Muslim writers, men and women, are sometimes going to tell a story of Muslim child abuse, sometimes of a Muslim doctor saving the impoverished ill; there is good and bad in Muslims, as there is in every people. We get to tell both sides, and a third, fourth, and fifth side too. And some writers will be better at telling stories from the dark side and others will be better at telling the upbeat stories. We aren’t required to stay away from writing about sex in Muslim lives just because sex is on the agenda of the stereotypers. There are other ways to write about it besides the victim-and-vamp stereotypes. The fact that a Muslim writer tackles one of the sensitive subjects on “the stereotype list” is not a red flag that she is adopting the Victim or Escapee package. How the writing proceeds is what matters.

Yet there is no forgetting that the stereotypes — and the bigotry behind them — dog us. They are real, and malign. They have real-life repercussions, often enough, on Muslim lives, on the safety of our mosques and the Muslims in them and the Muslims who are not in them. How can that not be on the mind of a conscientious Muslim writer in the Western book industry? Are there strategies that can counter the Packaging?

The Wiles of Women

How can a Muslim woman writer publishing in the Western book industry avoid being sucked into “the machine?” I’m not entirely sure because I’m at the beginning of my journey, but here’s what I think so far: “Women’s wile is great,” as the Qur’an says (Yusuf, verse 28) — and we need it all, for this task!

• Change the Scene. A lot of exciting, funny, sad, fascinating issues out there among Muslim women never get expression because we allow Western media to set the dial at “Islam and Women — Your Victim and Escapee Station.” Mix it up. Don’t keep rewriting the same script. Keep moving. Don’t let them pin a label on you. Booby trap your writing against anyone trying to drag it down Stereotype Lane (your chapter goes BOING! and they end up hanging upside down from your lariat — or something like that).
• No Sugar. On the other hand, don’t pander to those Muslim readers who can’t tell the difference between a satire written by a lover in the mirror of the mosque and an attack by neocons or others who bear no love for your kind. Don’t be “a-skeered” of such Muslim critics. Even if they vilify you personally (forgetting that a Muslim is one from whose tongue and hand other Muslims are supposed to be safe). Sugar coating’s not good writing. Examine your Selves, before ye be examined.
• Make a Middle Way. Keep a running critique of what’s wrong with both sides, the West and the Muslim world. Do it from a “third space” of your authentic values. Double critique dodges cooptation. It won’t make you popular with either side, but then truth-seeking, which is what writing is at its best, has never been a popularity game.
• Cultivate Your Crowd. Seek the audience you want, not the audience someone else wants to primp you for. You build a core. I have learned this from my poetry work over the last 15 years. You read locally; you do readings for a pittance, for free, for gas money; you e-mail poems to friends, you build a base of people who like your poetry and respond to it. You work up to wider circles of readers. Hooray, you get a publisher for the first book. Now you work on the second. But you don’t forget your base. Who’s in your head when you’re writing, to whom are you talking? That’s your core audience. Don’t let your writing become a tour guide for the powerful, and frown and turn away from your loyal reading base.
• Cover Yourself. Every step of the publishing process requires vigilance: editing, finding an agent, accepting a publisher, the contract, and then book design, jacket, blurbs, publicity. If you have misgivings about why an agent or an editor wants your work, investigate, and leave that which makes you doubt for that which does not make you doubt. Find an agent who “gets it.” Educate your agent and editor. Don’t take “That isn’t standard practice” for an answer. Push for changes to what’s standard if it’s important to you. Consult a lawyer. Shape your book reception before they shape it for you.

When I signed the contract on my upcoming novel (my first), I asked for control over the cover. “No,” came the answer. So I beefed up the cover clause. Did it help? No. They still designed an offensive cover featuring a “Muslim girl meets Britney Spears” hijabi with a bare midriff and her eyes cut off. I wanted a cover that featured praying, not navel-baring. They did not seem aware that cutting off part of her face was a clichéd image and that the bare skin was out of character with my story. And they didn’t want to hear it from me. From the house’s perspective, it wasn’t Orientalism, it was just inconvenient — they’d already expended the budgeted resources for graphic design. I scrounged through the contract with a lawyer. I wanted to withdraw the book, wondering if this was a sign that they weren’t the right publishers for it. We finally compromised, on a hijabi with no bare midriff and no hidden eyes. (The compromised cover still does not appeal to me, but at least it is no longer deeply offensive.)

Community, not Commodity

What are the alternatives to the mainstream trade book industry? University publishers, because they are subsidized, tend to worry less about how respecting your integrity might hurt their bottom line. There is self-publishing (one of the best Muslim poets writing today, Daniel Abdal Hayy Moore, has chosen this route). Perhaps the best of available alternatives are small presses founded by people critical of the Eurocentric mainstream — Before Columbus, Aunt Lute Press, and other Afrocentric and minority publishers. Even so, a Muslim woman writer going there cannot assume her concerns will always dovetail with their concerns. There are Muslim publishers. So far, however, they have not established a record of having an eye for fine writing — for adab, in its classical Arabic meaning of a broadminded appreciation of writing for its inherent aesthetic quality, beyond its strictly religious value. Their emphasis is on making khutbas (sermons) and other religious texts available. Muslim presses concerned with literature as much as with religious instruction will, inshallah (God willing), emerge, and soon there will be a whole new array of options.