Love, Popcorn, Plot Twists: Zakiya N. Jamal’s YA Debut Is a Queer Coming-of-Age Hit

Based in Brooklyn, Zakiya N. Jamal is an Afro-Cuban and Jamaican author who writes about romance, Black girlhood, and coming-of-age.

In April, she published her debut young adult novel If We Were a Movie, which follows Rochelle “the Shell” Colman, a young girl who’s only been focused on three things: becoming valedictorian, getting into Wharton, and taking down her only academic competition, Amira Rodriguez. To spice up her college application, she decides to get a job working at Horizon Cinemas, the beloved Black-owned movie theater. Unfortunately, Amira works there too and would also be her boss. Though Rochelle sees it as a horror movie, the more the girls work together, the more she starts to see Amira in a new, positive light. But the theater is in trouble and when mysterious things begin happening that spell out a shutdown, it’ll be up to Rochelle, Amira, and their fellow employees to solve the mystery before it’s too late and allow their love to find its way into the spotlight.

“What I love about this story is it’s not about Black or queer trauma,” Jamal tells HipLatina. “It’s not a tragic story. I feel like a lot of times the books about marginalized people that succeed are about our struggles, and those books are valid, but I wanted to write something that was fun. We’re facing so many problems in the world right now, so I wanted to create a book that kids could read and for a few hours or so, they could escape into a world where they felt safe.”

Though this year marked the first time Jamal has ever published a book, she remembers enjoying storytelling from a young age. When she was in the eighth grade, she played on the basketball team at school. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), she played so poorly that she always had funny stories to tell her mom when she got home.

“She would crack up laughing at the way I would recount my complete lack of skill on the court, and anytime I could make her laugh, I felt like I won a game,” she says. “Making people laugh has always been my favorite thing to do and I do that with my stories. That’s really what I love.”

In fact, she ended up writing so much that she pursued it in college. As a graduate student, she attended the New School in 2017 and graduated with an MFA (Master’s of Fine Arts) in Creative Writing. While she acknowledges that not everyone needs to go to school or attain an MFA in order to build a successful career, or even identify as a writer for that matter, it did give her structure, discipline, accountability, and a group of fellow writing friends that made writing feel like a communal or collective effort.

That remained true throughout the writing and publishing journey of If We Were a Movie. The story was originally conceived by her friend Shelly, who also served as an editor at Electric Postcard Entertainment. In its original form, the book—much like the final version—was an enemies-to-lovers, summer-themed romance between two teens working at a Black-owned movie theater. However, it was initially pitched as a heterosexual romance. Fortunately, Jamal was able to make the story her own by changing the main characters’ genders to make them both girls and setting the story on Long Island. By combining their creative efforts, they crafted a fresh, distinctive narrative with equally unforgettable characters.

Long Island was of particular importance to her, not only because it’s where she grew up as a child but also because she wanted to break down stereotypes and insert aspects of her real life in more ways than one.

“I think a lot of people think only white people live on Long Island but growing up there my community was very diverse, so it was really important to me to show that,” she explains. “Rochelle and Amira also each got little pieces of me. For Rochelle, we both have single moms, and we lost our dads when we were very young. For Amira, I made her Afro-Latine and extroverted like me.”

She also loosely based Rochelle’s relationship with her mom on her own, which often made the writing process emotional. This was especially true at a pivotal scene near the end when Rochelle and her mom have a fight and Rochelle “asks her mom if falling in love with her dad was worth it” as a way to try to understand her relationship with Amira. It was so emotional for Jamal that she ended up crying while she was writing it. But it’s moments like that truly make the book impactful and feel so close to reality.

Another aspect of this book that makes it truly unique is how certain the characters are of themselves. While Rochelle and Amira both go through emotional changes, they also move through the world knowing exactly who they are. Rochelle embraces her queer identity and ambitions to pursue a career in business. Amira shares her Afro-Latina identity openly and at the same time, never tries to change who Rochelle is. Rather than their personalities changing, it’s their perspectives of each other that shift and adjust to what they learn throughout the novel.

“I don’t call this a second chance romance, but in a way it kind of is,” Jamal says. “These two girls have history and it’s remembering that history, the good and the bad of it, that really pulls them back together.”  

Today, Jamal works as a writer while also having a full-time career in publishing. To stay on track, she schedules dedicated writing sessions at night and on weekends, when she’s off the clock. It also helps her to ease the transition from work to writing with a short activity like walking her dog, eating dinner, or watching a favorite TV show. In addition, she participates in a Discord channel where she writes alongside a community of fellow writers. They support one another and hold each other accountable to their daily word count goals.

In all of her books, both published and forthcoming, Jamal works to ensure that her communities feel heard, seen, and represented for all the identities they claim. In If We Were a Movie, it’s even more important to center diversity to normalize queer experiences, allow young people to feel seen, and paint the kind of accepting world we all want to see. She notes:

“Representation is important to me because that’s how people, particularly kids, can see what’s possible for them. In If We Were a Movie, there isn’t just a group of young kids who are queer. Glory, who manages the theater, is non-binary. Their uncles are gay. Taylor’s moms are lesbians. I wanted to craft this world where everyone can be queer and it’s not out of the ordinary or questioned. It just is. While I’m privileged to live in a place where that is my reality, not everyone is. So it’s important that readers, especially teen readers, can see this in books and even if they don’t have that safe space now, they can at least hope to have it someday.”