When the opportunity arose to review Ishara Deen’s God Smites and Other Muslim Girl Problems, I jumped at the chance. My interest in YA fiction and overall NEED for #ownvoices made the choice an easy one. The book did not disappoint. I finished it in one day. I just couldn’t put it down. The overall […]

Na’ima B. Robert’s second book, “Boy vs. Girl” is set in a South Asian community in Britain. The two main characters, Farhana and Faraz, are sixteen-year-old twins trying to negotiate their identities as the children of Pakistani immigrants and as Muslims.  Robert attempts to tell the story of struggling with trying to find a sense […]

In March, MMW ran a guest post by Özlem Sensoy and Elizabeth Marshall about representations of Muslim women and girls in young adult literature (part one, part two, and part three.)  The article focuses on stories, written by non-Muslim Western authors, of Muslim girls living in places like Afghanistan, and the kinds of images that are created through these novels.  In […]

This was written by Özlem Sensoy and Elizabeth Marshall, and originally appeared in Rethinking Schools Online. Part I & Part II ran earlier this week. Learning a Stereotype Lesson #3: Muslim Girls and Women Want To Be Saved by the West For many in the West, the plight of Afghanistan is framed exclusively within a […]

This was written by Özlem Sensoy and Elizabeth Marshall, and originally appeared in Rethinking Schools Online. You can read Part I here. Learning a Stereotype Lesson #2: Veiled = Oppressed Gendered violence in Middle Eastern countries, or the threat of it, organizes many of the books’ plots. With few exceptions, the “good” civilized men in […]

This was written by Özlem Sensoy and Elizabeth Marshall, and originally appeared at Rethinking Schools Online. Does popular young adult fiction about Muslim girls build understanding or reinforce stereotypes? Young adult titles that focus on the lives of Muslim girls in the Middle East, written predominantly by white women, have appeared in increasing numbers since […]