Berbs
The publishing industry is extremely difficult to break into. Getting a book deal is incredibly difficult. With biographies and memoirs, often the person has to have a public profile before any publisher will consider giving the writer a contract, because there is instantly scope for marketing and name recognition. I've noticed that journalists write memoirs, especially in the niche section of 'ethnic minority' writers. I'm thinking of Satnam Sanghera, a British Indian journalist of Sikh origin who writes for The Times. His memoir was actually very decent, about growing up in an Indian immigrant family with a father who had scizophrenia in the 1980's and 1990's. There have been a number of memoirs by British Muslim journalists who have written about 'being Muslim', like Sarfraz Manzoor, and a few by female journalists too, the most recent off the top of my head is a British Pakistani journalist called Zaiba Malik who just published a memoir. Unfortunately this is the nature of publishing these days, you really do have to have contacts and be within a circle, its a very incestuous world. Even Ayaan Hirsi Ali had a certain profile before writing.
Yeah, I know it won;t be easy. I'm not even sure I will attempt it simply because I still struggle with having it online where only a small portion of the world will actually ever really see it.
This however is not a reason not to write and try to get published. I personally would love to read more life stories like yours. You have a very good sense of humour and a cutting eye and self awareness that would probably blast alot of these kinds of genre books out of the water. Apart from Ayaan, has there really been that many accounts of absolute rejection and dissent from Islam? I can't think of many, and that is partly because, I think, of another problem. The level of critique of Islam that you would narrate might be too close to the bone for some or most publishers. The spectre of self-censorship out of fear, Islamic bullying, the slander of 'Islamophobia' still holds sway over large parts of the liberal media.
Thanks
I think the stories of ex Muslims are arguably the most important voices that need to be heard in contemporary Britain, so I think this is not just shameful, its morally negligent, especially as the countervailing dawah-ist self-image of Islam is propounded without reflection so widely. Voices of dissent and rejection have to be allowed to have air and breathe as a matter of urgency, and we have talked about the reasons why so many times on this forum.
I really agree. Literature has been used to give the sub altern a voice before, and TBH I feel that ex muslims are bracketed that way. If what we have to say cuts too close, and the chances of getting published still rest upon a publishers courage to push the ex muslim voice to the front, then that is exactly what we are, voiceless and unrepresented.
I hear people calling ex muslim biographies a fad.
I hear ex muslims saying they don;t think theirs are interesting enough.
But then again, how many black writers in a time when black writers found it hard to be published, or indeed how many women in the west, in a time when women weren't published, stood there and asked themselves the same very questions?
is my voice really that important? yes it is.
But so many others are doing it.....err as I said, why let that stop you? I don;t doubt people thought woman writers and black writers were a fad too. Fad is a word that society uses to ascribe to behaviour it wants to see the back of.
There is an alternative though. Self publishing has begun to change the scene. Technologies now allow a collective to write, edit and publish, selling hard copies through Amazon, or via Kindle and other readers. This would allow as a long term project, individuals like you along with others from CEMB, to author essays about why you left Islam, both as a permanent record and piece of hard literature that can be referred to, sold, given away, used as TESTIMONY for all ex Muslims to begin to make their voice heard, distributed to journalists and opinion formers in British society, especially those who accept the claims of Islam and dawah-merchants unquestioningly. It could be addressed to the issues at hand, why it is so important for the precepts of Islam to be challenged on a theological level, and on a macro level when it comes to the issue of Islamic Ummah Identity politics. It would also be an entry into formal writing for yourself, and be somtething on your resume, for when you finally get to tackle that long form memoir / biography with an eye to possibly getting a book deal from a publisher.
Just a thought. I think the impact of it could be great.
I'll have to consider that. My uni course will deal with self publishing and normal publishing. I'm hoping this in itself would give some contacts since I will get work experience in a publishers.
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Topic: Ex muslim biographies