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Temple Folk by Aaliyah Bilal surprised me. I have never seen a book of stories focused on the Nation of Islam, though I’ve encountered discussion of the Nation of Islam in reading other books, particularly in the autobiography and other biographies of Malcolm X.
Temple Folk honors the Black American community within the Nation of Islam in a way that I have never seen reflected before. While this is Bilal’s debut book, this collection of ten short stories demonstrates a deep understanding of the human condition and the inner life of Black folks who have chosen to practice faith as a means of survival.
The book is deeply contextualized within Nation of Islam. Unless you’re familiar with Nation of Islam, you may find yourself confused at points, but it’s no reason to avoid this beautiful prose. As is the case any time you enter into a new cultural environment, you’ll need to do a lot of inferring and will have to accept that you may not grasp the stories’ significance as completely as those who are part of the culture. You may want to do some exploration of the faith’s precepts and history before beginning Aaliyah Bilal’s collection of stories.
Bilal’s stories examine the different ways Nation of Islam has shaped believers and former believers’ lives. She focuses a lot on inconsistency (in some cases hypocrisy) in her characters’ religious beliefs and practices. One thing her characters have in common is a strong ethical sense. These are individuals who take living within a faith and decision-making about right and wrong with deep seriousness.
Temple Folk is informative, challenging, and valuable. Bilal’s book is promising both in terms of her own stance as a writer and in terms of the development of fiction set within a Nation of Islam context. We need more such writing — and also need to see where Bilal will take us as she continues writing.
The stories easily transition from one narrative to another. For me, as a reader, this speaks to how rich the storytelling is in this collection and the common threads that are woven throughout these standalone pieces.
Each and every one of us deals with certain contradictions in our lives, and this collection of stories examines and exposes these contradictions among “Temple” folk. The struggles around faith, sexuality, ethics, and moral relations are features in these ten stories. We get a glimpse into the conspiracies of Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam, although he is never mentioned by name. Some stories end abruptly, and some of the characters are rigid and harsh. Still there is much to like and learn through these stories of regular people trying to navigate through life while remaining faithful to their faith and to their true selves. Sometimes that alignment is not okay.
One standout story for me is “Blue,” which is the first story in the book. It explores the disappointment one contends with when they discover hypocrisies within loved ones. This story begins with an event. It is a special day. The Trailway bus is their transportation. Bilal writes full and wonderful descriptions of people, places, and things. A dark-skinned girl whose mother calls her “a child so black, she blue,” gains a new sense of self in Chicago, where a man addressing a crowd locks eyes with her while praising the virtues of dark-skinned women in the view of the Nation of Islam: “…the real thing…none of the stain of the ol’ master’s blood running in her veins…a taste of chocolate sweetness out of a dream.”
“Woman in Niqab” is another story that explores how we grapple with being disappointed in family members. A daughter’s suspicion of her father’s infidelity prompts her to wear her hair in public. “Candy for Hanif” brought tears to my eyes because it is a story that we don’t often see reflected on the page, particularly in a religious setting where so many families raising individuals with special needs find help and community. Sister Norah cares for her cognitively delayed son after her husband dies. “In that moment,” Bilal writes, “the entire city looked to her like a cage, placing limits on what she could know of the world.”
This story is told with deep compassion, and Bilal manages to show the impact the mosque had on this family unit. “Candy for Hanif” shows how when you take care of others for so long, sometimes you don’t even know how to ask for the help you need.
Books are meant to entertain us, for sure. Yet, they also have the power to educate and enlighten us about things that we may not know much about, or even feel comfortable with. This is one of those books.
I give this book a 5/5-star review. The stories accomplish presenting moral failures with compassion, as well as humor to remind us that while perfection is what many of us strive for, it’s our faults that really make us human.
Temple Folk is available July 4, 2023, on Amazon.
Temple Folk by Aaliyah Bilal surprised me. I have never seen a book of stories focused on the Nation of Islam, though I’ve encountered discussion of the Nation of Islam in reading other books, particularly in the autobiography and other biographies of Malcolm X.
Temple Folk honors the Black American community within the Nation of Islam in a way that I have never seen reflected before. While this is Bilal’s debut book, this collection of ten short stories demonstrates a deep understanding of the human condition and the inner life of Black folks who have chosen to practice faith as a means of survival.
The book is deeply contextualized within Nation of Islam. Unless you’re familiar with Nation of Islam, you may find yourself confused at points, but it’s no reason to avoid this beautiful prose. As is the case any time you enter into a new cultural environment, you’ll need to do a lot of inferring and will have to accept that you may not grasp the stories’ significance as completely as those who are part of the culture. You may want to do some exploration of the faith’s precepts and history before beginning Aaliyah Bilal’s collection of stories.
