Fatima Shaik

Fatima Shaik is an American writer of children’s and adult literature, and former daily journalist. Her literature explores the human spirit and the intersection of cultures, notably themes of family, community, and justice. Publishers Weekly described her as “knowledgeable and perceptive.”[1] Her work across genres reflects her career as a journalist and fiction writer to use a variety of literary forms in order to explore contemporary social issues, especially that of the "African-American experience."[2][3]

Fatima Shaik photo by Sophia Little

Shaik’s continuing research on the Société d’Economie, the founders of the jazz incubator Economy Hall, has received support from the Louisiana Endowment of the Humanities and the Kittredge Fund. She is the subject of an upcoming film by director Kavery Kaul who takes the author to her paternal grandfather’s birthplace in Kolkata.[4] Shaik is included in A Booklover’s Guide to New Orleans and the Encyclopedia of African American Writers among others.

Biography

Shaik was born in New Orleans and raised in the Historic Creole 7th Ward. Her father was one of the first black aviators in the state.[5][6] Her mother was Lily LaSalle Shaik, a native Louisiana French speaker and poet.[7] Both taught in New Orleans public schools.[5] Shaik is of Bengali descent. Her grandfather Shaik Mohamed Musa immigrated to the United States in the 1890s, settling in Tremé, New Orleans in 1896.[8] His grandfather was a shopkeeper, and married her grandmother, a black woman of Creole and Native American descent; he passed away shortly before the birth of their son, Fatima Shaik's father.[8]

Fatima Shaik attended Xavier University of Louisiana for two years before graduating from Boston University with a Bachelors of Science, and New York University with a Masters of Arts. She reported for the Miami News and New Orleans Times-Picayune before joining McGraw-Hill and working in editorial positions for a decade. She began teaching at Saint Peter’s University in 1991 and serves as a tenured assistant professor.[9]

She married artist James Little in 1984.[10]

Essays

Fatima Shaik’s personal essays present a unique and intimate portrait of feminine, African-American New Orleans. “Mothers and Daughters as Writers” in 1987 addressed the stridency of white male literature and suggested that it could also be composed quiet, female venues.[11] Her essays written for In These Times after Hurricane Katrina demonstrate a bottom-up view of the aftermath from 2005-2015. She reports from recreational vehicle camps, community meetings, and bus stops. Her criticisms of government officials are visual — “confounded like lizards frozen on a branch”. Shaik gets to the heart of neighborhood victims, such as in the essay “Chronically Displaced in New Orleans” in which a homeless former resident at a public meeting says she wants to die and asks whether she should kill herself. Shaik writes, “A few called out, ‘No, Don’t do it.’ The rest sat silent.’”[12]

On the 10 year anniversary of the storm, her essays showed the reality of a renewed but gentrified city on the websites of PEN American Center “Katrina 10 Years Later”,[13] “We’ve Come This Far by Faith”[14] The ROOT, and In These Times. “Selling Off New Orleans: Gentrification and the Loss of Community 10 Years After Katrina”[15] also appeared as the In These Times cover story.

Narrative histories of Creole New Orleans

Shaik’s is one of a few insider-experts on New Orleans Creole culture. Her research is thorough and the writing is accessible. Among her essays and journal articles are PEN American Center website “Translation, Semantics, and Race”[16] which discussed the subversive political metaphors used by the French-language writing of the black community in the 19th century; The Jazz Archivist “The Economy Society and Community Support for Jazz”;[17] LA Creole: A Journal of Creole History and Genealogy “The Boisdorés and the Economy Society”[18] give a history of an elite group of free men of color who lived in the neighborhood that her family has inhabited for generations. Shaik’s expertise was featured on panels at the annual conferences of the Louisiana Historical Association[19] called “The Francophone Atlantic and Beyond in Nineteenth Century Creole” March 2013 and “Creoles and Citizens: Being Afro-Creole in New Orleans from 1838-1920.” March 2012. The Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities and Kittredge Fund have supported her work to read and annotate 100 years of bi-weekly journals written by the members of the Société d’Economie et d’Assistance Mutuelle.

Fiction

Short story collections

For her work in trade fiction, Shaik has been praised as a writer in “the ranks of black women writers preserving the voice of the Afro-American experience.”[2]

“Shaik’s strengths as a writer are in creating everyday dialogue, in painting her characters’ lives, in moving her plotlines quietly and slowly along. She brews her characters—their status, their intellect, even their skin color—slowly, like tea steeping in a porcelain pot.” Jim Concannon.[20]

The Mayor of New Orleans: Just Talking Jazz[21] was “the first publication in book form by this native of New Orleans whose keen ear for dialogue and languid style help capture the special ambiance of Southern Louisiana.”.[1] “Shaik writes with empathy and compassion about the lower rungs of New Orleans society. There are no villains here, nor is there the damp palm voyeurism that we have seen in other New Orleans-set stories.”[22]

What Went Missing and What Got Found "is a lyrical short story collection with undertones of the blues. A love letter to the entertaining, unpredictable, and flawed characters who populated New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina,the book is set in a deep-rooted community and describes the inner lives of outsiders with humor and tenderness. There are religious zealots, day-dreaming musicians, failed romantics, and more - a mute woman who believes that the photos of starving children in the newspaper are speaking to her, a man who mourns the loss of his true love while being accused of her murder, and an old couple who spends their last night together as flood waters rise around their bed."[23]

The book “is author Shaik's recognition of the tenth anniversary of this overwhelming natural disaster (Hurricane Katrina) … Once again, stories are the true record of history…These folks became my friends. I cared about them and continue to now that the book is closed and on my shelf.”[24]

Shaik’s stories have appeared in the anthologies African-American Literature,[25] Streetlights: Illuminating Tales of the Urban Black Experience,[26] Breaking Ice: Contemporary African-American Fiction,[27] and in journals Killens Review of Arts and Letters,[28] Callaloo and the Southern Review.

