Randa Abdel-Fattah
Somewhere in the wilds of Australia, we encounter Amal Abdel-Hakim. She’s an Australian-Muslim-Palestinian. “That means I was born an Aussie and whacked with some bloody confusing identity hyphens,” she says. While watching Friends on the treadmill, she comes to a decision: she’s going to wear the hijab. Full time. This is a story of a girl of immense faith who makes a decision and sticks with it, while still having to go through the daily woes of high school, including everything from crushes to grades.
(Add from Miss Ashley: Abdel-Fattah's other novel, TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT ME is a must-read!)
Na'ima B. Robert
She Wore Red Trainers alternates points of view between Ali, a down-on-his-luck pretty boy whose family has to live in London for the summer, and the goal-oriented Amirah, who has no plans to get married or be held back in her dreams of Uni and a great job. As the weather changes, the story wends its way around the two as they move around each other in the days of summer and beyond.
Aisha Saeed
This book comes out March 24th, and it looks both darling and tragic. The right parts of Romeo and Juliet–two people who love each other even at the disapproval of her family–meet the clash of traditional conservatism and youthful desire. Naila is given relative freedom when it comes to living in the United States; she doesn’t have to cover her head, she can study what she wants. But no boys. She will be married based on her immigrant parents’ traditions: to whomever they decide. Guess nobody told her heart.
I wouldn’t include this in the actual “3 on a YA Theme” because I (read: publishers) don’t consider Ms. Marvel to be strictly YA. It does, however, feature a teenage, female, Muslim, AWESOME protagonist who not only has to deal with coming of age in an environment that can be openly hostile to Muslim-Americans, but also, hey! She has powers she doesn’t understand or really know how to use properly.
Also, the importance of seeing a brown face on the cover of a Marvel comic is huge. Even if she only has half a face.
Amalie Sarn
Jennifer Latham
Scarlett is an American Muslim teenager who solves crimes a la Veronica Mars (seriously, all I keep hearing about this one is Veronica Mars. It had better deliver). The fact that she is Muslim is very high on the list of items in the bullet list for her, which leads me to believe it might have some integral part in the plot, instead of a simple feature of her ethnic and religious background. We’ll see what happens when this one comes out in May.
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