{"id":60941,"date":"2016-06-27T21:44:18","date_gmt":"2016-06-27T10:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/?p=60941"},"modified":"2017-08-31T12:42:42","modified_gmt":"2017-08-31T01:42:42","slug":"michael-met-mina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2016\/06\/27\/michael-met-mina\/","title":{"rendered":"When Michael Met Mina: a boy, a girl, two families … and one great divide."},"content":{"rendered":"

Randa Abdel-Fattah, award-winning writer of\u00a0Does My Head Look Big In This?<\/a><\/i>\u00a0visited Booktopia today to chat about and sign copies of her new book When Michael Met Mina<\/em><\/a>. Learn more or pre-order your signed copy here<\/a>!<\/p>\n

\"Randa<\/a>

Randa Abdel-Fattah (left) with Booktopia’s YA expert, Sarah McDuling.<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\n

 <\/p>\n

Please tell us about your new book, When Michael<\/span> Met<\/span> Mina<\/span><\/em>.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Just over three and a half years ago I quit law and started a PhD to explore racism, specifically Islamophobia, from the point of view of its perpetrators. While I was conducting my fieldwork, interviewing people, attending anti-Islam and anti-refugee rallies, a character popped into my head. Well, two to be precise.<\/p>\n

One was a young Afghan refugee. A \u2018boat person\u2019 we see maligned and stigmatised by both sides of politics. Bright, fierce, courageous, scarred, she wouldn\u2019t budge from my head. I thought about what it would mean for this young girl to have fled Afghanistan, grow up in Western Sydney, only for me to then throw her into a private school in the lower north shore of Sydney. I called her Mina<\/span>. The other person who popped into my head at one of the rallies I was attending was a boy called Michael<\/span>.<\/p>\n

As I interviewed people about their \u2018fears of being swamped by boats\u2019, about the \u2018Islamisation of Australia\u2019, about the so-called \u2018clash of civilisations\u2019, I wondered what it would mean to be a teenager growing up in a family peddling such racism and paranoia. How do you \u2018unlearn\u2019 racism? How do you find the courage to question your parents\u2019 beliefs? How do you accept responsibility for learning about the world on your own terms? That\u2019s when I decided to write a story that took these two characters, Michael<\/span> and Mina<\/span>, and threw them at each other.<\/span><\/p>\n

What do you feel was the greatest challenge you faced during the writing process?<\/b><\/p>\n

The greatest challenge was writing Michael<\/span>\u2019s parents. I didn\u2019t want them to be racist caricatures. It was about finding the writing balance and tone and complexity, not reducing them to a one-dimensional racist stereotype.<\/p>\n

Do you believe in the idea that opposites attract? Michael<\/span> and Mina<\/span> are very different people with little in common, and yet they share a similar sense of humour and similar taste in movies and music etc. Do you think it their differences or their similarities that attract them to one another?<\/b><\/p>\n

I think all relationships need the right balance of differences and similarities. Too many differences and there\u2019s nothing to share. Too much in common and it gets boring! I don\u2019t know what makes some people click and what makes others run as far away from each other as possible! But with Michael<\/span> and Mina,<\/span>\u00a0I think there\u2019s something beyond their taste in movies and music, and that\u2019s their mutual capacity to question, to learn and grow.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_5483\"<\/a>
\nThere is a very eclectic mix of film and literary references throughout the book, such as Oscar Wilde, Lord of the Rings, The xx etc. Are these all personal favourites of yours? How did they influence\/inspire your writing? <\/b><\/p>\n

I was happy to indulge my own film, book and music tastes in this book. It was fun! The characters came first and I just felt that those kind of quirky tastes were true to them.<\/p>\n

In the book, there are many examples of people defending racist opinions\/actions by arguing that \u201cit\u2019s not personal\u201d or that they \u201cmeant no offense\u201d.\u00a0 Why do you think this is so often the go-to defence for racism?<\/b><\/p>\n

Ah yes. It\u2019s about as common as \u2018I\u2019m not racist but\u2026\u2019 or \u2018I have a black\/Asian\/Muslim etc friend\u2019. I think it\u2019s important to interrogate and expose these excuses which is why I made sure to use them.<\/p>\n

There are some great examples of people changing and growing in the book \u00a0– \u00a0in particular Michael<\/span>\u2019s character growth. And at the same time, you have characters like Terrence who remain stubbornly resistant to change. Do you think everyone is capable of change or are some people too stuck in their ways?<\/b><\/p>\n

Yes, I think everyone is capable of change. But not everybody is capable or willing to change. I think it\u2019s important to understand that change is hard, that there are structural forces bigger than \u2018willpower\u2019 that block people from having the courage to ask questions about who they are and what they believe.<\/p>\n

\u00a0If there is one thing you hope people will take away from the experience of reading When Michael<\/span> met<\/span> Mina<\/span><\/em> \u2013 what would it be?<\/b><\/p>\n

Never stop questioning and reflecting on what you have, who you are, and what you know and don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Randa Abdel-Fattah, award-winning writer of\u00a0Does My Head Look Big In This?\u00a0visited Booktopia today to chat about and sign copies of her new book When Michael Met Mina. Learn more or pre-order your signed copy here!   Please tell us about your new book, When Michael Met Mina. Just over three and a half years ago I quit law and started a PhD to explore racism, specifically Islamophobia, from the point of view of its perpetrators. While I was conducting my fieldwork, interviewing people, attending anti-Islam and anti-refugee rallies, a character popped into my head. Well, two to be precise. One was a young Afghan refugee. A \u2018boat person\u2019 we see maligned and stigmatised by both sides of politics. Bright, fierce, courageous, scarred, she wouldn\u2019t budge from my head. I thought about what it would mean for this young girl to have fled Afghanistan, grow up in Western Sydney, only for me to then throw her into a private school in the lower north shore of Sydney. I called her Mina. The other person who popped into my head at one of the rallies I was attending was a boy called Michael. As I interviewed people about their \u2018fears of being…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":60943,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[4,6676,73,85],"tags":[4416,6845,6644],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/SocialMediaImage34.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60941"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60941"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75823,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60941\/revisions\/75823"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}