Required Reading Fail
Probably the worst book I've ever had to read was Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind, by Suzanne Fisher Staples. I'd never heard of it when it was assigned to read over the summer before ninth grade, so I didn't really have any expectations beforehand other than the summary from the back of the book.
Probably what made it such a fail was it was presented as being about a girl struggling to find her independence while living an a rural Muslim, male-dominated culture. Sounds like an interesting premise, right? Well, the book sucked, mostly because for a plot like that you need to have a strong female heroine and this one sure didn't. The character Shabanu pissed me off to no end because she kept telling the reader she was "strong-willed" and "spirited" yet on practically every page she bent to the wishes of her entire family. Not just her father and mother, but her aunts and uncles successfully manipulated her for their own purposes. What was more, the tone of the book seemed to consent to and approve of this oppression of a young thirteen-year-old girl (mostly in the form of an arranged marriage to someone four times her age.)
The end had hope of redeeming the book, until the very last page. Shabanu runs away from home in order to escape her arranged marriage and everything's going great until her camel breaks its ankle or something and she's forced to sit down in the middle of the desert and wait for her father to come track her down and drag her forcibly back home to marry her elderly suitor. The last line is about her father finding her and beating her, but the worst part is how Shabanu seems happy about this. The book is supposed to be a coming-of-age story, but I didn't feel any sympathy at all for Shabanu and it seemed like she hardly even changed at all, except maybe to become brainwashed into believing the ideals she spent the entire first half of book trying to fight.
In short, this book made me incredibly pissed off at the lack of true independence and free will in a supposedly "willful and independent" heroine. Additionally, while male dominance is a key figure in much of traditional Muslim culture, this book seems to portray it to the extreme, causing some reviewers to comment that it doesn't give an accurate description of how Pakistanis actually live. If you believe in female rights in any way, shape, or form, this is definitely not the book for you.
EDIT: And the book explained almost everything in relation to camels, which I just didn't understand. Why.
Probably what made it such a fail was it was presented as being about a girl struggling to find her independence while living an a rural Muslim, male-dominated culture. Sounds like an interesting premise, right? Well, the book sucked, mostly because for a plot like that you need to have a strong female heroine and this one sure didn't. The character Shabanu pissed me off to no end because she kept telling the reader she was "strong-willed" and "spirited" yet on practically every page she bent to the wishes of her entire family. Not just her father and mother, but her aunts and uncles successfully manipulated her for their own purposes. What was more, the tone of the book seemed to consent to and approve of this oppression of a young thirteen-year-old girl (mostly in the form of an arranged marriage to someone four times her age.)
The end had hope of redeeming the book, until the very last page. Shabanu runs away from home in order to escape her arranged marriage and everything's going great until her camel breaks its ankle or something and she's forced to sit down in the middle of the desert and wait for her father to come track her down and drag her forcibly back home to marry her elderly suitor. The last line is about her father finding her and beating her, but the worst part is how Shabanu seems happy about this. The book is supposed to be a coming-of-age story, but I didn't feel any sympathy at all for Shabanu and it seemed like she hardly even changed at all, except maybe to become brainwashed into believing the ideals she spent the entire first half of book trying to fight.
In short, this book made me incredibly pissed off at the lack of true independence and free will in a supposedly "willful and independent" heroine. Additionally, while male dominance is a key figure in much of traditional Muslim culture, this book seems to portray it to the extreme, causing some reviewers to comment that it doesn't give an accurate description of how Pakistanis actually live. If you believe in female rights in any way, shape, or form, this is definitely not the book for you.
EDIT: And the book explained almost everything in relation to camels, which I just didn't understand. Why.