Crazy over #1 Ladies’ Style

I don’t have HBO but everytime I go over to my parents’ house I re-watch an episode of the #1 Ladies Detective Agency. First, it is always interesting to me to see images of Africa in the mainstream. Second, I find it telling that this white guy author & producers can center a story around a large black woman and not dehumanize her in the typical ways.  Precious is sexy, intelligent, ambitious and beautiful.

Interestingly there is a new  movie whose protagonist shares the same name as the #1 Ladies Decective lead based on the book Push by Sapphire. Produced by Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey-an unknown young actress stars as the abused, disempowered Precious while Monique plays her abusive mother. Much ado was made about the pathological characterization of Sapphire’s characters when the book was first published in the 90s.  I remember reading Push as a teenager and liking it but simultaneously wondering  if fat black girl always had to mean pathological or downtrodden.  

   When is the last time that you’ve seen anything  over here that dares to showcase the beauty of  a larger black woman? I’m not hating on the whole Tyler Perry Medea enterprise (although I have to say it’s not my favorite cup of tea) but I’m so over the big mama stuff. Yeah, some of it can allow for a chuckle but there must be balance and diversity in all things.

So-everytime I  head over to my parents I settle in for an episode featuring Jill Scott-not just for the storyline-but also because I AM IN LOVE with the printed dresses that Precious wears. My mother and I oohhh and ahhh over the bold color.  I think about these prints when I shop.  Check  out my latest fashion inspiration:

 

Summer Writing

I think the best part of the summer is the time I get to write and read what I want. I have a number of unfinished short stories that I need to get back to and right now I am starting something a little longer.

So the latest thing that I  am working on is about three wealthy African-American kids attending an elite prep school in NJ. It begins in the early 90s. One of them, Alex White is the son of a surgeon.  His bestfriend is Ali “Al” Shaw. Ali’s sister Salimah “Lee” is the third main character. Their father William “Bilal” Shaw  is a Muslim attorney who rises to become a charismatic leader in national politics.  The story will chronicle their years in prep school and their divergent adult lives.

 I am having a little fun entering the world of 1990s hip-hop-in addition to navigating issues of identity-religious, class-based and racial.

Islamic Fiction vs. Muslim Fiction?

So I was talking to my husband yesterday about why I don’t write Islamic fiction and instead see myself as more interested in Muslim fiction. I think labels are cheesy anyway but I noticed this need to make a distinction when I was contemplating entering a writing contest that called for Islamic writing. Right away I noticed that they made a strict distinction between Muslims who happen to write and bonafide Islamic writing. The divide seemed to be whether there were “haram” aspects to the writing.  

Hmm. I like to write about Muslims a) because I am one  b) because I think that the experiences surrounding Muslim Americans are highly underrepresented.

Don’t get me wrong there are a lot of Muslims writing right now. But to me a lot of it falls under the post-colonial and immigrant fiction genres. Which of course is all good.

 Yet, as Mohja Kahf has pointed out in her geneaology of Muslim American Writing we can also trace Muslim American writing back to the the Black Arts Movement (BAM). For me I see myself as beyond the actual “am I American?/ am I Western?” questioning evident in a lot of immigrant Muslim fiction. At the same time- I make the identity claim of Muslim fiction because central to my writing is an exploration of the meaning of religious identification in American life.

I like the idea of writing about a Bilal, Ali and Salimah Shaw because they are so unexpected. 

 Educated. Black. Wealthy. Muslim.  

Complexities that (hopefully) will make a good story.

 

What’s Up With Me?

I thought you would never ask.

First-this spring semester kicked my butt. But, great stuff did happen.

I passed my comp exams. I handed in my dissertation proposal with enthusiastic approval from my advisor now dissertation chair. The best part is that I do not have to teach next year because I’m on fellowship.

Yesterday I submitted my final grades for my writing course. And let me tell you I wrestled with a lot of these students all semester. Hand in your work on time. Your thesis is weak. Send me your draft. It was a pain but  a lot of my failing students moved up into the C range, there was a trio of As and many of them expressed to me sincere appreciation for the course.

NOW-I am on vacation. WELL, I’m giving myself a two week break before I begin research for the first chapter of my diss. So in between research and writing what are my plans for the summer?

To eat healthy. To get good exercise. I plan to visit as many nature trails in the tri-state area as I can. To take day trips with my husband.

To practice the guitar and piano. To write more short stories. To study Arabic twice a week with my instructor. To brush up on my Spanish.

