Dr. Seema Yasmin–a queer Emmy Award-winning journalist, medical doctor, professor, and author
–debuts her YA novel Unbecoming tomorrow! Yasmin previously worked as a disease detective for the US federal government’s Epidemic Intelligence Service and currently teaches storytelling at Standford University School of Medicine, and is a regular contributor to CNN, Self, and Scientific American, among others.
In Yasmin’s latest triumph, Unbecoming, two Muslim teens in Texas fight for access to abortion while one harbors a painful secret. Written in a dual POV, narrators and best friends Noor and Laylah want to change the world. After graduating high school, they’ll become an OBGYN and a journalist, but in the meantime, they’re working on an illegal guide to abortion in Texas.
In response to unfair laws that prosecute abortion, underground networks of clinics have sprung up, but the good flight has gotten even more precarious as it becomes harder to secure safe medication and supplies. Both Laylah and Noor are passionate about getting their guide completed so it can help those in need, but Laylah treats their project with an urgency Noor doesn’t understand—that may have something to do with the strange goings-on between their mosque and a local politician. Fighting for what they believe in may involve even more obstacles than they bargained for, but the two best friends will continue as they always have: together.
GLAAD had the opportunity to talk to Yasmin about the inspiration and themes behind her debut YA novel!
GLAAD: With the recent two-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the discussion around abortion rights and teen pregnancy is more relevant and impactful than ever. Tell us about the decision to set the novel in a not-too-far-distant America where abortions are prosecuted and the right to choose is no longer an option.
SY: I began to write the novel in 2019, setting it in a near-distant America in which abortion was more than banned—it was criminalized—and anyone seeking or helping a person get an abortion risked capital punishment. I was writing this story three years before the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade, not because I’m psychic but because the writing was on the wall; about abortion, about IVF, about personhood laws. We knew this was coming. So while the novel reads as predicting the future, especially in regards to news from the last few weeks about the reclassification of abortion medicines or the Texas GOP suggesting abortion seekers end up on death row, it was really my imagination mulling on the state of abortion in 2019 and 2020. With that in mind, it wasn’t difficult to predict this near-future America. I was inspired by Margaret Atwood’s method for writing The Handmaid’s Tale. Atwood said every sadistic punishment in that novel was inspired by real life. Someone on Twitter asked her: “How do you come up with this shit?” Atwood’s response: “As if I invented it.”
GLAAD: Narrators and best friends, Noor and Laylah, share an unwavering commitment to change the world for the better, yet their strong opinions do not always align. Can you touch on the overarching themes of intercommunity conflict and how Noor and Laylah demonstrate intersectionality in religion/faith, gender, race, queerness, and feminism.
SY: Laylah came to me fully formed: seventeen, obsessed with becoming an obstetrician, wearing a hijab partly as a way of asserting her identity to parents who are not at all religious and to a society that can’t reconcile feminism with hijab-wearing. Laylah wants to better the world one patient at a time. Noor, on the other hand, is a reporter who practices movement journalism and, in an America that’s banned abortion and all hormonal medications, she doesn’t see any opposition between reproductive rights activism and reproductive rights reporting. She’s the light (nur means light in Arabic) to Laylah’s dark (laylah means night). They both want to live lives of positive impact but come to this from opposite angles: the collective versus the personal. They happen to be co-authoring the Texas Teen’s Guide to Safe Abortion, but even there, they have different visions of how their lives will contribute to a greater good. Noor and Laylah also come to feminism differently. They both identify as feminists, although Noor pokes holes in the way some aspects of mainstream Islam might contradict with feminism. But they both are beginning to realize how layered and messy and personal this all is: politics, faith, friendship, feminism, and righting the world.
GLAAD: Discuss how abortion access is an inherently LGBTQ issue and how Noor navigates her identity as an unapologetically queer Muslim teen in Texas.
SY: Whether you’re advocating for queer rights or reproductive rights, you’re fighting for bodily autonomy, for people to be empowered to make choices about their desires, their futures. When Roe v. Wade was overturned and it was clear that the Court was coming for same sex marriage next, GLAAD CEO and President, Sarah Kate Ellis reminded us that “The anti-abortion playbook and the anti-LGBTQ playbook are one and the same.” We have to be united in these fights. That’s why fighting queerphobia should be central to reproductive rights activism. All of our struggles are connected.
GLAAD: From Noor and Laylah to their families and classmates, your experience as an Emmy Award-winning journalist, doctor, professor, and poet are deeply embedded in the fabric of this novel. How did your previous work and expertise in these fields inform the creation of Unbecoming?
