'Grief made me a better radio host': embracing hard questions in Minelle Mahtani's memoir
The Vancouver writer spoke about her memoir, May It Have a Happy Ending, on The Next Chapter
Sharing your vulnerabilities with a stranger is often a less daunting task than talking to the people in your life that know you best.
This was certainly the experience of former Vancouver's Roundhouse Radio host, Minelle Mahtani, who spoke to writers every day about their deepest thoughts, while she was going through immense grief off-air.
When her mother died, Mahtani was left to wrestle with questions of how to amplify her voice, the stories of her guests and the voice her mother had lost. Her new memoir sought to answer those questions, or at least to sit with them a little while longer.
May It Have a Happy Ending is a memoir about the anticipatory grief of caring for a dying loved one and the gravity of their loss when they do pass. As Minelle Mahtani was finding her stride in the newsroom, hosting her radio show Sense of Place in Vancouver, her Iranian mother had been diagnosed with tongue cancer.
Through vignettes and lyrical prose, Mahtani shares the intimate experience of talking with strangers while struggling to have tough conversations with close friends and family.
Mahtani is a Canadian writer and former radio host whose writing has been featured in publications like The Walrus. She is also an associate professor at the University of British Columbia. May It Have a Happy Ending is her debut memoir.
Mahtani and The Next Chapter's Antonio Michael Downing spoke about their shared experiences interviewing writers.
I heard you describe your interviews as emotional one-night stands. What do you mean by this?
I love that you pointed out this particular part of the book because I really struggled with describing it in an almost coarse and crass way. But I wanted to communicate the kind of rabbit hole I went down with my guests, particularly when I was searching for all sorts of intimacy, grasping in the unknown when my mother became sick because I was gaining a voice in radio when she was losing hers.
I had this incredible opportunity to amplify the stories of incredible writers like yourself, Larry Hill, Ann Patchett, while I was watching the stories of my ancestors get buried in my mother's mouth.
When you're feeling so much unease in that moment when someone you love is going through something so complicated and difficult, you are searching for comfort everywhere. And I was searching for comfort through the words of the people who were across from me, sitting next to me when I was on a microphone.
I was watching the stories of my ancestors get buried in my mother's mouth.- Minelle Mahtani
Part of what I discovered is I was having these really deep, emotional conversations with strangers, which is really what a radio interview can be. I know you've done this so beautifully with so many guests.
I kept on trying to figure out a way of doing that, how I could crack them open to hear their stories in new and different ways and to usher in a space of knowing for them where they would feel that nest of care. So I started calling these "emotional one-night stands" because you'd see them for 20 minutes and then maybe never see them again.
And of course that makes sense. They're on tour, right?
They're going from radio station to radio station, TV studio to TV studio. You can't be expected to become best friends with them and most of the time you won't have a relationship with them, and nor should you expect that. So it did feel like these emotional one-night stands and that was the closest, albeit not full description I could give of those incredible intimate moments I had with my guests.
I was wondering, why do you think it's easier to ask strangers the deep questions when very often we wouldn't dare to ask our closest loved ones those same questions?
I have an entire chapter on that and how angry I was that I could go that deep with a stranger and ask those questions that are normally surveyed questions that I couldn't dare ask my cousin or a friend with whom I have a very complicated relationship with.
Those are the questions that are on our minds that we don't feel we have the opportunity to truly ask and even if we do have the opportunities, we don't take those opportunities. It's why this whole book has been structured around questions, and one of the things I say in the book is if we are to have a whole new world of answers, we need a whole new world of questions.
So what would happen if we started having the courage to ask different questions, not only of strangers, because in some ways that's just like a leap of faith because there isn't a previous relationship. But what about with those we have the most cherished relationships? What could possibly open up in terms of like a field of green and expansive opportunity for a blossoming of a different kind of radical intimacy?
If we are to have a whole new world of answers, we need a whole new world of questions.- Minelle Mahtani
Radio taught me that I hadn't learned how to really listen, and that I wasn't paying attention to the things that aren't said, and that silence can be loud and deafening if only I would pay attention to that silence in a different way.
What happened with radio and of course, the experience of anticipatory grief, watching my mother fade away from the person that I knew that she was and watching her not able to speak to me any longer, is that grief made me a better radio host, but it also made me a better friend, I like to think.
Hopefully a better partner and a better mother because I think before losing my mom, I thought I had all the answers in so many ways. I wouldn't say I was arrogant, but certainly I felt like I had some knowledge as a professor at the university.
But now I know that death only opens up the space for more questions, which led me to be a bit more curious and to have the courage to ask questions that would lead to a more intimate space.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length. It was produced by Jacqueline Kirk.
