Aaliyah Bilal was born and raised in Prince George’s County, Maryland. She has degrees from Oberlin College and the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies. She has published stories and essays with The Michigan Quarterly Review and The Rumpus. Temple Folk, her debut short story collection, was shortlisted for the 2023 National Book Award in Fiction.
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Temple Folk: StoriesFrom"The Spider"
The hotel staff placed a pitcher of water on each table next to a small stack of translucent cups. I couldn’t help but shake my head at that. We would have been better off, I figured, taking Imam Saleem’s suggestion and just staying put at the Temple. The kitchen sisters would have at least given us some fruit punch and sugar cookies. Hell, had we asked nice enough, they might have made us some fried chicken and potato salad. If we were trying to throw money around like Rockefellers, why not put it in the building fund or pay zakat? But I was a one-man HVAC operation, with little more than a truck, some tools, and a house I was just three mortgage payments away from owning outright. As far as those brothers were concerned, I was too ordinary, based on outward appearances, to be an example.
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Temple Folk: StoriesFrom"Sister Rose"
When Intisar was small, she imagined that Sister Rose made her home in a mist of clouds enveloped all day in ethereal rays of light. She thought so because of the way Sister Rose seemed to float underneath her long abayas across the Musallah floor to the spot where she and five or so other little girls would gather for her Sunday school lessons. What else could explain her litheness, her sunset-peach skin, the way her irises sent threads of gold bounding out from the pupils like a million solar flares?
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Temple Folk: StoriesFrom"Nikkah"
Qadirah considered what he wrote and folded her arms. Until that moment, there wasn’t a single person she’d met on the platform that interested her, though a few keystrokes was all it had taken to feel drawn to this new presence. It must have been his adherence to the etiquette, not pushing her to violate the rules of modesty and video chat like all of the others, in addition to his unwillingness to be swayed or fooled—traits that reminded her of herself. In this recognition, she felt a likeness that warranted more forthrightness than she had previously shown.
“It’s Qadirah,” she replied finally. “That is my real name, if you must know.”
“Qadirah! The Capable! The Powerful,” he wrote back. “A very nice name, al-Hamdulillah. I understand why you wouldn’t tell me outright.”
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“Obviously a student of history, and even more so, a student of the human heart, Aaliyah Bilal lays bare the interior lives of Black Muslims in these ten extraordinary stories. Across decades, generations, and continents, Bilal's finely wrought and unforgettable characters grapple with religion, culture, family, desire, and most compellingly, themselves.” —Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Life of Church Ladies [on Temple Folk]
“Aaliyah Bilal is a gifted storyteller who understands how to build a world that feels both particular in its contours and universal in the challenges, triumphs and yearnings of its characters. The stories that make up Temple Folk explore love, faith, loyalty and disillusionment while offering up gorgeous langauge and unforgettable imagery. Temple Folk feels like no collection I have read before and announces Bilal as a literary talent worth championing.” —Angela Flournoy, author of The Turner House
“Temple Folk is a remarkable debut that does many things at once. It opens the door to a people we barely know, yet opens our eyes to the struggles that make us all human. People surprise and they disappoint. They stumble spiritually and soar morally. They love with all they have and lose all they've got. Put between faith and family, duty and self, Temple folk live through all the ties that bind and break.” —Marlon James, winner of the 2015 Booker Prize
Aaliyah Bilal invites readers into a world whose complexity has been often overlooked, informing her explorations with a prickling specificity and psychological insight. Her generous and indelible suite of stories is centered on the Black Muslim community, evoked here with a clear-eyed, bracing love. These subtle tales spring from faith and embrace the contradictions that explode from faith.