'What Will People Think?' and 'Climbing in Heels' star women trying to make it big

NPR's Book of the Day

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Arts, Books

4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 6 June 2025

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

New novels by Sara Hamdan and Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas follow women in the entertainment industry who must balance ambition with the pressures of family, friendship and love. First, in What Will People Think?, a Palestinian-American woman named Mia works as a fact checker by day and performs standup comedy by night. She hides her comedy career in order to protect her family until she discovers her grandmother has a secret too. In today's episode, Hamdan joins NPR's Ailsa Chang for a conversation about the politicization of the Palestinian identity and using comedy to explore cultural stereotypes. Then, in Climbing in Heels, three women working as secretaries at a Hollywood agency face sexism as they aspire to careers beyond their office jobs. In today's episode, Goldsmith-Thomas talks with NPR's Leila Fadel about moving from secretary to agent in her own career.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Ampera's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Today, we've got two novels for you about
0:06.9	women trying to make it in show business. But they're also more generally about the boxes
0:12.8	women get placed into. The societal roles women have to navigate in order to achieve their dreams.
0:18.7	In a bit, we'll hear about a novel centered around women in the 1980s entering the
0:22.9	Boys Club of Hollywood Talent Agencies.
0:25.7	But for Sarah Hamden's novel, what will people think is about a Palestinian-American woman
0:30.8	doing stand-up comedy, a fact that she has to keep secret from her family.
0:35.3	Hamden talks to MPR's Elsa Channing about writing a book
0:38.1	starring a Palestinian-American woman without making it all about religion or conflict or war.
0:44.4	That's coming up.
0:46.6	Mia Elmas lives a double life. She works as a fact-checker for a news publication by day
0:52.5	and as a stand-up comedian by night. And then one day,
0:56.5	she discovers her Palestinian grandmother's diary dating back to the 1940s in what was then Jaffa,
1:02.8	only to learn that her grandmother, decades before, also kept a secret from her family, a forbidden
1:09.8	love.
1:15.4	How Mia and her grandmother disclose their mutual secrets to each other forms the storyline of the new novel by Sarah Hamden called What Will People Think?
1:21.6	It's a book that reckons with how the pursuit of passion can collide with a family's love
1:26.3	and the consequences of being forced to choose.
1:30.2	Sarah Hamden joins us now. Welcome.
1:32.9	Hello. Thank you so much for having me. We're so excited to have you, Sarah. Well, I want to just
1:38.0	begin by saying it is refreshing to see a book that it's about Palestinian women, but it's a book that's not primarily about
1:45.5	religion or politics or regional conflict. And I was wondering how intentional was that choice,
	...

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