I have not experienced that in my life because of the area I'm from in London, everyone looks like me,вЂќ she recalls. 'One guy actually pressed himself against me in a bookshop. вЂњIt was a huge culture shock that I was experiencing,' she says. To combat some of her loneliness, she started binge-watching Gossip Girl, and shortly thereafter, Ace of Spades was born.ДЄ post shared by Faridah AМЂbiМЃkeМЃ-IМЃyiМЃmiМЃdeМЃ reeling from the drastic move from London to Scotland, Faridah began to observe microaggressions and outright aggressions for the first time in her life. Because of her religion, she doesnвЂ™t drink alcohol, and she found herself on the fringes of the social scene with so many activities revolving around drinking.

She grew up in South London, surrounded by Caribbean and African immigrants like herself, but everything shifted when she made the decision to go to a University in Scotland, where she was suddenly considered a minority. A lot of them have gotten their wealth and prestige from what they did in the past.вЂќДЇaridah is Muslim and the child of Nigerian immigrants.

'It's kind of interesting how they're all hiding basically what you've been doing. вЂњI think a lot of these institutions, whether it's university or a high school, they often are prestige because they have a history that is rooted in a kind of subjugation of Black people,' she says. I ask her almost immediately what she thought the relationship was between anti-Blackness and so-called prestigious institutions. It is not simply a cautionary tale of institutionalized racism but actually, a visceral depiction of the acute danger that people of color in white spaces find to be the norm. Her book, like many others that have been published in the last few years, places the subject of racial relations in the horror genre. SheвЂ™s living back home in London, doing virtual learning for her final year at university-the place that ended up being an unexpected catalyst for her creativity in writing Ace of Spades. I guarantee anyone who reads it will not be sorry and IвЂ™m starting to sweat even now remembering the way that my heart was hammering as I was reading along desperately trying to figure out where the narrative would end up.ДЇaridah and I connect-like so many people do now-over Zoom (complete with technical difficulties) at night her time because sheвЂ™s a night owl. It features the two lone Black students who attend Niveus Academy and are subjected to a level of sabotage and cruelty that is both terrifying, and while some might assume satirical, quite rooted in reality. The story does, however, have elements of both those pop culture phenomenons. The book was billed as a Get Out meets Gossip Girl, and to be frank, that sells it short. I am emphatic about telling everyone that they must read it.

I received a copy of her debut YA novel, Ace of Spades (published by Macmillan on June 1) and read it over a single weekend, so energized from the velocity of the plot that I quickly had to find someone else to share it with. She does not spill her entire life onto various apps and perform her existence for engagement-not to judge to anyone who might, I just observed it as a departure from what I would have expected from someone her age.ДЄnd so, obviously, I had to know everything. She is remarkably not the social media stereotype of what I would expect to find from a Gen Z author who just scored a major contract to publish their debut novel. I felt an inexplicable magnetism to Faridah, an instinct that was solidified once I started following her on Instagram and discovered that she, like me, is a tea fanatic (her handle is and this simple connection bloomed into discovering many others. It was that headline that brought her image across my timeline and made me curious about her story-not just the story that would make her an overnight millionaire, but her story. Faridah ГЂbГkГ©-ГЌyГmГdГ© went viral last year after scoring a seven figure book deal at 21.

Ace of spades