An Interview with Sana’a Jaber
The Carol Shields Prize Foundation Fellowship at Diaspora Dialogues provides financial support to a woman or non-binary BIPOC writer who is a refugee or new immigrant to Canada. The stipend is intended to provide opportunity for a writer to create, freer from financial constraints. As a part of the Fellowship, the recipient will also receive the support of a mentor to provide structured feedback on their work, as well as access to Diaspora Dialogues’ suite of professional development training and networking events. The Carol Shields Prize Foundation and Diaspora Dialogues are deeply grateful to the M.A. Faris Foundation for supporting this Fellowship.
We sat down with the Fellowship’s inaugural recipient, Sana’a Jaber, to learn more about her journey as an emerging writer.
What are some of the challenges faced by emerging writers?
Generally, it can be really difficult to tap into the market or industry, especially if you’re an immigrant without contacts and English is not your first language. As a refugee woman, the hardest thing for me has been finding my voice again in this new country, in a new setting, in a new society.
When you arrive as a refugee, because you don’t have your papers for a long time, you tend to live on the margins. That affects the way you live, and the things you allow yourself to talk about—or not. There is sometimes a feeling that you should suppress any form of “the other” in order to fit in more easily and assimilate to society.
But what I’ve noticed is that there are a lot of platforms and avenues to reach an audience here for women and immigrant writers, and I’ve sensed a larger openness to embracing new voices.
What are some of the recurring themes of your work?
When I was writing scripts for movies and TV, my work was heavily influenced by war and civil unrest. My main characters were women, trying to break free of rigid traditions and norms. In my current projects, I’m interested in dissecting intersections of identity, as well as womanhood and motherhood. Displacement is another major theme in my life and my work. I write about what it means for myself, my family members, and my friends to have been displaced from their family homes or country.
I’ve recently realized, given the political events happening in the world, how much of my writing in the past was written to appeal to the Western audience. When I grew up, the books that were more available to me were Russian or English novels. As I grow older, and especially now, I’m reclaiming my language and art from my part of the world, and I’m sharing it with my daughter. There is so much art and beautiful history in the Arab world that I’m trying to focus on and gain inspiration from.
I’m also interested in writing about my lived experience as a refugee in a new community and new setting. I want to mention Romero House, the refugee house that took myself and my daughter in when we got to Canada. A lot of people come here and don’t speak English, and the Romero House has helped so many and touched lives. When you’re not in a position to advocate for yourself, it’s great to have someone advocate for you as if you were their own family.
I try to advocate for others in that same way. In the past, I worked with Iraqi refugees in Jordan. In Canada, I’ve been volunteering to translate and interpret for refugees who have arrived in Canada, and helping to sort out paperwork and help people claim asylum. Naturally, I’ve heard a lot of stories. Some of them are so heartbreaking you feel like your brain is going to shut down. But then, after a while, you find the strength to get inspired by these stories and journeys.
Another theme I explore in my work is resilience. I think as Arabs, or people from the Global South, many of us have been living in turmoil for many, many decades. But the term “resilience” in the past has felt like a weight on my shoulders. But now that I’m raising my daughter almost completely on my own, and starting to settle down in Canada, I feel proud of that resilience once again, and it’s something that comes through in my writing.
Women all over the world break down, we suffer, and we go through atrocities, but we have this innate power within us: we fall, but we always get back up and we forge ahead.
How do you think the Fellowship will impact or support your writing practice and projects?
When I first got the email telling me that I was the recipient of the Fellowship, I immediately forwarded it to my best friend because I couldn’t believe it myself. I held off celebrating for a day, because I was at a point in my life where it felt like if something good happened, something really bad was going to happen next. I spent the next day looking at my phone, expecting an email to arrive that said a mistake had been made. But when that never happened, it started to sink in.
It took awhile, but the validation of the Fellowship has helped me to break through a big constraint in my writing process. I had been struggling to write for years, as I raised my daughter, dealt with illness, and left Lebanon. Even though I’ve always had all of these creative ideas, stress had caused me to completely lose my voice. For a while, I was like a shell of myself.
But with the Fellowship, I just started writing again, so effortlessly. It’s been such a beautiful journey to rediscover myself and rediscover how much I love writing. The Fellowship has given me more space to write. Everyone I’ve met from both Diaspora Dialogues and the Carol Shields Prize Foundation has been so amazing and supportive. Just knowing that I have this support and time to write, has been meaningful in a way that I can’t really describe in words.
This validation has motivated me to write every day, and it’s lightened up my life in a way that allows me to see inspiration in ways that were blocked before. It’s a beautiful thing, and I think it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity. I believe in divine timing, and this has happened at the right time for me, and it’s been an amazing journey ever since.
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Sana’a Jaber is an award-winning filmmaker and writer with over 18 years of experience. With a background in English Literature, she honed her craft at the Red Sea Institute of Cinematic Arts’ MFA program, a joint venture of Steven Spielberg, King Abdullah of Jordan, and UCLA. In 2019, Sana’a and her small family crossed the American Border and sought asylum in Canada, escaping turmoil in Lebanon. Her work explores womanhood, motherhood, displacement, and the universal need to belong.
