My best friend’s family often went camping in the desert and by the beach, and some of my favorite memories emerged from those trips with them. KP: I loved my Saudi childhood and have many fond memories of the place. What moments of your childhood in Saudi Arabia stand out? For most Westerners there’s a mystique to the Middle East, and there are a lot of questions about the roles of females in that region of the world.
LSLL: I see that you spent your childhood in Saudi Arabia. Those women-talented, smart and fierce-were my heroes. When she signed my basketball and shook my hand, I almost fainted! The character of Mercy Louis is definitely inspired by Jamila, with a dash of Kate Starbird thrown in. As a sophomore in high school, I attended the Stanford basketball camp just so I could meet her. She was pretty short-five foot six-but played with such ferocity and skill, no one could stop her. I loved Stanford because I’d read a terrific non-fiction book called In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle, about a championship Massachusetts high school team led by Jamila Wideman, who went on to be point guard for the Cardinal. In high school, I was a University of Texas and Stanford fanatic. But women’s NCAA basketball has always been my favorite. KP: With a toddler son, my free time is seriously limited, so unfortunately I don’t really watch sports any more. LSLL: Are you still a basketball fan? Do you follow March Madness or the WNBA? If so, which teams? It has truly become home to me, even if I no longer live here. For a while, I didn’t know where to tell people I was “from,” but now it feels so natural and good to say I’m from Texas. I was born in Saudi Arabia and lived there until I was twelve, when my family then moved to Austin. The sun rising over the hills, the early morning mist in the live oaks, the mourning doves calling-these things are so familiar and comforting to me. I love waking up in my mother’s house, in the neighborhood where I grew up. KEJIA PARSSINEN: It’s always wonderful to be home. What’s it like to set foot on Lone Star soil again?
LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: Welcome back to Texas. We corresponded with her during her recent Texas book tour. In many ways, her new novel The Unraveling of Mercy Louis (Harper, 2015) is a tribute to all the girls she met on that journey: her coaches, the ones on her team, and the few Mercys she played against, the ferocious girls who left her awe-struck as they lit up the scoreboard, as they owned the court, the day, the season, the town. Kejia Parssinen played basketball competitively throughout middle and high school.
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