There’s nothing better than a book to enlighten us. A good read can change our entire perspective and allow us to visualize the world better. We bring out five such works by Muslim women authors for you to consider reading this December. The list includes Dr Seema Yasim, an Emmy award-winning journalist, and Rabiah York Lumbard, the winner of the Middle East Book Award. Our picks cover genres like history, culture, and fiction. So this December grab one of these lovely reads and bloom with knowledge. Here are the following recommendations:
Muslim Women Are Everything: Stereotype-Shattering Stories of Courage, Inspiration, and Adventure by Dr Seema Yasmin
This book will leave you feeling more empowered than ever. The book is a collection of riveting, inspiring, and stereotype-shattering stories that reveal the beauty, diversity, and strength of Muslim women both past and present. The book showcases independent, talented, skilled and determined Muslim women who are not subservient, oppressed damsels, but women who are breaking down barriers using their art, voices, and activism. It includes Rashida Tlaib, America’s first Muslim congresswomen. The book features full-colour illustrations by Fahmida Azim.
About the author: Dr Yasmin is an Emmy-award winning journalist and author. She is also a public health professor. She teaches at Stanford University and is the founder of the Yasmin Scholarships.
No True Believers by Rabiah York Lumbard
This book by Lumbard is an insane page-turner. Set in the suburbs of America, it tells the story of Salma Bakkioui, an intelligent coder. Her life is fantastic with her best friend Mariam living next door. Things start to turn upside down after a terrorist bombing. Salma notices small changes like her friends drifting away; her father, a Muslim chiropractor not receiving any patients. Islamophobia starts to rise but she doesn’t lose hope. In some shocking event, she finds out that she and Amir, her boyfriend, are under suspicion for the bombing. To prove herself and her boyfriend innocent, Salma starts investigating only to uncover the deadly truth of the people she trusted.
About the author: Lumbard is an award-winning author of the picture book The Conference of the Birds (Wisdom Tales, 2012). She has also won the Middle East Book Award for her picture book When the Animals Saved Earth.
Amazing Muslims Who Changed The World by Burhana Islam
Burhana Islam has done a wonderful job of bringing out the hidden history of talent and skills of Muslims from around the world. She has illuminated some very iconic and influential beings. She has included athletes, inventors, scientists, artists and even Olympians. She has mentioned some familiar names like Malala Yusuf and Muhammed Ali. The book emphasises on their story, work and talent.
About the author: Islam was born in Bangladesh and raised in the United Kingdom. Her work concentrates on the themes of heritage, identity and faith. She has studied English Literature at Newcastle University.
Here, There, and Elsewhere: The Making of Immigrant Identities in a Globalized World (Globalization in Everyday Life) by Tahseen Shams
It is a very well thought book. It has various formatted interviews of immigrants from around the world. The essence of the book is how expatriates feel that they are from everywhere yet not a particular place to call home. Interviews of people from Africa, the Middle East and Europe can be found, elucidating the experience of their homeland and host land. The author has beautifully shown how immigrants perceive themselves in their homeland as well as their host land. It describes how these immigrants identify themselves.
About the author: Tahseen Shams is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. Her articles have been published by top tier journals.
The Beauty of Your Face by Sahar Mustafah
This heart-wrenching book will leave you with tears as it speaks about hope and forgiveness. Sahar has very delicately curated the plot of this story about a Palestinian-American, Afaf Rahman who is a principal of a Muslim school in Chicago. However one fine morning everything goes downhill as the school is endangered with attacks from a shooter. As this happens, we are taken back to the past of Afaf. We learn about the problems she faced as a child, her mother’s dream of returning to Palestine and her long lost sister. The book gently cradles us through it all.
About the author: Mustafah has earned her MFA in Fiction from Columbia College where she was a Follett Graduate Scholar. She is the winner of Willow Books Grand Prize Winner, CODE OF THE WEST in 2017.