A closer look into Adib Khorram’s new novel The Break-up Lists

Adib Khorram. // Photo by Afonseh Khorram

There’s a lot of Adib Khorram in the main character of his new teen novel The Break-up Lists.

The story centers around Jackson, a high school theater techie. When he has problems with people in his life, he deals with it by writing a list of all the reasons why he’d break up with them. He makes these lists for his sister, too, when she frequently breaks up with her boyfriends.

Khorram actually did make these lists for his own sister “as a way of making her laugh” but notes that she doesn’t have nearly as many exes as Jackson’s sister Jasmine.

It’s not just the lists. Lots of pieces of the characters or settings in the book have roots in his experience. It’s the first of his books to be set in Kansas City, and there are little allusions to that throughout the story.

There are the obvious references to the Plaza lights or the Royals, but there are subtler ones that certainly stand out. One in particular is when Jackson’s theater teacher tells an anecdote about a friend climbing the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art’s shuttlecocks naked.

“I may have actually borrowed that from my own high school theater teacher who told the story of one of her classmates doing that. To this day, I still don’t know if it’s real, but it’s certainly something that stuck with me 20 years later,” he says.

He drew upon his own days as a theater techie at Winnetonka High School to build Jackson’s immediate world. 

“In some ways, this is the book that’s closest to who I was as a teenager, kind of cynical, kind of a little bit of an asshole as a teenager. I like to think that I was a loveable asshole, but I could be a little mean. Being a theater kid was such a huge part of my teenage life and who I grew up to be,” he says.

Courtesy of Adib Khorram

Most teen stories he sees about theater kids focus on the actors, so he relished the chance to write about the techies. Before becoming an author, Khorram took his theater tech skills and got a bachelor’s degree in lighting design, working on events like Celebration at the Station or the Plaza lighting ceremony.

Jackson’s adventures in the book are mix of those from Khorram’s own life, stories from friends, and ones that he just created for the story.

The place where Jackson’s life most diverges from Khorram’s is with his hearing impairment. Though Jackson wears hearing aids, they don’t allow him to hear everything, and the book shares a lot of the frustration he experiences as a result.

To get into Jackson’s head on this issue, Khorram started by consulting with friends who are hard of hearing.

“They were very kind to answer questions I had and correct me when I was being obtuse,” Khorram says.

To supplement that, he read five or six novels by deaf authors and credits Sara Nović’s “True Biz” as a strong influence.

Although Jackson’s difficulties with understanding people are a consistent presence in the book, Khorram realized that he might have been taking it easy on his lead character.

During the writing process, when a deaf person was doing a sensitivity read of the book, that person’s comment was that it was clear Khorram had done a lot of research but that “I can’t tell if the people in the community didn’t tell him how bad it can be sometimes or if he’s afraid to write about how frustrating it can be,” Khorram says.

In crafting his characters, Khorram looks to those around him and tries to represent what he sees. 

With Jackson, “it came about because there are people in my life who are deaf and Iranian, and I wanted them to see people like them in a story,” he says. “At a certain point, as an author, you have to keep pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone. Writing about someone who was more different to me than any of my previous characters made me pay more attention to around me, ask deeper questions of the people I was talking to.”

He feels strongly about the importance behind creating diversity in all forms of literature.

“It’s important to me to write about characters like Jackson, because it’s important that young people like Jackson know they belong in the public sphere, whether that’s in school or life in general,” Khorram says. “This (recent) wave of book-banning lit a fire under me to keep writing about people like the teenager I was.”

One challenge of writing the book, he says, was to shift from being so completely driven by the main character and allow room in the story for the relationship between Jackson and his love interest, Liam.

As usual for a romantic comedy, the course of love is not a totally smooth one for Jackson and Liam.

“I really hope young people come away with the sense that they’re worthy of love despite their mistakes. That openness and honesty and a certain amount of humility and willingness to say they’re sorry are what make a relationship healthy,” Khorram says.

Khorram is impressed by the teens he’s met through school visits for his books.

“I don’t remember being nearly as smart or connected to the world or as empathetic when I was a teenager,” he says.

He likes being able to explore life and relationships through the lens of young adults.

“The teenage experience is one that’s so universal in many ways. It’s full of firsts. It’s full of expectations meeting reality. It’s full of being treated like a child and being asked to act like an adult. I find that’s just an exciting time of life to write about,” he says.

The Break-up Lists is available in stores April 2.