It’s so easy to understand why Shirin walks around with walls of thick stone surrounding her, and why it’s so hard for her to let people in-because even the people that seem “good” usually end up hurting her, whether it’s through ignorance or malevolence.
There’s also a running theme of Shirin discussing not only how racism affects her in obvious ways, such as the assailants who attacked her right after 9/11, but also in microaggressions and people being careless despite thinking they had good intentions. “I’m just-I’m sick and tired of trying to explain to the world why racism is bad, okay? Why is that my job?” I learned so much, but more than that, I was given just a tiny little glimpse into what it must be like to be a Muslim in a xenophobic, Islamophobic world, and it broke my heart a million times over. (If you have an own-voice review for this book, please let me know and I’ll boost your review! ♥) What I can say, though, is that Shirin is such an incredible character and I loved the representation. Obviously, as a white woman from the US, with no immigration in my recent ancestors and no religious affiliations, I can’t begin to speak for the representation in this book however, Tahereh explains in her author’s note that every bit of it is own-voice (even the break dancing!), and many of my Muslim friends have been raving about this book already. I was stuck in another small town, trapped in another universe populated by the kind of people who’d only ever seen faces like mine on their evening news, and I hated it.
A VERY LARGE EXPANSE OF SEA SKIN
On top of all of that, her parents move her and her brother Navid constantly, and where the story picks up, Shirin is yet again the new girl whose classmates won’t look past her scarf and skin color long enough to learn more about her: like the music she loves, or the immense value she places on her family and their Persian cooking, or her secret affinity for break dancing. So I said nothing.įirst and foremost, it’s a story inspired by Tahereh Mafi’s own high school life: our protagonist Shirin is a high schooler in the wake of 9/11, shortly after the event occurred, which isn’t an easy place to be when you’re a Muslim girl, the daughter of Persian immigrants who fought and worked their way to the US from Iran, and a hijabi. I worried that if I spoke or screamed my anger would grip both sides of my open mouth and rip me in half. Tahereh Mafi gave me literally every possible emotion I could imagine while reading this gorgeous story. I sat down late one night with the intentions of reading a couple of chapters before bed, and the next thing I knew, it was 4am and I had just finished it and could not stop crying from this mixture of sadness and grief and happiness and love and just… everything. This is my first Tahereh Mafi read (unless you count the few chapters of Shatter Me I’ve read so far), and I could not put it down.
I didn’t understand how anyone could be so violently angry with me for something I hadn’t done, so much so that they’d feel justified in assaulting me in broad daylight as I walked down the street. It’s really rare that I find a book that has all three of those traits, yet here we are. If you know my reading tastes much, you’ll already know that I almost never pick up a contemporary novel unless it involves one of three things: diverse rep, a heartbreaking learning experience (for the reader or the characters), or a romance so sweet and lovable that I can’t help but get sucked in. It terrifies her-they seem to come from two irreconcilable worlds-and Shirin has had her guard up for so long that she’s not sure she’ll ever be able to let it down. He’s the first person in forever who really seems to want to get to know Shirin.
Instead, she drowns her frustrations in music and spends her afternoons break-dancing with her brother.īut then she meets Ocean James. So she’s built up protective walls and refuses to let anyone close enough to hurt her. She’s tired of the rude stares, the degrading comments-even the physical violence-she endures as a result of her race, her religion, and the hijab she wears every day. Shirin is never surprised by how horrible people can be. It’s an extremely turbulent time politically, but especially so for someone like Shirin, a sixteen-year-old Muslim girl who’s tired of being stereotyped.
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