Rachna Singh, Editor The Wise Owl talks to Zilka Joseph about her recently released book Sweet Malida. Zilka’s books have been nominated for various prestigious international awards. Her first chapbook Lands I Live In (Mayapple Press, 2007) was nominated for a PEN America Beyond Margins award, and her second chapbook What Dread (2011) which was a semi-finalist in Finishing Line Press’ New Women’s Voices contest, was nominated for a Pushcart. Her first full-length collection of poems Sharp Blue Search of Flame (Wayne State University Press, 2016) was a finalist for the Foreword INDIES Book Awards. Her most recent chapbook Sparrows and Dust (Ridgeway Press, 2021), won a Best Indie Books Award. Her book, Our Beautiful Bones, (Mayapple Press, 2021) was a finalist for the Wheelbarrow Award from Michigan State University, from Galileo Press, and also a Foreword INDIES Book Award finalist.

Zilka was born in Mumbai, and is from the Bene Israel community. She lived in Kolkata, India. She has taught at and worked for the University of Michigan, Washtenaw Community College and Oakland Community College, been a Writer-in-residence at InsideOut Detroit. She has also taught at the Roeper School, been an ESL instructor at the Utica Adult Education Centre in Michigan, a volunteer instructor at the Indo American Centre (where she received an award for her contribution two years in a row) and Nettelhorst School in Chicago. ​Currently, she teaches creative writing workshops in Ann Arbor and Metro-Detroit. She teaches a workshop for the Psychology department and the Barger Leadership Institute at the University of Michigan. She is a manuscript coach, freelance editor, and a mentor to writers in the Ann Arbor community.​

Thanks Zilka for taking time out to talk with The Wise Owl about your recently released book Sweet Malida

RS: Sweet Malida feels deeply personal yet universally resonant. Could you share the moment or experience that first planted the seed for this book?

ZJ: Thank you for inviting me to share my thoughts and experiences with you and your readers, Rachna! I have written several poems in the past about food and food related subjects, but these were specifically written about Bene Israel sweets that I remember being made in my home by my mother and grandmother. I had submitted these poems to a prestigious food/food history magazine called Whetstone and the editor of the South Asian edition was interested and asked me to write a brief introduction to the poems to include in a new imprint of the magazine called Rasa. Giving these poems a context and re-reading books on the history of my ancestors inspired me to develop these themes-- Bene Israel history, family history, and food memories in a very organic way. I had lost both my parents and my home in a span of two years, so in a way this book became a tribute to them and my ancestors. I was delighted that Rasa was going to publish my poems in their very first issue. Some of the nonfiction pieces in the book were written a long time ago and I had been working on them from time to time, and they fit perfectly into this collection.

RS: Food often serves as a metaphor for memory, culture, and connection in your work. Could you discuss the role of food in shaping your identity and how it features so prominently in your storytelling & poetry?

ZJ: Food is an integral part of my life—I love food, love eating, and love reading about food history/anthropology—any kind of food related knowledge, and watch a lot of food programs on TV or Netflix. So I think it’s natural that food enters my writing quite a lot. It was during my childhood and perhaps my teens (I’ve lost track of the timeline) when my mother and grandmother made these dishes and sweets, and I have never eaten them since, except very recently when a group of Jewish women in the Detroit area invited me to read and the wonderful host with the help of her Tamilian neighbour, bought ingredients from an Indian grocery store and all kinds of fresh fruit, (including chikoo and mango which appear on my book cover painting by Raina Imig (whose father was poet Nissim Ezekiel’s brother, Joseph Ezekiel)  I demonstrated how to make malida! I made it at home for Yom Kippur this year and was very pleased with my efforts. What I have experienced, and this seems to be a common experience among most Jews who are Sephardi, Mizrahi, Ethiopian and Ugandan Jews, and the Indian Jewish communities (of which there are now five, all of different origin) in the US, that the Ashkenazi Jewish community which is the majority in the US, have little or no knowledge about the global Jewish communities. Most people are shocked to hear about my community. Sometimes they are quite incredulous and sometimes very upset. It was wonderful then, that through these food memories in my book some readers became interested in the history of the Jewish communities in India. I was thrilled to be interviewed by a Canadian podcaster Rivkah Campbell on her show “Rivkush”, Canadian National Radio, where we discussed how people in the West think Jews must only look like Barbra Streisand or Topol, and there is discrimination against “Black” and “Brown” Jews.  I was also contacted by a group called Jews of Color and they invited me to read my work and give talks. I realized as I presented my work how important it is to share knowledge of my micro-minority community which is dwindling, even though there are small populations of Bene Israel in Israel, India, Australia, England, USA and Canada. I hoped that my work would be a contribution to preserving the history of my ancestors and my grandparents and parents, and my own story of migration.

