Zibby speaks with playwright and author Sasha Salzmann about GLORIOUS PEOPLE, a remarkable, astute, and deeply empathic novel exploring the disintegration of the Soviet Union, told through mothers and daughters. Sasha shares how dinner table conversations with their mother’s friends inspired the book, what they discovered about motherhood, birth stories, and hidden family histories, and why they believe mothers are the unsung protagonists of political and cultural history. They also touch on their experience living as a Jewish writer in Germany, the role of friendship across communities, and how they choose between writing plays, novels, and essays.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Sasha. Thank you so much for coming on Totally Booked with Zibby to talk about Glorious People. Congratulations. 

Sasha: Uh, thank you.

So good to be here. Hi. 

Zibby: Hi. As we were just discussing, I'm in New York today and you are in Berlin. So we are having a very international conversation about this very international type of book. Could you tell listeners what glorious people is about? 

Sasha: Right. So, um, glorious People is a book about mothers and daughters who try to look at each other and truly see the individual in front of them, if that makes sense.

You know, not a projection of yourself. Of your expectations or hopes, but truly that complex human being that might be your mom or your kid actually, it takes place in Ukraine. We started in the seventies and eighties in East Ukraine. Follow really just a life of, you know, a young woman who has, has love and then tries to study and goes through all the aftermath of herto than, uh, getting pregnant and deciding to bring her kids to Germany, uh, to sleep from, from the horrors of the perah.

And for me, it's mostly not necessarily a portray of, of Ukraine, but really of the women who made the same effort to save their kids from everything that came after the fall of the war and the breaking down of the Soviet Union. And, um, to start very specific from, you know, my point of view, it started with, uh, you know, dinner parties with my mom's.

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Sasha: Um, so my mom loves to throw a party. She's really good at it. And she would have this very diverse crew at her table always. And after 2014 when the war in Ukraine started, people who identified as Ukrainians and people who identified as Russians started to have obviously very different conversations, right?

I was listening, you know, big eyes, big ears, what's happening because, so I was born in Russia as my mom, uh, and I knew that our family's from Ukraine, but nobody really spoke about our family in that terms, you know, as very typical African Jews. We were from all, all over the place. So we would speak about Odessa or Ovitz, but not the Ukrainian culture.

And I thought, it's a shame. Why don't I know anything about it? So at one point I figured I want, I wanna know everything. And since I'm a novelist and I'm a historian, I need to talk to people. So I ask the friends of my mom to take some time to, to tell me their story. I really want to get to know them as people who carry a history that I know so little about.

And it's always so much more fun to speak to people and read history books. Right. So maybe there was also the benefit of them knowing me as Nadia's kids. So they were very personal. We were not discussing politics, although it's, it was already war. And what did people tell me of course about their kids and about, you know, their first love and how it's not in their Ukrainian city and the food they are missing, what the food they're trying still to cook in Germany for their kids.

And I found it interesting to, to get into a country and a culture that I could know more about. Through their stories, they understood that I really wanna portray this women and I wanna portray mothers and I wanna portray how mothers were also kids back in the day. And they were daughters and they had the same questions and disbelief and were terrified.

But then they became mothers at one point and they had to do the same thing their mother did for them, for their own children. And so this is a book portraying, I say this type of women in this school generational fighting for, for dignity and And your children. 

Zibby: Wow. What a beautiful description. Oh my gosh.

And you really do take us on a ride through different decades and relationships and struggles, medical struggles, fictitious, medical struggles, psychological struggles. I mean, there's a lot. That goes in here and your writing is just so beautiful. 

Sasha: Thank you. 

Zibby: Do you mind if I read, uh, like the introductory paragraph?

Sasha: Oh, I'd love that. 

Zibby: Is that okay? 

Sasha: That okay. Beautiful. Thank you. 

Zibby: And I don't usually read from the beginning and I have like 20 pages dogeared, but let me just, let me read a little bit just to show people how they will be immediately drawn in. Okay, this is skipping stones, of course. I wanted to know what had happened.

What exactly took place before Ed was beaten up in the yard. She was lying on the grass. Her hair all pale and dirty. My mother was kneeling beside her. Auntie Lena was yelling at them both. And all three were waving their arms around, like they were casting out evil spirits. When they saw me, they started to cry one after the other, like a Russia doll.

