Adiba Jaigirdar

Second Book Depression

My sophomore novel, Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating, comes out in just a few weeks. And if there’s one thing I can truthfully say, it’s that I...am not excited about its release.

Don’t get me wrong: this does not mean I don’t love this book. It doesn’t mean that I didn’t work extremely hard on it. It doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate everybody else who has worked hard on this book, or everybody who is excited about it.

All it means is that no matter how hard I try, I can barely conjure up a minuscule level of excitement about the fact that this book is going to be out in the world soon. And I had no idea why.

Except a few weeks ago, Alexa Donne, YouTuber and author of several books, released a video titled, “When Publishing Makes You Cry.” And since I love learning all the hard truths about publishing, obviously I watched it immediately. And when Alexa got to the part about second book depression, this was me:

Alt text: meme of Leonardo Dicaprio pointing at TV

Alt text: meme of Leonardo Dicaprio pointing at TV

Truthfully, I really didn’t expect to feel like this. When it comes to second books, I’d always heard authors talk about the “second-book slump.” And all my author friends were experiencing it. Where the writing of a second book felt like a mountain they had to climb, in a way the first book never did.

My second book never felt like that. I wrote it in a month, and it was the most enjoyable writing experience I ever had. So, I thought, I’m doing good! I’m out of the woods!

Apparently not.

When my debut, The Henna Wars, was about to release, I remember feeling a lot of things. Probably to the point where I was very overwhelmed. I used to have publishing-related nightmares all the time. I felt overwhelmed and overworked. I was on deadline for two books, we were at the start of a global pandemic, and I was fasting, like, 17 hours a day because it was Ramadan. Still, I felt inexplicably happy. Literally nobody and nothing could have taken away that joy. I am convinced somebody could have given me the worst news in the world (and isn’t a global pandemic pretty much the worst news in the world?) and it would have just blown past me like it was nothing. Because my book was coming out, and I was finally going to be an author with a capital A.

The experience for Hani and Ishu? Literally could not be any more different. I feel so strangely disconnected from everything surrounding this book. Like I wrote a book back in 2019, and now another book is coming out that I have had absolutely no part in. It kind of sucks feeling so apathetic about something that you actually love with your entire heart and soul.

I couldn’t tell you exactly why I feel like this, but I can hazard a guess.

Part of it is that I already know what “releasing a book” feels like. I know the process. I know the highs and I know the lows. There’s no excitement for the unknown that is spurring me forward like with my debut. And as I write this, I know that none of this knowledge that my mind and body thinks it has is actually true. I know, rationally, that every book is different, and I don’t know what the outcome of my second book is going to be. I don’t know if it will be as successful as The Henna Wars, I don’t know if people will resonate with it in the same way. I don’t know if it will earn out. I don’t know if in a year, I will get tagged in tweets and Instagram posts every day about Hani and Ishu like I do with The Henna Wars. Truthfully, I actually don’t know the highs and lows of this book. I don’t know anything. But this rational knowledge doesn’t help how I feel. At all.

I think a part of it is also this pandemic. I released The Henna Wars in the US in May 2020, and in the UK in January 2021. Six months apart, but still in the worst depths of the pandemic, during total lockdown. And obviously me and my team, and literally everybody else in the world has tried to make the best out of a pretty awful situation. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t kind of suck, and having a third book release during a pandemic doesn’t feel fun.

And the last reason is personal. Like most people, I have lost people since this pandemic started. And for the last 6 months, my only living grandparent has been in treatment. We recently discovered that she is terminally ill. It’s never a good time to have your grandmother who played a big part in raising you, and is a big source of connection to your culture be terminally ill. But it’s especially not a good time during a global pandemic, when she lives on the other side of the world.

So even though I love Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating, and I’m so grateful that I get to publish it, and to everybody who has worked on it and everybody who is excited for it, I am not excited. At all. And I wish I was.

