AMERICAN AUTHORS CHALLENGE -- FEBRUARY 2025 -- AMERICAN MUSLIM AUTHORS

The list of American Muslim writers does need careful assessment because a number of Palestinian, Lebanese and Iranian authors Edward Said and Rabih Alameddine for example are not Muslim.

These are some choices to consider who, as far as I can glean come from a Muslim background, at least:

Malcolm X
Fareed Zakaria
Susan Abulhawa
Laleh Khadivi
Dina Nayeri
Daniel Nayeri
Reza Aslan
Adib Khorram
Naomi Shahib Nye
Ayad Akhtar
Jasmin Darznik
Laila Lalami
Aisha Abdel Gawad
Sabaa Tahir
Khaled Hosseini
Rumaan Alam
Nahid Rachlin
Daniyal Mueenuddin
G Willow Wilson
Mohja Kahf
Saladin Ahmed
Sahar Abdulaziz

What am I planning to read :

I'm planning to read a Pulitzer Prize winner, The Return by Hisham Matar.

>3 PaulCranswick: I thought In Other Rooms, Other Wonders was outstanding when I read it a decade or so ago. I hope it's an equally stellar read for you.

Thanks for taking the helm this month, Paul. I have a couple of Reza Aslan's books on the shelf, and I may check out In Other Rooms, Other Wonders as well. It is great to have that list of names to refer to in the future, too.

I am hoping to get to a couple of books in February: Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa and Thorn by Intisar Khanani.

I plan to read Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America by Laila Lalami in February. I might try to squeeze in a novel, too.

>2 PaulCranswick: Ayaan Hirsi Ali? Salman Rushdie?

and, my long time Sufi Friend, Mary Risala Laird.
(Poet, Master Book Teacher, and owner of Quelquefois Press in San Francisco)

>8 m.belljackson: Mine were suggestions only, Marianne, and not intended to be a completist list.

Salman Rushdie took American citizenship in 2016 so qualifies on those grounds - many would question whether he was Muslim though, although he certainly was brought up in that milieu as far as I know.

Ms. Hirsi Ali qualifies for sure.

>4 cbl_tn: Hisham Matar was born in the States so I suppose he qualifies too, whatever Mr. Trump may think.

I have some Hirsi and Matar so will choose from those, and may look for some poetry.

>9 PaulCranswick: The Pulitzer committee thought he was qualified for a Pulitzer so I'm counting him!

>9 PaulCranswick: Well good!

Both Salman Rushdie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, though at times wavering around Atheist and Christian choices,
have, as Ms. Ali wrote in Nomad,

" ...wondered whether one can ever truly escape such all-encompassing mental programming."

I will re-read Infidel and Nomad and re-start Heretic.

Can anyone recommend which of Salman Rushdie's books is the most compelling?

Sufi Teacher Mary Risala Laird also wrote a great fun cookbook, Lebanese Mountain Cookery
(under her former last name of Hamady)

>12 m.belljackson: I haven't read much Rushdie, but I really enjoyed Haroun and the Sea of Stories and Luka and the fire of Life.

>11 cbl_tn: Quite right too, Carrie, he was born in New York City in 1970 so that is as American as apple pie. He is not an American citizen, I think, but clearly qualifies for this challenge in every reasonable respect.

>12 m.belljackson: His two novels Midnight's Children and Shame are certainly amongst the greatest novels written in my lifetime.

>14 PaulCranswick: >13 amanda4242: Thank you - I will check Thrift for all of these.

Paul - from AARP magazine interview with Michelle Yeoh:

"Also, I come from Malaysia, where we are multiracial,
just different cultures in a beautiful country."

>15 m.belljackson: Michelle Yeoh is right and wrong, Marianne. I love Malaysia as everyone knows but it is institutionally racist. Its main parties are formed on the basis of race and it is constitutionally impossible for a non-Malay is be Prime Minister. That said, and despite the politics and politicians, the races generally get along fine and I particularly love my working place which is a heady mix of Koreans, Malays, Chinese, Indians and the token Brit all getting along uproariously.

>16 PaulCranswick: Maybe Michelle Yeoh meant "many races" instead of "multiracial"...?

>17 m.belljackson: No, Marianne, I think she meant what she said. She is viewing the country from a position of privilege (as am I to a degree) and she doesn't spend much time here and made her successes overseas.

I have just finished In Other Rooms, Other Wonders for the AAC this month written by Pakistani-American Daniyal Mueenuddin.

Please read this book it is simply wonderful.

