't fabricate any scene. And strangely

enough, my life has that experience of being not directly ordered,

but certainly given the cue that I need to hold my breath. So to say that I spent many years

holding my breath around my father wouldn't be hyperbole or metaphor. And my mother and I, we

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