Bilal's Bread by Sulayman X

As I was reading Bilal’s Bread, the issue of cultural authenticity, as explained in some of the articles for this week, keep gnawing at me. The author, Sulayman X , is an American convert to Islam and the founder of Queer Jihad. He has posted some biographical information on the Queer Jihad website, because—I presume—his cultural authenticity has been questioned. The Abu family, the main characters in Bilal’s Bread, are Kurdish immigrants living in Kansas City, and Bilal, the protagonist, is a 16 year-old boy who is beginning to identify himself as gay, falling in love with the son of his Imam, resorting to self-mutilation (Bilal cuts, burns, and bruises himself), and enduring brutal serial rapes and physical beatings at the hands of his oldest brother Salim, who is the male head of the family, since their father was apprehended and killed in Iraq by Saddam’s Republican Guard.

This novel addresses an entire range of issues that a Muslim youth might face in post-9/11 America: hatred born of ignorance, the autonomy of women (Bilal’s sister Fatima has chosen not to wear a veil, which displeases Salim), blending a Muslim identity with an American identity, family loyalties that are challenged by American culture… Complicating matters is Bilal’s sexual orientation and the Muslim condemnation of homosexuality.

I hoped this book would be a groundbreaking examination of Muslim culture, sexual orientation, and emerging adolescent identity. Ultimately, the book was a tremendous disappointment: graphic sex scenes (each time Salim rapes Bilal, Sulayman X spares no detail), disturbing depictions of the beatings Salim administers to Bilal, preachy dialogue, and implausible plot developments doom Bilal’s Bread to the status of well-meaning-but-ineptly-executed cultural artifact. What could have been a poignant and original story of adolescent development devolves into a disturbingly stereotypical representation of gay sexuality and Islam. For example, Fatima—who’s supposed to be a liberal, enlightened character—suggests that “Bilal might be gay because Salim sexually abused him when he was a child” (p. 205), and it is revealed that Salim himself was raped by the Iraqis before he was forced to witness the murder of his father. Bilal is often described as effeminate, and Salim—essentially the embodiment of evil—has absolutely no redeeming qualities at all, which is a problematic issue, since he is the most devout Muslim character in the novel. There are some positive aspects of this book (Bilal eventually comes out to his entire school during a poetry contest; the community begins to support and understand the Abu family by the end of the book), but they are few, they are almost too generic, and in the end they are inadequate.

Needless to say, I see no place for this novel in a secondary classroom.

Jim