I’m not writing this to be like, “hey, I’m depressed, let’s cry about it,” but because there have been so many unexpected things during this publishing journey. One of them being how awful I felt right after my debut. These are the not-so-pretty things people don’t often talk about, but when they do, it does help you prepare mentally and emotionally for it. So even if you are hit with post-debut depression or second book depression, maybe you can handle it a little better.

To end on a less depressing note:

Since I have been feeling like this, and not wanting to feel like this, I’ve asked myself what can I do to find joy at a time when it’s very difficult to find joy? I don’t have all the answers, but I do have my answers.

Hani and Ishu’s Guide to (real) Dating, my fake advice column actually makes me feel very excited and happy. I didn’t know if anybody would be interested in participating, but I did know it would be fun to reach out to a few of my author friends and ask them to participate. Reading their hilarious letters and channeling Hani and Ishu’s voice once more to write their responses has been one of my favourite things over the last few months. And it also makes me really happy to hear that readers have enjoyed guessing who the letters are from.

My virtual launch, which is still in the planning process, but will be coming soon. For Bengalis, community is really important. For example, during this second lockdown ramadan, almost every single week one of the Bengali families in Dublin has dropped off iftar for us to break our fast. Throwing iftar parties or giving money for family and friends to buy iftar is very common in our culture (and probably across many, if not all Muslim cultures). So, when I was finding it difficult to find joy in my book release, I thought about reaching out to my South Asian community. I called out for South Asian content creators and so many of them reached out. And working with these content creators to plan my launch events have definitely been a source of joy for me.

And lastly, seeing anybody get excited about Hani and Ishu makes me happy, even if the joy is a little fleeting. But every Instagram post, tweet, blog post...all of it. Knowing that even though I’m not excited for whatever reason, there are people out there who are...that’s a really weird feeling, but in a good way.

So, if you’re an author with a book coming out, and you don’t feel excited about it, that’s okay. You’re certainly not alone. Both me and Alexa Donne have been there, confirmed. But I hope that you still manage to find some joy, because you worked hard on a book and you deserve to be happy about it.

Pitch Wars 2020 Wishlist!

Who We Are

Adiba: Though I have never been a mentee, I have been a mentor! I was an R7 mentor for Author Mentor Match, and a mentor for the inaugural round of Avengers Of Colour, a mentorship programme for authors of colour. Along with helping my mentees with their manuscripts, I have also aided them through querying and submission processes. I’m the author of THE HENNA WARS, which has been well-received by readers and has two starred reviews, and the upcoming HANI AND ISHU’S GUIDE TO FAKE DATING.

Image of Gabriela Martins and Adiba Jaigirdar on a pink background, with a rainbow image to one side

Image of Gabriela Martins and Adiba Jaigirdar on a pink background, with a rainbow image to one side

As a queer Bangladeshi Muslim author I also have a unique perspective on writing and publishing, and as a mentor to multiple marginalised writers I have experience in the hurdles that authors come up against in publishing. 

When I’m not writing, I love reading extensively and playing video games. I’m represented by Uwe Stender at Triada US

Gabhi: Hi! I'm a kidlit author and linguist. My debut novel LIKE A LOVE SONG will be published by Underlined/Delacorte in summer 2021. I haven't had the experience of formally mentoring yet, but! I have been a teacher for the past ten years! Like Adiba, I am also a queer creator. I'm from the south of Brazil, and Latinidade is a topic very dear to me. I also have two cats, which is not super relevant for my CV, but I feel is extremely important to mention. Their names are Fitz and Simmons, they snuggle each other and me a lot, and we also spoon. They're the LOVES OF MY LIFE, along with languages and traveling, two things I love almost as much as my babies. (I am one of those women who call their pets children. I can't even pretend to be sorry.) I am represented by Chelsea Eberly at Greenhouse Literary

LET'S GO TEAM RAINBOW!!!!

Why You Should Submit To Us

BECAUSE WE ARE THE BEST MENTORS. No jk. (Unless…?) 

