What the film does well is highlight both the experiences that girls all over the world have in common and the terrible, particular difficulties and threats that a girl like Nasro faces. How much of girlhood is a shared experience?

Being a girl is always difficult. It’s a strange rite of passage, and being a woman in this world is difficult. But there’s a massive difference between what it feels like to be a woman in [America or England] and where Nasaro is. And a girl’s [experience] will be different, too, based on her race, her socioeconomic background, how much education she has. Does she have people in her life to support her? What part of the world is she in? What resources does she have access to? That will decide what her life will be like.

In the New Yorker, Alexis Okeowo wrote that your work “evokes longing for home,” which I think is true. When you feel that ache for home, what do you do?

I feel that every day of my life. For me, home is Somalia. I’m living in L.A. now, but London was home for a really long time, and now I’m living in America under Trump. So it’s double. I miss London, but I miss home home, which is Africa. It’s really important for me to listen to old Somali music and to speak in my mother tongue. It gives me a lot of pride. I like looking at old photographs of Somalia. I love to eat Somali food. I love to put on Somali incense. It’s all the time reminding myself a little bit of where I’m from, and the richness of it. Because it’s very easy to not do that and then you forget—how to cook, how to speak the same language, the comedy, the music.

I don’t want to grow older in different parts of the world and forget all the things that bring me a lot of joy, so I spend a lot of time on YouTube looking for Somali videos. And whenever I want to connect with London, I hope for rain. It’s rainy today in L.A., and it always makes me feel comforted. I just have to stay connected so I don’t forget where I’m from.

It can feel like time travel a bit, to surround yourself with those memories of home.

Yes, definitely. That’s a big help for writing as well. If I want to write about my teenage years, I’ll go back and listen to all the music I listened to and look at photographs of myself back in the day, and I’ll even ask my mom to send me old clothes from London. It’s like a time machine.

International Women’s Day can feel a little two-dimensional, I think. Because so much of it takes “place” online. I’m sure people will see the film and read articles about it. But then what? Do you have advice for people who want to do something with the pain or emotion that they feel?

I’m interested in the ways in which human beings are able to practice empathy, so my recommendation would be to read books written by different women from different backgrounds you don’t know anything about, watch films made by women all over the world, not just by women who look like you.

And try to practice empathy. Think about how massive the world is and how small your life is in comparison to that. Think about what it means to be a woman. Think about how you want to bring awareness to the suffering of other people. Think about women from different parts of the world, trans women, poor women, black women, women in prisons, women in shelters, women all over the world, women and girls in refugee camps. The world is so massive, but we forget that all the time.

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