If you read one book this year, have it be this one. The year is 2002, one year after 9/11, a politically turbulent time for a sixteen-year old Hijabi Muslim. Shirin’s immigrant parents have moved the family each year to find better job opportunities and better school districts. This makes it even harder to walk the halls of a new school surrounded by rampant Islamophobia and xenophobia. Slurs and stereotyping and even violence have built a guarded shell around Shirin that she can never let down. Invisibility is her goal and loneliness her companion.
One day her brother introduces her to his break dancing crew and she finds herself belonging somewhere. Then she meets Ocean. Not since Augustus in A Fault in Our Stars, have I encountered a young male character whose innocence, kindness, integrity and tenderness break your heart. He is the perfect complement to Shirin’s toughness. But I had never, ever touched someone and felt like this: like I was holding electricity inside of me. Their romance is so sweet and yet you fear that Shirin may be right that the cruelty of students, teachers and families will destroy it.
Shirin is an amazing narrator, fierce and angry as well as funny and loving. Her family and their Persian culture is heartwarmingly portrayed. I laughed and cried over this book.
I just want to include the following written by a young reader from Good Reads:
“Everything about this book fitted right into the hollows of my heart. When I first heard that this is the story of a fellow teen Muslim, my hope came so sharp that I didn’t dare speak it. My joy, now, is inarticulate—I could never quite explain the blaze of connection, the feeling of being seen and set apart that planted seeds of gratitude that would come to flower.”
Tessa's Picks, 8th Summer 2019, Character driven, Contemporary fiction, Issues fiction, People of color, Romance
One day her brother introduces her to his break dancing crew and she finds herself belonging somewhere. Then she meets Ocean. Not since Augustus in A Fault in Our Stars, have I encountered a young male character whose innocence, kindness, integrity and tenderness break your heart. He is the perfect complement to Shirin’s toughness. But I had never, ever touched someone and felt like this: like I was holding electricity inside of me. Their romance is so sweet and yet you fear that Shirin may be right that the cruelty of students, teachers and families will destroy it.
Shirin is an amazing narrator, fierce and angry as well as funny and loving. Her family and their Persian culture is heartwarmingly portrayed. I laughed and cried over this book.
I just want to include the following written by a young reader from Good Reads:
“Everything about this book fitted right into the hollows of my heart. When I first heard that this is the story of a fellow teen Muslim, my hope came so sharp that I didn’t dare speak it. My joy, now, is inarticulate—I could never quite explain the blaze of connection, the feeling of being seen and set apart that planted seeds of gratitude that would come to flower.”
Tessa's Picks, 8th Summer 2019, Character driven, Contemporary fiction, Issues fiction, People of color, Romance
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