Alicia Erian, Towelhead
(So. Freakin'. Far. Behind. On. My. Reviews.)
34. Alicia Erian, Towelhead.
I loved this all to pieces, and inhaled it in as close to a single sitting as my life allows. (I think it actually took something like four sittings, over the space of twelve hours or so.)
Jasira is thirteen, and surrounded by adults who think they're looking out for her, but are actually all betraying her. All of the adults suspect that all of the other adults are failing Jasira in assorted particular ways (and each of them is right in their suspicions about the others), but in their quest to be The One Thing Which Jasira Isn't Getting (while making absolutely sure to get what they themselves want from Jasira), they all perpetrate their own injuries and insults upon her.
(You know what these adults reminded me of? The adults in the Ramona books. Who were supposedly on Ramona's side, yet who betrayed her as casually and routinely as breathing.)
I could not read the Ramona books as a child, because Ramona was five and completely vulnerable to the adults. But Jasira is thirteen, and while she's still vulnerable, she has also learned the fine arts of deceit, of secrets, of playing adults off against each other, of playing them off against themselves. In the midst of all this adult betrayal and attempts to control and use her, Jasira starts carving out a space for herself: a space where she has agency, where she calls the shots, where she's the only one who knows everything that's going on.
I spent the entire book simultaneously rooting for Jasira ("You go! You show them that you're a person and they don't run the show!"), and cringing in terror for her. And also yelling at the adults to get with the program and take on the responsibilities of adulthood. (I can tell that I've somehow become a grown-up somewhere along the line, because I find myself thinking things like, "I know you have issues, everyone has issues, but there's a kid mixed up in all this which means that you don't get to make this about you.")
Some stuff I really liked about this book:
Then there are things about the climax that, when I step back from the book, bother me a lot: it's the nice white Peace Corps family who stands up for her against her abusive Lebanese father, and decide to become her de facto foster parents. And they can do that, more or less at will. I'm kinda amazed the police and the courts never got involved in this, except for the fact that I'm completely not: do I really expect a single Arab man to have much credibility in a Houston family court? Wouldn't he, in fact, do everything he could to keep it from going there? Which is pretty much exactly what Jasira's father does. The ending did work out well for Jasira -- I absolutely rooted for it as it went by, because at that point Jasira so needed someone, ANYONE, to get her back. But lord, do the inequities of racism and privilege stand out in that, and they go by pretty much without even a blip of recognition from the novel itself.
So, in the end, I'm somewhat conflicted about the book. Even while loving it enough to have inhaled it in more-or-less one sitting, and to have refused to pick up another book for a full twenty-four hours because I was still too busy thinking about this one.
Do with that what you will.
(By the way, for those who chose not to read the spoiler-cuts, but who still want trigger warnings up-front: there's sexual predation upon a thirteen-year-old in this book. Just so you know.)
34. Alicia Erian, Towelhead.
I loved this all to pieces, and inhaled it in as close to a single sitting as my life allows. (I think it actually took something like four sittings, over the space of twelve hours or so.)
Jasira is thirteen, and surrounded by adults who think they're looking out for her, but are actually all betraying her. All of the adults suspect that all of the other adults are failing Jasira in assorted particular ways (and each of them is right in their suspicions about the others), but in their quest to be The One Thing Which Jasira Isn't Getting (while making absolutely sure to get what they themselves want from Jasira), they all perpetrate their own injuries and insults upon her.
(You know what these adults reminded me of? The adults in the Ramona books. Who were supposedly on Ramona's side, yet who betrayed her as casually and routinely as breathing.)
I could not read the Ramona books as a child, because Ramona was five and completely vulnerable to the adults. But Jasira is thirteen, and while she's still vulnerable, she has also learned the fine arts of deceit, of secrets, of playing adults off against each other, of playing them off against themselves. In the midst of all this adult betrayal and attempts to control and use her, Jasira starts carving out a space for herself: a space where she has agency, where she calls the shots, where she's the only one who knows everything that's going on.
I spent the entire book simultaneously rooting for Jasira ("You go! You show them that you're a person and they don't run the show!"), and cringing in terror for her. And also yelling at the adults to get with the program and take on the responsibilities of adulthood. (I can tell that I've somehow become a grown-up somewhere along the line, because I find myself thinking things like, "I know you have issues, everyone has issues, but there's a kid mixed up in all this which means that you don't get to make this about you.")
Some stuff I really liked about this book:
- The construction of race and identity is messy, with clashes between how others perceive you and how you perceive yourself. Jasira is taken to be Latina at school, until she's outed as half-Lebanese; Jasira's father insists that he is white even as he refers to the problems that he and his Irish-American wife had as an interracial couple; neighbors refer to Jasira's father as a 'towelhead' even as they insist that Jasira herself is not. And so on.
- That one can be a victim and have agency. (Warning: there's a rape sub-plot in this book. And I can see why the movie got panned -- while I think the book does a good job portraying Jasira as a girl with a developing sexuality and sexual agency, and yet are clear that having agency does not mean that she can't be a victim, too, I can see any movie representation of that become a skeevy Lolitaish mess.)
- Issues of access to culture and identity. There's a moment when the "nice" Peace Corps neighbors are talking to Jasira's father in Arabic, accessing shared cultural knowledge with her father that Jasira herself has no access to. And they don't just access knowledge, but influence, too: influence that Jasira is completely shut out from. And Jasira can't read the letter her grandmother sends her, so she has to take it to her French teacher, who can. (And then outs her as Arabic to the class, never pausing in her "oo! so exotic!" to realize that she has just guaranteed that Jasira's school hours will thereafter be a living hell.)
Then there are things about the climax that, when I step back from the book, bother me a lot: it's the nice white Peace Corps family who stands up for her against her abusive Lebanese father, and decide to become her de facto foster parents. And they can do that, more or less at will. I'm kinda amazed the police and the courts never got involved in this, except for the fact that I'm completely not: do I really expect a single Arab man to have much credibility in a Houston family court? Wouldn't he, in fact, do everything he could to keep it from going there? Which is pretty much exactly what Jasira's father does. The ending did work out well for Jasira -- I absolutely rooted for it as it went by, because at that point Jasira so needed someone, ANYONE, to get her back. But lord, do the inequities of racism and privilege stand out in that, and they go by pretty much without even a blip of recognition from the novel itself.
So, in the end, I'm somewhat conflicted about the book. Even while loving it enough to have inhaled it in more-or-less one sitting, and to have refused to pick up another book for a full twenty-four hours because I was still too busy thinking about this one.
Do with that what you will.
(By the way, for those who chose not to read the spoiler-cuts, but who still want trigger warnings up-front: there's sexual predation upon a thirteen-year-old in this book. Just so you know.)