A review by deedireads
Temple Folk by Aaliyah Bilal

challenging dark emotional medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? N/A
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

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TL;DR REVIEW:

Temple Folk is a strong work of fiction that does what it sets out to do very effectively. I recommend reading up on the Nation of Islam before diving in, if you are unfamiliar.

For you if: You like short story collections that examine internal conflicts, especially with organized religion.

FULL REVIEW:

I struggled a little bit with Temple Folk (finalist for the National Book Award) while I was reading it, but after I’d read more about its subject matter (the Nation of Islam) and an interview with the author, I realized that was because of my own ignorance. If you do those things the other way around, I think you’ll like this a lot.

All the stories in this collection are about Black Muslim characters directly or indirectly connected to the Nation of Islam, which is the one Malcolm X became involved with during his time in prison (although he doesn’t have anything to do with this book). The stories are ordered chronologically, beginning in the 70s (when Elijah Muhammad died) and continuing until the near present. The characters grapple with their faith and allegiance, both real and performative, in extremely thought-provoking ways — which is exactly what Bilal set out to do. The book was inspired by her grandparents’ experiences in the Nation. A few passages from her recent interview with The New York Times which helped clarify this for me:

Her grandfather once told her that he hadn’t learned Arabic as a member, so couldn’t read the Quran at the time. So why, she asked, had he bothered to join?

“His face got really hard, and he said, ‘Don’t you know that white people were killing us and lynching us and calling us the N-word in those days?’” she recalled. “‘What would you have done?’ And it silenced me, because I didn’t know what I would have done.”

“Temple Folk,” which grapples with that era of the Nation of Islam, is her answer.

And:

This is part of my family history. I think the thing that disturbs some people is the idea that I can be of such a mixed mind about it, because I don’t like racialized thinking, and at the same time I understand, in its historical context, how inevitable it was that a movement like this would emerge. I have some pride, frankly, associated with the fact that my grandparents were brave enough to assert, in an environment where they were taught to hate themselves for being Black, that they should take pride in being Black. So I have pride attached to this personal history and I also have a lot of critique around the things the nation said and did.

Still, while effective and affective (more so in hindsight, for me), it wasn’t a perfect read. I had trouble keeping details straight within the stories, although that could have been because I chose to listen to the audio instead of reading in print. I was also left unsatisfied by the ending of several of the stories; while I know short stories do tend to end just before a resolution, a little open-ended but in a thought-provoking way, this was more like they just…stopped. I do think that the novella at the end (which is about 30% of the book) was by far the strongest, and it’s worth reading it just for that.

All in all, a strong work of fiction that makes sense to me as an NBA finalist.
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