To read the Qur’an daily.

To find more hijab friendly summer clothes. All you hijabis know the dire importance of this-a hot hijabi is a sad (sometimes hostile) hijabi.  I’m stocking up on cool maxi and knee length summer dresses, breathable scarves as well as light cardigans for layering.

 

The Graduate School Bubble

21 days from tomorrow I take my comp exam that will decide if I can go on to PhD candidancy in my program. I have taken three years of course work; passed my foreign language exam;  and worked as a TA and writer instructor.

  The comp exam is a 2 hour exam where I am orally examined by 4 professors in my department. Two of the examiners will question me on a long list comprised of about 90 books. The other two will question me on two minor lists made up of about 40 books each. If I pass this exam I will be ABD (all but dissertation). After four long years of commuting, teaching, dealing with pressures at home and at work it comes down to these two hours.

I am thinking, breathing and dreaming orals right now. I am still reading at a mad pace in addition to creating a narrative that I can use to link the lists-to show my examiners what I can bring to my particular field. I am frightened and excited.

I flash back to about 6 years ago when I was a cheery MA student at NYU. While most of the people in my MA program were bohos flirting with academics and the city, there were a few of us who knew we wanted a career in academics. We were warned as we expressed our desire to move forward towards the PhD:

    A well know black women academic at a conference-”Academia has become a pyramid scheme.”

Another professor talking to me while completing my recommendation letter-”Are you sure you want to do this? In English? I hope you have a trust fund.”

The gender politics professor sipping on a glass of wine recalling her days in graduate school-”When you are a graduate student no other people will understand your life unless they are in graduate school. People will look at you like you have delayed adulthood. People you know will have moved on into careers where they are making money. They will have children and buy houses. You’ll be stumbling into bed exhausted from a night at the library. You better have a hobby. Music, fishing, dancing-something to help you through it.”

And I still applied. Without a trust fund.

Everything that my professors have warned me about has been proven true. I have colleagues in my graduate program who after 7-10 years of  hard work can’t enter the job market because there ARE NO jobs. The dangers of the adjunct pool or no job in academic lurks below them like quicksand.

I have small,but profound, moments of anger as I watch the freedom of peers in my age group make decisions that I have to put off. I have felt estranged from community, friends and family because I just don’t have the energy.

I have felt completely alone as an African-American Muslim women in a world of white men, white women, non-religious folks, non-African-American Muslims, African-American Christians and atheists.

Don’t even let me get started about hijab and the academy. Let’s not go there right now.

So-all I can do is try to breath. Try to pull myself together for those two hours & Trust in Allah.

 

Snow Day!

So I am nice and cozy inside this ranch house with my sweetie. The university is shut down for me and the high school where my husband is an on-site counselor is closed. All I can do is say alhamdulilah : )

My plans include comp reading, paper grading and some post-Asr indoor exercise.

Yesterday, while feeling a little ill, I had to trek out to the supermarket. This means unfortunately I had to enter the frenzy of people going into a complete panic over SNOW. Snow that would eventually stop. Snow that would start to melt in a day or so. But you would not know that by the way people’s carts were piled up.

Really people if you are trapped inside for more than a day or two how long do you think those doritos, chips-ahoy, frozen pizzas and sodas are going to last you?

My mission yesterday was to find some ingredients to make a homemade chicken-vegetable soup. I had chicken breast at home. So I picked up some broth, potatoes, carrots, celery, bay leaf , spinach & other good stuff.  I grabbed a Fresh baked baguette to accompany the soup and other things I would need for the week. 

I actually just had a bowl for lunch and I do declare I make a mighty fine soup. I also am pretty good at assembling good eats for my pantry, fridge and freeze.

Like I raved last post- HAES is changing my whole approach to food and allowing me to really find pleasure in what I eat. I ate someting with a little more saturated fat than I normally consume not too long ago and my body naturally rejected it. It was pretty awful but it really made me realize how smart our bodies are naturally if we listen. We just have to stop fooling around with them. So for anyone interested here is what I typically buy in order to eat healthy sans thinking about measuring/weighing or restricting myself:

a bag of brown rice

unsalted natural whole almonds (good to carry on you or keep in the car for long work days)

salad fixings (various lettuce, spinach, cucumber, tomatos) baby carrots to munch on

fish (tilapia)

natural peanut butter

whole grain bagels ( for breakfast I might have a bagel with a table spoon of peanut butter with slices of a half of banana)

yogurt (goes with breakfast)

oatmeal & cereal (can you tell that breakfast stuff is big with us? okay well it IS an extremely important meal but here is another reason I buy a lot of breakfast foods.  In place of cheez-its, heavily processed cookies or even pretzels I will have some cereal and milk or oatmeal for a snack)

