At the start of Nadine Jolie Courtney’s YA novel All-American Muslim Girl (FSG, Nov. 12), no one at Allie Abraham’s new high school in Georgia knows she’s Muslim—and she intends to keep it that way. The daughter of a Jordanian Circassian father and a white American mother, Allie has been taught to hide her heritage and embrace her white-passing privilege to insulate against Islamophobia. However, as her 16th birthday approaches, she’s moved to embrace her faith. What that means for her familial relationships, burgeoning friendships, and romance with dreamy Wells Henderson, the son of a famous white conservative political commentator, is the subject of Courtney’s quintessential coming-of-age novel, based on the author’s own experience of growing up Circassian American.
When did you start writing the story that became All-American Muslim Girl?
About 10 years ago, when I was in my 20s and had moved to LA, I had the idea of a character named Allie Abraham. She was very much like me, a white-passing girl of Islamic heritage, and she had this boyfriend who didn’t know she was Muslim…but then I didn’t really explore it. I was still very much under the radar with being Muslim, even understanding what that meant to me when I was alone. So I shelved it.
What made you revisit it?
After Trump got elected, after the Muslim ban, I remember sitting on my couch watching CNN’s live footage of the protestors at JFK. All of these people showed up with poster boards that said “We Are All Muslim” and stood up for their neighbors as well as strangers. I literally started crying because it was so contrary to what my father had told me when I was young, which was, “People hate Muslims. People look down on us. People will never support us. You have to hide, hide, hide, hide, hide.” To see people in New York standing up for Muslims was a seismic shift. It was something I never believed could be possible. That’s when I reopened the document.
How closely does Allie’s experience of exploring her heritage and falling in love with Islam resemble your own?
It’s very similar, but rather than falling in love with Islam on my own in my teens, it happened for me in my early 30s.
Allie is 15 going on 16, going through the process of determining who she is, what’s important to her, and who she wants to be. She wants to know what it means to be a “good Muslim.” She also wants to have a boyfriend (which is forbidden). And she’s hiding her religious practice from her father.
The self-discovery process is never linear. It’s been two steps forward, seven steps back for me. It’s like, I bought a Quran and I’m praying…but I’m also going out and meeting my friends for a drink. I’m doing Arabic lessons twice a week…but I have a boyfriend. I was doing that dance in my own life.
When you’re [Allie’s] age, your self-examination is not going to hold up under a microscope or in a court of law. Someone could pick it apart, but it doesn’t mean it’s any less real or meaningful to you. I think that messiness, the process where you’re trying to figure out who you are and what you believe, makes your convictions last. When you do have people poking holes in your beliefs—when you are tempted or you are tested—you have to confront how you react, how you behave in the real world. It’s no longer in a bubble.
What’s your hope for readers of this book?
My hope is that another Muslim girl who feels confused or alone or just kind of weird will read this book, and it will resonate and she’ll feel less alone. It’s so important to be seen. We’re living through this amazing time now where there’s so much pop culture that is representative. [My generation] just didn’t have that.
I feel emotional about this book. This book was so scary to write, because the book is me. It is all of my teen vulnerability, what it felt like when I was young and thought there was literally no one in the world who could possibly understand me, that I was the only girl that was caught between cultures. This is the book of my heart.
Megan Labrise is the editor at large and hosts the Fully Booked podcast.
