Rukhsana realizes she must find the courage to fight for her love, but can she do so without losing everyone and everything in her life? Only through reading her grandmother’s old diary is Rukhsana able to gain some much needed perspective.

They immediately whisk Rukhsana off to Bangladesh, where she is thrown headfirst into a world of arranged marriages and tradition. Her parents are devastated being gay may as well be a death sentence in the Bengali community. Luckily, only a few more months stand between her carefully monitored life in Seattle and her new life at Caltech, where she can pursue her dream of becoming an engineer.īut when her parents catch her kissing her girlfriend Ariana, all of Rukhsana’s plans fall apart.

She rolls her eyes instead of screaming when they blatantly favor her brother and she dresses conservatively at home, saving her crop tops and makeup for parties her parents don’t know about. Seventeen-year-old Rukhsana Ali tries her hardest to live up to her conservative Muslim parents’ expectations, but lately she’s finding that harder and harder to do. The book is set after 9/11, but it is unapologetic Muslim book with a Muslim main character. 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. I recently started this series up where one of my followers wanted a series of diverse books from my creative features of blog tours, and I took it to Twitter where y’all wanted to see this series. This week’s list of recommendations comes from Love From A to Z with unapologetic Muslim books. This week’s list of recommendations comes from Love from A to Z with unapologetic Muslim books. If anyone has any ideas to what to call this series let me know, and I’ll give you credit for you.

Love from a to z book