With male loneliness and incel culture at the forefront of the current conversation, authors Adib Khorram and Nathanael Lessore address the complexities of masculinity and growing up in their new YA novels One Word, Six Letters and King of Nothing, respectively. We asked the two authors to discuss how they came to write about their concerns for young boys, the toxic rhetoric growing both in the U.S. and the U.K., and how empathy can be a powerful tool in helping young people get back on the right track.
Nathanael Lessore: I’m excited to kick this off by asking you to tell me about your upcoming book, One Word, Six Letters.
Adib Khorram: For sure! One Word, Six Letters is the story of Dayton, who shouts a slur in the middle of a school assembly and is forced to grapple with the consequences and fallout of that incident, and Farshid, an Iranian American boy grappling with his sexuality. It was inspired in large part by the time a student shouted a slur at me during a school visit.
Lessore: I’ve got too many questions, if that’s okay! First, is it difficult or therapeutic writing about true events? What was your immediate reaction to the slur, and what was the audience reaction?
Khorram: In the aftermath of getting called the slur, I remember everyone but the student who shouted it apologizing: teachers, other students, the principal. I was told the punishment plan for the student. But I found myself not really caring about all that. I’m an adult, and I got to go home at the end of the day; the students were the ones who had to live in the aftermath. I wondered if the queer kids at that school felt safe; and I wondered who was taking care of their mental well-being. I also wondered about the kid who shouted the slur: why did he do it? Was he parroting what he heard at home? Was it a dare? When you’re 14, your ability to assess risk and consequence isn’t quite done developing. And I wondered if what he’d done was going to follow him for the rest of his time at school.
I think writing One Word, Six Letters helped me clarify and explore those questions. In general, I’m less interested in punishment as a concept and more interested in restorative justice. I’m more willing to extend grace, even to those who hurt me, rather than react in anger. And I’m always asking how we can heal our communities that have been torn apart by hatred or ignorance.
Lessore: How much responsibility do you feel representing the Iranian/American youth, but also anyone struggling with who they are in an increasingly intolerant world?
Khorram: My thinking around “representation” has changed a lot since my first novel came out back in 2018. These days, I’m less concerned with “representing” anything. As an author, all I can do is depict the world as I see it. The responsibility I feel is to humanize every character on the page—even those who might be perceived as villains. Okay now I’ve definitely talked too much, so you have to tell me about your book!
Lessore: I can see why our books are paired for this! King Of Nothing is about Anton, who’s always in detention for fighting. His mum sends him to Scouts, where he meets Matthew, a nerdy softboy who saves his life, and Anton decides to give the nerdy kid a personality makeover as a way of saying thank you.
One of the key issues is toxic masculinity, which has taken hold in the U.K. and Europe, and [from what] I’ve seen online, in the U.S. It’s not getting better. I had young family members telling me that “most girls think this… most girls say that,” and girls won’t date them if they’re not tall, or ripped, or make six figures—all easily debunked. I told them that teenage boys have no idea what teenage girls are thinking or saying or doing. On my school visits, boys and girls would self-segregate—boys on one side, girls on the other—and it was demoralising to see such discomfort. Boys wouldn’t respect female teachers. It was a bit of a mess. And that’s where I started noticing the homophobia creeping back. “Gay” is being used as an insult again, which it hasn’t been since I was a teen. They’re linked, misogyny and transphobia and homophobia. Intolerance is contagious.
I guess this is linked to the responsibility question. Do you see it getting better any time soon?
Khorram: Education is key. I do think there are a lot of influences out there impacting teen boys today, especially on the digital front. The “manosphere” is a constant worry, and algorithms keep driving people toward it.
I wanted to ask you more about what the boys in your family were telling you. Where do you think they’re getting exposed to those ideas? And what forces are out there counteracting that narrative?
Lessore: That manosphere that you describe, it’s targeted at kids and young men. Incel culture is a big thing here [in the U.K]: men blaming modern women for all their problems. My cousins got targeted through the algorithm and sucked into believing the lies about women. They were nine and 13 years old when they were watching these videos. Young men here are generally lost.
But that’s where our jobs, and the jobs of librarians and booksellers and parents, are so important. The emotional intelligence that comes with reading is an antidote to sexism, racism, and fear of the letters. I know intolerance loves the uneducated, so let’s educate!
Have you seen literature and books enact positive change on your school visits?
Khorram: We’ve definitely got our work cut out for us! I think the greatest changes I’ve seen have been the conversations that books can spark. As adults, it can be so easy to forget that teens have their own lives, whole worlds we don’t have access to, though if we’re lucky they’ll give us glimpses. My experience has been that one of the best ways to get those glimpses is to share books—not just to hand them over and say, “Hey, you should read this!” but to say “I’m reading this and it’s really interesting. Want to read it too, and then we can talk about it?” Because when we talk about books with teens, those teens will go and talk to their friends. We might never know the change those conversations make, but they’re occurring nonetheless.
Lessore: One of the comments I get a lot with King of Nothing is from parents and teachers who say their kids, who are “good kids,” sometimes make ignorant comments, parroting what they’ve heard online. And our books have helped to counter a lot of those narratives.
More and more schools here are doing a “whole school read,” where the entire school has to read the same book, teachers included, to boost reading culture. They’ve also banned mobile phones in our schools, and that’s made a huge difference for attention spans and respect in classrooms. Are there similar actions taking place in American schools? And are there any suggestions you might have for improving reading culture among teens?
Khorram: That’s a tough one! Unfortunately, book banning is still on the rise in the U.S.. As of this writing, in fact, there’s a federal bill, HR 7661, which seeks to ban all books that include trans characters or discussions of transgender identity from schools and libraries. And that culture of book banning has ripple effects in who schools can invite and what books they can use for all school reads. I serve on the board of directors for Authors Against Book Bans, and we’re certainly going to keep fighting for the freedom to read!
I agree, though, that bringing the school together to read a book is one of the best ways to positively shape a community.
Khorram: I also think one of the most useful mindsets for us as adults—whether parents, teachers, librarians, or authors—is to hold empathy for teens. They can be, and indeed, often are, good kids. They’ve simply made poor choices. There’s a lot of cognitive dissonance that we face when confronted with the fact that our actions may have hurt others, intentionally or not. Helping teens work through that dissonance and find ways to repair the harm they’ve caused is one of the most important uses for the empathy that books help to build.
Lessore: For sure. I tell teens on school visits that empathy, manners, a sense of humour, curiosity... these are all ways of becoming more likeable. And you get these traits from books. None of the world’s current problems couldn’t be solved with more kindness.
King of Nothing by Nathanael Lessore. Little, Brown, Mar. 10 $19.99 hardcover ISBN 978-0-316-58857-7; $12.99 paper ISBN 978-0-316-58856-0.
One Word, Six Letters by Adib Khorram. Holt, Mar. 17 $19.99 ISBN 978-1-250-40555-5
