Fatima Shaik
American writer
Fatima Shaik is an Indian-American and African-American author and former journalist. Her work explores contemporary social issues, especially those related to the "African-American experience."
Shaik's research on the Société d’Economie, an early Black Catholic mutual aid society, received support from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities and the Kittredge Fund, and led to her 2021 book Economy Hall: The Hidden History of a Free Black Brotherhood. That same year, she received the Louisiana Writer Award from the Louisiana Center for the Book and the State Library of Louisiana.
Shaik is the subject of a film by director Kaveri Kaul, who takes the author to her paternal grandfather's birthplace in Kolkata. Shaik is included in The Booklover’s Guide to New Orleans and the Encyclopedia of African American Writers.
Biography
Early life and education
Shaik was born in New Orleans and raised in the Historic Creole 7th Ward. Her father was one of the first black aviators in the state. Her mother was Lily Shaik, a native Louisiana French speaker and poet. Both taught at New Orleans public schools.
Shaik's Bengali grandfather, Shaik Mohamed Musa, immigrated to the United States in the 1890s, settling in Tremé in 1896.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Fatima Shaik” is american writer. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Fatima, Shaik and American, not as a finished interpretation.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q28215720. VIAF identifies the subject as 38442006. The Library of Congress control number is n87873207. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2021 and 1896.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fatima Shaik” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.