"There was a lot of, you know, these sort of older people sitting together. And they would just sit out there, and they were waiting for their paperwork to come in," she says. "And that really drove home for me this dynamic because what those people were waiting for was absolutely determinant to how they behaved." The book is published by Simon & Schuster at $16.99.
Do the stories we tell about ourselves have the power to change us? Our guest today says they can.
To wrap up our season on meaning and purpose, we talk with author Daniel Nayeri. In his award-winning young adult novel, Everything Sad is Untrue, Daniel writes from the perspective of his twelve-year-old self, sharing the story of how he, his sister, and his mother immigrated from Iran to Edmond, Oklahoma, after his mother’s conversion from Islam to Christianity. Although this immigration kept his family out of prison (or worse), life in the U.S. came at a cost, too. Through his storytelling, Daniel also processes what he left behind: his beloved stuffed animal ("Mr. Sheep Sheep"), a life of comfort in Iran, and his larger-than-life father.
In this episode, we explore finding meaning through storytelling, the impact of an active imagination, and how the sustaining hope of the Christian story makes even a refugee camp in the Italian countryside a place of opportunity and joy.