#nadine jolie courtney
Allie Abraham appears to be the perfect all-American teenager. But when she witnesses Islamophobia firsthand on an airplane, she can’t shake the horrible assumptions people make. Her dad is an American history professor who is Circassian and a nonpracticing Muslim, and her mom is a Caucasian-American psychologist who converted to Muslim when she married. Allie has never explored her Muslim religion or heritage…until now. Allie longs to connect more with her dad’s family, especially her grandmother, and she begins to study Muslim and learn Arabic. At the same time, she starts dating Wells, whose father spews hatred and Islamophobia on a conservative cable network. As Allie dives into her Islamic heritage and becomes caught between two worlds, will she be able to find a place for herself as a Muslim-American girl?
Nadine Jolie Courtney expertly handles tough topics, such as Islamophobia, religion, feminism, racism, and equality with respect. She creates a remarkable character in Allie that all teens can relate too, especially those navigating two different worlds.
Tell us about your most recent book and how you came to write/illustrate it.
All-American Muslim Girl is a YA novel born of my own experiences as a white-passing mixed-race Muslim in Georgia. I’m the daughter of a Jordanian-Circassian father and a blond Catholic cheerleader from Florida who converted to Islam when she and my dad got married. Most people have an image in their minds when they hear the words ‘Muslim girl’—and it’s definitely not me. As a result, I was exposed to a lot of harmful stealth Islamophobia over the years, moving unnoticed through predominantly white spaces as guards were down and people dropped casually bigoted comments. Post Trump, that stealth Islamophobia became blatant. I felt compelled to write an Islam-positive story of a young girl who, like me, initially struggles with a lack of connection to her religion but eventually chooses to actively embrace it, exploring how that affects her relationships along the way.
Do you think of yourself as a diverse author/illustrator?
I’ve always had lot of anxiety about my identity, something I address in AAMG (and tried to work through, in my MC of Allie Abraham!) On the one hand, I grew up feeling very much like an outsider, no matter what room I was in. When I was out with my visibly foreign father or my hijabi family members, the reception was noticeably different to what I’d get when out alone with my Barbie-esque mom. People would make fun of my last name (an impossible to pronounce Circassian name rife with consonants). Faces would change when they found out my family’s religion or background. But, on the other hand, my experience as a Muslim has still been very different from those of my Muslim friends and family members—to say nothing of my Brown and Black Muslim sisters. My lighter skin and ability to “pass” as a basic blonde has shielded me from the worst Islamophobia—something I am both grateful for and, honestly, a little ashamed of.
Who is your favorite character of all time in children’s or young adult literature?
It’s a four-way tie between Ramona Quimby, Anne Shirley, Jo March, and Hermione Granger. Feisty young women for the win!
Hypothetically speaking, let’s say you are forced to sell all of the books you own except for one. Which do you keep?
Oh my goodness! Okay, well, since this is purely hypothetical, I’m going to pretend we’re only talking about fiction books. From there…oof. When my husband and I got married, we thinned out our respective book collections, and it was torture. My answer would probably change depending on my mood, but for right now, I’d say my most dog-eared, weather-beaten book: an ancient, well-loved Norton Anthology of Poetry that I’ve had since I was 14. Barring that, my Harry Potter series, which I’m saving to read with my daughter when she’s old enough.
What does diversity mean to you as you think about your own books?
I feel like there’s often this checklist mentality toward diversity in literature, and it comes across as not only inauthentic but completely harmful. To me personally, diversity is about moving past seeing white as a default and not prioritizing the white gaze. It’s about recognizing that our stories are better when they reflect the world as it really is, in all its complexity. When you’re a marginalized teenager, maybe somebody who’s occasionally ill at ease around your peers, books can be your safe haven—a place where you can lose yourself and forget about whatever issues you’re going through, if briefly. Now imagine you read a book and it’s you, your life, your experiences reflected back on the page. How much less alone might you feel? How meaningful is that for a young person—questioning themselves, questioning their place—to realize there are others out there like them? That’s why I think it’s so important to not have publishing continue to churn out the same perspectives, the same heroes and heroines. Those stories have been told. Let’s shine the light elsewhere for a while and see what blooms.
What is your thought process in including or excluding characters of diverse backgrounds?
ForAll-American Muslim Girl, it was important to me to include Muslims from a variety of backgrounds, races, and ethnicities—because that’s the reality of Islam. It’s not just Arab Muslims, which is the default in the media. It’s Indonesian Muslims and Black Muslims and Desi Muslims and Muslim converts. I’m a Circassian Muslim, so though I’m fair like a lot of Muslims from the Caucausus region, my family have been Muslims for generations. I wanted to show not just that diversity of background, but also of thought: the book is full of a variety of young Muslim women who interpret the religion in vastly different ways and enjoy respectfully debating those disparate views. The Ummah is stronger and richer not in spite of our differences but because of them.
Nadine Jolie Courtney is the author of the upcoming YA novel All-American Muslim Girl (November 12, 2019, FSG), as well as the YA novel Romancing the Throne, and two adult books: Confessions of a Beauty Addict, and Beauty Confidential. A graduate of Barnard College, her articles have appeared in Town & Country, Angeleno, OprahMag.com, and Vogue.com. She lives in Santa Monica, California, with her family.
Website:nadinejoliecourtney.com; Instagram: @nadinejoliecourtney; Twitter: @nadinecourtney