Soy or lactaid milk 

Sweet potatoes or yams (can I pause here and honor these deliciously sweet things. Okay you want fries-take some extra time chop those sweet potatoes into your favorite size, toss with canola or olive oil in a bowl, bake at 400 degrees and there you go. I also eat them whole along side fish. A perfect vegetarian lunch (or dinner) is a nice sized sweet potato with a side of sauteed brocolli rabe or spinach).

Black beans or chickpeas

Perrier, no-sugar added all natural cranberry juice, lemons, oranges or orange juice

-okay,  1/3 perrier, 1/3 fresh orange juice 1/3 cranberry juice + lemon slices+ice+glass = a refreshing Muslim friendly cocktail

For the sweet tooth:

Fruit (grapes, apples, oranges)

Dark chocolate pieces (Ghiradelli dark chocolate squares are good) Jonesing for a Hersey with almonds. Eat one of these squares with a few almonds. So good!

Cookie lover? Okay I haven’t bought these myself. Actually my dad buys them and whenever I visit my parents I have a few of these. They are these flax seed and dark chocolate whole grain cookies that are yummy & low on sugar but have a really good texture.

Its nice to be locked in on a snowy day and feel no guilt about what you have in your house to snack on.

 

Turning the Page: Embracing Health at Every Size

Maybe letting it happen again is a good thing? Curves better than a lollipop head?

Okay, I’m going to admit something. I think Oprah Winfrey looks great at her current weight. Yup the 200 lbs or just below.  Although I can’t be sure how Oprah eats or if she is unhealthy I have a sneaking suspicion that every time Oprah bounces back to this weight zone her body is just going back to its weight set point.

This is not a popular idea. I have expressed this on other places on the blogosphere amidst line after line of comments that say Oprah just needs to hit that gym harder or that just feel sorry for poor old fat Oprah.

I have expressed the opinion around other women that Oprah needs to stop a) putting on a big show every time her weight goes up b) thinking that she has self-control issues. Most of these sister girls have stared at me blankly and then started talking about how it’s good that Oprah is HONEST about her issues.

In our society, fat is fast becoming a moral issue.  Fat is not just a body characteristic but an epidemic that is threatening the fabric of our society.  It says something about an individual’s mentality, sexuality and inner strength. This really hit home to me when I saw a clip of a trainer going off on a contestant on The Biggest Loser.

Watching this little white man freaking out- yelling the f-word at the plus size black contestant- I couldn’t help but laugh a little. I mean this dude was really, really upset. But then my chuckles transitioned into a moment of catharsis. I thought-wait a minute,  this  sh-t is wack and abusive. Yet, we were supposed to believe that this was okay-after all he was saving the hefty girl’s life right?

Where before I thought the Biggest Loser was inspirational the smoke has cleared. I don’t need to watch people isolated on a ranch in tight embarrassing half tops. I’d rather watch The biggest Maintainer-show me the contestants three years from now.  Statiscally-most if not all of them will gain the weight back.  Why? Because life doesn’t happen on a ranch and painful exercise regimes are torture. Now, that’s reality.

On the other hand we have other reality shows and advertisements promoting weight loss surgery. With little statistics on long time mortality rates people are running off to get their God-given perfect organs mutilated or restricted.  Why? Because it is better to live with disgusting and painful side affects than to risk dying (so they’ve been told). So, although you may live the rest of your life malnourished at least you can fit into those size 6 jeans. Never mind, that statistics show that over the long run a lot of these people will gain a significant amount of weight back.

Has anyone seen Al Roker lately? The weight is slowly creeping back. That’s okay he’ll just get a lap band over his already surgically altered stomach. You know what I can not sit in judgement of anyone who has gotten this surgery. They have been socially ostracized and medically pressured.

We are living in a world of fat politics and this makes it hurt to decipher truth from fiction. I’ve been  reading Dr. Linda Bacon’s Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight and it is changing my life. In fact I want to send this book to Oprah personally and to every women (big or small) that I know.  Her book uses real science to debunk the moral posturing and panic that currently characterizes the war on obesity.  Through her work,  I am embracing the principles of Health at Every Size:

Health at Every Size is based on the simple premise that the best way to improve health is to honor your body. It supports people in adopting good health habits for the sake of health and well-being (rather than weight control). Health at Every Size encourages:

• Accepting and respecting the natural diversity of body sizes and shapes.

