Why I Quit Reading at 15 and Started Writing
Photo by Suad Kamardeen on Unsplash
When I was younger, reading was my greatest escape. The library was my safe haven, and I remember spending after school and weekends there piling what seemed like all the books in the world in my small arms. I remember the nights where I would stuff a towel under the door so my mom wouldn’t see the light coming from my room when I should've been sleeping.
I read everything from children's books to novels. Comic strip books like Garfield and the graphic novels Bones series will always have a special place in my heart. The first thing I thought about when I woke up was reading, and the last thing on my mind before falling asleep was reading.
When you’re younger, you’re not fully aware of concepts like representation and diversity. I do remember, however, feeling alienated when reading some books because I could never relate. Back then, the only book I was aware of featuring a Muslim teen was Does My Head Look Big In This by Randa Abdel-Fattah, and it was not an accurate representation of many Muslim teens' experiences.
At a certain age, society forces us to notice and focus on how “different” we are from one another. I was simply just a kid who loved to read. I didn’t see myself as my skin colour, nor did I see myself as my religion or the hijab on my head. I didn’t think of myself as different or as an outsider. When I was younger, I had the privilege to travel the world and see all kinds of people from different walks of life. It was common sense to me that we weren’t all the same. We were living differently, and I found beauty in that. How boring would the world be if we were all living the same way?
As I got older, I became aware of reality and some of its cruelties. I realized not everyone thought like me, and in fact, there were those who wished I didn’t exist just because of my identity. I become aware of the concept of race–ascribed to me–as well as my religious identity, and how that was perceived by others. It became apparent to me that I was being treated differently by some teachers and certain institutions in society at large. I learned what racism was, and what diversity meant.
The more the reality of this world seeped into my mind, the more I started realizing how harmful the books I was consuming truly were. These books made me feel othered and that I didn’t belong. They reinforced the ideas of what society was saying about people who looked like me and even erasing my existence.
By the time I was a teenager, I stopped reading. I could no longer use books as an escape, because the books that existed only reminded me of how harsh the reality I lived in was. These books reinforced the idea that the only stories that mattered were the ones that prioritized white characters as ultimate protagonists.
I realized I would have to create my own world to escape to. Instead of spending hours reading, I started spending hours writing. I started writing multiple books as a teenager, exploring different genres, and wrote characters I wish I read in books when I was younger.
Eight years later, I’m releasing one of those books. Every child should feel like they belong when immersing themselves in books. Diversity should not be an exception. It should be the norm. I dedicated my book to my two younger sisters who are teens, because I wish I had a book like the one I wrote when I was their age. I hope the kids who feel like they don’t belong because of the lack of diversity in the books, find the magical feeling of reading once again. I hope my book can serve as the escape some of us wish we had.
