My guest today is Dr. Eman Abdelhadi, professor at the University of Chicago, author of a forthcoming academic book called Impossible Futures: Why Women Leave American Muslim Communities, as well as the co-author of a speculative fiction novel called Everything for Everyone. Eman is also the subject of a documentary called Coming Around that is now, if you’re listening to this at the end of July 2023, screening virtually at the OutFest film festival in Los Angeles.
***Watch the virtual screening here until July30!***
The documentary portrays Eman’s relationship with her mother, a devout Palestinian Muslim woman who raised Eman and her siblings as a single mother in a small town in Missouri. The document is a nuanced portrayal of their deeply loving and complicated coming around to each other in spite of their differences.
In this conversation we talk about the documentary, Eman’s sociological work on Muslim American communities and what’s happening with the conversation in those spaces around queerness now, and about other places where the themes of family– blood, found, and otherwise– emerge.
Follow Eman on Instagram @eabdelhadi
Follow Eman on Twitter @eabdelhadi
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Dr. Eman Abdelhadi: queer Muslim activist, academic, and artist