Maria Kastani is a Pakistani American by birth, but was formerly known as Aliya Syed. Maria attended the University of Illinois at Champaign, but did not pursue her degree due to her marriage to an Iranian. She now identifies as a Muslim but was raised as a motionless person by her mother, who was from Iran. Maria moved to Los Angeles to study, which is where she met H.R. Hussain, who are a.com editor, and began a relationship with him, which would eventually end in marriage.
Maria’s parents both supported their daughter’s choice to be a lawyer, so her siblings encouraged her to follow her dream and become a lawyer. However, the pressures of raising a daughter into a Pakistani American brought about a change in her mind, which lead her to consider switching her profession to being a writer. While pursuing this goal, she discovered that while she enjoyed the legal aspect of the legal profession, the only way to truly be content was to abandon her Pakistani identity, and accept her American nationality.
While changing her name from nationality to American does not eliminate her ethnicity, it does mark a beginning. Although her father always called hernia” Sana”, (which is what her original passport read), and continued to do so until she was eight years old, Maria now prefers to use “Sana” when speaking to those who know her, or reading her work. In fact, her book was published under the pen name Sana Saleh, and her new novel entitled “Necessary Break” was recently published by Delmarva, a co-publisher of Macmillan. This is a remarkable example of a Pakistani woman adjusting to her new country and embracing her culture. Her transition is inspiring to women of all races, as well as a positive step towards the future of gender equality in the United States and the world.