![]() ![]() ![]() I imagined a young woman who just wanted to live her life-go to school, play on the tennis team, apply to college-but who wasn’t allowed to because of fear mongering and Islamophobia. That was the environment in which Layla’s story came to me. American Muslims, as ever, were seen as other, a group that continually and consistently was being asked to prove its Americanness, but always falling short because of bigoted standards. There was a public guilting or scapegoating of Muslims as if all Muslims had to bear the onus of the terrible acts committed by a few. After the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, there was a significant uptick in Islamobphobic rhetoric in the United States that spread to changes in policy and an increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes. Samira Ahmed: I always see a character first and then begin by writing a short story around that character to see if the story has legs, to see if this is a character I want to build a world around. LB School: How did the ideas for each of your books come to you, and why did you feel that they were stories that needed to be told? ![]()
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