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This Friday, see what critics are calling.
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A cold blooded masterpiece. Hello, city. Your back. Dead is just a word. Did you think our story was over? Discover the secret.
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It's brought us here for a reason. Behind the mask.
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What do you think happens when you die? It's time to find out.
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I'm not afraid of you. You should be. Black Phone 2 only in theaters Friday.
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Rated R under 17. I'd admit it with that parent.
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Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Hello, everyone, and welcome to nbn. I am your host, Holly Gattery, and I am thrilled to be joined today by Kasia Yaroncik. I did it. Cassia. I'm so proud of me. And who has been very diplomatically coaching me through her last name, which is not technically difficult, but it is me we're talking about. And I am really excited to have her here to talk about her novel Voices in the Air, which I first heard about a while ago. And I've been looking forward to having Kesha on the show to talk about it. Welcome, Kesha.
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Thank you so much.
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It's so lovely to have you here.
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Yes, I'm excited to talk to you.
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Yeah. Yeah. It's a novel that I felt like when I was reading it, I was thinking, wow, there is so much history steeped so perfectly into the everyday lives of these people and this narrative. So I have so many questions about that, but I want to start by telling our listeners a little bit about the book and about you. So, Voices in the Air. What would drive women to risk the lives of their children and innocent people to leave their mother country forever? On April 30, 1982, two women and their families hijack a Polish passenger plane. A flying from Wrslo to Warsaw in a bold attempt to escape martial law in communist Poland and find safety in West Berlin. Among those hijackers are a cotton spinner whose husband wants to avoid a long prison sentence, a schoolteacher with a sick daughter, a pregnant 14 year old who has visions of the Virgin Mary, and an ambitious young filmmaker inspired by real events. Voices in the Air is told from the point of view of these four women and a stewardess in love with the married pilot. Will they find happiness beyond the Iron Curtain, or was the hijacking not worth the risk? So, a little bit about Kasia Kasia Yaronic is a Polish Canadian writer, artist and microbiologist. Oh my gosh. Wow. She immigrated to Canada at the age of 14. Her debut short story collection, Lemons, was published in 2017 by Mansfield Press. She is a co editor of the only anthology of Polish Canadian short stories Polished. You have to picture that like polished but with the e D in brackets for everyone. Poland rooted in Canadian fiction, which was published by the marvelous Guernica editions in 2017 as well. Her stories were shortlisted for the Bristol Prize in 2016 and longlisted for CBC Short Story Prize in 2010. She has published in Canadian literary magazines such as New Quarterly, Rune, Prairie Journal, Carousel, the Nashwack Review, Postscripts to Darkness, and in anthologies Wherever I Find Myself, Essays on Canadian Immigrant Women, and the Bristol Short Story Prize anthology. Kasha welcome again to the show.
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Hello.
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I love that I pronounced your name correctly the first time and then completely biffed it the second.
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Oh that's not buy and don't work. I don't think anyone would like know or Karen. I I don't mind most people really.
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Announce it so so I I want to know like this this is based in true events. But where did the story start for you? Because this is a story that pre exists your writing of it. And I am always fascinated with writers who pick up real events and then stay true to those events but also make those events their own. So I'd love to know about where the seed of the story started for you.
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B
Okay, sure. So having grown up in communist Poland and emigrated a couple of years after the communism fell, I have always been interested in stories of escape and I think the most common ones common ones are the ones when people try to escape across the Berlin Wall from East Berlin to West Berlin. So I think everybody knows about those stories. People were digging tunnels under the the wall or different families sewing a hot air balloon together and using that to cross. But then I started Wondering why I haven't heard of any similar stories from Poland. So I started reading on that subject. And then I discovered, which was pretty amazing, that during Polish martial law, which was in the early 80s, which happened because the people were not happy, there were a lot of demonstrations and protests, and the Soviet government was losing its grip on the society. So they requested that the general who was in power in Poland announces martial law and, you know, prevents people from, you know, completely uprising against the Soviet rule. So during that time, I found out that there were six. And the martial law lasted for two years, so only two years. And during that time, I found out that there were 16 airplane hijacking. So when you think of the number 16 airplane hijacking attempts, so, like, it's like a hijacking every other month. And 10 of them were successful. And what is even more amazing, that most of them were regular people with families, with no weapons. So they were not.
