By Tjoa Shze Hui

I first met the writer, poet, translator and activist Ameera Aslam online. She was one of the first Singaporean writers whom I saw speak out about the genocide in Palestine – calling attention to the injustices unfolding both abroad and at home, during this ongoing period of global systemic change. I admire how Ameera used her words to perform what, to my mind at least, is the most basic function of the writer in society: to "call a spade a spade" and give language to reality as it unfolds, so that a community can understand and have agency over its own experiences. As a fellow Singaporean writer with an impulse towards self-censorship, I find Ameera's voice to be a bright spot of hope.

As I got to know Ameera better, I became curious about the particular trajectory of her publishing career. As someone who primarily writes beautiful, self-reflective religious literature, she initially had to take a self-publishing route before finding a home for her work in Malaysia. As someone who's starting out in publishing, I am inspired by the self-driven dynamism in her practice. Ameera isn't afraid to engage with her readers actively: from cultivating a circle of followers on Buy Me a Coffee, to doing Instagram Live teach-in's, to dropping short social media posts called "Today's Cool Thing" that document her unfolding writing journey.

There's something about these initiatives that challenges my own received, baked-in notions of what a writer must be: someone who sits mutely in an ivory tower, waiting for benefaction and permission to speak. It also, I think, reflects the evolving socio-economic realities of the publishing industry today, where we authors increasingly have to be our own advocates.

Ameera's work has appeared in various publications locally and internationally. Desiring Light, her first poetry anthology, won the Daybreak Press Book Awards in 2021 and her second poetry collection, These Ramadan Lights, was launched at the Kuala Lumpur International Book Fair 2023. Her third book, and first non-poetry collection, When You Think You Are Falling, was just published this March with Iman Publication and is continuing to garner praise as it appears on several bestseller lists, including those by Wardah Books (Singapore), MPH (Malaysia), and The Straits Times (Singapore). 

1. What are you reading right now?
I've actually been reading my teacher's PhD dissertation to help him rewrite and reformat it to a book. But before that, Mosab Abu Toha's Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza.

2. If you were a famous literary character in a novel, play or poem, what would you be and why?
Charlie from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory because he still has all his grandparents and his parents and he is so loved.

3. What is the greatest misconception about you?
That I am serious (because I'm religious) and angry (because I'm an activist). Haha. I laugh so much and am the most annoying optimist among my friends.

4. Name one living writer and one dead writer you most identify with, and tell us why.
Dead writer: Mary Oliver because she writes poems about God and faith or spirituality from the littlest things. I feel like I do the same. She has a lot more nature in her poems because she was surrounded by it, and I am a woman living in a city in the 21st century trying to pause all the time.

Living writer: Sukina Noor because she's another female poet trying to be a woman of God.

5. Do you believe in writer's block? If so, how do you overcome it?
One hundred per cent. Different strategies work for different times. Sometimes just sitting in silence for an uncomfortable period of time works. Sometimes a prompt might lure the words out of me. Most of the time though, it's reading a random book off my shelf.

6.  What qualities do you most admire in a writer?
The ones who are generous in their interpretations of the world and others, and who laugh at themselves.

7. What is one trait you most deplore in writing or writers?
The ones who know they have a way with words and making you feel things, and who manipulate that for no good reason.

8. Can you recite your favourite line from a literary work or a piece of advice from a writer?

"How can I reap what I have sown?
Oh how I weep for how I've roamed
but the sweetness of arrival
is in proportion to the distance
one has flown"

– 'Seed and the Fruit' in Disembodied Kneelings by Baraka Blue, 2010

9. Complete this sentence: Few people know this, but I…
actually need lots of quiet and solitude.

10. At the movies, if you have to pick a comedy, a tragedy or an action thriller to watch, which would you go for?
I love watching movies, all of them, so it'd have to depend on how I'm feeling that day.

11. What is your favourite word, and what is your least favourite one?
My favourite word is "glorious." I don't think we use it enough! My least favourite is " genocide." 

12. Please compose a rhyming couplet with the following words: grow, connection, istiqamah/steadfast(ness).

Istiqamah is not about attaining perfection,
It's a persistence to grow your spiritual connection.

13. What object is indispensable to you when you write?
Honestly, thesaurus.com.

14. What is the best time of the day for writing?
6.30am – 9am!

15. If you have a last supper, which three literary figures, real or fictional, would you invite to the soiree, and why?
Imam al-Ghazali, Mary Oliver and John Green. I enjoy all of their works and they each teach me something about myself or the world. Just imagining what the three of them would speak about with each other makes me giddy with joy and curiosity!

16. What is it like being a religious writer in Singapore? As someone who used to be very religious too, and grew up surrounded by a big faith community, I have always thought it strange how devotional writing is absent from the contemporary SingLit canon. Somehow, we seem to have little patience here for writing that isn't aligned with a secular "Western" framework – even though that doesn't always reflect our lived realities. I'm curious: how has this dynamic played out in your own publishing career? Does it have something to do with why you chose to publish overseas?
It feels very strange for sure. And very surreal to know my book was on The Straits Times' bestseller list for two weeks in a row together with James Clear's Atomic Habits, Ikigai and Simon Sinek! It almost feels like my book snuck in, and I wonder if they know I talk about God and Prophet Muhammad on almost every other page!

In my publishing career, I just never even considered that there could be space for someone like me.  I've attended the Singapore Writers Festival several times, I've watched a bunch of plays in Singapore, and I don't think I ever heard or saw someone talk about loving God or being happily Muslim. I feel like it feels acceptable to be doubting faith, but if you are sure or settled, you are unintellectual.

Actually, the book that made me wonder if I could carve out a space for myself was Ziks' Notes after Terawih, published by Ethos. It was about a Muslim woman's documentation of what she saw or experienced or who she met while doing terawih, the special night prayer during Ramadan, in Singapore. It was such a uniquely Singaporean Ramadan experience that for the first time I was like, "Wait a minute! Is this possible??" Her book didn't really talk about faith or God as much as the people she encountered, but it was still about a very Muslim experience - not just Ramadan, but terawih specifically.

That book, alongside other reasons, made me decide that I could compile my "very Muslim" and "very Sufi" poems and try get them published. With devotional or Sufi poetry, it's such a niche within a niche that I had to look overseas. I eventually went the self-publishing route for my first two books.

It was my good fortune that the Editor and Head of Content for Iman Publication dropped by my booth during Kuala Lumpur International Book Fair last year and browsed my books. That led to several meetings, and then them asking if I would write with them. After the impossibly hard work of self-publishing (and refusing to be on Amazon out of principle), I knew this was a great opportunity to get my name out to what I thought would be my target audience.

17. What would you write on your own tombstone?
"She loved well."

_____