We've both been through publishing- and life-rejections enough times that we know what it's like. We want to hold your hand through the nerve-wrecking process of revising and querying, and hopefully going on submission as well. We've been friends for years, and during our friendship, we've cheered each other on hard. We want to extend that cheerleading to you, as well as offer our experiences in revision, querying trenches, and submission, to help inform your choices as well as possible.

#TEAMRAINBOW GO!!!! 🌈🌈🌈

What We Want

Romcoms/Contemporary Romance/Historical Romance

  • At the top of our list is romcoms!!!! We’re both romcom authors and we love reading them. Some of our favourite romcom authors are Jenny Han, Sandhya Menon, Maurene Goo, Leah Johnson.

  • Some tropes we love are FAKE DATING!!!!!!! rivals-to-lovers, childhood enemies-to-lovers, friends-to-lovers, forced proximity/stuck together, second-chance romance, road trip romance.

    Contemporary

  • We LOVE family-focused stories, especially sibling-stories. We want complex family dynamics! 

  • Ambitious MCs, TORTURED I HATE MYSELF heroes, dysfunctional families, found family trope, niché interest, focus and spotlight on friendships, technology appearing (texts and stuff), 

  • Some of our favourite contemporary books are WE ARE OKAY by Nina LaCour, LOVE FROM A TO Z by S.K. Ali, REALITY BOY by A.S. King, LATE TO THE PARTY by Kelly Quindlen, THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER by Stephen Chbosky, FELIX EVER AFTER by Kacen Callender, WINNING by Lara Deloza.

  • We're also interested in adventures and retellings with a twist.

    Historical/Alternate History

  • We’re especially interested in underrepresented histories.

  • We want to see historicals from countries whose histories we don’t usually study/read about/hear about. 

  • We really want to read about the history of marginalised characters

  • Some of our favourite historical books are A VERY LARGE EXPANSE OF SEA by Tahereh Mafi, LOVE IS THE HIGHER LAW by David Levithan, THE RADIUM GIRLS by Kate Moore, LIKE A LOVE STORY by Abdi Nazemien, THE WEIGHT OF OUR SKY by Hana Alkaf, MEXICAN GOTHIC by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

    Thriller/Suspense/Mystery

  • MARGINALISED VOICES CENTERED IN THRILLER/SUSPENSE/MYSTERIES!! Give us all the chilly creepy stories with marginalised voices front-and-center.

  • We're especially interested in psychological thrillers! Eg in YOU WILL KNOW ME by Megan Abbott, who the killer is isn't as relevant as what the main character will do with that information. 

  • We love who-dun-its and locked room mysteries, but with a twist!

  • If your thriller/mystery is a little bit unusual or outside the box, we want it (for example: YOU MUST NOT MISS by Katrina Leno)

  • Some thriller/suspense/mysteries we love are THE HALF LIFE OF MOLLY by Katrina Leno, PERLA by Carolina de Robertis, LITTLE MONSTERS by Kara Thomas, I KILLED ZOE SPANOS by Kit Frick. 

  • We are big fans of books that can be comped with the TV shows Pretty Little Liars and Control Z, and the movie Get Out. 

In all of the above genres

  • PLEASE (!!!!!!!) SEND US your stories that are set in the global south, primarily those stories set in Asia, Africa, Central and South America. Both of us are international authors so we really want to see stories from international authors.

  • Send us stories about marginalised characters. We are especially excited about stories by and about South Asians, South Americans, Muslims, and sapphic characters.

  • We really want stories that focus on intersectional identities. We especially want to see intersectional stories about BIPOC. That means QTBIPOC, disabled BIPOC, fat BIPOC, etc.

  • We're #TEAMRAINBOW🌈, so we're very into queer stories! Although we have a sweet spot for sapphic characters and narratives, we're here for all LGBTQIA+ stories! We especially especially want QTBIPOC stories.

  • We want books that can be comped to Hayley Kiyoko songs. 

