Rhonda Roumani: Activism Does Not Require Permission

Rhonda Roumani is a Syrian American journalist who lived in Syria as a reporter for U.S. newspapers. She has written about Islam, the Arab world, and Muslim-American issues for more than two decades. Currently, she is a contributing fellow at the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at USC. Rhonda lives in Connecticut with her family. Find her on Twitter and Facebook.

Rhonda Roumani

Photo Credit: Nadia Roumani

In this post, Rhonda discusses what she hopes readers take away from her new middle-grade novel, Tagging Freedom, her advice for other writers, and more!

Name: Rhonda Roumani
Literary agent: Brent Taylor
Book title: Tagging Freedom
Publisher: Union Square & Co
Release date: November 7, 2023
Genre/category: Middle-grade
Elevator pitch: Kareem Haddad is a 13-year-old Syrian graffiti artist at the start of the Syrian Revolution who, after a close call with the secret police, is sent to live with his Syrian American cousin in a small town in Massachusetts. Together, they discover the power of activism and the courage it takes to stand up for freedom of speech everywhere.

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What prompted you to write this book?

I wrote Tagging Freedom for so many reasons. I have kids and for years I found myself trying to explain the war to them (they were quite young then) and why we couldn’t go to Syria, even though we visited Egypt often since my husband’s family is from there. Then over the years, I found that any book that focused on Syria mostly addressed the war and the refugee crisis. So, I found that I wanted my kids to understand that Syria wasn’t always a warzone. And I wanted my kids and their friends to understand why it all started. So, I wrote Tagging Freedom because I wanted kids to understand that the conflict in Syria very clearly started as a revolution – as a moment of hope—when Syrians believed they could create a new, better country, free of oppression and corruption.

The other thing I wanted kids to know is that kids, the same age as Samira and Kareem, helped ignite the revolution, with a simple act of graffiti. Acts of protest can be so powerful, even when they might feel so futile. Right after mass protests led to the fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak—which the Arab world followed closely—a group of kids from a southern Syrian town graffitied “It’s your turn doctor” on outdoor walls. Those kids were arrested, and their arrest ignited mass protests across the country.

So, in the end, it was these kids who inspired this book.

And, finally, there’s a story that happened at my kid’s school that also inspired me to write the activist parts of Tagging Freedom. A few years ago, a group of kids from my children’s school wanted to hold a walk out for a Global Climate strike led by Greta Thunberg. These kids approached the principal and the principal basically said no, citing safety concerns. Then the parents took it to the PTA meeting and the principal doubled down on her position. An argument ensued and the parents left the meeting very upset. And it ended there. The students didn’t walk out.

But I imagined a different outcome, one in which the kids and parents refused to be limited by authority.

One of the phrases that my characters graffiti—using graffiti chalk in their Massachusetts suburban town is FREEDOM REQUIRES NO PERMISSION.

By that account, activism does not require permission. I believe the students should have walked out that day. And received detention. And then the parents should have told them that their detention is a badge of honor. In real protests, there are stakes. Kareem’s stakes are much higher than Samira’s. But in the end of Tagging Freedom all the kids learn that lesson—in different ways. I won’t ruin the ending for you. But I wanted to tackle this idea directly.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

I started writing this book in 2019, when I was part of Pitch Wars. It actually started as an entirely different book about a magical mosaic box that I wrote with a friend of mine. But when we queried that book, something wasn’t quite working. We received a lot of requests for fulls, but for some reason it didn’t translate into an offer of representation.

I felt really lost at that point. I loved this book and, honestly, I still do. But something wasn’t working in it. So, I just let it sit and started thinking. I’m not quite sure when it hit me, but sometimes it’s in the quiet time, or the down time when it comes to you. Somewhere in between the time I applied to Pitch Wars and the time I was chosen I had decided that the beautiful magical mosaic chest had to go. That is when my journalism brain probably kicked in. A true story about some kids in Syria and their act of graffiti is what truly inspired a good part of this book. Their small act of resistance ignited an entire revolution. And then it just hit. That’s it. It is a work of fiction, but it is definitely based on fact and a few characters are loosely based on real people.

I started Pitch Wars and I wrote a new book in two months. My mentor Rebecca Petruck really helped make sure I had a strong outline before I started. I don’t think I could have written the book that quickly without that guidance. But I didn’t query until eight months later for many reasons—COVID, moving, more editing. So, I started Pitch Wars in November 2019 and we’re publishing in November 2023. So, four years!

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

There were so many. The publishing process is fascinating. It’s slow and then fast and then slow and slow and slow. And then, finally, it’s all about your book and you feel like you’re on a speed train! We’ll see what happens next. But coming from a journalism background, where everything is fast and you move on to the next story quickly, it was really hard to get used to. The fact that you get an offer on a book but might not get the contract for months or even a year out was just baffling to me. So, I think the entire process has been a learning moment for me.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I hope they’ll take away a few things. There is one middle-grade graphic novel written by a Syrian about Syria. Other than that, the middle-grade books that were written were not by Syrians or Syrian Americans. So, I do think that people from their own country will tell their stories often with more nuance, or a certain perspective they may not have heard before. The war in Syria was devastating—on so many levels. Many of our families and friends are no longer in Syria. And we don’t feel like we can go back. So, that is devastating in and of itself.

But the fact that people just refer to it as a civil war, as though it was meant to happen, somehow makes it all worse. It did not start as a civil war. Kareem was in that protest, asking for change. You might not know this, but his friends have different names. George is Christian. Hassan is Shi’a. At the beginning, everybody came out, across sectarian groups. So that’s one thing.

And the most important take away, I think, is that there are often consequences when we stand up for something. Sometimes it’s huge—like in Syria and the war. Sometimes the consequences are smaller, like what happens in Tagging Freedom. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t keep trying. Revolutions rarely succeed the first time around. Or the second. It’s a complicated matter. But having a clear idea of what you believe in and what it means to speak out for those things, that is important.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Don’t do it alone. It makes all the difference in the world. I would say find a group of writers you like and then a group of writers you trust to give you serious feedback. Those might be different people. Finding your community is important—they will help you manage the ups and downs and frustrations of the industry. They’ll help you deal with the flood of rejections you’ll get, because you will probably get that at every stage of the process. It’s hard being a writer. It’s already such a lonely endeavor. But the kidlit community has some of the most amazing people I’ve ever met—kind, giving, smart. If you write for children, tap into that.

And then find the writers who will tell it to you like it is; that’s another thing. The people who will tell you when something isn’t working. And try to open yourself up to that type of feedback. That isn’t always easy to do. But these are the people who will make you a better writer. Lani Frank. Rebecca Petruck. Hena Khan. Catherine Egan. Salam Zahr. Aya Khalil. Thank you for being those people for me. It takes a village to create a book. That’s what you need. To find your village. 

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