Teen Tuesday and Audiobook Review: All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir

Image: Penguin Random House

All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir. Unabridged e-audiobook, ~10 hours, 26 minutes. Read by Deepti Gupta, Kamran R. Khan and Kausar Mohammed. Listening Library, March, 2022. 9780593502228. (Review of finished e-audio borrowed from public library.)

Teen Tuesday features All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir. Ms. Tahir made a huge splash with her debut trilogy starter, An Ember in the Ashes. Here she turns from fantasy to contemporary realistic fiction and the results are gut-wrenching and utterly compelling.

Salahudin and Noor are eighteen-year-old seniors living in a small town in the Mojave Desert in California. They are the only Muslims in town and used to be best friends. Noor is an orphan who lost her parents in an earthquake in Pakistan when she was six. Her uncle, who owns a liquor store and was her only living relative, brought her to the U.S., but has banned her from speaking Punjabi or practicing Islam. Though Noor wishes to attend college and eventually study medicine, her uncle's plans for her to work at his liquor store full-time.

Sal's parents own the financially failing Cloud Rest Motel and his mother, Misbah has ignored her health problems due to lack of insurance. His father struggles with alcoholism. Sal learns of the severity of the financial problems when Misbah dies. His father is useless and Sal vows to save the motel, but makes a poor choice in order to do so.

The POV (point-of-view) shifts between Noor and Sal in the present with snippets of the past narrated by Misbah. The result is a feeling of immediacy and utter dread as the story unfolds. Issues of class, race, Islamaphobia, abuse, found family and the criminal justice system collide in a compelling, yet painful narrative. I read this one with my ears and had to stop often due to the intensity of emotions I felt.

Mature teen fans of the author's Ember in the Ashes Trilogy will most definitely want to read All My Rage, as will fans of contemporary realistic fiction. This is a story that will stay with me for a long time. 

I'm so glad I read this with my ears. The three narrators were pitch perfect. 

Teen Tuesday: Huda F are You? by Huda Fahmy

Image: Penguin Random House

Huda F are You? by Huda Fahmy. 188 p. Dial Books for Young Readers/ Penguin Young Readers Group, November, 2021. 9780593324301. (Review of finished purchased copy.)

Happy Tuesday! It's still winter here in NJ, a brisk 24 degrees when I took the hounds out for their morning trot at 5AM. The title of our Teen Tuesday feature sure is attention-grabbing, so hang on to your hat! 

Teen Tuesday features Huda F Are You? by Huda Fahmy. Did you see what the author did there? The main character in this fictionalized graphic novel memoir is Huda Fahmy, Huda F. is an Egyptian-American. She is also a hijab-wearing Muslim who has recently moved from a town in Michigan, wear she was the only hijabi, to Dearborn, where she is one of so many, that there are hijabi cliques, like the athletes, gamers and fashionistas. As the second of five daughters, she knows exactly who she is in her family, the smart one, but in her new high school? Not so much, so she experiments with personas with often humorous but embarrassing results. Sadly, Huda still deals with micro-aggressions and outright hostility, especially from her English teacher, who thinly hides her racism.

The art is simple and clean with lots of white space and easy to follow panels. Readers are sure to root for Huda F. as she finds herself. I'd love to read a sequel.

Teen Tuesday and Audiobook Review: Internment by Samira Ahmed

Image: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Teen Tuesday features Internment by Samira Ahmed. This powerful and prescient first-person novel is set in the near-future and is narrated by seventeen-year-old Layla Amin. Two and a half year after the election of an Islamophobic president, Muslim Americans are stripped of their property and rights and are relocated to internment camps. Resistance results in the individual being "disappeared." Defying her parents plea to stay quiet and follow the rules, Layla finds likeminded friends and ways to resist. Utterly believable and exquisitely suspenseful, Internment will astound.

Fact Friday and Audiobook Review: Proud (Young Reader's Edition): living my American dream by Ibtihaj Muhammad

Proud: living my American dream by Ibtihaj Muhammad with Lori L. Tharps. Unabridged audiobook on 8 compact discs. ~9.2 hours.  Read by the author. Hachette Audio, 2018. 9781549172908. (Review of audiobook borrowed from the public library. Own Young Reader's Edition.)

Fact Friday features Proud: living my American dream by Ibtihaj Muhammad. Muhammad is the first hijabi to win Olympic bronze and one of few people of color in the predominantly white sport of fencing. Her memoir covers her life growing up in Maplewood, NJ, a suburb of Newark through the 2016 Olympics, where she and her teammates captured the bronze medal in the saber event. 

As the only Muslim in her class, she often encountered racism and micro-aggressions. But when she began wearing hijab, comments and taunts escalated and after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, she often faced blatant hatred. She found strength in her religion, her close-knit family and sport. However, competing in sport was often a challenge due to the necessity to be covered modestly. When Muhammad was in eighth grade, her mother noticed the fencing team practicing at their local high school. The team members were covered from head to toe in protective clothing. Ibtihaj would not stand out. But, she eventually would stand out as a fencer.

Participating in a predominantly white sport as the first muslim athlete brought many challenges, adding to the stress and loneliness of high caliber training and competition. Honestly, I don't know how she did it. The racism and animosity were relentless and infuriating. This is an inspirational and important story. Hand to fans of sports memoirs and fencing fans.

I accidentally ordered the wrong edition of the audiobook from the public library. The adult version is narrated by the author, whose performance, though earnest lacked variety of expression and nuance. The Young Reader's Audiobook is read by someone else, I assume a professional reader and will check that out when my hold comes up. I recommend reading this with one's eyes.