• Eating in a flexible manner that values pleasure and honors internal cues of hunger, satiety and appetite.

• Finding the joy in moving one’s body and becoming more physically vital.

Here goes. I’m done dieting. No that does not mean that I’m throwing caution to the wind but it does mean that nothing is OFF LIMITS to me. I’m not juicing, no-carbing or measuring.I’m eating and exercising for pleasure.

If you believe that fat always equals unhealthy-If you feel bad about the 10 to 20 pounds you need to lose. If you are fat-phobic or feel cool ridiculing fat people (or assuming that you know that they are over-eaters, lazy or unhealthy) you need to open your mind and try reading this book. I have to warn you. She is going to make you think critically  about everything that you assumed you knew about food, fat and weight.

Here is an excerpt from the introduction:

You want to lose weight. You look in the mirror and you see “fat and ugly.” You’ve heard the obesity fears trumpeted repeatedly in newspapers, magazines, and on the television news: 65 percent of Americans are overweight or obese . . . growing numbers of overweight kids . . . we don’t know how to eat . . . we’re not exercising enough . . . we’re the first generation that’s going to die younger than our parents . . . blah, blah, blah.

So you buy one diet book after another, desperate for the one that will finally save you. But they never do, at least not in any lasting way.

Face it, the “D” word is dead. A new diet isn’t going to get you
what you want. You’ve been there, done that, and there’s no point in trying again. Even exercise programs don’t deliver.
So you picked up this book, Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight, hoping it will finally provide the cure. This book can cure your weight woes, but the answer may be different from what you’ve imagined.

Health at Every Size is not a weight-loss book. It’s not a diet book.It’s not an exercise program. Health at Every Size is a book about healthy living, one designed to support you as you shift your focus from hating yourself and fighting your body to learning to appreciate yourself, your body, and your life. It’s a book designed to help you break free of the weight-loss mentality and embrace the health-and happiness mentality. Because really, what’s beneath your weight-loss
quest? Isn’t your ultimate goal to feel better about yourself, to feel love, acceptance, vitality, or good health?

That’s the Health at Every Size promise. You can feel better about yourself. You can feel loved, accepted, and vital—and you can improve your health—regardless of whether you lose weight.

The Health at Every Size program won’t ask you to give up on
your dreams; it will help you to actually live them. It will give you the tools to realize those dreams, to live in a body you love, and to focus on things like feeling good and enjoying life—no matter what your weight.

Decades of research—and probably your own personal experience—show that the pursuit of weight loss rarely produces the thin,happy life you dream of. Dropping the pursuit of weight loss isn’t about giving up, it’s about moving on. When you make choices because they help you feel better, not because of their presumed effect on your weight, you maintain them over the long run. You do it because you want to, not because you believe you should. When you stop trying to control your weight through willpower, your body starts doing the job for you—naturally, and much more
effectively. If you stop fighting yourself, achieving and maintaining a healthy weight is effortless.

After reading it, I have not felt the need to eat chips or fries. I deliberately made sure that on my way home from campus today I didn’t grab any fast food. Instead I enjoyed tea, a cup of vegetable barley soup and a half of sandwich. I ate the soup slowly savoring the carrots and grain. I am practicing intuitive eating and trying to really get in touch with my big beautiful body.

I feel free & like I am on a wonderful journey.

 

When All Else Fails…SING?

I already mentioned before that I was a cumberband wearing choir geek in high school. But I failed to mention that I also took acting lessons and was in plays in both high school and college. I continued to take voice lessons while working on my MA for relaxation and to work on my technique. With my instructor I started training in Italian singing method which opened my eyes to how one can really use his/her voice.

I chalk my love of the arts up to my eclectic upbringing where my parents pretty much let me explore all of the things I needed to in order to get a sense of myself. Sounds real hippy, right? And believe me it was not a popular idea among my parents more conservative Muslim friends.

“You’re too liberal with those kids” was a recurrent phrase said to my parents.

Perhaps they were right in many ways. Sometimes I feel downright unruly in spirit compared to a lot of the sisters I know.

On a day like today when I am tired, have to drive to campus to teach and come home to continue my comp exam preparations there are only a few things that can get me through. Dua and dhikr are first. The beautiful horses that I always look for as whiz down the NJ Turnpike are second and singing is third.

