How great does a trip to Italy sound?
There, he meets understanding friends and begins the work of accepting himself.
The idea of a teen running away to Italy was inspired by Ahmadi’s own journey.
Credit: Joe Power; Penguin Young Readers
Below, Ahmadi discusses queer literature, writing his most personal story yet, and more.
To own who you are.
I wanted to represent both sides.
But at the same time, you don’t want it to be sugarcoated.
You want the reality of the situation, and that’s why Amir’s story felt right for me.
I also didn’t write a sad, tragic story because that hasn’t been my experience either.
You’ve said this is your most personal book yet.
It’s a story that’s really close to my heart.
Prior to that, the idea I already had was being gay was punishable by death in Iran.
I didn’t want the negative aspects of the gay experience to be the dominant image.
I wanted something more complex and more hopeful.
There’s been an increase in the range of types of queer literature recently.
Do you feel excited about this moment as a queer writer?
At least in the mainstream, those were the two forms of representation that were being peddled.
Today, the mainstream is more willing to push these fully dimensional queer characters.
I think we’re getting better at representing that.
What are your thoughts about the current state of queer Muslim storytelling?
So I hope I am contributing something, but at the same time, my something isn’t everything.
It’s not every queer brown person, queer Muslim person, queer Middle Eastern person’s experience.
I hope that after my story, we get more stories.
There are some amazing queer Muslim stories that have come out in the past couple of years.
There are conversations about whether or not we’ve seen too many coming-out stories.
Do you think there are more stories to be told there?
I think just because we had aLove, Simondoesn’t mean we’re done telling coming out stories.
I believe there are so many intersections of coming out that make it an exciting space to explore.
I want to see Iranian coming-out stories, see Black and Brown and all types of coming-out stories.
We’re not even close to being done with them.
I just thought it was a way for a desperate high schooler who needs those funds.
As much as this is a story about Amir’s sexuality, it’s also a story about family.
What did you want to explore about family?
I originally wrote the book entirely from Amir’s perspective as a monologue told to the officer.
However, coming-out stories don’t exist in a vacuum.
Especially when you grow up in an immigrant family that is so tight-knit.
I wanted to show more of Amir’s family.
They create this authentic family dynamic without zooming in on the most painful parts of their conversations.
I wanted to create some distance from the painful parts.
That’s where we get our mirrors.
My thinking was he made it work, so what was stopping me?
What do you hope people take away fromHow It All Blew Up?
I just want people to feel like they can own who they are.
When you’re different, it’s really easy to think you have to hide certain parts of yourself.
It doesn’t happen all at once, but he does get there eventually.