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A
You know, when.
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Usually when you think of a hijacking, you think of terrorists, right? These were just people, people who tried to escape, but they were regular people. They could be your neighbors. So that really fascinated me. So then that was the beginning. And the second part of it. There's a famous photo by a British Polish journalist called Chris Nidental that shows the first day of martial law. It was winter, December, and he took a photo of a movie theater in Poland, in Warsaw, that I actually mentioned in my book. And the movie playing at the time was Apocalypse Now. And there were two tanks parked in front of the theater. And that photograph was smuggled across the border and published in the west also. It's super famous, and it just shows the paranoia and the fear of. That came so perfectly with the title of the movie. The tanks in front of the theater and a few people passing by. And every time I looked at the photograph, I wondered, what are those people thinking? You know, what they are doing, what their lives were like. And that was kind of a second piece of inspiration for me, you know, to find out what they were, what people in that situation were like and what drove them to, you know, escape on in any way, like hijacking an airplane. And. Yeah, so they were the two seeds for the novel and for my interest in it. I thought it was a cool story. If I didn't know about the hijackings and I'm polishing, I thought, you know, there are a lot of people who don't know. It would make an interesting story.
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As you were just talking, Kesha, I was thinking about some pictures I recently Saw about what's. I think it's still going on in Italy right now, the protests going on in Italy against the genocide in Palestine. And I was thinking about how, why isn't the media covering this? And then I started me thinking about what media covers, what media doesn't cover. Also, I mean, it's a little bit different in the case of these stories because there was literally a curtain stopping people from accessing what was happening in other parts of the world, what was happening in Poland. And I really started to think about the flow of information and how much of our lives and how much of our outlook on the world and even who we are is based on such a minute bit of information that we're actually given access to. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how information and knowledge spreads in your story. And what I mean by that is how these people, these characters who are often restricted in so many ways. I found how they communicate and how they gather information to be really fascinating.
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B
Okay, so part of the idea behind the novel was about historical records and historical information, because when I was doing the research, I found out that the. The actual hijacking that my novel is inspired by, all the information available was about the men who took part in it and nothing about the women. Also, I didn't know, you know, who these people were, what occupations they had, or what their names are. So I had to invent it all. I tried to get more information from the Polish government. And, you know, knowing that Poland now is a democracy, right. So there's no. Shouldn't be any restrictions on the information. The Polish government would not release any information to me about it because they said they could only do it to some. Some of that like a professional journalist associated with a specific media. So. So I started thinking of how much information is still restricted about the past and also how history is just interpretation. History, even though it contains facts, they are. You know, every historian has a certain bias. It's very hard to be unbiased. And you know the saying that history is written by the victors, right? So. And now with all the massive misinformation also. So I wanted to show how information is gathered and processed. That's why the milgau of the book is in the form of a documentary film script in which the character, who is a filmmaker, finds all the women from the airplane and interviews them about what happened at the airplane. And then during those interviews, of course, the information she gets from them is incomplete because it was such an intense time period, such an intense Unusual event that memories are unreliable. In addition to that, some of the women would subconsciously suppress memories, would not want to remember what they did or what their husbands did. So getting that information was difficult for her. Also, as a documentary filmmaker. Filmmaker, filmmaker, sorry. In communist times, she had to always face the question that if I film somebody and have recordings of regular citizens doing their things or doing maybe working in opposition, if I film them, will that get them in trouble? So the question is, as a filmmaker, do I want to record the daily life, record what I consider is the truth, or and, you know, hold that moral responsibility of maybe getting somebody arrested, in trouble, providing evidence against people or not? So that was the question she faced at the airplane, on the airplane while the hijacking was happening. So that's one part of it. Another one is how the hijackers were perceived by the media In Poland at the time, they were seen as criminals, even though themselves, they did not consider themselves to be terrorists. They called themselves air partisans, and they did not have any evil intentions. Right. But they were considered traitors and criminals by Poland, and they were also considered criminals once they landed in West Germany because they did hijack an airplane. They did fly where they were not supposed to, and they were made examples of because, you know, as you said, there were a lot of hijackings happening at that time. So they. They did go to prison. So now, from our perspective, we can. I don't offer any judgments in my book. I leave it open to the readers to, you know, make their own minds up about how they judge the people who did it. So. Yeah, I don't know if that answers your question.
