Cartoonist Huda Fahmy: ‘My whole life is political and it sucks’
The last book in her semi-autobiographical series about a hijab-wearing schoolgirl from Michigan is ready to hit the shelves. Now, the artist feels like she needs a rest from herself
“I am ready to be done,” says author and cartoonist Huda Fahmy, as she prepares for the publication of the fourth and final installment of her semi-autobiographical graphic novel series. “I am tired of writing things based on my own life.”
So far, readers have followed a hijab-wearing teenager from Dearborn, Michigan, as she starts high school and searches for her own identity (Huda F Are You?), learns to navigate the judgment of others (Huda F Cares?), and reconciles with her parents’ unexpected divorce (Huda F Wants to Know?)
In the final book, Huda F Would Love You?, our heroine graduates from high school and prepares to go to college, hoping to find academic success and, ideally, a husband.
“I feel like I have spent way too much life writing about myself, but I like to joke that writing this series has been therapeutic,” says Fahmy, 41. “I get to rewrite a little bit of what I wish had happened in my life and things I wish I had been exposed to. For example, Huda F Would Love You? is very much about first relationships and crushes and falling into the trap of the nice guy who turns out not to be nice.
“These are things I experienced in college and I hope that, if this book gets into the hands of younger readers, then they’re given this kind of script to be able to recognise what positive and negative traits look like and what is not OK.”
It has been eight years since Fahmy’s first collection of comics, Yes, I’m Hot in This, was published in book form and 10 since she began posting stick-figure strips on Instagram. Back then, she had never drawn anything “properly” and had just quit her job as an English teacher to care for her newborn son.
From her home in Texas, she watched Donald Trump’s ascent to the White House and the trail of Islamophobia that followed him. In response, she wrote a collection of essays hoping to share her perspective as Muslim American, but the manuscript was rejected by every literary agent and publisher she approached.
It was her sister’s idea that she should try posting on social media instead.
“I didn’t know how to draw, so all my early comics were stick figures,” she recalls. “I would watch YouTube tutorials and practise, practise, practise. You don’t necessarily have to be born with a talent — you can develop a skill.”
Today, Fahmy is still learning. “Currently I’m working on hands, so I can bring them out from behind people’s backs and draw them out front,” she says. “It’s not perfect, but it is progress. When I see my first sketches compared to my drawing now, I am so proud.”
As well as increasing sketching proficiency, Fahmy has also earned awards and acclaim. She had been nominated for the Goodreads choice award in 2022 and was a finalist for a National Book Award in 2023.
At the same time, the issues that pushed her towards writing and illustrating in the first place — the widespread increase and politicisation of Islamophobia — are as relevant as ever.
A decade since Fahmy’s first cartoon sketch, Trump is still in the White House, Huda F Are You? has been banned from public schools in Broward County, Florida, and just this month Fahmy’s home state of Texas approved an anti-Muslim rewrite of the public school curriculum.
“I love that my work has become more than just standing up for Muslims, but standing up for all marginalised communities,” she says. “But I hate that I have to keep making these comics and writing these books where it almost becomes the whole identity. It’s frustrating.
“The criticism I have received is that I can’t write anything but identity books, but it is not like I am having a great time either. I wish I did not have to do this,” she says. “Unfortunately, we live in a society oversaturated with Islamophobia, xenophobia, hatred. It affects everything I do. My whole existence is political and it sucks and it is exhausting, so I’m going to write funny books and laugh about it and hope that other people read it too and it opens their hearts.”
As she waves goodbye to the illustrated version of her teen self, Fahmy is working on a horror short story, due to appear as part of an anthology, and working on a graphic novel aimed at adults. She also hopes to move towards more text-based work.
“I want to lean more into writing,” she says. “The drawing bit — yes, I learned a lot — but it is exhausting. It doesn’t come as naturally. It feels like work, whereas writing is freeing. I am not limited to a box.”
Huda F Would Love You? is published by Dial Books on 20 October and is available to preorder for £15.19.
