On their yellow brick road
New York student Hebah Uddin writes YA book with Muslim hero.
THE 12-year-old protagonist in Hofstra University student Hebah Uddin’s new book is desperately trying to rescue her younger brother, who is trapped in an evil board game come to life. The fact that the main character Farah is a Bangladeshi-American Muslim who wears a hijab is secondary.
However, it’s the primary reason Hebah’s middle-grade adventure story, The Gauntlet, was selected to be the second book published by a new imprint from Simon & Schuster Books for Young Children called Salaam Reads. The imprint – Salaam means peace in Arabic – seeks to publish stories that feature main characters who are Muslim.
“The first time I saw the cover, I actually cried,” says Hebah, 24, who was born in Brooklyn and raised in North Babylon and who wrote her novel under the pen name of Karuna Riazi, combining her nickname with a name of her paternal grandfather to create her nom de plume. “I was overwhelmed because when I was growing up it wasn’t common to see Muslim girls on the cover at all. There are going to be kids who look at the cover and feel that they see themselves.”
And, in addition to Muslim kids seeing themselves as they read, children who aren’t Muslim will also learn about kids who are different – but not so different – from themselves, says Zareen Jaffery, the executive editor of the new imprint and herself a Muslim born and raised in Stamford, Connecticut.
“There’s so much misinformation and misrepresentation about Muslim lives,” Jaffery says.
“It’s impossible to ignore the fact that Muslims are very demonised due to the actions of a deviant minority.”
Nine books a year
The new imprint – which published its first book, Amina’s Voice, earlier in March and Hebah’s book on March 28 – is expected to publish nine books a year, including children’s picture books, books for middle grades and books for young adults, Jaffery says. The books won’t be about Islamic religion or Islamic history, she says, but rather stories that are emotionally compelling and authentic.
Early in The Guantlet ,for instance, an exchange between Farah and her friends Alex, who is African-American, and Essie, who is white, exemplifies the novel’s meshing of items familiar to peo- ple from Muslim-majority countries and references to mainstream American pop culture. The three friends – who live in Queens and Manhattan – have entered into the board game called The Gauntlet of Blood and Sand to search for Farah’s seven-year-old brother, Ahmad, who ran into the game without realising its danger. They land in a Middle Eastern marketplace.
“A souk,” Farah said.
“It’s beautiful,” Essie whispered. “We’re definitely not in Kansas anymore,” Alex pointed out, “but I think this is the closest to a yellow brick road we’re being offered.”
As the characters face challenges, readers also incidentally learn about some different foods and clothing, such as chenna murki, a treat made of sweet cheese, and a salwar kameez, a traditional outfit worn on special occasions that includes a long dress over matching pants with a matching scarf.
Whirlwind experience
Hebah is a senior-year English major at Hofstra. She says it’s her first “brick and mortar school” after being home-schooled through high school along with her younger sister, Sumayyah, who is 22, and younger brother, Sahnoon, who is 15. Their mother, Javette, an educational consultant, is AfricanAmerican and American Indian, and her father, Mirza, a perfumer, is Bangladeshi, which is why the character of Farah is from Bangladesh, Hebah says.
Hebah has visited the country, but not since 2003, she says.
“This has always been home,” she says of Long Island. “Most of the cultural background is from my experiences growing up here with my cousins. I have a really huge family.”
While Hebah was in high school, she became a book blogger, reviewing middle-grade and Young Adult (YA) books at Watercolor Moods. In 2014, she joined a grassroots, online movement called #WeNeedDiverseBooks, which is geared to increasing books featuring characters and authors from under-represented races, religions, sexual orientations and with disabilities.
Through that she “met” Jaffery, introduced by a friend via e-mail. Later, when Jaffery was seeking writers, she came in contact with Hebah again and learned she was working on a novel. Hebah finished it in March 2016, working on it at points in the Hofstra University library. She chose to use a pen name because she wanted to protect her privacy, she says.
“It’s been very whirlwind,” Hebah says, of getting a book contract. She was stunned. “I had to sit down; I was literally shaking. I had been totally working myself up for rejection. It still doesn’t feel real.” – Newsday/Tribune News Service
Hebah Uddin, who wrote the middle-grade adventure novel JONATHAN HEISLER/Hofstra University