Kasim Ali Wanted to Write the Book His Community Didn’t Have

Kasim Ali always wanted to be an author, writing vicariously every evening between episodes of television, and typically clocked in at two or three novels a year. They’re all on his laptop, never to be seen, having faced rejection after rejection. The 27-year-old, who is native to Birmingham, wrote them on the side of working in publishing as an editor, first at smaller publishers, and now at Penguin Random House in London.

Ali’s new novel, Good Intentions, was similarly going to stay in a word .doc file forever. It was feverishly written in a few weeks, as a retaliation to the “stereotypical portrayal of Brown people in The Big Sick”.  A close friend read it, sent it to an agent, and it later sold as part of a six-figure deal to 4th Estate.

Ali sounds a lot like Nur the main character from Good Intentions – a young Muslim from Birmingham of Pakistani heritage with aspirations of being a writer, just like him. But if Ali sees parts of himself in all the male characters from his novel, he also sees himself in the fierce and sassy Sara. He sees the push and pull of racial tension, and specifically anti-Blackness, within his community, which greatly informs the book.

Covering a few years in the life of recent graduate British-Pakistani Nur, much of the book focuses on his relationship with the British-Sudanese PhD student Yasmina – Nur worries that his family won’t accept her because she is Black, so he keeps their relationship a secret for years. The idea is that “everyone acts with the best intentions in the book, but often best intentions aren’t the right thing to act upon,” Ali says.

So far, Good Intentions has picked up praise everywhere from Vogue India to The Sunday Times, who likened him to Sally Rooney – a compliment he tweeted about, only to then add “The South Asian urge to delete this tweet because it’s too boastful” four minutes later. His immersion in the publishing world doesn’t necessarily mean Ali is thrilled by what he sees around him though: debates on whether men are writing enough books is one thing, but another is the lack of men like Ali being published. This lack of representation was enough to prompt Kasim to write a list of “50+ Men of Colour Publishing in 2022” for Bad Form Review.

Ali spoke to AnOther about the lack of diversity in the British publishing world, the importance of seeing yourself in literature, and his hopes to write a memoir.

Rhys Thomas: So your Bad Form Review article, what spawned that?

Kasim Ali: In Britain, I seem to be one of the only male Muslim debuts in 2022 from a big and traditional publisher. There are around 3.5 million Muslims in Britain right now, so how are there so few? Obviously, there’s going to be more of us out there writing, but why are they not getting published? There’s clearly a barrier somewhere. Off the top of my head, the only very famous male Muslim writers from the UK I can think of are Mohsin Hamid, and Salman Rushdie. And like, Salman Rushdie … I don’t want him on my team, man.

I read The Santanic Verses despite my mum’s anger (because the book is against Islam) and I was angry he did that because, along with the obvious, he’s a very good writer. So yeah, I guess it comes from being frustrated that I can only think of those two.

Rhys Thomas: So your debut, Good Intentions, what was the genesis of this book?

Kasim Ali: The Big Sick’s really stereotypical portrayal of Brown people annoyed me a lot and prompted me to start writing what ended up becoming this book. It’s quite funny to say that my whole career pivoted on Kumail Nanjiani, but it did. That aside, I wanted to write about anti-Blackness in the South Asian community. It’s rampant. And I find that there’s a certain hypocrisy among Muslims when talking about it.

“I wanted to write about anti-Blackness in the South Asian community. It’s rampant. And I find that there’s a certain hypocrisy among Muslims when talking about it” – Kasim Ali

Rhys Thomas: What’s the hypocrisy?

Kasim Ali: People will often lean on a famous story about the first Muslim being a Black slave called Bilal, or a phrase from one of Hadid’s scriptures which talks about how we’re one human race at the end of it all, to be like ‘we aren’t racist’. But in actuality, when you look at day-to-day behaviours within the South Asian community (which is all I can really talk about) there’s a lot of racism. For example, I was really light-skinned when I was born, and as a child I’d be told not to go in the sun or to wear a jacket, because I’ll get darker. I was born in 1994. This is why I made Yasmina Muslim. Because so often, people will also be like ‘we don’t want them marrying that person, because they’re not Muslim,’ and they’ll lean on the religion. I wanted to expose that the truth is people worry about the person being white or Black also.

