The Transportation Security Administration has probably converted more people to Islam than any religious order in the last 100 years. It doesn't matter how you choose to self-identify or even if your religiosity is private; when you get to the airport you know how you're going to be treated based on your name. Possibly also because of the colour of your skin and the colour of your passport.

There are so many stories that need to be told and are not being told. We tend to want to put things in boxes: "This is a memoir about a Muslim," or "This is a memoir about a woman or a normal personal." There's a certain story that assumes to be universal. Everyone else is ethnic fiction. Anyone can aspire to universality.

If you are an American Muslim, you live in a community that is really struggling to get its feet off the ground. We're a very young community, so to speak, institutionally and otherwise. The way in which we're portrayed it's like we're the empire from Star Wars and the truth is that we'd be lucky to be the Rebel Alliance.

Writing something down and processing it, sitting with a text and a story, editing and rewriting new drafts - that entire process helps clarify something for myself. Depending on the person, the act of trying to tell your story helps you understand yourself better, helps you come to terms with something that happened.

The Transportation Security Administration has probably converted more people to Islam than any religious order in the last 100 years. It doesn't matter how you choose to self-identify or even if your religiosity is private; when you get to the airport you know how you're going to be treated based on your name. Possibly also because of the colour of your skin and the colour of your passport.

There are times when I think being bipolar gives me the ability to see and want and write things that other people cannot and do not. One of those is writing. Creativity is something that co-presents with bipolarity. There are other times when being bipolar legitimately sucks and leads you to a point where you want to kill yourself. Very odd thing when your brain which, evolutionarily speaking, should want you to survive is telling you to die.

After September 11 there was feeling obligated to respond, and allow other people to set the terms of the conversation. There was this ritualistic condemnation of terrorism. I'm not saying that that's unimportant, but it became the case that the Muslim people in the United States or in other parts of the world were inclusively taking on responsibility for things that they had nothing to do with. Of course, it's very important that a community define its moral boundaries. A community also must acknowledge what it can and cannot control.