Feature photo credit: Dondre Stuetley

On Monday, September 26th at 5pm PST, the A+ Read a Fucking Book Club met for our second ever session on a super mini pop-up Discord Server. Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of All This Could Be Different, and National Book Award finalist, joined us for a conversation that covered everything from her construction of flawed but lovable characters, writing about the midwest and getting away from toxic individualism!

Thank you to everyone who came out and especially to everyone who asked questions! You all make these events so special!  There’s info about our NEXT A+ Read a Fucking Book Club pick at the end of this post, too!

Transcript has been edited, and some conversational threads re-organized for clarity.

Sarah: hi cuties! so happy to be here 🥳 🥰
joining from Brooklyn, NY

Nico: Welcome Sarah!! We’re so glad you’re here!

Hello A+ Members!! @everyone

Thank you so much for coming to the SECOND EVER iteration of A+ Read a Fucking Book Club. Thank you, also for supporting everything we do at Autostraddle. We couldn’t be here without you!

Tonight, we have the honor of talking with Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of ALL THIS COULD BE DIFFERENT, which, in news surprising no one who’s read it, was nominated for a National Book Award! So, first, I think congratulations are in order to Sarah on her nom!

Sarah: thank youuuu y’all are so sweet. genuinely one of the more surreal moments of my life was finding out in real time about the nomination

*A flurry of congratulations and emojis!*

Nico: AND THEN just a couple of notes about how this can go: This is a Q&A, so I hope you brought your questions! Of course, it is also totally cool to gush a little if you like, but, don’t be shy to ask about the book, the process, etc! Sarah, I hope you’ll also feel free to ask our members questions, if you like! I am just going to ask everyone here to be mindful of the pace of the conversation. We want things to move, but not like, AVALANCHE, so if you see a couple questions pop up, just try and wait a moment before asking your next one so that things don’t get too overwhelming. We’re going to go until 6:30pm PST / 9:30pm PST, too, just so you know when this will be wrapping up. Thank you all again for being here. It’s really special to get to share space with you all like this. So LET US OFFICIALLY BEGIN!!! Whomst would like to ask the first question???

Ocean baby: Ok so, one thing (amongst many) that I loved about your book is that your characters have these relationships that are allowed to be really messy at times and there’s space for that messiness to kind of exist and breathe. And then there’s repair within them too. And they just feel so deeply human and flawed and redeemable and it’s really beautiful. So my question is this: what was the experience like of crafting these characters? And did it teach you anything about how to build & mend relationships or change your perspective on how to do that?

Queensie: I am curious how you decided to set the book in Milwaukee, and what your relationship is with that city? It was such an interesting and rich part of the book!

Sarah (in reply to Ocean Baby): damn that is such a good and beautiful question. have you ever grown coral or salt crystals? it’s slow and organic but there’s an organizing pattern to it too. creating these characters felt really similar. i started with sneha, and then with marina next, and then i was like wait i actually want this book to be about Big Friendship. next came Thom. and then i kept casting around, thinking about what this book needed. i felt like a foil to Sneha’s young-dumb-and-kinda-cautious-and-conservative energy was needed. I thought about two of my friends, including one who was a big part of my life in Milwaukee, and Tig waltzed onto the page

ugh my internet gave out and ate my follow up. but in short i think part of my process with characterization is: borrowing some from life, but also doing a kind of slow and boring acting. where i try to become each of the characters. so even if a scene was narrated by sneha, i tried to imagine myself as tig at least once, if they were in dialogue

gina (in reply): that’s so lovely! relatedly, which of the characters surprised you the most as you wrote?