I sing along to everything. First I might start out with a little Dinah Washington or Sarah Vaughn. Move into some Jill Scott. Then I gotta rock some Feist, Cocteau Twins or Bjork. By the end my voice has crossed genres, emotions and continents.  All types of feelings have been worked out and understood.

Some who see me whizzing by in neat professional hijabi attire might get a chuckle at my singing and bobbing. No need to worry-I’m just doing a little art therapy.

 

10 Things You Should Know How to Cook

single, married, urban or suburban you should know how to cook:

1. a perfect pot of rice-brown,white, basmati, with or w/o peas. rice unites diasporas and it is good with almost everything. PLUS as the daughter of a geechee I might get shot if I messed this one up.

2. stir fry. Chop up some broccoli or throw in some snap peas. Vegetarian or not -so delicious.

3. Cookies. Learn a basic dough recipe add oatmeal, raisins, brown sugar or chocolate chips. All of the above together is good.

4. Homemade marinara. Juicy tomatos, olive oil, herbs, coarse sea salt, freshly ground pepper and a low simmer.

5. Perfectly boiled pasta.

6. A simple roasted chicken. Add herbs and lemon under the skin for flavor.

7. Perfectly cooked vegetables or vegetable medleys. Al dente for nutrition and crunch.

8. One pot meals. Curry, chili or halal paella. Lots of flavor sans all the dishes.

9. Pancakes or french toast for romantic lazy Sundays.

10. Eggs. Omelettes, scrambled, frittatas.

What did I miss?

 

On Isolation & Belonging

The things that motivate one to write and towards introspection are strange. Recent posts on my favorite Muslim blogs have made me think deeply about my relationship to the idea of community. Like many things that I read in the blogosphere I carried the conversation beyond the realm of my laptop and discussed the idea of community with my husband.

I expressed to him my attitudes towards the idea of Muslim community. Basically I do not long for it, or more precisely, it does not preoccupy me as much as other Muslims. Rather I have embraced a specific attitude about the very idea of community-it is something that, in my opinion, is always fragile, fragmented and temporary. I see community as not existing intact and accessible. Instead community often happens in specific moments that are not necessarily to be maintained.

As a highly self-critical person I  pause at these conclusions I have reached. I ask myself, Wait a minute, sister, has all that critical race theory and literary theory over taken your Islamic sense of brotherhood and sisterhood? We are one ummah, one body, remember?

The reality is that I believe in this too. When I began to dig deeper I realized that what I have cultivated most of my life is a deep sense of detachment. This detachment is not apathetic. Anyone who knows me personally will attest to my commitment to other people; to the ethics of sharing and caring. Yet underneath it all, my attitude for the majority of my life has been built upon an underlying principle of privacy and mental isolation.

If I follow the trail deeper into my mind I realized that it begins (surprise, surprise) with childhood. More specifically it begins with numerous incidents of emotional, physical and sexual abuse I suffered as a young girl and adolescent. What I was able to do was to dig a space for myself mentally where I could not be touched and where I thought (mistakenly) that I could become without the need of others. I have now realized that I do need other people but I have also realized the extent to which there are things that other people can never rectify or sooth. These are the things that only the Creator heals.

I cannot speak for other people whose childhood and adolescent were marred by pain in this way but for myself I have alway believed that it produced in me an outsider position-for better or worse. And yes, it has influenced the way I worship and the way in which I connect to the ideas of Muslim identity or Muslim community. Along with my gender, race and class my abuse has not allowed me to take for granted the reality and tensions produced by real differences-in identity and experience. 

Quites some time ago I read a blurb by a Muslimah sister who recounted how her experience of sexual abuse threw into crisis some of the most basic assumptions about Muslim womanhood and sexual values. At that time I was not prepared to hear what she was saying. I wanted to escape into fantasies of a perfect Muslim existence. Now, I understand exactly what she means. My own  memories have forced me to hear and acknowledge.

 

Losing Weight…

ain’t easy. Duh. Especially when:

you spend a lot of time commuting

are stressed out because you are studying for your comp exams and you’re way behind.

have to battle this thing (weight) like a disease in treatment and you’re energy is low

So this week my goals are:

more water

more exercise

more vegetarian meals (REAL VEGETARIAN MEALS emphasis on the veg aspect)

no eating after 8pm excluding beverages (water, Perrier, crystal light) or one piece of fruit.