Author Bio: Medeia Sharif is a Kurdish-American author.
This was not on any of the lists I consulted, but I couldn’t resist a YA book with Ramadan in title since it is starting imminently.
Almira is attempting to fast for Ramadan for the second time. Last year she experienced a spectacular failure on the very first day when crumbs stuck in her lip gloss revealed her cheating ways to her family. She’s hoping this year will be better. She wants to be successful in her faster, capture the heart of the adorable boy she’s fallen for, get her driver’s license and hey, if she loses weight while doing it, all the better!
This is extremely fluffy reading, of a type that I did not find particularly satisfying. And I am saying that as someone who finds many teen romances satisfying and engaging. I have no bias against love triangles because certainly that happens among teens. But it just felt like there wasn’t much substance here, unlike Does My Head Look Big in This which balances the shallow with lots of discussion of other issues. It’s hard because with such a narrow range of options featuring Muslim main characters I really wanted every thing I read to be excellent.
One of the things that didn’t sit right with me was the way Almira’s weight was written about. I just don’t feel comfortable with the repeated message that size 8 is too fat. No, wait, hold on. I don’t feel comfortable repeatedly telling teens that anything is “too fat”. Almira constantly compares herself to her super slim workout obsessed mother. I know that many teenage girls struggle with their self-image, particularly as it pertains to weight, but in Bestest. Ramadan. Ever. Almira ends up losing weight on the way to her happy ending, supposedly due to her fasting. It’s presented in a really unrealistic and slightly dangerous way with her parents complimenting her on her weight loss when she’s lost just two pounds, an amount that would really not be visually noticeable at all. She further comments that for each three pounds she loses, three more boys pay attention to her. The message here is resoundingly clear, Almira’s weight loss is not just key to her Ramadan being the happiest ever, but it makes the romance seem as though it is somehow tied to her being thinner (it actually isn’t, but it’s hard to separate that when weight loss = happy ending). Furthermore, many reviewers have mentioned that losing a significant amount of weight like that during Ramadan is incredibly unrealistic because of the feasting that occurs after sundown.
Other concerns: Almira displays a mocking attitude towards her grandmother’s choice to wear the hijab. Lots of kids find family embarrassing or old fashioned, but in our current political climate, the last thing teens need is to think it is okay to mock women for making that choice. I also did not like the portrayal of Almira’s grandfather. He is meant to be quite old-fashioned and he certainly has many character traits that show this. But Sharif doesn’t allow his strict attitudes and frequent criticisms to speak for themselves. Instead she tells us that he shouts “infidel” a lot and that supposedly he might stone Almira’s mother for her risque dressing habits. To me, this reads as racist stereotyping, perpetuating narrow minded beliefs about how Muslims speak and act.
Age Recommendation: Ages 12+. There’s not much inappropriate here, but the dismissive way Almira’s friends treat her fasting, coupled with the character of her grandfather make this a book I would not readily recommend.
Sex, Nudity, Dating – She talks about how men lust for her hot mother. She writes love letters to movie stars (that she doesn’t send) and thinks about having a boyfriend. She and her best friend both find a boy hot. She didn’t find him as attractive last year when he was on the heavier side and had more pimples. She even thinks her teacher is hot, for an old guy. Guys at school stare at her mom because she is so attractive. She is not supposed to date, her family says they will arrange a marriage for her. She keeps a lot of pictures of hot guys on her computer. She once had a messaging exchange with a guy who was supposedly a buff 18 yr old soccer player but turned out to be a 30 year old. She calls him a “Pedo”. Almira wonders how she’ll get her first kiss. Her grandfather calls girls who wear short dresses “prostitutes”, as in, actually shouts this out the windows at them. They watch Dr. 90210 and see a woman who had a “boob job”. Almira thinks “slut” while looking at a girl in a low-cut shirt. She says her mother sounds like a cat in heat when she sings. Almira has gone through her friends’ parents’ medicine chests and found birth control. (Just being nosy, not stealing it or anything). Almira wonders what a boy would look like shirtless. She reads romances. Her mother wears revealing clothes. She daydreams about kisses. A friend of hers has a guy massage her upper thigh. People kiss. People date.
Profanity – “pissing…off”, Almira’s grandmother drops “F bombs”. People stick up their middle fingers. “suck”, “chonga“, “damn”, “ass”, “hell”, another reference is made to “F bombs”,
Death, Violence and Gore – They dissect frogs for class and talk about how the frogs may have been killed. There’s some talk about the war and bombings that occur in the Middle East. Almira’s mother left Iran before the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war. One girl shoves another and they square off to fight. They are stopped by adults. A girl pinches another girl. Almira has her wisdom teeth out. There’s a reference to a story where King Solomon tells two mothers fighting over a child that he will cut the child in half. Girls are stoned in her parents home countries for dating.
Drugs, Alcohol and Smoking – None.
Frightening or Intense Things – None.