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It does, and it answers it so perfectly. I'm not sure if I'm allowed. I'm allowed to have whatever I want. I do have a favorite character in this book. I was like, I'm not sure if I'm allowed to. If I'm allowed to admit it is what I meant to say. But thank you. I love Marta and. And I realize that this may not be everyone's favorite character, but I really loved how she was to me, just felt so real. She's struggling with this deep insecurity, which is probably why I really love to her so much. You know, she is. Is her husband cheating?
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Is she?
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Is he not? How faithful is he being? And she also has this adorable little daughter, Hanya, and. But, you know, she. When she is separated from Hanya because of her husband's action. And this is what I'm talking about with information like her husband keeps knowledge from her that puts them in danger. And I really felt so rageful. And I'm trying not to give anything away, but so angry about him doing that. And I understand it's a different time. It's a different place, and it's also just who this person. Person is. But I. I would love for you to talk about Marta. And I'm not trying to single her out above all the others, because she is objectively most fascinating, but she is who I found most fascinating.
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B
Yeah. Okay. Well, she's. She's the first character I created, so the book started with her. So, you know, her husband plans two escapes. The first one fails. Right. And the second one, he's the one who organizes the. The airplane hijacking. And the fact that he kept it away from her is, I think, not just his personality in this specific family situation, but I think it's the patriarchal society in Poland. And that was the huge question that I wanted to ask is, did, like, what I would. What would I do if my husband decided for our family to escape from Poland to potentially endanger other people's lives, to polish, put my and my children's lives at risk and not consider my opinion? You know, I wanted to ask that question and also present the opposite. A situation in the family in which it's the woman who decides that. Right. And the husband goes along. And that's a situation with Ivana. So, yeah, Martha was the first character, and the first escape attempt that her husband organizes behind her back is to escape by the sea at the Baltic Sea. That actually happened. I knew that one of the characters, the men who organized the actual hijacking, did it because he was afraid of the long prison sentence awaiting him from. For a previous attempt. And that would be, you know, probably 20 to 30 years in prison. So that. That is a motivation because in communist Poland, not only he would be sent to prison, but also possibly his children would be taken away from his wife because the government would deem both of the parents corrupt and not. Not responsible enough and traitors to raise their own children. The children would end up in an orphanage because at that time in Poland, I think there were not a lot of foster homes. So a lot of kids would just be left in an orphanage. And the conditions in those orphanages were awful. Not as bad as the Romanian ones that everybody knows about. But so I can understand. I can understand the motivation of why he would do it the second time. And, you know, obviously, I think he kept it away from her. Why? Because I think she wouldn't Want to leave. Right. Because most people, if you were not involved in the opposition, if you are not a writer, on an artist who was controlled by censorship, which is another big topic in the novel. And I guess it. It also partly answers your first question about the control of information. Right? Because one of the characters is a filmmaker. And when making films, you have to go through several stages of censorship, you know, before your movie is released. So, yeah, he kept it secret from his wife because I think she. He knew she didn't want to leave because her life, even though basic necessities were hard to get and she had to struggle to find food and clothes for the children, her freedoms were not as limited as if she were an artist. She was just, you know, a mom. So as she said, you know, we're used to living here, and I'm not gonna endanger my children's lives.
