Becoming Baba is a map of how far I drifted from home, and how I found my way back. It’s about resenting your parents, and then resenting yourself for being so stubborn. It’s about having kids, doing my best so they can be their best, and accepting that control is an illusion anyways.
About Becoming Baba
The son of Egyptian immigrants, Aymann grew up in a tightly-knit Islamic community, his whole world revolving around an Islamic school in Jersey City. That world shattered after 9/11, when his parents—anxious that it was no longer safe to be so explicitly Muslim—enrolled him in a local public school. In the privacy of their home, they turned to their faith for guidance on how to live, while Aymann explored his new environment, where he was the only Muslim his new friends had ever met.
And yet, Aymann was undeniably an American teenager, negotiating his place in multiple worlds, chafing against the structures of his upbringing, and resisting abandonment of the mold his parents hoped to shape him into. He eventually embarked on a career in political journalism, in part to establish his own version of things, reckoning with his past, future, and the beliefs that have shaped his life: What does it mean to be a Muslim man? More still, what does it mean to be any man—and a father to a baby boy and girl?
In time, though, he also gains a deeper understanding and appreciation for his parents’ values and sacrifices—his father’s grueling work ethic as a town car driver, and his mother’s adeptness at managing their itinerant family.
When Aymann meets and falls in love with Mira, a woman with her own ideas about the modern Muslim family, his world shifts yet again. After Mira gets pregnant with their first child, Aymann begins to reckon with his past, future, and the beliefs that have shaped his life. What does it mean to be a Muslim man? More still, what does it mean to be any man—and a father to a baby boy and girl?
In lucid, confident prose, Aymann Ismail questions the sturdy frameworks of religion and family, the legacies of his childhood, and what will become his children’s ethical and intellectual inheritance. To reckon unflinchingly with these questions offers him a road map for his young Muslim children on how to navigate the singular journey into adulthood.