Why researching her novel inspired Ayelet Tsabari to learn the songs of her ancestors
Songs for the Brokenhearted explores the untold stories of Yemeni Jewish women
Ayelet Tsabari's novel Songs for the Brokenhearted is a powerful, multigenerational story about a Yemeni Israeli family, their traditions and long-buried secrets.
Weaving together the stories of Zohara, a 30-something Yemeni Israeli woman living in New York City in the 90s, and her mother, who immigrated to Israel in 1950, Songs for the Brokenhearted is inspired by Tsabari's own heritage and years of research.
Tsabari is the author of The Art of Leaving, which won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Memoir and was a finalist for the Writer's Trust Hilary Weston Prize, and The Best Place on Earth, which won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award. She spent years living in Canada and is now based in Tel Aviv.
In Songs for the Brokenhearted, Zohara hasn't looked back since moving to the U.S. for her PhD. Her life feels much simpler than her childhood growing up in Israel, where she felt othered as a Yemeni Jew by the predominant Ashkenazi (eastern European) culture.
When her sister calls to let her know of their mother's death, she gets on a plane with no return ticket. But as she goes through her mother's belongings and discovers tapes of her mother singing hauntingly beautiful songs in Arabic, she begins to unravel family secrets, including a forbidden romance that challenges her perception of the conservative Yemeni community of her parents.
From a writing residency in Banff, she told CBC Books about how she crafted her novel Songs for the Brokenhearted.
Learning to sing
"A few years ago, I received the Chalmers Grant to interview elderly Yemeni women. The beauty of the Chalmers Grant is that it's an Ontario Arts Council grant. It's not for a specific project. It's just for a body of research that you want to do. And I just wanted to talk to Yemeni women about their lives and about their stories and their folkloric wisdom. And often they would start singing.
"At that point, I didn't know that the songs were going to be a big part of the novel. I knew that I wanted to write this sweeping Yemeni multi-generational novel. I knew that I wanted to honour a lot of our traditions and I knew that singing is such a big part of our tradition, but I still didn't quite know how that would fit in.
I knew that singing is such a big part of our tradition, but I still didn't quite know how that would fit in.- Ayelet Tsabari
"And then I ended up interviewing a woman by the name of Gila Beshari, who's a singer who is versed in both the women's songs and the male songs. She's actually the one who kind of explained the distinction to me. The men's songs were devotional and sung in Hebrew — because they prayed in the Hebrew language — and the women's songs were more about love and heartbreak and heartache and betrayal and just domestic stuff — and were sung in Arabic because they were illiterate and didn't know Hebrew because they were not allowed to pray.
"I remember driving away from Gila and realizing suddenly that for me it wouldn't be enough to just talk to her about it. I actually needed to learn to sing. I was like, 'You're a Jewish Yemeni woman, you need to know how to sing the songs.' And I emailed her or called her and I said, 'Would you teach me?' And she said, 'Sure.'
"And that's kind of when it started to become a really big part of my life."
Honouring untold stories
"I'd been researching this for so long. I think I started probably like 15 years ago. I had such a wealth of stories from family, from just elderly people that shared their stories with me.
It felt like honouring these women, honouring my ancestors, honouring those people and their tales.- Ayelet Tsabari
"In the residency, they were talking a lot about writers being hunters. We're thieves. We lift from people's stories. But for me, it's about more than that.
"It felt actually that I'm honouring their stories because they told me that these were stories that were not often told or not heard if they were told. So it felt like honouring these women, honouring my ancestors, honouring those people and their tales."
Balancing research and writing
"I don't believe in researching and then writing. It's kind of something that happens at the same time, you research and then you write and sometimes you have to stop writing and research some more. And sometimes you don't stop, you just continue and you just mark yourself a little note to go back and research later or complete that or verify that or whatnot.
"At some point I took some time off because I was really fortunate to get a grant from the Canada Council and I really just wrote for about seven months. And I think that really made a difference — sitting there daily, you know? And I completed the draft during that time.
I don't believe in researching and then writing. It's kind of something that happens at the same time.- Ayelet Tsabari
"Waking up early is a really big thing for me. Not that it's something I love or want to do, but it's actually really helpful to me to have those two hours in the morning before my daughter wakes up to just write.
"Some of my strongest, most productive writing and writing time happened during those two hours. And then I usually exercise. And then I come back after exercising and I write all morning.
"Then after lunch it depends where I am in the process. If I'm really deeply into it, I'll drive my kid to her ballet and sit outside with my computer and keep working. As I get closer to it, I go everywhere with my computer."
Quiet feminism through song
"My idea of Yemeni women was always like that they are powerful and badasses and strong and loud and mouthy and all of these things. And yet the more I researched, the more I discovered their lives and how hard it was, how oppressed they were and something there was just like there was such a dissonance that I couldn't really settle.
"And for me, learning about the songs kind of unlocked something. I think Yaqub, a character in my novel, says that they rebelled within what they were allowed or within the confines of that structure.
There was something hopeful to me, that audaciousness, and that claiming of story and narrative that their songs afforded them.- Ayelet Tsabari
"I started to see that it was quiet feminism and subversive in a way that I don't think I appreciated before. And similarly to how Zohara sees her mother in a new light, I guess I saw my grandmother and my ancestors in a different light after I learned about this.
"There's no arguing that their lives were hard, but there was something hopeful to me, that audaciousness, and that claiming of story and narrative that their songs afforded them. I was left with deep admiration."
Ayelet Tsabari's comments have been edited for length and clarity.