>18 PaulCranswick: Okay - when you wrote that government parties were based on race,
I was guessing there wasn't a lot of multiracial intermingling.

>20 m.belljackson: It is a strange place, Marianne. In urban areas the races mix fine in the villages the politicians wheedle the villagers to vote to keep out the Chinese (Malaysian Chinese). It is the politics and the politicians that manipulate race - the vast majority of Malaysians are not per se racist.

>19 PaulCranswick: Just added to my basket Paul.

I've just finished The Kite Runner Graphic Novel by Khaled Hosseini, ill. Fabio Celoni and Mirka Andolfo for this month's challenge.

"A story of fierce cruelty and fierce yet redeeming love."

The original book, The Kite Runner, was a massive hit, making all kinds of bestseller lists. From Wikipedia: "it tells the story of Amir, a young Afghan boy from Wazir Akbar Khan, Kabul. The story is set against a backdrop of tumultuous events, beginning with the collapse of Afghanistan's monarchy and the Afghan conflict that sparked shortly thereafter, with a particular focus on the Soviet–Afghan War and the mass exodus of Afghan refugees, as well as the rise of the Taliban regime."

This graphic novel was a difficult book to read, but I'm glad I did. I haven't yet read the original book, and that might be in my future.

Karen O

>14 PaulCranswick: >13 amanda4242: thrift had both Joseph Anton and Midnight's Children - I will store them for future challenges -
cannot bear to read Knife: Meditations.

>24 m.belljackson: I haven't read any of Rushdie's non-fiction, Marianne, but Midnight's Children is a wonderful book.

I had been chugging through Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, by Iranian-American Reza Aslan. Aslan was born into an Iranian family, which immigrated to America when the Mullahs rose to power. The family members weren't observant Muslims. I'm about 2/3 through and expected to complete the book this weekend, but I was foggy-brained yesterday, inattentive, and set it side. Maybe tomorrow...

>23 klobrien2: I thought I might be the last person on this site who had not yet read The Kite Runner! I have just finished it, and it was every bit as difficult as you might expect, if you've been exposed to the story in graphic form. It's powerful, often brutal, stuff -- especially disheartening to read at this point in time, knowing what has happened in Afghanistan in the two decades since the book was written. There's an excellent time line of events here should anyone want to delve into the history. As a novel, I had some quibbles with it, primarily that I simply could not see the narrator as a sympathetic protagonist, no matter how honestly he portrayed his own failings and desire to overcome them. But as a representation of what life is like in a country where fanatics rule, it is essential reading.

>27 laytonwoman3rd: Don't worry, Linda! I think I was next to last. I just read it not too long ago.

>27 laytonwoman3rd:, >28 cbl_tn: No, *I'm* the last! ;-) I started it this month and am quite taken with it. Buuuut I don't think I can keep going with it right now. I just can't spend time in this subject matter in this moment. It is going firmly on my "read this when you can" pile. I have noted a number of other Muslim American authors I have on my shelves and intend to get to at least one of them this year. If it weren't for the shortness of the month coupled with an in-person book club that falls earlier in March than it sometimes would, I'd probably jump in right now. Sabaa Tahir and Saladin Ahmed are two whose books I have and am very intrigued to try.

The March thread for Stewart O'Nan is up.

https://www.librarything.com/topic/368785

I read Heretic by Ayana Hirsi Ali. I agree with her but it did not give me hope for change.

>32 Kristelh: All of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's books deliver any needed change with Muslim people caring.

>19 PaulCranswick: That one has been in the BlackHole for a good long while. I really need to get hold of a copy!

I am currently finishing up Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa, but I am not going to get to Thorn this month as I had hoped.

>30 katiekrug: Great review Katie. I haven't seen that in the bookstores here but I will definitely keep an eye out for it.

>31 katiekrug: I am looking forward to renewing my relationship with Stewart O'Nan and know that the baton is being passed to safe and sure hands.

I finished In Other Rooms, Other Wonders today. As so often with short fiction, I appreciate that it is well done, sometimes brilliant, but I have a hard time engaging with the format. These stories are linked, and that does help, but it still seems to me that I just get well acquainted with characters and their situations, and then I must move on to another set. By all means, if you have a better relationship with the short form than I do, put this collection on your list.

I finished The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between by Hisham Matar last week. It's a poignant reflection on the author's relationship with his father, a Libyan dissident during the Qaddafi era who was kidnapped, imprisoned, and then vanished. The author came to terms with his father's death during the period in which he wrote this memoir and he set aside the kernel of hope that he had previously held.