WGI Mentor Noni Salma has her story “My Daddy’s Daughter,” published on The Gay & Lesbian Review!
- Tell us about your piece “My Daddy’s Daughter.”
“My Daddy’s Daughter” is a personal essay that explores my relationship with my estranged father. It’s a kind of interrogation into the past and a hopeful reconstruction of the future. As a trans woman who has been disowned by her father (family), I wanted to unpack not just my father’s inability to love a child like myself, but also what it meant to not be a dream come true to a parent who probably had their own personal dreams for the child they had.
- What was the writing process like for this piece?
Writing a memoir piece can be tricky as you’re not just relying on your memory and its accuracy but you’re also exploring events that probably still cut deep. My first process is writing as though I am the reader. It has to feel like a love letter to myself; my teenager self who i sometimes think about. Staying in this mindset allows me to be honest. It also grounds me as I find myself uninterested in anything gimmicky especially if it’s going to affect the story I’m telling.
- What is your earliest memory of writing?
I remember being 8 years old, locked in the house with my younger siblings because our strict parents didn’t want us going outside the house. Being constrained meant my world became smaller. So I imagined what the larger world out there looked and felt like. And at some point I stopped imagining and picked up a pen and I started writing these short stories. The world became expansive and colorful and it didn’t matter that all we got were peeks from our barricaded balcony, my pen wrote about the imagined lives of the people I saw walking down the streets.
- What/Who inspires your writing?
This might sound silly but I’ll say myself. I inspire my own writing. I consider myself both a comedic and dramatic heroine living in the same body. I have experienced some daunting life moments but through some kind of miracle I still find the joy and the levity in life. Even when I write screenplays I always gravitate towards characters with these qualities.
- What do you think makes a good story, and what kinds of stories are you drawn to?
I think a good story is hallmarked by its ability to make us feel less alone regardless of its subject matter. Could be about a nun in Ivory Coast or a black trans woman in the Bronx, a good story makes us feel like we are them. We empathize with them and we connect with their woes and triumphs.
- What are some of your favorite books, TV shows, movies?
Books: Jericho Brown’s “The Tradition,” Ocean Voung’s “Night Sky with exit wounds” and “On earth we’re briefly gorgeous.”
Movies: Y tu mama tambien, Close, Parasite, Ex-machina, All of us strangers, Life of Pi.”
TV shows: Succession, The White Lotus, Insecure, Abbott Elementary, Queen Sugar.
- What are you working on next?
I just completed a page one rewrite on my GLAAD List 2022 comedy pilot, BADASS and I’m working on my memoir (“You split the ocean in half”) that chronicles my journey as an immigrant and a trans woman and also how these two parallel journeys are always in conversation with each other. And “My Daddy’s Daughter “ would be a chapter from it.
- Do you have any advice, tips, guidance or resources you’d like to share for someone who wants to write?
My favorite advice is always to seek out and join a writer’s group as they help ground and keep you accountable, plus you always find resources from your own community. If you don’t have access to one you can start one with one or two writer friends and see how that grows.
Read great writers. Be inspired by and let your writing sensibilities be titillated by them. Read new developing writers too, as sometimes they help you recognize your writing and what needs work in it. But the most important writing advice I’ll give is to go out there and live.
Experience the beauty and banality of life as they’ll guide and inspire you as you write on. And because it is a highly competitive and brutal industry, don’t let it steal your joy away. You love writing. Never forget that.