  • We love both upbeat and light stories and darker themes as long as they're explored with nuance. Among our fave books there's some of the darkest YA as well as the funniest romcoms. :)

What We Don’t Want

  • We won’t be mentoring adult, new adult, or MG, and we are not looking for any SFF work. We love these stories, but currently aren't the right mentors for them.

  • We are not the best fit for stories that focus primarily on: rape, eating disorders, self-harm, suicide, slavery. It’s okay if any of these things are mentioned in the story in passing, but they should not be on the page scenes, and they should not make up significant portions of the story.

  • For romance, we're not interested in teacher/student stories, or big age gaps.

  • We don't want the Bury Your Gays trope, or POC being Fridged. We're also not looking for a primarily allocishet white cast, and we don't want stories where marginalised characters are used to further the plot points of non-marginalised characters.

  • White savior narratives.

  • In historical fiction, we don’t want stories set in commonly represented historical periods UNLESS they feature marginalised characters. We also don’t want stories that center wars, though it’s okay if stories are set during wars (eg. the TV show Bomb Girls).

Mentoring Style

We will read through your manuscript and write an edit letter for developmental edits; including breakdown into plot, character, pacing, etc., and might include some small line-level things if there's anything that important that needs to be pointed out. 

Then, we will do a second round to see how you have incorporated the developmental edits and suggest any line-level edits required. 

Our edits will definitely use a sandwich method. We will combine all of the things that we love about your work, with the things that need a little bit more of a push to get your manuscript to where it needs to go. We might also ask questions that will hopefully help you figure out why you’re making the writing choices you are, and whether they’re the right choices to be making. 

Remember, your manuscript is yours, and as mentors we are here to help you bring your vision to life. We want to make your book the best it can be, and so we never expect you to take all of our suggestions without any questions. We are here to talk through our editorial ideas and figure out the best way to make your story shine in the way that only your story can shine! 

The best way of communication for us is through emails, or phone calls. We're open to questions throughout pitchwars, and we're here to guide you along your revisions if you have any concerns. 

If you have any questions for us, Gabriela will be doing the Twitter chat on Sunday, September 8th, and both of us will be doing the Twitter chat on Friday September 25th!

