Sentimental souvenirs
On fridge magnets and a Q&A with author Alina Khawaja. 📚
The cherry blossoms are in full bloom and it’s so wholesome to watch people milling about in parks and taking photos beneath clouds of cotton candy pink. I love seeing them here, but it’s also a dream of mine to one day visit Japan during sakura season. Speaking of travel, that’s loosely the theme of this week’s newsletter.
A love letter to fridge magnets
A few of the fridge magnets I’ve collected over the years.
Some people consider fridge magnets tacky. I am not one of those people. I like having things on my fridge. Not an excessive, can’t-see-the-surface amount, but just enough to make it personal and homey. I have a peel-and-stick dry erase calendar filled with all our important dates and appointments, photos that probably should be inside an album, and a collection of magnets that I’ve bought over the years, which I feel very sentimental about.
It’s one of the traditions that I’ve carried from my family home into my own (although you probably can’t see the surface of my mom’s fridge). When I travel, I love searching for the perfect magnet and the thrill of finding the right one. They represent memories of the places I’ve been, loved and even hope to return someday—the markets in Aix-en-Provence, the hawker centres in Singapore, the sparkling blue waters of the Amalfi Coast. I read about a study recently that found that magnets can help recall memories and trigger emotional responses more so than photographs. I’m not surprised. They’re kinda kitschy, sure, sentimental, yes, but they also bring a lot of joy. To me, they’re the perfect little souvenir.
I was lucky enough to get an advance copy of Alina Khawaja’s debut novel, Maya’s Laws of Love, which was published late last month. I flew through the book and wanted to chat with the author immediately, especially because I love a good diverse romance. It follows Maya Mirza, who’s traveling to Pakistan to get married. She believes that she’s cursed and has a list of laws to explain why. When a problem with the flight derails her plans and she befriends a prickly stranger en route, she embarks on an unexpected adventure where she realizes that her laws don’t always apply. If you’re a K-drama fan, you’ll also appreciate the references to Crash Landing On You (highly recommend watching if you haven’t seen it).
I chatted with the Canadian-Pakistani author about her debut novel (🥳), favourite romance tropes and love of K-dramas. (This is also the first author Q&A with hopefully many more to come!)
What inspired you to write this book?
It was a few different things! I watched a Taiwanese drama that used Murphy’s law in a similar way and I was like, “Wow, if I did that, how would I do it?” and tucked that thought in the back of my mind. Related to that, I came up with a concept of a girl who was unlucky in love, but it was waaaay different from what Maya’s Laws of Love ended up being. I also wanted to write a road trip novel because I think they’re super cute and fun. And finally, in my third year of university before the pandemic, I was thinking about what I might want to do after I graduated, and I casually told my mom I was thinking about going to teach English abroad and she said, “You can go, but you have to be married” and I immediately thought, “Why would I do that?” And then I wondered, “What if there WAS a girl who had to do that?” Then I put them all together and Maya was born!
Maya is Pakistani and you write this book with a cultural specificity that we haven't always seen in romance novels. Why was that important to you?
It was super important to me because growing up as a brown girl, we were never the desirable girls on TV. We were the nerds or super repressed or trying to rebel against our cultures. I was tired of that same narrative, and I decided that if I wanted to see something different, I’d have to do it myself. I wanted to show women like me that we’re more than the stereotypes we see, and we deserve grand love stories too.
Maya loves K-dramas, which you do as well. What do you love about them? What was the first one you ever watched?
I love how dedicated to love they are. Oftentimes the emotional core of the show comes from the main male lead and the main female lead, and it’s so enthralling to invest yourself in them. I also love that they’re finite series, and they average 16 episodes. So I don’t have to wait potentially years between new seasons like Western TV, along with the possibility of seeing actors I already love in new projects. My first K-drama was actually Playful Kiss, which is an adaptation of the Japanese manga Itazura na Kiss. I first watched it in high school, and at the time it was because I loved the story of ItaKiss, and I wanted new iterations to watch (after the anime and the 2013/2014 live action). So while I already knew the story, it was a new version of it!
What are your favourite romance tropes?
Definitely hate to love, there’s only one bed, marriage of convenience, academic rivals to lovers, and fake dating.
What's a great romance book you read recently?
I Hope This Doesn’t Find You by Ann Liang! It’s a YA contemporary romance, and it’s one of the best YA rom coms I’ve read in a long time! I love it because of how great the academic rivals to lovers trope is utilized, and because of the main character, Sadie. She’s so smart and hard working and just wants to be liked, which was so endearing. And of course, I’d die for Julius Gong.
Seven hotels with a Wes Anderson vibe.
The Nancy Meyers character you are, according to your Zodiac sign.
This broccoli, date and pistachio salad recipe is at the top of my list of things to make.
There’s something primal about our love for cups (like the frenzy around Stanley Cups)
The pleasure of boredom while traveling solo.