In a recent event hosted by the Heritage Reads Book Club alongside How To Be Books, Noreen Masud shared her insights from her celebrated non-fiction work, “A Flat Place.” Masud’s book, which has received critical acclaim and was shortlisted for the 2023 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction, explores themes of identity, trauma, and the significance of landscapes in personal and collective memory.

How To Be Books set the stage for the conversation, showcasing the importance of this year’s Women’s Prize and the club’s privilege in discussing Masud’s highly acclaimed work. The reading group is among six clubs chosen by the Women’s Prize to read the inaugural shortlisted nonfiction prize nominees.

Read: Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction shortlist showcases groundbreaking voices

Masud, born in Pakistan and a lecturer at the University of Bristol, has been recognised as one of the new generation thinkers by BBC Radio Three and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Her contributions, including the monograph “Stevie Smith and the Aphorism Hard Language”, have won her critical acclaim and numerous awards.

The 20th-century literature scholar expressed her disbelief and joy upon learning the book had been shortlisted for the prize. “So I was teaching when my editor tried to call me with the news… I just let out a kind of shriek,” Masud recounted, describing her reaction to the unexpected news she received while surrounded by her students. She spoke about the diversity and strength of her fellow nominees, including Naomi Klein and Tiya Miles.

Exploring personal and collective traumas

The conversation, steered by Heritage Reads Book Club founder Pupak Mohebali, explored Masud’s inspiration for writing the memoir. She cited a lifelong attempt to make sense of her experiences through writing. The book, as she described, evolved from her academic work on flat landscapes in literature, which unexpectedly became a metaphor for her own complex post-traumatic stress disorder. Masud elaborated on how landscapes shape stories and reflect personal traumas and societal challenges.

Read the book review: A Flat Place by Noreen Masud on trauma and its link to land

The Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award nominee explained her personal experiences with cPTSD and its influence on her writing, saying, “Like, if regular PTSD is like ‘everything’s normal’, and then there’s a big event, and nothing’s the same after that. You can see I’ve drawn a mountain with my finger. And complex PTSD is like there’s no single event that is the ‘big one’. And so when you look at it, it’s just like a flat landscape. Everything’s on the same level. So, that was why I wrote it now.”

She then shared that the need to make sense of her life drove her to write from a young age, though initial attempts were abandoned when her experiences seemed insignificant. She stated, “I’d actually been trying to write about my life… since I was about 14.” Her journey through writing was punctuated by struggles with personal significance and worthiness. It wasn’t until her academic focus on flat landscapes in literature caught the attention of an agent that she realised her unique perspective could resonate on a broader scale.

Challenging the expectations of healing

Talking about the therapeutic qualities of nature, particularly flat landscapes, the academic offered a nuanced perspective on the subject of healing trauma. She acknowledged the common belief that nature can boost mental health, mentioning, “There’s a lot of evidence that being distracted by things, having some engaging things to look at in nature, like trees or rivers or whatever, can make people feel better.” 

Read: Will You Read This, Please? writers on mental health storytelling

One of the topics Masud touched upon was the societal expectation for individuals, particularly women of colour, to heal from their traumas to function within societal norms. She posed a critical reflection, stating, “What if it were okay not to heal? Who wants me to heal? Society wants me to heal so that I can go out and become a good worker again, do lots of labour, be cured, and be a good citizen.”

The Jhalak Prize nominee expressed scepticism about the possibility of healing in a world marred by systemic racism and violence, such as that in Gaza, asserting, “I cannot be well in this world.” Masud was among hundreds of writers to withdraw from the Hay Festival this year due to its sponsor Baillie Gifford.

The writer, who is also Scottish, pondered the interaction between nature and trauma recovery. She continued saying that while she believes systemic changes are necessary for true healing, finding a landscape that mirrors one’s internal state can provide a measure of solace, saying, “So my big answer is, I don’t think we can heal in this world. To an extent, we need to keep saying, ‘This isn’t okay, we’re not okay.’ We can’t be okay in a world that’s so racist. But then there’s a smaller answer that suggests when you feel less alone in the world and you find a landscape that makes you feel less alone, whether it be a flat landscape, trees, a forest, or a river, we do feel a bit better.”

Read: Hay Festival suspends Baillie Gifford sponsor amid pressure

Despite these challenges, Masud found a personal resonance with flat landscapes, explaining, “I find that inside my memories feel like a flat landscape and it feels like a very lonely landscape. So when I go into landscapes that look like my inside, it does do something to me that makes me feel less alone.” 

She articulated a unique perspective on flat landscapes as reflective of complex PTSD, describing them as spaces where “there’s no single event that is the big one… Everything’s the same level.” This analogy deepened during discussions about the implications of colonialism on perceptions of landscapes and histories.

She proposed that the flat, featureless landscapes that resonate with her personally offer a form of visibility and validation to the often-overlooked or misunderstood aspects of her life and the lives of others who face similar struggles.

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Masud also spoke about the complexities of writing about personal trauma and deciding which life events to include in her memoir. The author revealed how the process offered her a profound sense of being understood, a contrast to her previous experiences of expressing her trauma. “All of that pain is in this thin little bundle of pages. And it’s separate from me. It’s here, and I’m here. We’re separate now,” she described, highlighting the cathartic separation between her experiences and their literary recounting.

She also provided insights into the challenges of navigating the literary world as a woman of colour, where her work is celebrated yet simultaneously scrutinised. She reiterated the importance of authenticity in her writing, resisting the categorisations that might confine her story to specific genres or expectations.

Advocating for flat solidarity

In the end, she talked about the lessons she hopes her readers will absorb. She said, “There is something very specific that I hope people will take away. And that is precisely the question we were talking about before – about dehumanisation.” Masud outlined two forms of dehumanisation discussed in her book: personal experiences within her family and a broader societal context underpinned by white supremacy. 

She critiqued the concept of empathy, suggesting it is often insufficient across cultural and socio-political divides. Masud explained, “Empathy says, ‘I feel exactly what you’re feeling; I understand what you’re feeling. I’m there with you.’ And I see it in the difference between the public response to the crisis in Ukraine and the crisis in Gaza.”

Read: International Women’s Day: books by Palestinian women authors

Spotlighting the limitations of empathy, she proposed an alternative: “What I would like to see is a new model of solidarity… to say to people from other cultures, I don’t understand you. Your worldview is totally different from mine. I am so different from you, but I have solidarity with you.” 

This call for “flat solidarity,” as she described, challenges readers to embrace a form of support that does not rely on full emotional or experiential understanding but on a commitment to stand with others despite differences, hoping readers will embrace this approach in viewing global and interpersonal relationships.