Pitch Wars 2020 Young Adult Mentors' Wish Lists

  1. Aiden Thomas (Accepts NA)

  2. Sarvenaz Tash (Accepts NA)

  3. Chloe Gong and Tashie Bhuiyan

  4. Abigail Johnson

  5. Kit Frick and Carlyn Greenwald

  6. Sonora Reyes (Accepts NA)

  7. Laurie Dennison

  8. J.Elle and Emily Golden

  9. Andrea Contos (Accepts NA)

  10. Emily Thiede (Accepts NA)

  11. Amanda Panitch

  12. Allison Saft and Ava Reid (Accepts NA)

  13. Emery Lee (Accepts NA)

  14. Carrie S. Allen and Sabrina Lotfi

  15. Shannon A. Thompson and Sandra Proudman (Accepts NA)

  16. Adiba Jaigirdar and Gabriela Martins

  17. Michaela Greer (Accepts NA)

  18. Tash McAdam

  19. ST Sterlings (Accepts NA)

  20. Maiya Ibrahim and Ayana Gray (Accepts NA)

  21. Meg Long and Xiran Jay Zhao (Accepts NA)

  22. Margie Fuston

  23. Jamie Howard

  24. Nova McBee

  25. Amelia Diane Coombs and Sophie Gonzales (Accepts NA)

  26. Rachel Griffin

  27. Susan Lee and Auriane Desombre (Accepts NA)

  28. Ciannon Smart

  29. Sasha Peyton Smith and Kristin Lambert

  30. Lane Clarke (Accepts NA)

  31. Lyndsay Ely (Accepts NA)

  32. Anna Sortino (Accepts NA)

  33. Jennieke Cohen

  34. Bethany Mangle (Accepts NA)

  35. Sunya Mara (Accepts NA)

  36. Kat Dunn and Daphne Lao Tonge

  37. Sheena Boekweg and Alechia Dow (Accepts NA)

  38. Liz Lawson and Dante Medema (Accepts NA)

  39. Sarah Dass (Accepts NA)

  40. Zach Hines (Accepts NA)

  41. Hoda Agharazi (Accepts NA)

  42. Dawn Ius and April Snellings (Accepts NA)

  43. Kara McDowell and Kimberly Gabriel

  44. Kylie Schachte (Accepts NA)

  45. Deborah Falaye

  46. Rona Wang (Accepts NA)

  47. Becca Mix and Grace Li (Accepts NA)

  48. Aty S. Behsam (Accepts NA)


    Click here to view all Pitch Wars 2020 Mentors' Wish Lists

Waiting For The Other Shoe To Drop...

A few weeks ago, I received some good news in regards to publishing and my writing. I was pretty happy, but that lasted for a few minutes, maybe. After those fleeting minutes of happiness had passed, I felt kind of dread in my stomach. Like because something good had happened, inevitably it would be followed up by something bad. I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

As I write this, I guess the other shoe hasn't dropped yet, but this is the way I have felt for a long time now. Ever since I got off the phone with the editor of my book in January 2019, knowing she loved The Henna Wars and was about to send us an offer. I still sometimes feel like someone is going to take it all away even though obviously very tangible things have happened between January 2019 and now. 

So much of this irrational fear comes from being a woman of colour, and being a woman of colour in this industry specifically. It feels like even when I'm here, I'm not here. Like there is so little value ascribed to me, I might as well not be here at all.

A few weeks ago, there was...an incident. 

As a writer on the Twittersphere, I have been added to many different groupchats. I have had to leave almost all of them because of racism. The only ones I haven't left are the ones which exclusively consist of women of colour. 

A few weeks ago, in a Twitter groupchat consisting of writers, a quote was posted that contained exclusionary language. In my interpretation, it ascribed power and privilege to "men," which essentially does not take into account the fact that men from different spheres of life do not experience power and privilege in the same way. That, in many situations, cishet white women have power over men. 

In a group that was overwhelming full of white women, my friend and I (both queer women of colour), suggested that perhaps there was more nuance needed in a quote such as that. We were, unsurprisingly, met with defensiveness from our white peers. Someone suggested that the person who had shared the quote (and - it turned out - the quote belonged to) knew what she was talking about and had an important message to share. As if we did not know what we were talking about and were not addressing anything of importance. 

Then, like clockwork, we were accused of "pulling [someone] apart." Don't get me wrong, from the get-go, we were treated as aggressors, it was just that someone had now spoken it.

Someone apologised and mentioned how this place should be a "safe space." But I always wonder about what that means. How can there be a safe space where there are huge power imbalances, especially through numbers? Who is being silenced in those safe spaces? In that safe space, it was the women of colour. 

We swiftly exited the chat. It was nothing that I hadn't experienced before, but I guess the discomfort of it came because everyone in that space was my colleague, and I would be expected to spend all of my career smiling pretty and pretending that they did not view me as an aggressor for simply existing.

It was after I exited that "apologies" came pouring in. I will paraphrase here, but they suggested that they had entered into the conversation without any awareness of what it was really about. They wished they had been a little more thoughtful. They wished they had read what was being said before saying anything. They wished they had worded things better. 

Of course, when you come into a conversation with no knowledge and still think it's okay to attack the only women of colour and accuse them of aggression based off of nothing, that's a marker of your racism more than anything else. The only thing "apologies" proved to me was their attempts at washing their hands clean, their fear of being accused of racism, their need to say, "no, I'm a good person, I promise." Their apologies had nothing to do with me. 

Then, there was the explanation that some of them were trying to "keep the peace." To quote Martin Luther King Jr: "I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice." 

The reason why I'm sharing this story is because this is what being a woman of colour in this industry is like. This is not the first time an incident like this has happened to me, and it certainly won't be the last. People who call themselves "allies," and "feminists," loud and proud but continually perpetuate violence against women of colour. 

