"Madras on Rainy Days" by Samina Ali - - author event and book signing

Madras on Rainy Days

by Samina Ali

A Poets & Writers First Fiction Notable Author and one of the top 5 Debut Novels of the Year, 2004

“I'm the first in my family to ever have gotten a divorce. I'm the first in my family ever to have married outside my religion. Now here I am, a Muslim woman, living on my own, a single mother. [My relatives in India] don't understand it. But that is who I am.”

MADRAS ON RAINY DAYS is a novel based largely on Samina Ali's own tumultuous life as a Muslim woman, born in India, and raised both in India and the United States, whose arranged marriage to a gay man and eventual divorce caused her to be rejected by her traditional Muslim family. Samina Ali was a part of a group of women who formed “Daughters of Hajar,” an organization which stormed a mosque in June 2004 to assert their rights to equality within Islam, a story covered by Time magazine and PBS-TV. Ali argues, “From the mosque to the bedroom, women have an Islamic right to be on equal footing with men.”

Samina Ali was born in Hyderabad, India and immigrated with her parents to America when she was six months old. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities with a B.A. in English, and received an M.F.A. from the University of Oregon