Sarah (in reply to queensie): lol I think there are multiple ways in which I am not like Sneha buttttt I moved to Milwaukee after undergrad, lived there, worked there, fell in love. and then left because I felt like i had to leave.

so I have care for and respect for Milwaukee. I had a beautiful and often hard time there. it annoys me to see it, and other smaller cities and places disrespected. I think its history of worker rights and socialism is deeply moving. and i think its segregation etc is mad depressing

tldr Thee Midwest Is Complicated But Important

Sarah (In response to gina re:which character surprised you the most): mmmmm I felt consistently surprised by Thom, tbh. I really loved him and cared for him. I wanted to write a book where I could read a good man, who messes up sometimes but also acts admirably, and who has deep and meaningful relationships with the women and gay people in his life

Queensie: Love this. Honestly Thom felt like people I’ve known who I have not really seen represented in fiction before

_psi_fi_: I’d love to know more about how you conceived Tig’s vision of the Pink Mansion/Rion and why you think Sneha was ultimately so moved by it, after her initial hesitation. I loved that we got to see it realized, rough edges and all. (Please forgive me if I’m misremembering the name of the commune.)

Nico: I was very surprised by Thom as a reader. He actually had an arc of growth and one that was unexpected? That led him down a path of like…deepening himself? But it was like, yeah, like queensie said, unexpected maybe because I’m not used to seeing that type of character represented.

gina: well, and it bespeaks the generosity you have toward all your characters, sarah, even when they’re making the diciest of choices – it was such a compassionate read

Sarah: okay so something on this and also what @queensie said, and then i’ll address @_psi_fi_ on the Pink House / Rion (you remembered perfectly)

I think something that I have really struggled with is the political question of…..loving and organizing across difference, versus…a political separatism

and I know that, for myself, I came to the conclusion that in order to amass enough power to build the world we want to see, loving in coalition and loving across difference is what makes sense. at least for me. and one way in which love is shown is attention, and conferring a certain kind of full and deep humanness–the ability to desire, to fuck up, to change–on everyone. i’m still always going to be most interested and invested in queer people and people of color. but it is true in my life that i have had deep and meaningful friendships and relationships and community with men, and i thought, with Thom, that I would nod to that.

Carmen: “Loving in coalition and loving across difference” wow

Kayla: Yeah love that

Nico: That’s. Wow. Almost going to make me cry!!

Sarah (in response to _psi_fi_ on Rion / The Pink House): okay I love this question, in part because I had to think about it in a “wait what WAS the moment of inspiration”??? So basically I really wanted the movement of the novel to start with an I and end with a We, with something collective. That in part was because I was doing a lot of really collective-based organizing at the time, when I was like “fuck the I! fuck our individualizing society and art! what is happening rn is so beautiful!” so i thought of vehicles of the collective….and thought…okay: union, protest, commune, or non-traditional family. and frankly, i really longed, when I was writing the novel, to own a home and not pay rent. I mean I still long for that lol. But that’s how the pink house was born

Nico: “start with an I and end with a We” !!

Carmen: YES!!

Gina: and i am somehow now only connecting the pink house to the difficulties sneha faces with housing / amy, and the centrality of housing / living to the story more generally

i’m not sure there’s a question in there, but i’d love to hear more about the importance of housing / community building for you, and also – what was it like to write amy?

Nico: omg right, how the central antagonistic forces in so many cases are around giving / getting / witholding shelter or place or acceptance and belonging and security.

(in reply to Gina) would also love to know this

gina: i mean, that even connects to sneha’s work as an independent contractor, right?

Sarah: yeah so for a while i felt like i was just buzzing around and not sure what the novel was About besides coming of age, and i was feeling anxious about sort of what to do about the central romantic relationship, in terms of what i wanted to have happen — like i could have ended the book on the coming out scene, for eg, and at least one person in publishing world wanted me to end the book there. and there are ways in which marina is based on me and my ex so i wanted to be … thoughtful about it lol

and then it hit me that the centralizing force of the novel was about finding home — that’s what connected immigration and queerness and friendship and the socialist vibing and the antagonism from landlords and bosses

and once i sorted that I was like okay, we’re going to follow everything, like every section, that has to do with the idea of Home even nominally. i kept track in an …excel spreadsheet lmao. but i think that’s how i managed to create a coherence around it. i think i was like…okay this has to show up in some form at least every 15 pages.

Nico: that’s incredible! in a spreadsheet!

Sarah: i knowwww….real dork vibes

Carmen: I love this!!

