Their relationship is sweet and awkward and lovely. Phil, meanwhile, provides the kind of first-love story that I never tire of reading. Rather than casting Kareem aside, she develops a platonic relationship with him that grows to play an important role in her life. She likes spending time with Kareem, even likes kissing him, but recognizes that her feelings for him don’t have the depth or intensity of her feelings for Phil. Maya’s love story is three-dimensional and heartrending. And all I want is to make movies and kiss a boy.” I’m blamed for events that have nothing to do with me. The world outside paints us all as terrorists. My parents’ fears shrink my universe to the four walls of this house. “Everything in my life is a fight right now, and it’s exhausting.
Maya’s parents are shaken by the attacks on their family and, while they had previously agreed to let her move away to film school, they now insist she go to college nearby and live at home. Investigators later discover that the terrorist attack was mistakenly attributed to an innocent victim, and that the actual terrorist was an American-born white supremacist. Maya is threatened, and subsequently attacked, by an angry racist classmate. Her parents’ office falls victim to a hate crime. The brazen Islamophobia that her parents had always recounted to her from their experiences post-9/11 is suddenly a reality of daily life in their small town.
The perpetrator is Muslim and, to make matters worse, shares Maya’s last name. Then a terrorist attack strikes the nearest city, and Maya’s fragile plans shatter. She comes clean to her parents about her film-school ambitions, feeling hopeful that she can carve out a place for herself in this world after all. Perhaps she is deserving of her own love story, even if it doesn’t look quite like what Hollywood or Bollywood would portray. Maya begins to realize that people see more in her than the shy token Indian girl, and that perhaps she should see more in herself. In Samira Ahmed’s debut YA novel, 17-year-old Maya Aziz is caught between her parents’ expectations that she be a good Indian daughter who lives according to their Muslim customs, and her desire to spread her wings, go to film school, and maybe even kiss a boy.Īs someone who feels like she’s always lived her life on the sidelines, Maya is surprised to suddenly find herself the star of her own romantic comedy: She makes a strong connection with Kareem, a college boy her parents approve of who also encourages her to explore what she really wants.Īt the same time, Phil, the star of the football team and her longstanding crush-from-afar, starts to notice her.
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