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It was really interesting to get a look at this story. I mean, as I said, I know I'm harping on one character, but I found it interesting is it made me reflect on what I would do in that situation. So I like to think I'm a very brave person who stands up for what I believe in and I have the courage of my convictions. But actually put yourself in that situation. What would you actually do? All romantic ideals aside, behind the safety of that ideology, when it comes down to it, what would I actually do? And she made. Martha, made me question that about how brave I actually think I am. And I don't know if I arrived at any conclusions because all this is just theoretical for me. Obviously, I don't know. But I appreciated that she made me ask what. What I would actually do and would I do the brave, courageous thing and take a risk or as someone who I'm very self. Admittedly risk adverse, would I know? I don't. I don't. I don't know. But it was interesting for me to play that thought experiment with myself and again, come up. Not really nervous. I'd like to think I would be brave, but again, I. I'm not sure. I also love the character of Alina and who is the mother of the husband and I. You'll notice I'm not saying the husband's name Ke$ and it's because I can't pronounce it. And you know when you're reading a book how you're allowed to just say these things in your head and then you're like, oh, I can skim by it, but if you'd like to say it for me, then I will attempt to repeat it.
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Yeah, it's Sigmund.
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Oh, Zygmunt. So it's exactly as it is spelled actually. So Zygmunt's mother is a very shrewd woman. And what I found interesting about her is that she was my main key into the economics of the time. Which may sound like a strange thing to say, but her frugalness, her nickel and diming everything, her mistrust even of her a daughter in law may. I mean again, this. Maybe it's just the way she is, but obviously given the context, I, I think, you know, some people can always be frugal, but then they're put in extraordinary circumstances and it's elevated. And that's what I thought about her. And I was wondering if you could talk about perhaps before I ask you to do the reading, which I've been meaning to do, but I keep getting distracted. But more questions. If you could talk about looking into the, the economics. Because I mean, it's something that's woven really beautifully into here. But I think that, you know, you know, you may not have gone into the story knowing about just the day in, day out, how things worked with money, how much people had, how much people didn't have. And that's really beautifully illustrated in this. When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th. And never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Learn more at WhatsApp.com the new Popeyes and Hot Ones menu is fire flavor.
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A
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A
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Please drink responsibly. Responsibility.org Jack Daniels and old number seven are registered trademarks. Tennessee Whiskey 40 alcohol by volume. Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee.
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B
Yeah, so nobody had anything. You know, people didn't, not, did not make a lot of money unless they belonged to the party. And the party, even though was a communist system, allowed certain people to have private businesses because the party wanted luxury goods. Right? So if you were lucky enough or married to a military person, if you're lucky enough to be in that group, lucky enough, but maybe also unlucky because you know, always involves some kind of questions of morality, right? Taking advantage of other people. But most people did not make a lot of money. I know from my own life. My mom was a teacher and my dad was an engineer. And that was, you know, one of two of the lowest paid jobs. Incumbent, despondent. Also doctors. So the jobs that actually make money here, they were load paid jobs there. And even if people had money, they would go shopping to, let's say you know, a store to buy food, to buy vegetables or meat. There was nothing in the stores. People had ration cards. So you know, there was a limit of how much meat or how much sugar or alcohol you could buy for your family. So even if somebody could make more money, they couldn't spend it. Right. It was difficult to buy children's shoes, toys. I remember I, I used to wear my grand, my. My grandfather died when I was in grade four and my siblings and I wore his socks. They were like old men, argyle pattern, kind of brownish socks. Because my mom couldn't get us socks. We had the same kind of shoes to wear all year round. So you know, that kind of life. And the only good thing about it is that most people were the same. So there was not really a look of envy or you know, like a lot of competition. Actually there were strategies for getting things. So for example, people would know by the word of mouth that certain goods would be dropped off in a certain store. For example, if you wanted to buy furniture, you would sign up on waiting list. Or you were passing by a store and you saw a line of people, you know, going across the whole block and you would ask them, you know, what, what is the line for? And they will tell you, well, supposedly there are, you know, there will be oranges in that store. So you know, you would ask them to keep your spot in line and you would buy oranges or you would buy shoes, even though, because Shoes were suddenly available. If the shoes were not in your size, you would also buy them because then you could barter them and exchange them for some other goods that you would need. So that's what people often did.