Nico: um no it’s an inspiration truly
or dork as in heck yes

Kayla: I love the sex scenes in the book!!! There are only a few but they’re very memorable! Some classic advice I’ve read/heard about writing sex scenes is to just write them like any other scene but that seems, idk, kinda hetero to me? Lol. Your sex scenes really read as so distinctly queer!! Do you have any sex writing craft tips or like writers who do it well who you look to for inspiration?

Nico: Every time I came to a sex scene in the book I was mesmerized by how it was written? I think because there is a shift in the writing in some way, maybe? Is that more queer???

Casey: Also loved the sex scenes, very hot, very queer, very much an essential part of the story

Sarah: kayla!! what a compliment coming from you. and yeah “just write them” is mad hetero. i think my biggest thought is: what do we as writers want our sex scenes to do? so for me: i wanted the sex scenes to show character, aka show a different side of sneha. i wanted them to show a brown femme topping her little heart out…i think i was tired of reading a certain kind of straight sex scene where the skinny white girl just wants to be dommed in non-fun-seeming lite BDSM by some man.

and also i think sex scenes can read as embarrassing if you feel like the author is like…so horny for / in the scene that you can feel them rubbing one out as a sort of astral presence lol. trying to avoid this was one reason i tried to not focus too too much on describing marina’s body / boobs, or sneha’s for that matter, during the scene itself

oh and finally, i think, i was like, i want at least one scene that felt fun / inventive in some way…and ended up with the Kia soul

Gina: that’s an interesting distinction and it makes sense now that i’m thinking back – they’re not about the gaze but very much about the sensations and what they call up in the characters, if that makes sense.

Casey: I listened to the audiobook and the fact that it was in this format just clicked for me! Thank you for bringing this up

Kayla: Trulyyyy one of my favorite scenes I’ve read all year. I’ll never look at a Kia Soul the same way

Sarah: yeah i wanted the scenes to feel as embodied as possible, esp bc i think of sneha as someone who maybe feels best in / most in her body while having sex

Kayla: That totally comes across!

Nico: Can I ask about your process when writing a relationship based on you and an ex in fiction? What considerations did you take, — ethical, in service of the story, otherwise — when drawing from that inspiration? (said in the tone of “asking for a friend”)

Sarah (in response to Nico): okay so my move was to write as hard as I could and not think about real people at first, but to avoid…meanness or pettiness. it helps that i really love my ex, i think she’s wonderful, we are still friends though no longer very deeply integrated into each others lives. but i think i was like “i would like every person of mine who might see themselves in this to feel loved / cared for in some way, even if the characters behave badly etc”

but after i wrote the book, i showed it to my longterm / current partner and also to my ex and also to a couple of other close friends who might have seen themselves in the fiction. and i was just like, “look, it’s fiction and a ton is made up and changed and often for a purpose, i didn’t try to replicate life in a memoiristic way, but our time together inspired some of the things within it. i really hope you like it, but let’s talk about it whether you do or don’t”

tbh i didn’t show it to people i was no longer in relationship with. like my shitty former property manager tho. hope she doesn’t read it. or does! idk

Carmen: I love this, you can really feel all the care in your writing practice

Nico: I love this

Casey: I’ve seen some ppl calling your book “the millennial novel”. Aside from the fallacy that one book can represent everyone in a generation, how do you feel about that designation?

gina: I’ve seen some ppl calling your book “the millennial novel”. Aside from the fallacy that one book can represent everyone in a generation, how do you feel about that designation?

Sarah: oohh i think i’ve seen that less! i mean, it’s a mix up between honored / flattered, and wanting to hide. on one hand i’m like, “yessssss gas me.” and then equally think, “oh no” … my two wolves

Sarah: and the “oh no” comes from exactly what you mentioned at first, @Casey…the weight and pressure and impossibility of any one piece of art being generation-defining. personally i want a vast, diverse, rage-filled, beautiful howl of stories that shows among other things how failed we were as a generation–by the state, by neoliberalism, by so much else–and what the fuck we did in spite of it. i want so many stories. not “the millenial novel”

Serena (in reply to spreadsheet convo): This is amazing. I’m a big lover of spreadsheets too (your book is currently the most recent in my spreadsheet of books i read each year) and I was actually wondering about your chapter titling with the excel format, and your decision to break our of that for the last section.

discoj: Jumping off of Serena’s question, I LOVED the formatting of this book. How did you settle on the formatting for dialogue between characters? Particularly using indentation instead of quotation marks as a means of splitting up the conversations (hopefully this questions makes sense lol). Also thank you for being here!

