Good For Nothing

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Absolutely loved this book. I often wished when I was teaching in inner city Bradford 30 years ago that their were more books like this around. I can understand that. I’m from Bradford: a town in West Yorkshire best known for its large South Asian population, the birthplace of the singer Zayn Malik, many well-respected restaurants, and a certain brand of deprivation-induced delinquency. This is a true flavour of the diverse Yorkshire I love and I hope it makes its way onto the school curriculum.

Eman is the awkward girl whose favourite evenings are spent at home watching soaps with her Nani. Amir is the angry boy who won't talk about the brother he lost but won't let his name be forgotten either. Kemi is fast and fierce and beautiful, and knows she deserves as good a shot as anyone else, if only she can get to the starting line. They’re students, shopkeepers, taxi drivers, teachers, accountants, journalists, doctors, entrepreneurs… Who writes for them? The real people? Including the northern, brown-skinned, kasmey-yelling bros who act hard, and feel hard, but aren’t, underneath it all? A picture of West YorkshireGood For Nothingfixates on a town named Friesly. This is my fictional homage to Bradford, Dewsbury, Doncaster, and the likes. So it was during a free hour in my college room, when I felt particularly isolated from the ivory tower I believed I’d chanced myself into, that a character called Eman, and another called Amir, and another who would later be named Kemi, strolled into my head. Told from the points of view of three diverse teen characters, I became more invested in each character's journey in a world that is complex and where often they have no voice. Glimpses into their lifestyles, their thoughts and fears, their relationships and their desire to live their best life, evoked many different emotions.

My characters - much to the dismay of the students I teach every day at a school in Bradford - are not based on anyone in particular. Yet they are an amalgamation of everyone I have met, seen, spoken to, and not spoken to. I think that it is the job of the writer to bottle magic. Now she wants to organise a school trip to Cambridge, but insists it’s not for the high fliers. “It would be for the students who tell me they let off fireworks in the park, or the students who tell me their dad was angry with them last night.” She wants to bring the students “who are always in detention or who just come to my room and linger instead of going out for break time … because they don’t know what Cambridge is”. There’s a certain sense of pride in her voice as she talks about them: I want all the children who make trouble in class to laugh.” She says if the novel feels authentic “it’s because I was thinking would the kids in my class like this? Would they find it funny? And if they wouldn’t laugh then I just wouldn’t write it.” Ansar hopes her pupils will connect with the book’s setting, too : “if they couldn’t say ‘I’ve been to that supermarket’, or walked in that park … it just wouldn’t work in the same way.” “My students are from deprived communities”, she says. “I want these characters to feel real, I think especially because they’re under-represented voices.” Beautifully written, well developed characters, authentic setting and real heart. Good for Nothing explores friendships, the nature of family and community, racism, conscious and unconscious bias and more. What more could you want in a book? I want the texts that are about Muslims to be just as rich and sharp, just as perceptive and loving, as the texts of the classical era; or the Victorian; or the medieval. I want them to be emotionally difficult and tangibly rewarding. Beyond interracial love stories, beyond headlines seeking to sensationalise the worst of us.I wanted to create narratives that feel real and that move people because I’m from a community that is underrepresented, but also underprivileged and misunderstood – not just in terms of race – but in class and culture and community.” I am unsure if the silent majority recognises what stories they live every day. Certainly the young child that I was on my grandma’s street, arm in arm with a neighbour with the same name, face, and stance as my own, wouldn’t. Here, Ansar talks about how her teaching career has influenced her work and how she represents northern communities through her writing. In part she feels responsible for widening pupils’ access to cultural capital, while not talking down to them. Her students know how much she loves Shakespeare (” Miss if you like him so much, why don’t you just marry him?“) but she emphasises her ability to code-switch, using the classroom to talk about everything from the celebrated bard to notorious bars. To the room, her love for teaching young people is obvious. To her students, she says “they should stop commenting on my TikToks”. I kept notebooks dedicated to shaping my characterisation of Eman, Amir and Kemi. I created a brother for Amir: Zayd Ali. The Hector to his Paris, the one who would always save him, even if it meant his own death.

There are a few genres which always come up when you’re searching for a Muslim-centric narrative. Certain tropes that are somehow palatable to the publishing industry: Good for Nothing is a tender, witty and heartfelt coming of age story that follows three teens grappling with grief and police prejudice in the North of England. This rich and warmly written novel redefines small town mentalities and explores the power of friendship and human connection. It is the perfect next read for fans of And the Stars Were Burning Brightly and The Hate U Give. I see it as a love letter to the northern community, focusing on the lives of people that are often left out of dominant narratives. In the UK, we have such a southern-based focus on development and progress. There are young voices who are quite angry about the fact that they’re not really included. Writing this book felt like a reclaiming of not just forgotten areas but also forgotten emotions, and using those emotions to shed a light on important issues. It is a realistic dip into the lives of diverse communities in Yorkshire and is written with compassion and awareness of the many hurdles Northern teens from marhinalised groups have to overcome. As well as being a damn good story, Good for Nothing carries a valuable message that resonated with me.I’m not actively trying to teach anyone anything or trying to dispel a stereotype. I’m letting people be themselves. I work as a teacher in quite a deprived area. There’s a defiant “it is what it is” mentality here and I respect that. There’s this idea that we have to be palatable and soft and that we have to do all these things to be seen as exceptional. My three main characters are not the perfect representation of being Muslim or a person of colour. That was very intentional. Sara Jafari, Editor, says: ‘A coming of age story for our times, Good For Nothing is a snapshot into the lives of three teenagers, Amir, Kemi and Eman, and explores the highs and lows of what it’s like to grow up as people of colour in the North of England – which we so rarely see. As soon as we read this all of us at Puffin knew we had something seriously special on our hands. Good For Nothing is emotional and heart-breaking – but also funny and relatable – and completely unlike anything I have read before. We are so proud to be the publisher launching Mariam’s writing career as a new literary talent to watch.’

Records the default button state of the corresponding category & the status of CCPA. It works only in coordination with the primary cookie. Jafari said: “As soon as we read this all of us at Puffin knew we had something seriously special on our hands. Good For Nothing is emotional and heartbreaking – but also funny and relatable – and completely unlike anything I have read before. We are so proud to be the publisher launching Mariam’s writing career as a new literary talent to watch.” The exercise I was involved in - a weekly seminar named Practical Criticism - revolved around analysing a text without considering its contexts: who wrote it, when did they write it, what socioeconomic factors could they have been responding to? With teaching, it’s a dynamic job and you’re seeing young people come in and live their lives, and getting to know themselves. There is something very earnest and sweet about it, even in the difficult moments. I think it’s inevitable that I’m going to take from some of their experiences.What kind of challenges did you face within the publishing industry and do you have any advice for Muslim writers on how to overcome them? Today the silent majority of Muslims pray and buy treats for their family after dinner. They struggle with their hijab, and search TikTok for style tips. They play football and argue about their teams with stringent fervour. I went to mingling events with other British-born Muslims - naively expecting some camaraderie - and found that saying you’re from Bradford got its own set of laughs. Some non-funny jokes. Everyone in your ears: kasmey (I swear), yara (man!), bro. Such emotional aspects had to be divorced from the reading. We were taught to consider words, rhyme schemes, pentameters and tetrameters instead. Ironically - despite my old supervisor’s efforts - context has always been the first thing I consider in any text. Family restaurants boom with shoddily planned weddings and an extensive mithai collections. The barbers are perpetually busy, the Asian supermarket is manned by the wise and the vicious. Young people are dealt their silent struggles and go about their business under the watchful eye of their parents and the police.