May is all about Asian books! Here are twelve recent South Asian middle grade books for all readers.
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Salma Hussain Recommends Twelve Canadian Writers Creating Stories Around Muslim Characters
Salma Hussain, author of The Secret Diary of Mona Hasan (May 2022), recommends twelve books with Muslim characters written by Canadian authors.
Read More“If dark academia is meant to be about the darkness of academia…what is darker than structural or institutional racism?”
Q/A with Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, author of Ace of Spades (2021) on her debut thriller featuring Black queer teens and crafting a YA fiction with social themes like institutional racism.
Read More“It has been a pleasure to craft…an embrace of warmth and acceptance around a young brown girl”
Q/A with Karuna Riazi —author of The Gauntlet (2017) and A Bit of Earth (2023)— on her upcoming contemporary retelling, crafting middle-grade stories, and writing a biracial character.
Read More“I hope that young queer Muslim readers understand that you’re perfect just the way you feel”
Q/A with Naz Kutub on his upcoming debut novel (The Loophole, 2022), portraying tough themes in the midst of heart and humour, and writing a young queer Muslim protagonist.
Read More“As an adult they seem incongruous, but as children we knew seemingly opposite things can co-exist…as long as we made the space”
Nina Hamza, the author of Ahmed Aziz’s Epic Year, on the power of ‘and’ when crafting a middle-grade coming-of-age story about identity.
Read More“Both [my] characters soon come to realise that, like everything that ascends, they must come down eventually where their problems still remain”
Aneesa Marufu, the author of The Balloon Thief, writes a guest post on how feelings of prejudice and unbelonging drove this debut fantasy.
Read More“As a writer, I believe it’s extremely important to try and create, as much as possible, diverse stories about a community”
In January 2019, a mix of humour, heart, and high-stakes drama provided a timely and honest portrait of what it’s like to grow up feeling unwelcome in your own culture. The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali showed a young Muslim queer fighting for love, fighting for family, and fighting for herself. Through the prism…
Read More“I wanted a brown kid at the center, the protagonist of her own life, abolishing the misconstructions society has of Desis and Muslims”
In July 2022, a debut novel set in rural Pakistan and centred around a young Muslim girl will whisk away readers into a magical palace in the jinn world. In this mysterious world, a rich heritage and the chilling reality of child labour will be shown. And Nura is a protagonist everyone would cheer for…
Read More“I wanted to explore Aafiyah’s denial, acceptance, and guilt…but also show that she is much more than a bad habit”
Q/A with Reem Faruqi, author of Golden Girl & Unsettled, on her middle-grade novels-in-verse, compassionate stories about young Muslim girls, and poetic finesse with a focus on family.
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