So, I suppose, is it any wonder that as a woman of colour, I am constantly waiting for the other shoe drop? Hasn't it already dropped? Is it not that feeling of never belonging? Is it not the racism at the root of it all, that will show up in your day-to-day life? Is it not the people who will get accolades for their "diverse" novels and smile proudly for being a fantastic ally but be bystanders as violence is enacted on you? Or worse, the violence they enact on you if you allow yourself to befriend them? 

Writing “Bang-lish:” Honouring Your Mother Language While Writing In English

Growing up as a Bangladeshi, there is one thing that my parents always reminded me: you are from a country where people died for their right to speak their language. 

Some people might know that International Mother Language Day is on the 21st of February, and it’s to celebrate and honour our mother languages. But Bengalis know the day as Ekushey February, the day we commemorate those who died for us to be able to speak our mother language. It’s not simply a day of celebration, but a time to honour the language that our predecessors fought and died for. 

There is a lot of responsibility that comes with being a Bengali writer. My Dad always reminds me that, though I am writing in English, I should never forget my mother language is Bangla. As someone in the diaspora whose grasp of Bangla comes from studying the language in school until I was ten years old, and now only speaking it to my parents and relatives in the language, it’s a difficult thing to balance. How do we write in English and still portray our mother language? How do we share our stories with the world and still honour the language of our people? 

Writing a book is no easy feat, but when I first sat down to write a book with a Bangladeshi character, I found myself up against an unprecedented challenge: I had never read a Bangladeshi character in a book before. I hadn’t seen a Bangladeshi character on a TV show, or in a film. Though I had grown up with, and surrounded by, Bangladeshi people, I had no idea how to tell a story about people like us. So as I sat down to write, it wasn’t the idea of writing a novel that was daunting, it was the challenge of doing something that I had never seen done before: writing about someone like me.

Writing as a person of colour often means writing with no blueprints set out in front of you. It means navigating new territories in writing. Navigating the responsibility—and burden—of representing not just yourself, but everyone who shares your culture, religion, language, ethnicity. Along with this, comes the difficulty of navigating a new linguistic landscape. 

In my everyday life, I speak in different languages. With my parents, and most of my older relatives, I speak in Bengali. With my siblings, and Western cousins, I speak in “Bang-lish,” which is essentially a mixture of Bengali and English. With non-Bengali people, I mostly speak in English

As I began writing a book with a Bangladeshi and Irish immigrant character who went through life with a similar linguistic experience as me, I had to ask myself how do I translate my real-life experience with language and expression into a book form? How do I do it, while still being true to my lived experience, and engaging to an audience that doesn’t necessarily share the same experience?

Firstly, I tried it exactly how I had learned non-English languages should be presented in books: I italicised everything that wasn’t English. I wrote footnote explanations or direct explanations right there on the page. I essentially circled every non-English word in my writing with a red pen and screamed, “here’s something different!” It was as unauthentic as I could make it. After all, when I think in a jumble of Bengali and English, when I speak to my family in Bang-lish, there are no italics to mark the difference between that and the English many of my peers speak. There’s my experience of language and their experience of it: different, but both as valid as each other.

After this failed experiment, I had an idea of exactly how I wanted to write my story: with me at the center of it. That is to say, without stripping back language or experience for someone who was not experienced in my language or my culture. I wanted to write characters who lived authentically in my story because they did not have to cater to someone with little to no knowledge of their language and culture.

At the time, I thought it was impossible to do this and still have some hope of being published. After all, for most of my life I had read books that did mark out languages and cultures that were “different.” Books that seemed to speak to the people living outside of the characters’ lived experience, rather than to those inside it.

Thankfully, I read two books that changed my mind. The first was When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon. In the pages of this book, Menon had written out entire conversations in Hindi between her main characters and their parents. The second, Love From A To Z by S. K. Ali, where Ali includes Arabic script as one of the main characters—Zayneb, who is Pakistani, American, and Muslim—writes in Arabic inside her journal. These books are obviously far more than these small instances. But it was these small instances that emboldened me to write my stories, and my characters, as fully as they deserve to be written. Without the hindrance of a second gaze peering over my shoulder.