Bilal’s stories examine the different ways Nation of Islam has shaped believers and former believers’ lives. She focuses a lot on inconsistency (in some cases hypocrisy) in her characters’ religious beliefs and practices. One thing her characters have in common is a strong ethical sense. These are individuals who take living within a faith and decision-making about right and wrong with deep seriousness.
Temple Folk is informative, challenging, and valuable. Bilal’s book is promising both in terms of her own stance as a writer and in terms of the development of fiction set within a Nation of Islam context. We need more such writing — and also need to see where Bilal will take us as she continues writing.
The stories easily transition from one narrative to another. For me, as a reader, this speaks to how rich the storytelling is in this collection and the common threads that are woven throughout these standalone pieces.
Each and every one of us deals with certain contradictions in our lives, and this collection of stories examines and exposes these contradictions among “Temple” folk. The struggles around faith, sexuality, ethics, and moral relations are features in these ten stories. We get a glimpse into the conspiracies of Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam, although he is never mentioned by name. Some stories end abruptly, and some of the characters are rigid and harsh. Still there is much to like and learn through these stories of regular people trying to navigate through life while remaining faithful to their faith and to their true selves. Sometimes that alignment is not okay.
One standout story for me is “Blue,” which is the first story in the book. It explores the disappointment one contends with when they discover hypocrisies within loved ones. This story begins with an event. It is a special day. The Trailway bus is their transportation. Bilal writes full and wonderful descriptions of people, places, and things. A dark-skinned girl whose mother calls her “a child so black, she blue,” gains a new sense of self in Chicago, where a man addressing a crowd locks eyes with her while praising the virtues of dark-skinned women in the view of the Nation of Islam: “…the real thing…none of the stain of the ol’ master’s blood running in her veins…a taste of chocolate sweetness out of a dream.”
“Woman in Niqab” is another story that explores how we grapple with being disappointed in family members. A daughter’s suspicion of her father’s infidelity prompts her to wear her hair in public. “Candy for Hanif” brought tears to my eyes because it is a story that we don’t often see reflected on the page, particularly in a religious setting where so many families raising individuals with special needs find help and community. Sister Norah cares for her cognitively delayed son after her husband dies. “In that moment,” Bilal writes, “the entire city looked to her like a cage, placing limits on what she could know of the world.”
This story is told with deep compassion, and Bilal manages to show the impact the mosque had on this family unit. “Candy for Hanif” shows how when you take care of others for so long, sometimes you don’t even know how to ask for the help you need.
Books are meant to entertain us, for sure. Yet, they also have the power to educate and enlighten us about things that we may not know much about, or even feel comfortable with. This is one of those books.
I give this book a 5/5-star review. The stories accomplish presenting moral failures with compassion, as well as humor to remind us that while perfection is what many of us strive for, it’s our faults that really make us human.
Temple Folk is available July 4, 2023, on Amazon.
It’s time y’all. Dust off those character sheets and get ready to roll dem bones, as Black Nerd Problems takes its first dive into a live Dungeons & Dragons live stream. We hope you’ll join us on this magical 3-shot adventure held on every other weekend throughout the month of July beginning July 1st. To get you ready for this brand-new event, let’s introduce our world, our players, and our Game Master.
Welcome to Riyoon
In the world of Riyoon, a cataclysmic event known as “the Great Rift” forever changed the fabric of reality. Before the Rift (B.R.), the realms of the material plane, feywild, and shadowfell existed in closer harmony. Mortals and creatures traversed these realms with relative ease, and the balance between them, while tumultuous, was maintained. Hulya, one of the nation-states within Riyoon, flourished as a bastion of magical knowledge and vibrant culture.
In the aftermath of the Great Rift (A.R.), while the connection between the realms of Riyoon was severed, there remain scattered gateways and portals that allow limited passage between them. These portals, hidden in forgotten corners or accessible through powerful magical means, promise opportunity and peril for those seeking to traverse the once-intertwined realms.
Over the centuries, some people of Riyoon have yearned for a way to bridge the gap created by the Great Rift, to restore the interconnectedness of the realms, and bring back the lost wonders. They seek to understand the cause of the rift and find a means to reunite the shattered realms. However, amidst the chaos and uncertainty, there are those who see an opportunity to exploit the fractured state of the realms for their own gain. Power-hungry individuals, opportunistic factions, and malevolent forces aiming to exploit the interplanar discord, twist the delicate balance, and unleash chaos for their own purposes. Enter our heroes.
