The Muslim, hijab-wearing girls' basketball team of Milwaukee’s Salam School is the inspiration behind a new children’s book.
It’s called We Are Big Time, and it’s Hena Khan’s first graphic novel.
Khan based this story on Salam School’s 2018-19 season. At that time, their record was 13-4, and they gained national attention for being an all-Muslim hijab-wearing basketball team.
We Are Big Time follows a Muslim teen, Aliya, who comes to Wisconsin from Florida. She’s at a new school, she’ll have to make new friends, and she’s interested in joining the basketball team, which is struggling to win.
In a conversation with WUWM’s Race & Ethnicity Reporter, Teran Powell, Khan talks about the book and the importance of telling diverse stories.
Khan spoke to former players to gain insight for her book.
"I was thinking about the inspiration of these girls, but also, you know, the typical very relatable challenges of being a student-athlete, and some of the things that involve. Things like moving, and being in a new school, and needing to make new friends, and all the things that kids today face, along with the joys of being part of this team and the wonderful season they had," Khan says.
"Another key point I wanted to include and was thinking about while I was researching and writing, was the unexpected media attention that these girls got and the sudden, I guess, expectation that they were representing our faith and other hijab-wearing women around the world. And that intense pressure and scrutiny that they were suddenly under where they you know, really wanted to just play basketball," Khan added.
Khan says she wanted to go beyond what headlines were saying about the team and really ask players what questions they wished the media asked them.
"From the way some of the coverage was presented, it made it sound like they were overcoming stereotypes and discrimination, and I said, well, did something happen? Because there was sort of an illusion to incidents, and I thought maybe there was something dramatic that had happened ... and thankfully, it sounds like it wasn't," Khan says.
Khans says she was relieved that it wasn't the case that the team experienced some major racist incident, and that everything mostly came down to good old fashioned basketball trash talk.
For Khan, writing children's books makes her think about the role books played in her childhood. She says they were a source of comfort for her.
"They really spoke to me and opened up my eyes to the world around me and the way other people lived," she says. "I grew up as a child of immigrants and as a Muslim. I didn't feel like I always fit in, so I think books really filled that curiosity that I had for people around me."
Khan says the books she read as a kid helped shape her as a person; she still thinks about the characters from the books. "That makes me really want to write for children in the hopes that my stories will stay with kids," Khan says.
Knowing the impact that a variety of books had on her childhood, Khan says it's unfortunate that books by diverse authors have been banned in recent years.
"Some of my books are included on lists of banned books because they've been included on lists for anti-racist education or for inclusive learning. And it breaks my heart to know that kids are being denied access to these stories that will help them get to know people around them who may look different than them ... to see how much they have in common with these characters and their lives," she says.
Khan says she hopes people will read We Are Big Time and push back against the banning of stories that don't feature what is considered traditional content.
"And say not in my community, not in my home. I will let my children read widely, and read freely and get to know the world and society as it exists," she says.
