A Message of Hope: Silmy Abdullah's Debut Story Collection Spins Beautiful Tales of Migration, Family, & Self

When home is in flux, our sense of who we are can feel unanchored too. Enter writer and lawyer Silmy Abdullah's debut collection of short fiction, Home of the Floating Lily (Dundurn Press), which, through its finely crafted, evocative storytelling, takes readers deep into the experience of family, migration, and the search for home. 

Abdullah's stories, set in both Bangladesh and a fictional Toronto neighbour of Bangladeshi immigrants, are filled – as all authentic family stories are – with secrets, love, longing, change, and discovery. It's a stunning debut from a writer with a keen understanding of the human heart. 

We're excited to welcome Silmy to Open Book to discuss her first book as part of our Keep It Short interview series for short story writers. She tells us about why asking the right questions is more important in good writing than finding a firm answer, the short fiction collections that have inspired her as a writer, and the moving reason for the dedication she chose. 

Open Book:

What do the stories have in common? Do you see a link between them, either structurally or thematically?

Silmy Abdullah:

The stories have common themes running through them, such as family, love, friendship, loss, and betrayal. More importantly, they all deal with the experience of migration, and the pursuit of belonging and finding a home, whether it’s in a new city, a new country, a new relationship, or even within one’s own heart. In one way or another, the stories explore how migration complicates our relationships with others and ourselves. Although the characters travel between Canada and Bangladesh, they are all somehow connected to a fictional neighbourhood in Toronto called Crescent Oak Village, a hub of new Bangladeshi immigrants. Each story contains a reference to this neighbourhood and explores the characters’ relationship with it as they try to settle and navigate their sense of belonging in Canada.

OB:

How did you decide which story would be the title story of your collection? Why that story in particular?           

SA:

I chose the longest story in the collection to be the title story, which I structured like a novella. I wanted it to be the title story because it ties together the many themes that emerge throughout the collection. It kind of sums up that experience of turbulence and the constant back and forth that characters go through as they explore the question of where their home is. My goal for my characters and my stories has been to ask this question throughout, without necessarily arriving at a firm answer. But in the title story, the characters do arrive at a sense of homecoming, and a sense of rootedness, which is also the feeling I wanted readers to have after reading the collection. This is why, I also strategically placed this story at the very end. I ultimately wanted the message to be one of hope, and wanted to end the collection on this hopeful note as well.

OB:

What do you enjoy most about writing short fiction? What is the toughest part?

SA:

I love the brevity, the fact that I can somewhat foresee a resolution. Given my tight schedule, it also gives me the satisfaction of being able to finish a piece of work. The toughest part is to decide what to keep and what to take out, to strike that balance of concise and evocative writing, where readers don’t feel like they didn’t get enough. It’s especially difficult to develop a compelling character arc within a short page count.

OB:

Did you do any specific research for any of your stories? Tell us a bit about that process.

SA:

My research is my lived experience, my memory, and what I observe around me. I didn’t do much research in the academic sense of the term, because I didn’t feel I needed to. The immigrant experience is so entrenched into my reality, both my past and present, that I can directly tap into that. I did do some research to make sure that some of the technical aspects of my plots, such as timelines, descriptions of certain places in Bangladesh, and certain aspects of the profile of my characters were accurate and made logical sense. 

OB:

Do you have a favourite short story collection that you've read? Tell us why it is special to you.  

SA:

My favourite short story collection is Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. I adore her writing style, the myriad emotions that she is able to evoke through her simple, yet elegant prose. Also, as a Bengali immigrant living in North America myself, there was so much that was familiar about the stories, so much that I could connect with.

OB:

What story collections were you reading for inspiration while writing your book? What did you learn from them?

SA:

I read multiple collections, in addition to Interpreter of Maladies, Here are a few: The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Adichie, Collected Stories of Anton Chekhov, Runaway by Alice Munro, Collected Stories by Ruskin Bond, Lovely, Dark, Deep by Joyce Carol Oates, and Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri. The most wonderful discovery I had while reading these stories was the universality of them despite their specificity. Regardless of what time, or which part of the world the stories were taking place in, they all, in one way or another, ultimately dealt with the strengths and vulnerabilities of human beings and the human experience.

OB:

Who did you dedicate your collection to, and why?

SA:

The collection is dedicated to my parents, because the book is a tribute to their journey. My parents left behind a very comfortable life and chose a brand new country in their 40s and mid 30s, just when they became very settled in their personal and professional lives. They uprooted themselves to give their children a better future. This book celebrates the journey of our parents and those of us who left behind the familiar and started from scratch again, whether by choice or by compulsion.

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Silmy Abdullah is a Bangladeshi-Canadian author and lawyer. Her legal practice focuses on the intersection of immigration, poverty, and gender-based violence. Silmy writes both fiction and non-fiction, and  Home of the Floating Lily is her debut collection. She lives in Toronto.