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A
I remember being in Poland as a child and we stayed at this hotel, and it was like quite beautiful architecture, like, intricate. I mean, I know that there's. Poland's, like, very multifaceted. You know, people have one opinion of it. I mean, I've heard people say, oh, it has these very stark and basic buildings. And yes, I remember that. But I also remember a lot of very beautiful architecture. Architecture. And what I remember about this hotel was that in the bathroom, there was a. That there's a really deep bathtub, but where the faucet came out, where the tap came out, there was a dinner platter, a large, ornate dinner platter that had been, like, put upside down and a hole cut in the middle for the faucet. So it was covering up some. Like, it was. It was like a really, like, MacGyvered way to fix tile, essentially. And I can remember thinking that was the coolest thing ever. I really loved it. But reading your book, it really made me think, like, I didn't understand then why these things.
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Yeah, people have to be really resourceful. You know, there's a Polish saying that says. Which means a Polish person can do everything because people have to learn how to do everything, you know, how to repurpose things. Also, people stole a lot. Like, if you, let's say, worked in a factory that made TVs or whatever, you would just steal parts to, let's say, you know, again, exchange them for some other goods or use them to fix your own tv.
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Right.
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People really did not care about doing their jobs well because they never got paid well and they never got promoted or never got paid enough in proportion to what they deserved. So nobody really cared about anything. You know, just doing the minimum to survive.
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Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, that is. That is really interesting, your. Your book. There's some scenes in factories where these things are being discussed and revolutionary topics are being.
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Yeah, there are a lot of strikes in factories, you know, just before martial law. So there were factory strikes, university hunger strikes. Right. Protests on the streets. Yeah.
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And these are all things that I'm semi proud to say I was vaguely aware of. Sometimes I talk to people on the show who are sharing parts of histories that I just so shamefully unaware of any of it that this. This I was semi aware of partly because of visiting Poland, you know, having a lot to do with Poland due to the nature of what my parents did. But that was basically why I think that if I hadn't had that access into it, if I hadn't spoken with people and been to people's houses who lived there and had them to our house back in Canada, I wouldn't have known any of it. I and even this book gave me deeper insight into it. So with that in mind, I would love to you love for you to read to us from your book.
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B
So the fragment I'm going to read happens on the night, actually on the morning, where martial law is announced. And one of the characters, not Martha but Ivana, who has a child who is sick in a hospital in another city. But she also has two other children and one of them has an earache, so she has to on Saturday morning she has to find a pharmacy to buy some antibiotics for her child. Ivona marched down Rakowiecka street towards Puaska, which has several pharmacies. As she passed the long cement wall of the prison, Ivona picked up her pace. Pale patches of pain on its dirty yellow surface covered old graffiti. She recognized from the shape of the spots that it had said Solidarna, which is Solidarity. Two rows of loosely coiled barbed wires stretched on top of the wall. The place gave her the creeps. She half expected to hear the cries and moans of the Solidarity members and political prisoners they tortured inside. She couldn't help imagining how they would break Igers slim fingers if they arrested him. She ran, slipping along the wall until she stopped, breathless, at the next intersection. In front of her she saw the tramway stop sign with its red T on a yellow background with the schedule underneath and behind her the battery yellow barrier fence preventing people from jaywalking across the tracks to the largest movie theater in Warsaw. A big neon sign, Kino Moskva on top of the building wouldn't be lighted until evening. On weekends they screened films and cartoons for children, but the square in front of the cinema was now empty. The movie playing was Apocalypse Now. She read from the green print on a large screen above the entrance. Ivona wanted to take her class to see it. After they finished reading Heart of Darkness, she instinctively hid behind a maple tree growing out of a square. A square patch of ground cut in the sidewalk in front of the theater, obscuring the two stone lions. At the main entrance a large armored vehicle was parked. Vierzha would know exactly what it was called, but to her it looked like a tank. Soldiers moved around it, entire track spiraled in the snow don't be ridiculous, Ivona muttered to herself. They are not going to shoot you. She felt a snowflake milk on her lips. A few more attached themselves to her lashes. She blinked them away. You're a Polish mother looking for medicine for a sick child, not the enemy. And they are Polish soldiers. Ours, not Soviet. Who knows, maybe Arek is one of them. Ivona smiled at the memory of Basha's infatuated gaze on her 18 year old godfather's in his new uniform. Ivona crossed the street, slippery with melting snow. She had to walk past the tank to get to the pharmacy. She clutched her purse handle so hard her fingers hurt. An older woman in a red scarf smiled at her furtively and skulked away. Ivona tried to look like a regular person, not the sweaty, trembling woman with racing heart whose husband was in Solidarity and was participating in a strike at that very moment. Years later, Ivana would recognize herself in the famous photograph. There she was in her sheepskin coat, the collar lifted around her face, her purse hanging on her arm. She remembered being afraid of the men who came out of nowhere to go at the vehicle, wondering if they were members of the sb, which is the secret police. She had looked down at the melting snow and hurried away. It struck her now, by a complete chance, by being there, the exact moment when Chris Needenthal pressed the shutter, not a moment earlier or later, she became immortalized for all history like a fly caught in amber. She preferred to remain on the periphery, outside the frame of big events. And ironically, she's not. She's hijacking an airplane later.