RS: Your poems, like "Mumbai Goddesses," reflect a melding of worlds—childhood memories, cultural rituals, and new influences. How do you capture the tension and harmony between these different facets in your writing?

ZJ: Part of the challenge of creating a poem it is essential to create texture, tension, and some element of surprise. In this poem I was writing about how story and mythology and storytelling itself becomes vital to the education of and for the development of a child’s mind and imagination, as well as growing knowledge and consciousness of the world. These women (my mother and grandmother) who made magic happen in the summer months just because I put up my paper Santa Claus become transformed into goddesses of mythology. I was trying to re-create that experience of myself as a child (which is in itself not possible without poetic licence and the imagination) wondering about Christmas and presents that were given to children. I was able to weave together myth, personal story and religious complexities as well as a kind of awakening in this poem. When I grew older, I remember Christmas parties with friends—and I received gifts from friends and even my parents. It is really a secular holiday in India. Right now I am in Kolkata and parts of the city are lit up and full of people of every religions enjoyed the festive season.

RS: Your work delves into the history and legends of the Bene Israel Jews in India. Was there a particular historical event or legend that you found especially compelling during your research, and how did it influence your writing?

ZJ: I have always been drawn to the origin story of the Bene Israel, the blend of mythology and history, and I wondered about their lives in the villages of the Konkan, the special connection the Bene Israel have with Prophet Elijah. But writing about the shipwreck of their ships that very likely came from Judea to the Konkan coast of India,)  in 175 BCE (India as well and Judea were not named then), and the survivors who adapted to life in these villages, became oil pressers and were called “shanwar tellis” or Saturday oil pressers because they did not work on shabbath, (Friday evening to Saturday evening), was fascinating. I re-imagine the experience of the survivors washed onto the sands after the storm in which their ships were destroyed and most men and women on board had drowned. My poem “The Angels of Konkan” specifically tell this story, and it is in the village of Navgaon that a memorial pillar has been erected to commemorate the arrival of the Bene Israel and those who perished. Other poems make reference to the storm and in general there are maritime references throughout the book, especially in the poem “Leaf Boat” where in the fragments that make up the long poem, I refer to the storm, shipwreck, and survivors, my father and mother’s travels by ship since my father was a marine engineer, my grandfather’s travels to Egypt and Palestine during World War I as a doctor in the British army, and my own migration to the US. Journeys then becomes a motif as well.

RS: As someone born in Mumbai and part of the Bene Israel community, how has your perspective on heritage evolved since moving to the United States, and how does that shift influence your poetry?

ZJ: My family had some traditions, mostly cultural, but we were not religious. We did celebrate some of the High Holidays, but in our own way, and mostly it was around food. I was more interested in the history, food and rituals, as well as the stories of my grandparents, and I read the books on Judaism and the history of the Jews in India—mostly books written by Benjamin J. Israel (who happened to be my half-grand Uncle on my father’s side). Mostly we enjoyed our festivals with Jewish friends who invited us to join them for prayers and celebrations. I love to light candles for shabbath and say the prayer as my parents did, and I continue that traditions because it is beautiful, simple, and meaningful to me. In the US, I am also invited to celebrations at my Ashkenazi Jewish friends’ homes and I enjoy that very much. As far as how the move to the US has changed my perspective, I think I have mostly answered that question in the section where you have asked about food and culture, so I’ll be brief here. This book is about some specific themes, the main one being the history of the Bene Israel, and I realized as I read my work and gave talks to audiences in the US (and now in India as well) that some readers are really interested in these subjects. I immersed myself in this history in a way that I had not done before, and delved into my past experiences so I could write about whatever I remembered before it was lost. I became aware of the importance of preserving the knowledge of the culture of our often overlooked or dismissed communities.

RS: Some poems, like “The Angels of Konkan” and “What Ravens Do,” experiment with form and spacing. Could you share your artistic choices behind these stylistic decisions?

ZJ: It’s so much fun to experiment with subject matter, spacing, form/s. In “The Angels of Konkan” I’ve used alternating couplets with indentations to suggest the movement of waves, or a back and forth rocking motion like the ocean as well as the growing consciousness of the survivors as they begin to become aware of their surroundings, the food, the people, and the fact that these strangers were responsible for not only saving their lives but giving them the freedom to worship as they wished. Jews have been persecuted the world over and have been victims of antisemitism in the west, but in India they been safe. (There have been incidents of violence in the recent past, but those were related to mostly extremist actions, and one was an attack on Chabad House, which is a sect from the West, and which has no link to Indian Jews though they teach about Judaism and offer classes etc). To suggest how perhaps these survivors came to realize what had happened and that they were nursed back to health by the villagers, I used a series of questions and comments in parenthesis that I hoped would function like little asides in a dramatic monologue. When I read it aloud, sometimes I feel it also has the effect of a call and response poem, and another writer has mentioned that to me after I read the poem at an event. That effect is created by the series of questions that are interspersed throughout the n the poem, as well as the narrative that fills the spaces between those questions.