Growing up as a Bangladeshi, we are often hyper-aware of the history of our language. Every mother language day, as we celebrate our mother tongue and mourn the martyrs of the language movement, we remember the importance of our language. To speak a language with this history is a gift, but as an immigrant coming to terms with identity, and as a writer coming to terms with identity in the form of stories, it can be a heavy weight to bear. I can only hope that I’ve done my best to honour it in my work.

The Muslim Diaspora Experience

Welcome to Muslim Voices Rise Up, a month-long project taking place during Ramadan where Muslim authors and bloggers share their experiences on various topics! This project is dedicated to centering Muslim experiences and showcasing the diversity within our own narratives. You can find more info, along with other blog posts for this project, on this introduction post. This post features Muslims speaking about their experience in the diaspora:

diaspora.jpg

Zoulfa Katouh

What does it feel being a daughter of many countries?

It’s like I owe each part of me somewhere. My loyalty and heart are divided all over earth, and everywhere and nowhere is home for me. It’s like a wandering soul, walking side by side with people who belong. It’s the raised eyebrows when I claim Canada as my country because that’s where life was given to me, and the oh’s when I tell them of my Syrian ancestry. It’s the subtle racism, an infection spread further than I could bear. It’s the narrowed eyes, confused stares, defensive glances and all the secret conversations spoken. It’s the hurtful words towards my hijab and ethnicity.

It’s watching my non-diasporic friends speak of their family homes, family vacations, family celebrations and family stories with nothing of my own to share. It’s me seeing my grandparents once every four years if I’m lucky. It’s the feeling of never truly belonging. It’s people thinking I’m ungrateful for all the opportunities I’ve been given, not knowing how much I had lost in the process. It’s me never knowing what Syria’s soil smells like today or how the sun looks setting over the mountains. It’s the surprised happy jolt in my chest when I see other girls who look and dress like me. Whose Arabic accents aren’t a jigsaw puzzle put together from the many people they met. It’s all the cultural history I was deprived from. It’s me, an anomaly to both Arabs and non-Arabs.

It’s me, forever searching for a way back home.

Twitter: @zeereadsbooks

Adiba

One of the first thing I noticed when I moved to a country without a Muslim majority, is how everybody believes in the lie of secularism. Making me pronouncedly Muslim.

In the country where I was born, I got to be a person who practices a religion. I got to pray five times a day (or four, or three, or two…), fast during the month of Ramadan, celebrate Eid with my family, and never have to explain myself or my humanity.

In my new “secular” country, it feels like I’m Muslim first, and a person second. Suddenly, the things that are second nature to me, an every day part of my life, are things that need constant explanations. Things that are scrutinised, and pointed out for being strange. If I speak about my religion, I’m accused of “preaching,” at best. At worst, I’m attacked for having faith at all.

I live in Ireland, which has a really complicated history with religion. After a lifetime of living under the thumb of a corrupt Catholic system, which operated in some really horrific practices, many Irish people have a grudge against religion. Something I guess I can’t blame them for. The problem is, a grudge against their religion, somehow translates to a grudge against all religion. At the same time that many of them will berate people of faith, they will practise a culture that is totally reliant on Catholicism, and not even realise it.

For me, this means that at a young age, practicing my faith was also…complicated. Even though I had spent ten years living between two Muslim majority countries—Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia—where I experienced the two Islamic cultures and communities, I still internalised a lot of Catholic grudges about religion, even though it had nothing to do with my faith.

Being a person in the Muslim diaspora comes with a lot of baggage. For me, it meant not just having to sift through a crisis of identity of my own religion, but also to have to figure out a crisis of identity of another religion completely.

Upcoming author if The Henna Wars

Twitter: @adiba_j

Instagram: @dibs_j


I hope you enjoyed reading about The Muslim Diaspora experience!

Thank you to the contributors of this post, and to Aimal for the beautiful graphic!