Marketing being often exaggerations, I rarely pay attention to the endorsement blurbs on covers; but, in this case, the quote is right and right on target. We — society as a whole, and especially readers of color — have long needed stories like these in Bilal’s collection, stories which reflect a way of thinking and life beyond the literal pale (read: whiteness) that has so long been taken as the norm in literature.
Literary canons still rarely feature writers and stories of diverse backgrounds, genders, and identities, and the term still conjures an Eurocentric image. Bilal’s collection is a balm, not a bandaid; a healing wound, not a scar; a mark of beauty, not a blemish. It highlights this paucity in modern literature and offers a concrete solution towards developing a greater oeuvre of our human experience.
The opening tale in Temple Folk orients the landscape of the collection as a whole: it centers on an interstate bus ride. The bus is filled with faithful black and white Muslim-American women, chartered to bring them from their small hometown, across a rural and white-dominated expanse, to Chicago where a Muslim conference will be held. This is a community unto itself, though it exists — consciously — as a part of white, Christianized America. Readers are given a privileged view into this world within a world.
The other tales highlight the daily, lived experiences of the citizens of the Nation of Islam. As a whole, these stories bring to the fore the intersection where NOI citizens, black denizens within their world, and the non-NOI, non-Muslim white world meet. Bilal presents the reader with scenarios where the whiteness of a child confronts the blackness of a woman, and what this might mean within the context of a religion that is often positioned adjacent and not central to the black/white politics of our era. Bilal pokes at the humor and seriousness of dating in the muslim world, knowing the gendered expectations of muslim women and men the reader is likely to filter her tales through. Bilal encourages a shift away from that pockmarked lens, offering a clearer view if the reader is willing to remove the glass from their eyes.
Indeed, most of my favorite stories were premised on a collision of modern, American ideas of empowerment and feminine identity, with Orientalist stereotypes of Islam and Muslims. But, the unique feature Bilal brings is a side-sweep which softens the collision and creates instead, a merger. Modern Muslim identity is not at odds with Islamic traditions and cultures (though it can be), nor do modern muslims (men, women, children, and all alike) need to make choices between their Blackness, modernity, and Islamic identities. In performing this clever maneuver, Bilal introduces the reader to a much more nuanced world of Black Islam, likely one that they have not seen before. Certainly, for this reader, this was the case.
Dr JoAnn LoSavio 