Aaliyah Bilal's debut collection of ten linked-in-theme short stories portrays Black American Muslims — many of them people who came up in the Nation of Islam and later moved toward Sunni orthodoxy — looking back on the movements, disciplines, and certainties that formed them. The catalog contents run from "Blue" and "New Mexico" through "Candy for Hanif," "Janaza," "Woman in Niqab," "Nikkah," and "Sister Rose" to the closing "Due North," in which an obedient daughter is haunted by her recently dead father. Elsewhere a federal agent assigned to surveil a Nation of Islam leader is pulled back toward obligations at home; a father who has briefly taken up vegetarianism conspires with his daughter over a double cheeseburger; and a daughter who suspects her father of infidelity responds by uncovering her hair in public. Bilal, who has said the community in the book reflects on its Nation of Islam years from a later Sunni perch, writes the gap between professed belief and actual conduct with comedy as well as severity. Published by Simon & Schuster in July 2023 as a first Simon & Schuster hardcover edition, Temple Folk was a finalist for the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction.
Author: Aaliyah Bilal · Original publisher: Simon & Schuster (New York), 2023