SY: This novel might not have come about had I not spent years as a staff writer at The Dallas Morning News covering pregnancy and abortion in Texas. The way I approach research as a reporter informs my storytelling (and it informed Noor’s storyline since she’s an over-enthusiastic investigative journalist). The first few pages of the novel and some of Laylah’s interactions with healthcare providers throughout are, sadly, based on things I saw and heard as a practicing physician. Although I’ve never cared for patients in a country in which abortion is banned, I have been in the emergency room and heard doctors say they wouldn’t bother testing a teenager in a hijaab for pregnancy because they believed that hijaabis don’t get horny. I can tell you as a formerly horny hijaabi (the past tense applies to the hijaab-wearing) that these assumptions are dangerous, although they are also hilarious.
GLAAD: Though Noor and Laylah are the main protagonists in this novel, the secondary characters bring unique perspectives that tie the story together. Laylah’s grandmother, Nanima, brings forth a lived experience that weaves the current fight for abortion rights and bodily autonomy in the United States to a long history of activism across the globe. Discuss how today’s movement reflects and intersects with those of the past.
SY: I’m thrilled to see the novel’s secondary character’s getting love in interviews and reviews! These characters are layered, contradictory, not always what you’d expect. Without giving away too much about Laylah’s grandmother (and it melts my heart to see non-Gujarati’s using our word for maternal grandmother, nanima, since it evokes such precious connotations for me), Unbecoming is an inter-generational story that challenges ageism, our expectations of what older women know and have experienced, and how much information—even salacious information!—about us our loved ones can handle. Laylah and Noor can come off as know it alls who think they’re the first girls in the entire history of humanity to have endured injustice and organized against oppression. What they learn is that they are part of a long lineage of femme activists, storytellers and organizers who brought about change in unique ways. They’re not the first and they won’t be the last.
GLAAD: While Unbecoming explores themes of intergenerational trauma, it also discusses intergenerational strength. Discuss the importance of this dichotomy and the creation of well-rounded, ambitious, and resilient leading characters.
SY: I’m a keynote speaker at corporate events and organizers usually want me to discuss what lessons they should learn from the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. One of my favorite things to talk about is post-traumatic growth syndrome, a phenomenon which can sometimes occur after trauma, if you’re open to navigating trauma in particular ways. Similarly, nanima’s story sheds light on how people can endure and even triumph after trauma. Not to take away from the very real and very horrifying things that have been inflicted upon people’s bodies, but there is an afterlife to these experiences, and that can include lifting others out of oppression and reimagining a radically better world.
GLAAD: Bollywood has a strong influence in Laylah’s life. Tell us about the decision to include Hindi cinema and culture in Laylah’s subconscious.
SY: I love the drama of Bollywood! The opportune and sometimes inopportune dance breaks! The whimsy, the romance. The outfits! I had this idea of Laylah as a Type A kinda gal who needs life to go according to the Laylah Life Plan. When things are not going according to the LLP, well, I’ll leave it to the reader to discover exactly what happens! The visual and sonic legacy of Bollywood gave me a way to inject Laylah’s idealism into the story. Don’t we all lay back and day dream about a world in which our skin is perfect and there are no abortion bans? Don’t we all want to be swept off our feet by the (butch) hunk of our dreams and to collapse into a bed of flowers? So yes, this is a teen abortion novel. But I set it in Texas, and made it Bollywood.
GLAAD: Noor’s pansexual identity is not a point of contention in the novel, nor does she have a ‘coming out’ scene—it is simply one facet of her identity. Touch on the importance of proud queer characters in the YA genre.
SY: What a joy to write a character who’s “just” queer. I say “just” queer because Noor’s storyline isn’t riddled with angst over her identity, pronouns or coming out. She’s not agonizing over parental repercussions or contending with other people’s opinions about her desires. She’s not busy explaining herself to anyone. Noor’s story reflects the reality and breadth of the queer Muslim experience. Some of us come out to our parents only for them to say “Yep, we knew. What’s for dinner?” We don’t all live in fear of our mother’s disowning us and our father’s beating us. It’s high time for the Islamophobia and lazy stereotypes about queer Muslims that still exist in the queer community to die a tragic, dramatic, Bollywood death.
Pre-order Unbecoming now and buy the novel tomorrow! Be sure to check out Yasmin’s other books: What the Fact?: Finding the Truth in All the Noise, The ABCs of Queer History, If God is a Virus, BS: Medical Myths and Why We Fall for Them, Djinnology, Muslim Women Are Everything, and The Impatient Dr. Lange. For more information, follow Seema Yasmin and sign up for her newsletter!