More Muslim Stories Were Always Needed, Even Before The Travel Ban
I should be happy literary agents want to hear from Muslim writers. But we’re more than tokens of protest in the era of Trump.
I n 1991, my uncle’s second wife gave me writing advice I did not take.
She had come to say goodbye when I was about to graduate high school and leave my hometown of Jidda, Saudi Arabia, for an East Coast liberal arts college in the United States. I was going on my own, without a father, brother, or husband to be my male guardian — something unheard of for a Saudi woman at the time. But my aunt did not counsel me against living abroad without a guardian, which was somewhat surprising given how conservative she was, even by Saudi standards, and how much she enjoyed lecturing others about religion.
When I told her I wanted to study English literature so I could become a writer, she said: “I write, too. Poetry.” Then she dispensed some religious advice, after all: “You should write in Arabic. It’s the language of the Qur’an. It’s preferred by God.”
English is my mother tongue, literally — my mom is European American — and as a child, I read books for pleasure exclusively in English, and wrote all my stories and poems in English as well.