Children’s and young adult literature

Shaik's books for children include Melitte,[29] a historical novel, which was nominated as one of the Best Books for Young Adults by YALSA, 1998 and praised by The Horn Book, School Library Journal, and Kirkus. The Jazz of Our Street[30] was “a compact cultural history” said Kirkus. On Mardi Gras Day[31] was one of the Best Holiday Books of 1999, according to the Bank Street College of Education.

She is the co-chair of the Children’s and Young Adult Book Committee for PEN American Center and moderated its panels for the Brooklyn Book Festival[32] and PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature[33]

Shelia Stroup wrote about the author’s work with PEN to deliver books and authors to the Martin Luther King Jr. School for Science and Technology.[34]

Awards and honors

She received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities to study Aesthetics and Popular Culture at the University of Chicago in 1981. As an emerging writer, Shaik was named along with Rita Dove, David Bradley, Mark Mathabane, and Trey Ellis as one of five writers under 35 who "...will play a significant role in shaping the future of Afro-American literature in the 21st century.” Fall 1989 by the Forsythe County Public Library.

Shaik held a literature residency at the New Orleans Public Schools Africana Studies Program in October 2002. She was a Scholar in Residence at New York University in 2004.[35]

She currently is a member of the Board of Trustees for PEN American Center and former board member of the Writers Room in New York City.

References
  1. "The Mayor of New Orleans: Just Talking Jazz Review". Publisher's Weekly. October 30, 1987.
  2. "Novellas Jump with New Orleans Rhythm". Jackson Sun. February 21, 1988.
  3. "African American Legends: Fatima Shaik, novelist, "The Mayor of New Orleans" and "On Mardi Gras Day"". CUNY TV.
  4. "Streetcar to Kolkata". Hartley Film Foundation.
  5. Stephens, Brooke. Men We Cherish: African-American Women Praise the Men in Their Lives (1st ed.). Anchor Books. ISBN 0385485328.
  6. "Mohamed Asa Joseph Shaik". The Times Picayune Obituaries.
  7. "Papers, 1987-1988". Archive Grid.
  8. Shaik, Fatima (March 2, 2013). "Black and Bengali". In These Times. Retrieved June 1, 2017.
  9. Dixon, Nancy (November 17, 2013). N.O. Lit: 200 Years of New Orleans Literature. Lavender Inc. p. 540. ISBN 1935084526.
  10. McGee, Celia. "Driven to Abstraction". Art News.
  11. "Callaloo". 29. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Fall 2006: 1551–1559. JSTOR 2931164. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  12. Shaik, Fatima (September 20, 2009). "Chronically Displaced in NOLA". In These Times.
  13. Shaik, Fatima. "Katrina: 10 Years Later". PEN America: The Freedom to Write.
  14. Shaik, Fatima. "Remembering Hurricane Katrina: We've Come This Far by Faith". The ROOT.
  15. Shaik, Little. "Selling Off New Orleans: Gentrification and the Loss of Community 10 Years After Katrina". In These Times.
  16. Shaik, Fatima. "TRANSLATION, SEMANTICS, AND RACE". PEN America: The Freedom to Write.
  17. Shaik, Fatima (2004). "The Economy Society and Community Support of Jazz" (PDF). The Jazz Archivist. XVIII: 1–9.
  18. Shaik, Fatima (October 2, 2009). "The Boisdorés and the Economy Society". La Creole: A Journal of Creole History and Geneaology. 2 (1).
  19. "Homepage". Louisiana Historical Association.
  20. Concannon, Jim. "Reviews: Fiction and Poetry". Bostonia.
  21. Shaik, Fatima (1987). The Mayor Of New Orleans: Just Talking Jazz. Creative Arts Book Co. ISBN 9780887390500.
  22. "The Short Story Review". 5 (3). Summer 1986. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  23. Xavier Review Press
  24. Pando, Trilla. "What Went Missing and What Got Found". Story Circle Book Reviews.
  25. Young, Al (1996). African-American Literature. Harper Collins.
  26. Austin, Doris Jean; Simmons, Martin (1996). Streetlights: Illuminating Tales of the Urban Black Experience. Penguin.
  27. McMillan, Terry (1990). Breaking Ice: Contemporary African-American Fiction. Penguin-Viking.
  28. Shaik, Fatima (Fall 2015). "Bird Whistle". Killens Review of Arts and Letters. Medgar Evers College Center for Black Literature. 7 (2).
  29. Shaik, Fatima (October 1, 1997). Melitte. Dial. ISBN 978-0803721067.
  30. Shaik, Fatima (May 1, 1998). The Jazz of Our Street. Dial. ISBN 978-0803718852.
  31. Shaik, Fatima (February 1, 1999). On Mardi Gras Day. Dial. ISBN 978-0803714427.
  32. "Won't Know Much About History presented by the PEN American Center". Brooklyn Book Festival. September 18, 2016. Archived from the original on January 18, 2017. Retrieved December 2, 2016.
  33. Geter, Hafizah; Aiello, Antonio. "Truth and Solutions: Roundtable on Equity in Children's and Young Adult Book Publishing". PEN America: The Freedom to Write.
  34. Stroup, Shelia. "6th graders hear about civil rights struggles right from local leaders' mouths". The Times Picayune.
  35. "Fatima Shaik". Poets and Writers: Directory of Writers.
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