The tears of one turning into the tears of the next, and so on. First, my mom let rip. Then the others joined in as if they were singing a howling, wailing round. I couldn't make header tail of it. Okay, so it wasn't hard to guess why my mom came over all misty-eyed when she saw me standing there after the long radio silence.

But Lena and Ededie, they seemed to have some score to settle mother and daughter, one of them lying on the ground like the other's shadow or the other way round. One of them growing up out of the other's feet, like a shrub with broken branches. That's so beautiful. Oh my gosh. 

Sasha: Thank you. 

Zibby: And then later you said this, a whole passage about your uncle and everything it said.

I wasn't surprised she was in town. Uncle Lev had told me she'd be at the party at the Jewish Community Center. In fact, he'd paid me an official visit to inform me and to demand a family reconciliation, a big reunion. He came in a clean shirt. His nostrils flaring. He had the best intentions, but I had to disappoint him when he saw that he wasn't getting anywhere.

He tried to guilt trip me. You can't break with your own mother. You have to love her no matter what. But I don't think I'm obliged either to love or not to love her. She's my mother and that's all there is to it. Things are what they are. 

Sasha: Right. 

Zibby: Amazing. So beautiful. Talk about that, how we feel about our mothers, the compulsion to have a good relationship and what happens when those.

Relationships fray. 

Sasha: Right. So I, to be honest, I thought I said everything about my mom before I wrote this novel. I wrote about 18 plays by now, and half of them are about my mom. My first novel, a lot of text. So I thought, okay, you know what? Now it's not gonna be about my mom to ending up with for best piece at the table, you know?

So it's kind of like circling around this topic and I learned so much. By understanding that it's easier to speak to her friends because there are certain questions I would not have dared to really put out. For example, you know, like in all these conversations they were going for hours and tea and food and all that.

They would share with me most intimate experiences they, um, giving birth in Soviet Union, it must have been such a nightmare with speaking about abuse or speaking about, uh, sexual violence. Everything you can think of. That was not one or two times, but everybody was telling me at one point I understood that this is a question I made with how was giving birth to a child, and it took me a while to understand, wait a second, I was born, my mom gave birth to me in the eighties, but I would never have dared to just come with a question right to my mom.

So it took me this adventure really. Understand, I know nothing, and I think this is a very typical mistake of kids who course grow up with their parents, so they think I know everything about you, but they just see a reflection and maybe it's part of the deal. I agree that, you know, like to a certain extent, you, you stay a kid and a mom has to stay a mom and you, you will not be that kind of friend or you will never be able to see each other just as individuals, but you have to make this effort.

So by, by watching friends of my mom observing how they were speaking about their hopes for their children or the sacrifices they made, I got a glimpse of what I never have expected about my mom and, you know, know, uh, then I, I went on the book tour with this one right across Europe and I encourage everybody to ask their mom about giving birth to them.

And literally, this is not a question you would think of, but I think it does something to you, to your relationship with your mom, make you understand that you assume she went through a lot. 

Zibby: Wow. That could be a whole anthology like birth story, right? You're right. Yes. Um, I recently interviewed someone who said, who's a doula, who said that actually your own birth and how you came into the world does affect a lot about your personality and things that come next for you.

And so you need to know your own birth story. So. Anyway. 

Sasha: Yeah. And I thought I know everything about my birth story, you know, like the, the, the myth around it or the story around it, because everybody hears something and it's always aestheticized and somehow nice and little funny and not too bloody. But then like, just, you know, like, just accidentally, I found out things about me.

Uh, when I called up my mom, uh, the main character in my novel, uh, is the doctor. It was like similar, you, you go through a certain, you know, like college degrees, years, and it was very different Soviet Union from what I know. So I need you like a tech check. So I called my mom and I was like, wait a second we are starting five years to six years. I'm not getting it. I'm trying to count. It's like, oh, with you it was six years because I had to take a year off and you were sick. And I was like, excuse me, what? Like I was, I was sick, which mean I was sick. And it just didn't bother to tell me that I had a very serious disease and I nearly died.

And she knew that if she leaves me at a hospital back in the day, I mean, I probably will not survive, but it took a year off and was tear in her hands for a whole year. He could not let me down otherwise I would. And that just came out of her, you know, like just, oh, by the way, and then she would ask me something about, you know, like.