In reply to discoj: it’s so lovely to be here! i think mine will be a boring answer here. i just…didn’t want to use quotes. i wanted the book to feel “voicey” and i thought dialogue mixing with narration would be a good way to do that. at the point i sold the book i had the excel cell formatting for chapters….which i liked for formal reasons but also simply bc it made me feel like a clever little guy. 😉

Casey: Yes I hear this! Also at the same time generation novels are always by and about white men so it was v cool to see a queer brown immigrant book being called this!

gina: and related to what we were saying about the communal / we superseding the individual / me, it seems like another way to read sneha’s arc is her acceptance of receiving help / being honest and vulnerable, to be in community rather than striving after unattainable individual success. it was fascinating to see her juxtaposed with tig, who is so consummately open and relational, and (mostly) unashamed to be so.

i suppose the question is, was it difficult to write sneha earlier in the novel, when she makes so many deeply understandable yet deeply isolating decisions; or, conversely, how did you conceive of tig, who is just such a fantastic character?

Sarah (in reply to gina): so something i wished i had been better about is signalling more clearly which year the novel begins in, which is 2013. the recession was still felt, esp in smaller cities like Milwaukee, but it was in no way as dire as it was in 2008, which was a very weird and specific time. i was in high school in 2008, and in 2013, i was….twenty two and entering the workforce 😉 and i just wanted to make my own life easier by choosing a time period i could remember well

gina: clearly i need to be a more careful reader! and i was also 22 and living in the midwest in 2013 and WOW do i feel this.

Nico: I had VISCERAL memories of the job market in 2013 *while reading this, so I don’t know, the year markers stood out for me.

gina: but instead i went to six years of grad school and pretended the workforce didn’t exist 😆

Kayla: I can’t tell if this question is mean but what was the HARDEST part of the revision process?

Sarah (to gina): god, what a lovely and thoughtful question. i think writing sneha made me forgive and have compassion for my younger self for stupid decisions i made: staying with the wrong people, for example. like i started to think of her as something between a close friend and … don’t laugh… my kid.

gina: that’s lovely!

N.: Related to Gina’s question a bit – there’s a moment in the book where Amit first brings up Em and how they use they/them pronouns, and Sneha reacts in a way that made me think “sounds like you have some introspection to do!”. Did you write Sneha as a trans character who just hasn’t had the time to delve into all that yet? Or is that more just her getting reactive, like she sometimes does in other situations too?

ocean baby: ooo very curious about this too

Sarah (in reply to Kayla): Kayla….lol. not mean. but also i had a moment of 😵‍💫 . honestly, the hardest part about revision for me is ego calibration. you have to believe you are a good writer and also know that you are fallible. and also it’s like renovating a house. you move a kitchen wall far enough and then its like oh fuck gotta mess with the plumbing too. the causality of revision is what is hardest alongside the ego shit, i would say

Kayla: damn yes love this metaphor

Nico: So I think we have the question from N. and also just 14 minutes left! Just time for a couple more 😉

Sarah: great question. I did have some talks with my trans friends where both I and the friend were like…”is this binch just an egg lol.” but overall the reason i included the scene was i wanted to like…have multiple moments throughout of the main character acting in ways that were not contained, moral, or elegant. i wanted that, first to create intimacy. i don’t know if it worked universally to create intimacy, honestly. my reasoning was that, you the reader, are a person who makes mistakes, and here is this young immigrant in 2013, making a mistake in how she’s talking about this other queer person. but i don’t always know if that’s how all people think–of themselves as full and fallible and mistake-making beings. I really wish for readers to think about what different life experiences make people susceptible, or not, to different schools of politics.

i have some…thoughts on what Sneha in her like, 40s or late 30s becomes more like in terms of gendery stuff, but i think my decision was basically like…it’s not the world of the novel, let me not inadvertently try to pull a R*wling, in the sense of announcing Dumbledore was gay or whatever

ocean baby: ok but also would love to get to dip into a universe of sneha later in life

