Lucy Ferriss Discusses A SISTER TO HONOR and the Universal Nature of Love, Pain, and Hope

Esteemed author Lucy Ferriss is here with Fresh Fiction's Pasha Carlisle to discuss Ferriss's latest novel, A SISTER TO HONOR, which released this week from Berkley Books.

Thank you for joining us on Fresh Fiction today, and congratulations on your latest book's release. A SISTER TO HONOR centers around a crisis that occurs when a young woman from Pakistan falls in love with an American student while studying at a college in New England. Can you tell us a bit about why you chose to write this story and why it is relevant to today’s international struggles?

The story began as a “what-if” exercise. Not only do I see many international recruited athletes at the college where I teach, but my son was also a ranked racquet athlete growing up, so I saw a great deal of the intense competition, cultural diversity, and sense of honor that thrives in that world. What if? I wondered. What if one of these young men brought his sister to the United States? How would her experience be different from his, what would happen between them, what would happen back home? When I explored where the best squash players in the world came from, I learned they hailed from the Pashtun area of Pakistan, the same part of the world that has spawned the Taliban, amid a culture with strict traditions and ideas of honor, especially concerning women. I knew my story lay there.

As to the story’s relevance—well, you need only look at Malala Yousafzai and the recent school massacre in Peshawar, where I did my research. It is important, I think, that we in the West understand that such incidents of violence are not due to religion or to some other nation’s inferiority to us. They have their roots in complicated tribal and family systems that are different from ours. But love, pain, villainy, sacrifice, hope—these things are universal.

At Trinity College, where you are writer-in-residence, there is a high rate of diversity, particularly among the students on the school’s nationally ranked squash team. How did you use your work environment as inspiration and research for A SISTER TO HONOR?

The squash team’s diversity did inspire me. So did a candidate for Athletic Director one year, a tall, confident woman with spiky blond hair who insisted on being called Coach. She reminded me of many coaches I’ve known over the years—individuals who care a great deal about the young people they mentor but who are also drawn to the triumph of winning. While my story lies primarily with the siblings who come to the States and find themselves tangled up between their lives here and pressures from home, I am not Pakistani and felt I needed an American point of view to help anchor the story. The coach, who is both in charge and ignorant, wanting the best for her kids but also wanting something for herself, came to me out of many encounters in academe and also out of many recesses of myself.

An estimated 20,000 women are killed each year in the name of family honor, which is a threat your heroine Afia faces in A SISTER TO HONOR. What stirred your decision to spread awareness of this tragic reality through Afia’s star-crossed romance and ensuing family crisis in your book?

The problem of honor violence is real and is a logical though extreme consequence of traditions that invest family honor and shame in women as a means of controlling them. But I don’t want to sensationalize this crime or attribute it to one particular religion or culture. Instead, I traveled to northern Pakistan to get to know the people there, and I found they abhorred such violence even as they struggled to reconcile ancient family systems with contemporary culture. I also learned that so-called honor killings are often plain murder, committed out of revenge or a sick mind, just as, in America, so-called crimes of passion can be misogynist murders. I wanted to put a human face on Afia’s dilemma, so people might look past the headlines and not jump to conclusions.

How did you construct the character of Afia so that western readers would be able to relate to her and her plight?

She’s first and foremost a smart young woman—a sister, a daughter, a student, someone who’s shy but also eager and curious, as many previously sheltered young women are when they step into the wider world at 19 or 20. So I focused on her close relationships—to her brother Shahid especially, but also to her mother and her younger sisters, and to her roommates at school, her favorite teacher, the older ladies who befriend her at her part-time job, and of course her relationship to Gus, her boyfriend—all people who relate to her easily and intimately. Through her interactions with them and the human connections she experiences with them, we come to know her and care about her. Gradually, the dual world she lives in becomes ours as well.

What were some of the challenges you came upon while writing about the controversial themes of honor killings, patriarchal cultures, and the chasm between eastern and western worlds?

Two main challenges. First, I had never understood how deeply different life becomes when marriages are arranged by the family. Things I’d taken for granted—male-female relationships, family structure, parenting, finding a vocation, the role of romance—assumed entirely different meanings. I wavered between shock and envy at the extensive, supportive, sometimes suffocating family systems I saw among Pashtun people. In bringing that huge difference to life, I tried to portray the sense of comfort that exists side-by-side with repression and fear. The second big challenge was distinguishing the honor culture that pervades my characters’ world from what Americans label as Islam. Yes, these characters are Muslim. But their traditions are more tribally than religiously based, and basic emotions like desire, envy, fear, and revenge can beset individuals versed in those traditions and set off a storm.

What are some of the triumphs you hope to see following A SISTER TO HONOR’s release this week?

I don’t know that I’m looking for triumphs. I’d like readers to love this story, love its characters, feel for them in their desires and griefs. If reading A SISTER TO HONOR leads people to pay a little more attention to the threat millions of women are facing in our world today; or if it opens our eyes to see “the other” as a little more like ourselves, I’ll feel enormously gratified. Fiction shouldn’t set out to teach. But fiction is in the world, and the world is ours to discover. I like to think of my book as a small part of that journey.

Thank you again to Lucy Ferriss for joining us. Readers, how are you discovering the world through fiction? Join the conversation! Leave a comment below or chat with us on Twitter (@FreshFiction, @PashaCarlisle, @LucyFerriss1).