Abdellah Taïa (Arabic: عبد الله الطايع; born 1973) is a Moroccan writer and filmmaker who writes in the French language and has been based in Paris since 1999.
"[5] Since his coming-out, according to one source, Taïa "has become an iconic figure in his homeland of Morocco and throughout the Arab world, and a beacon of hope in a country where homosexuality is illegal.
[6] According to The New York Times, Taïa "was born inside the public library of Rabat...where his dad worked as a janitor and where his family lived until he was 2.
The tastes, the smells, the images, the ideas of fear and transgression are all coming from this house, this poor family that I love and hate at the same time.
[8] For most of his childhood, according to The New York Times, "he hid his sexuality as best he could, but his effeminate demeanor brought mockery and abuse, although it would later become a source of artistic inspiration.
By the time I was 10, though no one spoke of it, I knew what happened to boys like me in our impoverished society; they were designated victims, to be used, with everyone's blessing, as easy sexual objects by frustrated men.
"The freedom in Egyptian cinema, where women appeared without veils and alcohol was consumed openly, pervaded his living room and gave him hope.
"[6] He studied French literature while living in Rabat, "his gaze set upon Paris and the possibilities that city represented to him, namely a career in film.
"[6] Taïa's books deal with his life living in a homophobic society and have autobiographical background on the social experiences of the generation of Moroccans who came of age in the 1980s and 1990s.
"[8] Taïa has explained what happened when Le rouge du Tarbouche came out in Morocco and he was interviewed by a reporter for the French-Arab journal Tel Quel: "She wanted to do a profile on me and was interested in speaking about the themes of homosexuality in my books.
The editor of Al Massae, Morocco's biggest-selling newspaper, wrote an editorial denouncing Taïa and attacking the use of public money to fund TV shows that featured him.
"[6] The scandal over Taïa's coming-out led to "a debate about gay rights and the oppression of the individual in Morocco, and to a greater extent, the entire Arab world."
'"[6] During the public outrage over his Tel Quel interview that Taïa wrote L'armee du Salut (Salvation Army), a "bildungsroman of his youthful dreams and indiscretions set in Rabat, Tangier, and Geneva.
"[2] Taïa's English-language publisher, Semiotext(e), describes Salvation Army as "a coming-of-age novel that narrates the story of Taïa's life with complete disclosure—from a childhood bound by family order and latent (homo)sexual tensions in the poor city of Salé, through an adolescence in Tangier charged by the young writer's attraction to his eldest brother, to his disappointing 'arrival' in the Western world to study in Geneva in adulthood—and in so doing manages to burn through the author's first-person singularity to embody the complex mélange of fear and desire projected by Arabs on Western culture, and move towards restituting their alterity.
"[3] Salvation Army was described in Out Magazine as "a gay coming-of-age novel" whose "perspective–rooted in the claustrophobic world of a poor Moroccan neighborhood–lends it freshness rare in English literature."
It was described by author David Ebershoff as one of the best gay books of 2009 and by Edmund White, who wrote the introduction to the American edition, as marked by "a simplicity that only intelligence and experience and wide reading can buy.
"[8] Variety called it "a bold coming out, unadorned by guilt or sensationalism and directly confronting Western expectations, at least in gay circles, of Arab youth as adornments rather than equal companions.
"[13] Interview Magazine described Salvation Army as a valuable contribution not only to queer fiction but to North African diaspora literature as well.
A resident of Paris over the last decade, Taïa has joined the column of Moroccan expatriates–Tahar Ben Jelloun and Abdelkebir Khatibi, among others–who cast a telescopic eye over the thorny and often violent ideological interchange between postmodern Europe and postcolonial Africa.
But Taïa's words are not scrawled with the bellicose politics of a partisan; rather, they are auguries of a familial world imbued with both magic and poverty; lilting and resolute; a prose of stark divinity and apostasy.
"[2]Une mélancolie árabe (An Arab Melancholia) is an "autobiographical novel of self-discovery...about an openly gay man who lives between cultures in Egypt and France".
"[6] Taïa responded to the 2007 death of two young brothers in a suicide attack on the U.S. consulate in Casablanca with a Le Monde editorial titled "We Have to Save Moroccan Youth".
Pierre Bergé, the partner of Yves Saint Laurent, "agreed to fund the printing and distribution of 90,000 copies of the book in French and Arabic".
In 2009, when Morocco's interior ministry began to crack down on writing that challenged the country's "moral and religious values", Taïa published an open letter, "Homosexuality Explained to My Mother", in Tel Quel.
[8][9] Taïa wrote a piece for The Guardian in December 2010 about Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who, formerly the richest man in his country, was accused of tax fraud in 2003 and has been languishing in a Siberian prison for seven years.
[7] The reviewer for Variety stated that in the film "Taïa retains the bare bones but strips away warmth and insight, without any fresh perceptions that would compensate".
"[4] "Before shooting", Taïa has noted, he submitted the screenplay of his film "in its original form to the authorities at the National Centre for Moroccan Cinema....
[17] Taia has noted that he is coauthoring a play to be performed in Paris: https://www.lambdaliterary.org/2020/11/abdellah-taia/ In 2001, he appeared in a French gay film The Road to Love.
[4]According to a 2014 New York Times profile, Taïa "considers himself Muslim because he is very spiritual, and he believes that freedom has existed in Islam through those such as the Arab philosopher Averroes and the Iranian poet Rumi, and in works such as '1001 Nights.'"
"[1] Taïa is a fan of the films of Marilyn Monroe and of the directors Gus Van Sant, Douglas Sirk, and Tsai Ming-Liang.