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A
Yeah, I mean, it's there. There's so much to love. And my my final, one of my final questions, my penultimate question, if you will, in this interview, is to ask you about juggling all the voices and all the perspectives. I ask this question a lot to people who have polyphenolic phonetic novels because I feel like when you're reading it, it seems like, oh yeah, this is. This is such an easy thing to do. But as someone who, you know, writes, I actually find it incredibly difficult. And you know, yes, you can get different perspectives and stuff, but balancing even things as simple as who gets airtime when, and the sequencing of when voices come, when they go, and organizing how the stories are woven together seems like as again, when you lift the hood on this novel we have a Lamborghini on the outside and then when you lift the hood you can see that a lot of work has gone into making it. So I was wondering if you could talk about Managing the voices and organizing them and sequencing them and weaving them together.
- [33:03]
B
Sure. So. So the novel is divided in three sections. The. The first section describes the lives of the women before the hijacking. And it's written in third person, so, you know, the voice is important, but not as important as writing in first person, trying to differentiate between them. And then the middle part is the documentary interviews in which each of the women speaks in first person and speaks about what happened at the airplane at different moments. And then the last part is. Follows all the women through time to the modern times to see. To get the glimpse, you know, through different times for. For each of them in a different time to see what happened in their lives. So when I started writing this novel, I made the decision that I wanted to make the. The woman very distinct and have very distinct life stories and to make their life stories interesting even if the hijacking did not happen. So I did not want the hijacking to be the only thing in their lives. Right. So they all have separate stories and events in their lives before and after that, you know, are also interesting even if they did not participate in the hijacking. And also, you know, each of them have different distinct personalities. And I kept that in mind when I was writing the first person interviews. So, you know, the. The teenage girl who sees the Virgin Mary, she was kind of naive and childlike in her voice and also very shy and traumatized. The. The stewardess who I really enjoy writing is kind of. She's kind of cocky, full of herself, but at the same time desperate to be with the pilot that she's in love with. So that's her vulnerability. She was a fun character to write because she consider herself very superior to her country cousin. And she does come from a privileged class because stewardesses and pilots were the few people in communist plan who could go abroad, who could travel. And a lot of stewardesses like herself were involved in smuggling goods. They would travel to different countries beyond the Iron Curtain, buy goods there and sell them important, sell them in other countries and make a lot of money. Another interesting thing about stewardesses, I'm just going to add, because it's very interesting. Very often there were people at the airport asking stewardesses to bring medicine for, raise sick relatives who, you know, just strangers asking stewardesses if they could bring certain medicines from abroad for their, you know, pay, pay them for it. And also some people even asked for blood products, which was really interesting to me, you know, like, bring some type 0 blood for my relative. Like, it's insane. So, you know, she had a very distinct voice because of her social position and who, who she was.
- [35:40]
A
Yeah, it's just mind boggling for, you know, when I was reading this to be like, like, it's, it's not, it's not unimaginable. I was imagining it because you painted a very clear picture, but it was unfathomable until I read it that, you know, and I, again, this book made me reflect on who has power, who's denied power, how power changes people, how it can change some people for the better, how it can change some people for the worse. Like, and a lot of themes that I'm sure this was not on your mind as you were writing it, but are really salient today with what we're seeing in the world.