How my writing is done, and I, I just sta at the phone understanding that for her, those are normal stories, how she took care of me and how she took care that I was survive in a very harsh situation where you knew that, especially in those days in Soviet Union and former director, uh, there's no one. And coming back to all the friends of first who interviewed, I figured out they all got the stories.

And to be honest with you, I think all mothers got the stories in the end. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Sasha: And we don't ask and they will not tell on one hand because it seems obvious to them and why they part motherhood. I don't have children myself, so I just can't assume, but I'm just so amazed by this creature called mom and what they're able to do, especially in harsh political situations, you know what I mean?

When everything is fine, which is barely the case, but let's say there is Utopia. Um, everyone is equal and everything's great, but, um, in certain realities to get it. Um, it, it's just they're heroes to me, really. And this is what I also told them when I was speaking to them. Um, all, all, you know, all these wonderful women that I think that the hero of their own story, and I really wish they would see themselves as protagonists of historical events.

It's not only the mother, it's like somehow. Fairly un politicized term. I think a mother can be a very political issue, obviously, and it was really fun to also, to observe them, you know, listening to me encouraging to think of them as actual political figures and, and our society. And it was another very funny anecdote, but because they knew, of course, that I interview all of them because they're friends, they tried to exchange and they were also fighting like, why do you tell Sucha this bullshit?

Like it was totally different, blah. Oh, that's nice. Get your pen out because now it's getting interesting. And then stood by by totally looking at themselves. Each other differently that they were living very different lives. Also, you know, if you go through a regime like Soviet Union, you suppose that everybody is going through the same kind of horror or let's say regime, but, but they were not, they were rich people and poor people and people in love, and very unhappy people.

And especially when it came to, you know, like job opportunities. It was always told that everybody's getting the same and your opportunities are the same. But that's not true. I, um, me, myself, and my mom and all this, all this kind of, uh, family, um, they said they were doctors, which meant they didn't have any money.

You know, a doctor would get the same amount as like anybody, like normal worker, but there were a lot of like really rich people who were part of the party who would, who did different jobs my mom didn't know about. So she taught me that we come from a country where everybody would get the same. Not enough, enough to survive.

And now, you know, like talking to friends, they figure out, oh no, there were actually quite rich, um, people doing very different things in this kind. So yeah, I learned a lot. It was really a journey. 

Zibby: As you're talking, I'm thinking to myself, wow, how interesting would it be if I talked to all my mom's friends and got stories?

You know, while our parents are here, do you know, like my mother is alive, you know, like, so I should just do, I, she would probably be really interested in what they had to say. And who is collecting these stories of that generation? Nobody, like, no one is going around 

Sasha: See, because they don't think of themselves as protagonists.

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Sasha: And by giving them this opportunity to tell their story. They will see themselves differently and you will see your mom differently and it's fun. You know what I mean? It's not only work, it's somehow also really eyeopening what's happened there. 

Zibby: Interesting. Maybe I could do it on Zoom. 

Sasha: Sure.

Zibby: Probably not. Probably not. 

Sasha: No. 

Zibby: What is it like in Germany for you now, if you don't mind talking about it? You don't have to, but just wondering, you know, here I am in New York and to be Jewish now of course is, is quite fraught with as the world is, you know, devolving and I'm just wondering how you feel being there in particular.

Sasha: Thank you for asking because that's, um, I mean that's a complicated one. Look, uh, we came in the nineties and that's a very specific aliya, right? People from former Soviet are the majority of the Jewish population in Germany. So the whole Jewish crowd changed a lot. Um, we have, and Ashkenazi and all kind of Jews really being the face of, of the Jewish communities.

For me, it's. It's kind a tricky game because I'm an artist. I'm a writer, I'm in. I always try not to be a professional youth for the German gay. Uh, Germans love their juice. They need their juice. I think that's kind of known that the German identity is deeply rooted in what they think of as guilt, generational guilt, I guess, and the nonstop trying to make up to you to do.

Somehow it is like it is this other rising and being the good other. Which never really worked because you never accepted as part of the society. But in the last years, and this is not new, but of course October 17th, a whole nother level. I don't wanna speak for everybody, I speak for myself. I feel that, you know, the known Jews, the, the people from the culture seems as myself.

