There's this principle in architecture that I go back to quite often when I'm teaching creative writing classes.

Whenever you design a structure of any kind, you should give some thought as to how that structure is going to look as ruins.

And I think writers would do well to sort of think in similar terms.

I was writing in part a memoir, and I was writing in part an assessment of the part of the world that I have sort of tethered myself to since I was about five years old.

But I was also writing a real-time account of a period of history that I think will be one of our most shameful.

I often go back to this thing that Ishiguru said when he accepted the Nobel in his speech.

He said something like, all literature is essentially someone saying, this is how it feels to me.

Can you hear me? Does it also feel that way to you?

Welcome to the Stax, a podcast about books and the people who read them. I'm your host, Tracy Thomas, and today I am beyond thrilled to welcome to the Stacks, Omar L. Akad. Omar is an author and journalist whose work explores politics, identity, and the consequences of war. His latest book, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, is his nonfiction

debut. The book examines Omar's own conflicting relationship with Empire and the West. It explores

how history is rewritten and the stories we choose to tell ourselves about who we wish to be in

the world and what it means to live in a world that is deeply shaped by conflict. Don't forget,

our book club pick for March is they were her property, white women as slave owners in the American

South by Stephanie E. Jones Rogers. Temby Denton Hearst will be back on Wednesday, March 26th,

to discuss this book with me. So be sure to read along and tune in. Quick reminder, everything we talk about on

each episode of The Stacks can be found in the link in the show notes. If you love the Stacks and you

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