by Sara Nimis
Novelist, poet, and cultural critic Bushra Rehman opened her talk by inviting the audience to breathe together, to locate the seat of the courage and generosity required for such work in our own bodies.
Through her own story, Rehman made the case for bringing family secrets to light and offered tools for overcoming the fears that keep family stories hidden.
Having run away from home to “Jack Kerouac around the country” (including Key West), Rehman describes herself as both the family truth-teller and the family’s biggest secret. She stands by the direction her life has taken.
Rehman has unearthed important historical information buried under family secrets. She discovered that an auntie who features in her writing once traveled on a train that carried refugees across the newly drawn borders of India and Pakistan in 1947, during the bloody partition of British India. Such trains were targeted by armed mobs as they crossed contested regions, earning the name “ghost trains” from witnesses when the trains would arrive at their destination with no survivors. She also discovered light in what she calls the “black matter” around experiences she has narrated out of taboo, including the everyday texture of community and spirituality.
Rehman offered seven tools to break through the fear of harming those we love, all drawn from her Two Truths & a Lie workshop. First, when you find yourself caught up in fear of harming your relationship with those you love, just make a mark on the page in front of you. Second, know that what is written need not be published; focus instead on writing for your own clarity and healing. The publishing process takes enough time that by the time your work sees the light of day, the writing itself may have transformed those relationships.
Third, honor your characters with multidimensional portrayals. Caricature is a betrayal. Fourth, let readers see your own flaws in characters based on yourself. Fifth, tell those who are disturbed by your work of bringing secrets to light: “I don’t make you look bad; you make you look bad.” Hiding is stifling.
Sixth, forgiveness is essential. The writing must reflect either forgiveness of the subject of the work, or forgiveness of oneself, as the author, for failing to forgive. Finally, be braver than you think. You must write it, because the alternative is to hate yourself.
The talk closed with a reading from Rehman’s novel-in-progress, a scene from a bookstore in Manhattan navigating violent responses to Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. In the scene, Rehman used a series of interactions between characters of different backgrounds to sketch the tension between an impulse to protect her already embattled Pakistani community from purposeful religious provocation and a responsibility not to side with the enforcement of silence.
Sara Nimis is a 2026 KWLS Teacher & Librarian Scholarship recipient. She is a language and culture educator living on the ancestral lands of the Ojibwe and Dakhota Anishinaabe. She has taught at the Concordia Language Villages in Bemidji, MN, Sewanee: The University of the South, Miami University of Ohio, and Georgetown University. Her writing includes scholarly research, essays, verse, and fiction.
