In How to Be a Muslim, Moghul has tried something new: a memoir about how his “life kind of crashed and burned” around age 32, as he put it. He writes about the pains and hilarities of growing in a South Asian family in bucolic Massachusetts; his lifelong struggle with mental illness and adult diagnosis with bipolar disorder; and his many crushes, including his ex-wife, Hafsa, whom he later divorced. The book is by turns delightful and bizarre; it’s confessional writing about being Muslim, but also about struggles that are likely common across religions.

It’s not exactly apolitical: Moghul’s mental illness is specifically conditioned by the anxiety and pressure of being a “professional Muslim,” as he puts it. But it’s an attempt to claim literary space for American Muslims that’s not about geopolitics. And Moghul has offered up his own life as material.

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