Sarah: but yeah, sometimes in organizing I run into people who have…regressive beliefs, and I often have tried to engage them by being like, okay, why do you feel so strongly about this. I really care about trying to build a culture on the left where we don’t dispose of people for making mistakes or believing heterodox things (within reason ofc, hateful shit is hateful shit)

Queensie: This was honestly something I LOVED about this book. The characters were allowed to mess up and to grow, and they were still portrayed with compassion. The idea that everyone will do and say exactly the right thing at every moment just… isnt real

Kayla: ^^Yeah this book really is a triumph on that front

Deep empathy, deep realness about fuck-uppery

Nico: It’s really interesting that you mention organizing as a context for your understanding of this moment because — yeah, when you are working with people on the ground and attempting cooperation and coalition forming, you are not running into people who align with your views at every turn — there is the whole gamut of humanness.

Lee: I don’t have a question, just wanted to say I really loved the book, and especially how you gave such visceral/physical descriptions of a lot of the emotions–like with attraction/sex, as you were talking about before, but also with fear, care, etc.

Sarah: this is so lovely to read. thank you so much

gina: as we get to the end, is there a question you WISH we’d asked that you’d like to answer?

(and also, thank you for your beautiful book and generosity with your time and thoughts this evening)

Sarah: ooh goodness. i think one thing that i wonder about is what people thought of (like in a making of meaning sense, i’m not asking for compliments) on the ending? both smashing amy’s window and the actual closing page. i suppose i wonder because it has come up less so far in my conversations with people / interviewers

Casey: Sneaking in here too that this book is truly one of the best I’ve ever read and that’s coming from a lesbrarian who has read a lot of books!

Nico: 3 minutes to go folks! I would love if we could take this final moment to answer Sarah’s question above @everyone

gina: well after this conversation, i’m thinking there was such rich symbolism in smashing the representative of privatized white neoliberalism

but mostly my response was cathartic glee

Casey: Cathartic glee that’s a good way to put it

I was thrilled by the ending

jesaka: The final page felt like growth: sneha asked for help instead of trying to suffer through things alone

Carmen: Personally, I’m still chomping on what you said earlier in the chat, “starting out with an I and ending with a We”

jesaka: (also LOVED this book! Thank you for being here!)

N. I was very stressed when they smashed the window! My face was 😬 waiting for something bad to happen as a result, so when they got away, I was happy for their catharsis – felt like a small win.

Sarah: this is all so so so lovely to read

discoj: LOVED THE ENDING! It hit so hard in just the right way (particularly as someone in their late 20s).

Kayla: Yeah there was the right balance between like closure and a question mark ending like it felt like it exists somewhere in the middle in a way I appreciate

Nico: I felt like the catharsis was well-earned by the rest of the story.

Serena: Sometimes books feel like they get to an inevitable ending and sometimes I think “i would keep reading this forever” but the ending is at an appropriate point, and yours was the second for me! (To be clear i love both types)

queensie: Yes I looooved the ending. It felt cathartic and real. Satisfying without being too tidy. I literally said “wow” when I read the last page. Immediately started texting people to recommend it!

Lee: With smashing the window, you gave such care in what you wrote to acknowledging that “Amy’s” aren’t necessarily the only ones at fault or the ones most at fault. But there are people who choose to dig in their heels, stay complacent, and make the world so much harder to live in. So I’m with others here who are saying how it felt cathartic.

Carmen: Before Nico closes the server, I just wanted to thank Sarah for joining us and to all of you for being members, I sincerely look forward to book club nights for the opportunity to hang with all of you thoughtful, kind nerds. And I mean that in all the best ways. Thank you! 💜

I hope you all have a great night!

discoj: Thank you Sarah! And thank you to the Autostraddle team! I’ve been looking forward to this and it has been such a blast!!

Many thank you’s follow and the server closes!

The next A+ Read a Fucking Book Club will take place during the 13 Days of A+ in December and will be with our very own managing editor, Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya where we’ll discuss her forthcoming book, Helen House. December is still a spooky month so get ready to talk all things lesbian ghost stories and horror with Kayla!

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

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