Becoming Baba

From Slate staff writer Aymann Ismail comes an exquisite memoir about fatherhood, religion, and the search for identity in an ever-shifting world.The son of Egyptian immigrants, Aymann Ismail came of age in the shadow of 9/11, tracking the barrage of predatory headlines pervading the media and influencing the popular consciousness about Muslims. After a series of bomb threats were directed at his Islamic school in Teaneck, New Jersey, just a few miles from downtown Manhattan, his parents—anxious that it was no longer safe to be so explicitly Muslim—enrolled him in public school, where he was the only Muslim his new friends had ever met. In the privacy of their home, they turned to their faith for guidance on how to live, adhering to traditional notions about gender roles, and avoiding the putative American dangers of alcohol, sex, and rebellion.And yet, Aymann is undeniably an American teenager, negotiating his place in multiple worlds while chafing against the structures of h