They kind of used or at least asked to be the good other against bad other. So if we play along, uh, against other minorities, we are more accepted within the white German center. And this is not a place for me. You know, I I, I never tried to be part of the dominant culture. Um, never wanted to prove anything to anyone besides maybe that I can write.

And it is kind of, it is tricky to still say yourself and know who you are. And I never understood myself as anything else and I do it. At the same time, not giving the dominant culture, the CRA and the need for the statue who is deeply destroyed, especially after October 7th, we're so, it, it's a, it's a tricky situation where I feel, uh, grateful to have so many friends from so many different communities.

You know, like I'm surrounded by such amazing people from Palestinian quarters, uh, Arabic. Russian, Ukrainian and all kind of communities, and we have been doing this, doing this meaning not only our friendship, but also cultural work for decades now. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Sasha: So when I'm new to the game, we're kind of ready for, for the dominant gaze to come and say, I pick you, you will be my, my favorite boy today.

Zibby: Mm.. 

Sasha: Thank you. Because we're also kind of kind safe enough because we got each other and this, this other thing that really awkward. Think of, you know, like in this horrible times we're in that friendship is truly like, you know, Annette, that will hold you. That was my experience of October 7th when I, I was told that I'm gonna lose my mind.

That all kind of friends called immediately and they were Muslim background, Christian background, Jewish, but all of it, everybody calls. This is where I know or knew that, uh, we haven't a chance. 

Zibby: Thank you. I like that. Hope that's lovely. What are you working on now? 

Sasha: Well, I am staying with the same topic.

I'm writing a novel about friendship. I wanna portray exactly that, the friendships among people with very different backgrounds. But we are in this together. And I started in the nineties in Europe, where, you know, um, after the fall of the wall, especially in Germany. The rise of right wing instrument was always fine.

Um, a lot of sad stories that, not that in detail now, but the research that happened in the nineties, it really shaped our idea of what Germany is. So today, where we are grown up, some have kids themselves trying to figure out what remain from them, what is new, and who, who do we wanna be in this, in this situation we are in now.

Zibby: That sounds great. So are you doing more playwriting, more novels? Obviously you're doing the one novel. Like how do you decide what format you're writing in? How do you approach your work? 

Sasha: Well, the content decides really, I, I wish I could tell you that, you know, like, because I am so experienced, et cetera, et cetera.

The truth is, every time, um, an empty page tells me what to do. And I, so I was really a playwright. I, I was really happy there. It really worked out for me. I could live from it. Suddenly my first novel beside myself came out of me and I was like, okay, this is, uh, that's gonna be, that's gonna be scary because theater is my identity.

And now, you know, like I'm going through this transition and who are gonna be as a novelist. And then I loved it so much and it worked out so well. Then I thought, okay, you know what other people can do theater. They're great playwrights out there. They don't need me anymore. But then my, uh, grandfather passed away, um, after October 7th, by the way.

Several strokes and it was like, you know, a theory reaction to what happened. And he was me, like this father figure who taught me how to think, how to function. He taught me to be very political, you know, always look for, you know, like argument, this Jewish kind of argument. And once he passed away, a play came out of me, like my way of warning his staff and uh, like really an elegy could not have been a novel.

So like, you know, this form just came out of me, and then I saw it on stages and other people were basically singing the song from my grandfather was somehow also comforting. I, I love the idea that he, he lives forever and Jesus, you know, because normally I write like family history, like I guess with most writers, but I never wrote that kind of like autographic piece and it had to be.

The play. And now it's, you know, like spoken by others and it's beautiful because reading a book is really such an intimate experience. Now you have like this text between, you know, like this and you can decide if you take the book out of yourself or not. And if theater is such a public experience with very social, you always with others.

So it's very different. And I also write essays and all these other, you know, pieces and I write poetry, but I, I kind of don't show it to anyone because it's. So, uh, I'm, I'm accelerating in, um, very different form and when it's there I figure out do I wanna, do, I wanna share it with the world or not. 

Zibby: I love that.

Amazing. Sasha, thank you so much. Thank you for this beautiful book, Glorious People and for all that you do as this like consummate intellectual. So thank you. It was lovely to chat with you. 

Sasha: Thank you so much. 

Zibby: Okay, thank you. Best of luck. Take care. Bye-bye. 

Sasha: Bye. 

Zibby: Bye.