I was fascinated by the stories of the Biblical figure of Elijah in the Bible, his dramatic  and fiery personality, well as the legends that connect him with Bene Israel. In “What Raven’s Do” I bring in the story of the Flood from Exodus, Noah’s ark and the story of the raven and the dove, and weave in the references to Elijah and the ravens as well. Ravens and crows appear in my poems frequently, as do animals and birds in general—they are fascinating to me as well, for their intelligence and interesting personality. Furthermore, the idea of impurity and demonization is implied, as is the historical persecution of the Jews, and the question of what is “pure” and whose perspective is it. I used the staggered and broken lines and narrative to give a jagged texture and what I hoped was a  kind of uncertainty and unpredictability.

RS: How did you decide to structure Sweet Malida—alternating between poetry and prose—and what guided your choices in organizing the collection?

ZJ: A lot of thought and hard work goes into the making, the arranging of a book. I had some previously written nonfiction pieces that fit perfectly into the subject matter, and with the arc and the aesthetics of this book. It allowed me to create a somewhat hybrid form (which had become a fairly common genre itself nowadays) using a short essay, nonfiction poetic narratives which overlap with prose poetry, and a variety of forms of poetry as well, all arranged in a unique structure, especially suited to the leaps in time and place. The long poem “Leaf Boat” which was part of another manuscript I had mostly finished before I started work on Sweet Malida, but worked beautifully with what I wanted to do in this book. Its fragmented narrative, spanning historical, geographical and personal spaces served as an effective segue from the first sections to the last sections of the book. At least that was my aesthetic intention, but my hope is that each reader will enjoy each poem separately as well immerse themselves in the overall narrative.

RS: Your work has been recognized for its intricate layering of imagery and simplicity. Could you talk about how your style has evolved over the years, from your earlier chapbooks to this latest collection?

ZJ: Thank you for that comment. Over the years, I’ve explored varied subject matter, and I try and change things with each book. They begin as small projects and then I see where they go, what themes seem to working together, etc. Then I have also experimented with form and language. As a poet it’s hard not to think in images and all the senses are needed to make the story come alive . Metaphors seem to emerge quite naturally as I compose. Of course my craft got sharper and stronger, so I became a fiercer editor of my own work. Over time, I tried my hand at traditional forms like the sonnet, villanelle, dramatic monologue, pantoum  (a form taken from Malaysian poetry and which plays on the repetition of lines), abecedarian and the ghazal—which is a new form that Agha Shahid Ali invented, and I really loved playing with form—rhyme, rhythm, and meter. Most of my books contain some of the forms I’ve mentioned above, with the exception perhaps of What Dread which focuses on persona poems, but then those are a kind of form as well. My most recent collection includes a pantoum, and a sonnet which is quite ambitious because it condenses the highlights of 2000 years of Bene Israel history into 14 lines, including the turn at the end. My readers will decide if I really pulled it off!

RS: Reflecting on the journey of writing Sweet Malida, was there a moment of discovery—about your heritage, your family, or yourself—that particularly stands out?

ZJ: The poems were written in a very organic way, some were written a while ago, some were quite new, and the book came together in a very organic way as well, so I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the order, the role each poem would play in the overall narrative, creating that pattern or arc that we look for in a book. I think it was when I actually put it all together for the first time-- the opening essay, the poems and nonfiction pieces, and began arranging them, rearranging them, that it hit me. I felt the gravity of the subject matter, the seriousness of what I was doing—paying tribute to my ancestors and my parents, bringing to the fore ancient history as well as mythology, and sharing this information with the world.

RS: What role do you think poetry and creative writing play in preserving cultural heritage, especially for communities like the Bene Israel, whose stories might otherwise remain untold?

ZJ: I think any form of writing, any visual and aural records, any genre that delves into the history, rituals, culture, food and foodways, of a micro-minorities, especially ones that are dwindling, is essential to the preservation of not just the culture, but the way of life of ordinary yet extraordinary families who called India home and many who still do. Writing about ancestors, the lives of people like my grandparents and parents, and tracing their paths is vital for the generations to come, to know where they come from and who they are, and because these communities are part of the fabric of India since 175 BCE and they have contributed significantly to the history and culture of India.

Thank you Zilka for taking time out to talk to The Wise Owl about your book. We wish you the best in all your creative endeavours.