‘Life is devastatingly beautiful’: Q&A with Sasha Hom

LR: Congratulations on Sidework, Sasha. It’s a stunning debut—lyrical and layered, humorous and heart-wrenching. Can you tell us a bit about the title?

SH: The first page of the novel begins with a list of the protagonist’s literal sidework duties, written out by the restaurant manager, like refilling salt shakers and other stocking duties servers do. Sidework is often looked upon as a pain, yet it’s the little stuff that keeps the restaurant operating. It maintains the status quo.

One could extrapolate and look at this in a more metaphoric sense. We could ask ourselves about the sidework we do in our socio-political roles to maintain the status quo of our families, communities, and country. We could ask ourselves about the sidework in our daily lives, the returning of emails, doing dishes, etc., and compare that with what we feel our primary role in life is—mother, wife, partner, daughter. How much time do we get to spend in that primary role? And what about our responsibility to our inner selves?