Goodreads asked Huda Al-Marashi:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Huda Al-Marashi When I set out to write First Comes Marriage, I had two goals in mind. For Muslim readers, I wanted them to see themselves in a relationship story that upheld traditional values. Although many books and movies have explored the territory of resisting one’s parents and faith to marry outside of the Muslim community, I wanted to tell the story of the more common experience, the woman who never had a relationship with a man prior to her husband; the woman who never dated the man she married; the woman who loved her spouse but didn’t know how to reconcile what she felt with what she encountered in romantic novels, television, and movies.

As a young, Muslim woman, I had no sense of what a healthy, traditional relationship looked like from within the Muslim community. Among non-Muslims, my own story felt almost embarrassing in its innocence, but in the company of other Muslims, I was convinced that my fiancé and I had sinned for sneaking hugs and kisses before our wedding!

My second goal was to dismantle stereotypes. Love stories are our most humanizing tales. They fill our hearts and linger in our imagination, and I wanted non-Muslim readers to see Muslims in a story that did not engage in a discourse about terrorism and global conflicts and to do so through the story of relationship rather than another coming-to-America narrative.

And, I also think it's time to shift the narrative around what it means meet a person and fall in love. With the advent of online dating, we are seeing a large number of people voluntarily being set up by database. They are relying on an automated ‘aunty,’ to collect their information and search for their algorithmic match. As a society, we have arrived at a cultural moment where we need more stories that reflect these different paths to coupling and the wide range of experiences people are having within their committed relationships.

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