Rhys Thomas: And how much of this book does stem from your own life? I know the geography is biographical. You’re from Birmingham as is the main character, and lived in Nottingham which is where he lives.

Kasim Ali: Yeah. Birmingham, Nottingham and Bradford are places that mean a lot to me. I guess I was writing about the experience I had at university, which was pretentious conversations on ‘what is culture’ and ‘who am I’, while also… smoking some weed. A little like Nur (the protagonist) does in the book, confronting his internal biases. So the cliched ‘first-time author writes about themselves’ model. But there’s three dudes in this book, you don’t know which one is me. I could be any one of them! There’s a bit of me in all the characters I guess really.

Rhys Thomas: Are either of the book editors brown South Asian men?

Kasim Ali: Neither are, but with my first editor, who is white, we spoke a lot about the fear of publishing non-white people – in the sense that the editor can’t edit the writer to the extent that they’d edit white people. Often I see books from Black or Brown people that clearly haven’t been edited, and I didn’t want that happening here so we spoke really openly about it. If something came up in the editing and I’d say to her ‘that’s a South Asian thing,’ I didn’t want her to just roll over and assume I’m the expert.

We also had conversations about not italicising Urdu words. It was really important to me that the proof-readers never came in and italicised them. I find it ‘others’ the language, and for someone who’s bilingual, those words aren’t different, both languages are used seamlessly in conversation. It should look that way on the page. The experience with both was generally really positive.

Rhys Thomas: What do you think I (a white guy from Wales) will have totally overlooked?

Kasim Ali: Plenty. It’s not just you though, I think there’s gonna be stuff in there that non-Muslims overlook, and even South Asian Muslim women, because it’s such a specific – South Asian, oldest son, child of immigrants – situation. And there’s a lot in the book that I refuse to explain, because I think a lot of books over explain stuff. So like, I am the oldest ... actually no, look, the book is not about me, I promise! Like being completely upfront, I haven’t been in a relationship with a Black girl, the whole concept of the book is completely made up in that regard.

Rhys Thomas: Who do you hope reads this book?

Kasim Ali: This might sound rehearsed but I want South Asian boys to be able to read a book about people who look and behave like them. We need to do away with the narrative given to South Asian men which is that they’re super aggressive and violent, or very withholding and closed off. Also the terrorist angle, which is frustrating to say the least. I want to show that you can be a South Asian softboi, and that you can be the kind of person who falls in love with someone and expresses that emotion. The guys in my book seem like softbois, right?

“I want to show that you can be a South Asian softboi, and that you can be the kind of person who falls in love with someone and expresses that emotion” – Kasim Ali

Rhys Thomas: I’d say they do. Do you feel like a lack of access to these books affected you growing up?

Kasim Ali: I grew up in an environment where I wasn’t able to express emotion otherwise I’d get taken the piss out of, right? Called ‘gay’ or ‘a girl’ or whatever. And then I’d internalise those things as insults, and stop doing the things I wanted to that led to people calling me those insults.

It’s not uncommon, toxic masculinity kind of hits everyone. I guess I say South Asian boys specifically because I am one, and it’s about South Asian boys, and it’s for them. I say it’s for them because white men have those stories, they’ve always had those stories. And I think Black men more and more do have access to those stories as well. Whereas with South Asian boys, I often find myself thinking: ‘Is there a book like this for us?’ And getting upset about it.

Rhys Thomas: And you think that’s a pressure thing?

Kasim Ali: I guess, before I was just writing to write. There was no idea of an audience, that’s maybe what’s crippling me since. The idea that there is an expectation, which is why I’m really glad that I wrote my second book before I sold Good Intentions.

Rhys Thomas: What are you looking to do in the future?

Kasim Ali: I want to write a memoir because all I do is carve my heart out and put it on Twitter anyway, but my agent says I’m too young. The second book is about friendship, I won’t say much more on that for now.

Good Intentions by Kasim Ali is out now, published by 4th Estate.