- [36:17]
B
Oh, my God, yes. It's horrifying to, to watch what's happening in the United States and not keep thinking martial law, you know, like, and, you know, I keep thinking of the Polish people in the United States who voted for Trump, and I'm thinking you guys escaped, you know, authoritarian system and now you're voting for, you know, I, I just can't imagine, like, I, I don't understand how people can be so blind. But anyways, so another character, your favorite character in Martha, as you said, she was completely in love with her husband also, you know, very insecure in his love, and kind of one of these women who kind of would do anything for their husband so she would agree to God. So, like, she has a specific voice. And of course, all the women also loved it. Well, not all of them, but she also really loved her children. Right. She cared for them. So that also gave her like a personality, the kind of person who would care about making a house. She, she, the Sufyamata, you know, she really wants to have her own house. She bought furniture, which was hard to get. And then she, she's supposed to lose.
- [37:22]
A
All that, so there's some anger there.
- [37:24]
B
And then Ivana, whose daughter is really sick, she's the one who is frustrated with her politically active husband. She does not like that political idealism. She, she wants to be practical. She doesn't want to fight for freedoms and sacrifice her life. She wants to have a peaceful, happy, secure life for herself and for her children. So all of those life circumstances and personality types would influence how these people speak and how, and also what these women remember and what happens to them afterwards, what kind of, what decisions they make and how they shape how they shape their lives. So for me, everything was kind of connected to that and what happens on the airplane is exactly what happened on the actual airplane. Because I read some interviews with the men who organized the hijacking, so I knew exactly everything that happens in my novel at the airplane happened. Only the reactions of people, of the women and the comments of the women are invented. But beat by beat, the actual events at the airplane are real. So I just had to choose which women would witness which situations and which ones would be the most effective in telling it, you know, and the impressions of a young teenager who has never been on an airplane were also an interesting thing. So I had to decide where to put her and what happens to her, which is very traumatic on the airplane. So, you know, kind of technical things and always asking myself who would take. Who would tell the story best and why and choose that person to, you know, tell that piece of, you know, the experience or the events. Yeah.
- [39:04]
A
Thank you for that. It was. It's a really moving book, really illuminating and lots of food for thought while also being funny as hell at some points. Purposely. Funny as hell.
- [39:15]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some humor to liken up the situation, of course.
- [39:20]
A
I mean, I don't know if it was supposed to be funny, but I. Or if she was supposed to be funny. But I really love the mother in law, Alina. Like, she made me laugh so many times. I mean, very grateful. I don't have.
- [39:29]
B
Yeah, and she was a surprising person too. Right. Because she feels like she's not happy with the, the sharing the apartment with, with, you know, her son's family and doesn't really care about helping with the children. But at the end, like, she really comes forward and like, saves the day and, you know, like, she, she surprises. Well, she surprised me. Hopefully she surprises the readers with, you know, how she's able to, you know, sacrifice some of her own comfort and actually, you know, forget all the little annoyances of everyday life and make good decisions.
- [40:05]
A
Yeah, I think she's surprising because, like, yes, she's a grandmother and mother in law, but she's very sexy and very, you know, very active and energetic. That's just the way I'll put it.
- [40:15]
B
Yeah. And you know, she. She's based on my grandmother.
- [40:18]
A
Oh, wonderful. Sounds like, Good for her.
- [40:21]
B
Grabbing.
- [40:21]
A
She's a. She's a little bit harsh, I guess, but good for her. I mean, again, she's somebody I love to watch and read but would not want to live with. She's entertaining, that's for sure. My final question for you is, what are you working on now?
