Columbia is over 350 pre-orders, and I hope that it goes a lot higher! I think most creators want their work to be well-received, but many of us also want to provoke a reaction: we have something to communicate and we want lots of people to hear the message and think about it.
I want readers to meet Sami Lakhani, a different kind of spy hero.
One of the most frequently asked questions about Columbia is why I wrote a book about a gay, Muslim spy?
I think that question can be broken down into many sub-questions:
Why did I write a book about a gay, Muslim-American spy?
Why did I write a book about a gay, Muslim-American spy?
Why did I write a book about a gay, Muslim-American spy?
Why did I write a book about a gay, Muslim-American spy?
The decision to make the protagonist of the story a Muslim-American and part of the LGBT community arose from three choices.
First, the artistic choice to do everything possible to represent historically underrepresented groups in mainstream fiction. As an artist, it is important to me to create literature from a perspective that not only challenges implicit stereotypes and biases in literature, and America, and the spy genre, but also within myself. Supporters of Columbia may find it hard to believe, but one of the most common questions that I get when I explain Columbia to people (including people in the literary/publishing world) is why I made my spy hero a gay Muslim-American?
If I had written (another) book about a straight, White, Judeo-Christian spy, would anyone have asked why?
Why should our spy heroes not be gay? As a writer, I am committing myself to approaching character development from that same place for everything I write.
Second, Sami's sexual identity and religious upbringing coalesce to play an important part in shaping the early plot. The reader presumes that the driver of the estrangement between Sami and his conservative grandfather, an imam, is Sami's sexuality. As readers soon discover, there is a dark family secret that Sami has long suspected that truly lies at the heart of their separation.
In many ways, this is a challenge to the old trope that there is something inherently shameful about LGBT people or inherently divisive about their lives. No, in Columbia, it is Sami's grandfather (and the crowd of white nationalist thugs he has aligned himself with) who has something very shameful that he is hiding and which is at the root of their estrangement.
I wanted Columbia to turn the traditions of the thriller genre inside-out. A strong, smart, proud person whose identity cuts across hidebound categories is a hero in the face of those who not only want to define themselves narrowly, but also to force others to define themselves and their loyalties in the same way.
Where I was working a high-wire act was that Sami's grandfather is a Muslim-American. I wanted it to be very clear in the story that he could be a villain, without being vilified for being a part of the community of American Muslims.
Instead, Abu Muhammad's evil lies in his intolerance, a common thread that I have found in my work in counter-terrorism around the world. It is much more complicated that just intolerance, of course, and while this blog post cannot, the book delves into the roles that factors like poverty and marginalization play in developing extremism.
In many ways, this is a challenge to the old trope that there is something inherently shameful about LGBT people or inherently divisive about their lives. No, in Columbia, it is Sami's grandfather (and the crowd of white nationalist thugs he has aligned himself with) who has something very shameful that he is hiding and which is at the root of their estrangement.
I wanted Columbia to turn the traditions of the thriller genre inside-out. A strong, smart, proud person whose identity cuts across hidebound categories is a hero in the face of those who not only want to define themselves narrowly, but also to force others to define themselves and their loyalties in the same way.
Where I was working a high-wire act was that Sami's grandfather is a Muslim-American. I wanted it to be very clear in the story that he could be a villain, without being vilified for being a part of the community of American Muslims.
Instead, Abu Muhammad's evil lies in his intolerance, a common thread that I have found in my work in counter-terrorism around the world. It is much more complicated that just intolerance, of course, and while this blog post cannot, the book delves into the roles that factors like poverty and marginalization play in developing extremism.
Third, in spite of every movie and book portrayal, the people of the IC are not all square-jawed muscle men or women with cunning to match their knockout looks. And they are not all WASPs.
Sami represents the cerebral and immensely talented people who serve in our IC, many of whom are newly-arrived Americans with strong cultural, linguistic and family ties throughout the world. There is a great scene (includes language NSFW) from the film version of Charlie Wilson's War that encapsulates the struggle many of these loyal, serving Americans have long faced to be accepted as American citizens and still remain proud citizens of their cultural heritage.
Having Sami fly in the face of every stereotype about the spy/action hero was the very best way for me to announce to the publishing world, and to readers, that Columbia is a different kind of book. Sami's second adventure is in the works already, and I can't wait to continue to show the brilliance of this character and to honor the people like him who protect our sacred freedoms.
Sami represents the cerebral and immensely talented people who serve in our IC, many of whom are newly-arrived Americans with strong cultural, linguistic and family ties throughout the world. There is a great scene (includes language NSFW) from the film version of Charlie Wilson's War that encapsulates the struggle many of these loyal, serving Americans have long faced to be accepted as American citizens and still remain proud citizens of their cultural heritage.
Having Sami fly in the face of every stereotype about the spy/action hero was the very best way for me to announce to the publishing world, and to readers, that Columbia is a different kind of book. Sami's second adventure is in the works already, and I can't wait to continue to show the brilliance of this character and to honor the people like him who protect our sacred freedoms.
Comments
Post a Comment