What does it mean to be a middle-class Muslim kid in India today? Talking to over a hundred children and their parents across twelve cities, Nazia Erum uncovers stories of religious segregation in classrooms and rampant bullying of Muslim children in many of the countryÕs top schools.

Muslim Mothering is an interdisciplinary volume, concentrating on the experiences of Muslim mothers, largely in the contemporary period. The volume is notable for the global range of its contributors and topics, indicative of the number of Muslim majority national contexts and large and diverse Muslim diaspora of today's world. While motherhood is highly valued in the sacred texts of Islam, the lived reality of Muslim mothers demonstrates that their lives do not often conform with traditional religious paradigms. For instance, prominent among the themes uniting these essays from diverse global contexts are the challenges facing Muslim mothers to protect and nurture their children in the context of war and militarization. With ongoing turbulence in the Middle East and subcontinent, many Muslims mothers face the difficulties of rearing children amongst frequent bombings and episodes of violence. Muslim mothers living in the diaspora face other challenges, such as the difficulty of fostering positive Muslim identity as a minority and in a context of Islamophobia. Other contributions discuss the way that Muslim mothers negotiate cultural institutions and practices, such as divorce, adoption/guardianship, post-partum confinement, and societal/religious expectations of procreation. This collection demonstrates the diverse and complex ways that Muslim mothers define and redefine the resources of Islam to negotiate better situations for themselves and their children, revealing how religious identity is a dynamic and vital force in their everyday lives.

A People Book of the Week & a Kirkus Best Nonfiction of the Year An exquisite and inspiring memoir about one mother’s unimaginable choice in the face of oppression and abuse in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. In the days before Homeira Qaderi gave birth to her son, Siawash, the road to the hospital in Kabul would often be barricaded because of the frequent suicide explosions. With the city and the military on edge, it was not uncommon for an armed soldier to point his gun at the pregnant woman’s bulging stomach, terrified that she was hiding a bomb. Frightened and in pain, she was once forced to make her way on foot. Propelled by the love she held for her soon-to-be-born child, Homeira walked through blood and wreckage to reach the hospital doors. But the joy of her beautiful son’s birth was soon overshadowed by other dangers that would threaten her life. No ordinary Afghan woman, Homeira refused to cower under the strictures of a misogynistic social order. Defying the law, she risked her freedom to teach children reading and writing and fought for women’s rights in her theocratic and patriarchal society. Devastating in its power, Dancing in the Mosque is a mother’s searing letter to a son she was forced to leave behind. In telling her story—and that of Afghan women—Homeira challenges you to reconsider the meaning of motherhood, sacrifice, and survival. Her story asks you to consider the lengths you would go to protect yourself, your family, and your dignity.

What does it mean to be Muslim in India?What does it mean to look like one's religion?Does one's faith determine how one is perceived?Is there a secular ideal one is supposed to live up to?Can people of different faiths have a shared culture, a shared identity?India has, since time immemorial, been plural, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-lingual, where various streams have fed into and strengthened each other, and where dissimilarities have always been a cause for rejoicing rather than strife. These writings, on and about being Muslim in India, by Rakhshanda Jalil - one of the country's foremost literary historians and cultural commentators - excavate memories, interrogate dilemmas, and rediscover and celebrate a nation and its syncretic culture. But You Don't Look Like a Muslim is a book that every thinking Indian must read.

Family, Law and Politics, Volume II of the Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures, brings together over 360 entries on women, family, law, politics, and Islamic cultures around the world.

A pioneer of modern motherhood studies, Andrea O'Reilly explores motherhood's current representation and practice, considering developments that were unimaginable decades ago: the Internet, interracial surrogacy, raising transchildren, male mothering, intensive mothering, queer parenting, the applications of new biotechnologies, and mothering in the post-9/11 era. Her work pulls together a range of disciplines and themes in motherhood studies. She confronts the effects of globalization, HIV/AIDS, welfare reform, politicians as mothers, third wave feminism, and the evolving motherhood movement, and she incorporates Chicana, African-American, Canadian, Muslim, queer, low-income, trans, and lesbian perspectives.

The story every mother in America needs to read. As featured on NPR and the TODAY Show. All moms have to deal with choosing baby names, potty training, finding your village, and answering your kid's tough questions, but if you are raising a Black child, you have to deal with a lot more than that. Especially if you're a single Black mom... and adopting. Nefertiti Austin shares her story of starting a family through adoption as a single Black woman. In this unflinching account of her parenting journey, Nefertiti examines the history of adoption in the African American community, faces off against stereotypes of single Black moms, and confronts the reality of what it looks like to raise children of color and answer their questions about racism in modern-day America. Honest, vulnerable, and uplifting, Motherhood So White is a fantastic book for mothers who have read White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo, Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi, Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Daniel Tatum, or other books about racism and want to see how these social issues play out in a very personal way for a single mom and her Black son. This great book club read explores social and cultural bias, gives a new perspective on a familiar experience, and sparks meaningful conversations about what it looks like for Black families in white America today.