- [40:38]
B
Well, I've been Working on collection, I guess collection of essays or like a loosely written memoir about my mother and I, our relationship. My mom passed away at the beginning of the pandemic. Suddenly was a complete shock to our family and she was kind of the, the center of our family. Like our lives were kept supported by her. You know, we're like planets in an orbit around her. She was the sun. And after she died, all of a sudden we were kind of let go free and really off our paths. And she was the kind of woman who sacrificed her life for her children and also she, who kept herself completely separate as a person from all of us. So she was a difficult role model. She was the perfect self sacrificing mother. But she would not ever let me in to see what she was like as a person, as a woman. So, so the memoir is about that I want to kind of immortalize women who kind of disappear, who no one writes about. Women like her, you know, who just do everything for their family and their children, have nothing. She's not the, you know, toxic mother about whom we have lots of memoirs. She's, she's, you know, a type of a Polish, Polish mother that's a type who sacrifices everything for her kids. But also for me. I am a disabled mother, a mother with ambitions. She was a very difficult role model. So there was a lot of conflicts also, you know, being a self sacrificing mother on her part, but also in a lack of control. She had control over everything. So there were those issues. So yeah, so the memoir is about me and her, our approaches to mothering and motherhood and trying to find out who she was as a person, what she was like. Because she, I know she was ambitious. She was a teacher, an amazing gift. My, my father gave me all the letters she wrote to him when they were at university dating. And the letters are amazing and surprising and she writes like a writer. So anyway, so I've been working, working on that for a while, but it's emotionally difficult, so I've been a little bit blocked recently and also, you know, occupied with promoting my novel. So. Yeah, so that's what I'm working on right now. Yeah.
- [42:56]
A
If only these people would, you know, stop. Stop inviting you to these interviews.
- [43:02]
B
Oh no, I really appreciate it. I mean, I didn't mean it that.
- [43:06]
A
Way, you know, I know, I'm teasing, I'm teasing. I, I use it, I'm just like, oh, I have to do all this publicity stuff. I don't have time to write. It's like, it's A double edged sword.
- [43:15]
B
Right.
- [43:16]
A
Like, it's a good problem to have, but I get it. That sounds fascinating. And I'm infinitely interested in how we often never know the people we're closest to in our family, especially our mothers like it. It's something that is so interesting. I think my kids would actually say they have the opposite problems. They could stand to know less.
- [43:38]
B
Yeah, you know, it's a. It's a difficult question for a mother. How much do I share with my vulnerabilities? How much do I share that with my child? And how much do I hide from them? Because they want somebody who will be there for them, that somebody they think will not be broken, will be strong for them. Right. But at the same time, you don't want to kind of completely alienate them and think that they. You don't want them to think that you are somehow emotionless or you never suffer or. You know what I mean? Like you don't have any problems. So. So, yeah, it's a difficult question. She went one way, I'm going the other. Like, you know what I mean? Like, you can't. Your child has to know that you are somebody that you can go and ask for help. But if they think that you are just like a friend, that you have problems and issues, that you can't, you know, resolve herself, how. How can they help turn to you? You know what I mean? Like, it's. Yeah, it's a difficult question for me as a mom. How much do I reveal myself?
- [44:33]
A
I. I always say I want my children to recognize that I'm their soft place to land. I am their hard place when they need protection. But I'm also like, please recognize my humanity too.
- [44:43]
B
Yeah.
- [44:44]
A
That I, I will do anything. I will pull it together for you. But I may need a minute. Just give me a tick to pull it together. Because I am so flawed. It is unbelievable. So it's constantly a dance, it's constantly a negotiation, it's constantly.
- [44:59]
B
Oop.
- [45:00]
A
That. That didn't go well. Let's try something else. So I'm really interested in that memoir and I cannot wait to read it. Kesha, thank you so much for coming on the New Books Network to talk to me about your marvelous book, which I think I neglected to mention was published with Pamulp says Press, which is a wonderful Canadian publisher, won many awards for their incredible books. And Voices in the Air is available wherever books are bought or borrowed. And I recommend getting it into your library, order it into your bookstore, order it into your house, and then you know, reach out and let us know what you thought about it. We always need to support independent presses and independent authors published by independent presses. I'm trying to. There's so much confusion about if you say independent author, does that mean self published or an author published by any? Anyways, it's a whole other conversation. But let's support small independent presses and the authors they publish. There we go. I pulled that together at the last minute coherently.
- [45:58]
B
KE thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. Holly.
- [46:01]
A
Thank you so much for coming. I can't wait to have you back to talk about your memoir, which I have every faith will be published.
- [46:07]
B
I agree. Thanks so much. Foreign Doug Limu and I always tell you to customize your car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. But now we want you to feel it. Cue the emu music. Limu Save yourself money today. Increase your wealth. Customize and save. We see that may have been too much feeling.
- [46:43]
A
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