Meet D.A.T.Z.
Dalox, The Lantern Sun Soul Monk Mikkel Snyder, @ChimericNotion
“The boundaries are blurry out in the Fae Wilds. I am merely one beacon back, a steppingstone. The lost must choose to face perdition first.”
Dalox always understood the natural flow of energies in the world, the way power circulated in the body, and how that power could be expelled outside of it. Their parents knew they could not teach their cub the path they were on, so they led them to a monastery and for years, Dalox trained. On the eve of Dalox’s ascension to a fully-fledged monk, they were kidnapped by a roaming band of Fae and taken into the wilds. No one knew exactly what happened, and years passed. One day, the monastery heard a single solitary knock at their door and found a wounded Dalox at the gate.
They didn’t talk much about what had happened. They rested, recouped, and then asked to learn a different path: The Way of the Sun Soul. The monastery pointed them to the sole practitioner in Riyoon, and Dalox once again vanished into the distance.
But these days, there are plenty of rumors of a Bleached Leonin roaming the wild. Plenty of sightings of a roaming nomad carrying a solitary lantern and quarterstaff, surveying the boundary of worlds.
Autumnus Bladesinger Wizard Garrett Green, @blkriku
“Deep within a Fey’s heart, lies the mischievous melody of the Elven spirit.”
A seemingly simple melody on a single sheet of parchment was the only possession with Autumnus when he arrived at the orphanage as a toddler. This orphanage was known for taking in children affected by the continuous aftermath of the Great Rift. As an Eladrin, his long lifespan meant he’d seen many caretakers and orphans come and go. One caretaker he grew exceptionally close to was Mufaska, a kindly Leonin who taught him how to play the violin. With this knowledge, he set his sights on learning the melody. Perfecting this tune unlocked the secrets of the Bladesinger and once he became of age by Elven standards, he set out to become an adventurer.
A true autumn child, Autumnus is a caring and personable individual. Loving to perform and play his violin, he may see himself more charismatic than he actually is. Along with his familiar, The Fantastical Mr. Fox, Phineas Mc-Fennec-Gan, he adventures to earn money to send to the orphanage, and this is what drew him to work with his current party. Those whom he calls his chosen family.
Taldra’Anad Oath of the Ancients Paladin Keith Reid-Cleveland, @Keefabara
Taldra’Anad is a Dragonborn paladin/fighter. He was raised on the core belief that he and his fellow Dragonborn are distant descendants of the first dragons to settle the land and should be treated as such.
In his youth, this arrogance and entitlement led him to make many poor decisions and ultimately be given a choice of enlisting in the royal army or serving time in the gem mines. After finishing a successful military career and developing a more grounded worldview, he now spreads word of the ancient dragons and the good fortune they’ve bestowed upon the world to everyone he can while making a profit.
Zahra Circle of Dreams Druid Victoria Vertein, @HijabiGeek
Zahra grew up in a community that seeks the balance of the world before the Great Rift. They inhabit the various borderlands where the Fey world and Riyoon still overlap. She sees herself of both worlds and is most comfortable when her access is not restricted, feeling out of sorts in situations that are fully Riyoon or fully Fey. Her community is not bound by class or species; anyone with an open mind and good heart is welcome. However, increasingly negative encounters with Ilok (ee-lok), bandits of many stripes looking to make a profit bringing resources from one world to the other, from both sides has led to a more secretive and seclusionary lifestyle for her people.
Zahra herself has ventured out to see what change a generation has made.
The Game Master
Game Master (GM) She’Rohn Draper, @darth_draper
I played my first D&D game in 2018. It was something that I always had an interest in, but never knew anyone that played. I started DMing a few games in 2019 and tried to connect with or create some on-going gaming groups, but they never fit right. When the pandemic hit and BNP opened up their discord, our dear friend Mikkel invited me to join and engage the tabletop space. After playing in a couple one-shots and feeling like I’d found my people, I offered to run an on-going campaign. We’ve been playing every other Saturday since January 2021. My hope is that more Black and brown folks hop into this space and build their own dope worlds. Tabletop can feel very white, very straight, and very male, and that can make it inaccessible or unpalatable. The stories we tell when we are safe and comfortable have so much more flavor, and I wanted to share that.
Come Along on a Journey
And there we have it my friends. I hope you are as excited as all of us to embark on this magic filled campaign. You can catch us on the Black Nerd Problems Twitch channel on July 1, 15, and 29 @3pm/est for this 3-part event. We hope to see you there.
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The post A Midsummer’s Night Stream: A BNP D&D Live Stream appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.