When a Brown Girl Flees

August 15, 2023
Eighteen-year-old Zahra Paracha's tight hold on a secret spirals into a decision to run away from home. A recent high school graduate who's about to get married, Pakistani American Zahra feels suffocated by her controlling mother. Consumed by guilt from a mistake she made that's at odds with her Muslim beliefs, she flees from California to Long Island. While attending prayers at the local masjid, she meets girls from a youth group and is befriended by the Chaudry sisters. They warmly invite her into their home, helping her find her bearings and a loving community. Struggling to control her depression and anxiety, a cautious Zahra slowly embraces her new life and begins to unpack her troubled mind and reevaluate her faith. As she heals, she confronts her past and seeks absolution to repair her new relationships. The story is an emotional journey of redemption, forgiveness, and moving forward that explores themes of friendship, mental health struggles, and finding oneself. While Qureshi introduces a number of mental health issues--depression, anxiety, emotional and physical abuse, self-harm, suicidal ideation, slut shaming, and PTSD--they are not explored with sufficient depth. The overwrought writing is vague about Zahra's trauma. Many problems are met with impromptu solutions by the Chaudry sisters, and the resolutions of her interpersonal conflicts happen so easily that they feel anticlimactic. An underdeveloped story that misses opportunities to examine underrepresented mental health issues in Muslim communities. (trigger warnings, author's note) (Fiction. 13-18)

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 25, 2023
Pakistani American 18-year-old Zahra Paracha feels suffocated by her mother’s controlling nature and is consumed by guilt over a decision Zahra made that she believes is at odds with her Muslim faith. A few weeks after her high school graduation, she runs away to Long Island, N.Y., leaving her family, community, and impending nuptials in California. When she arrives, she heads to a local mosque to clear her mind; there, she befriends sisters Haya and Sadaf Chaudry, who take Zahra under their wing. Zahra, who sometimes navigates her anxiety and depression through self-harm, has been wrestling with her relationship to Islam. But as she integrates herself into her new community, she learns to reconnect with her faith and starts to unpack her feelings surrounding her secrets and the family she left behind. Expository passages depict Zahra’s conversations with God, whom she asks for forgiveness and mercy. Didactic and moralistic prose by Qureshi (The Man or the Monster) summarily renders the characters’ experiences with suicidal ideation, slut shaming, and emotional and physical abuse, and messaging surrounding love of culture, family, and faith provide plentiful food for thought. An author’s note discusses the novel’s inspiration. Ages 14–up.

October 6, 2023
Grades 8-12 After partaking in an act frowned upon in Muslim culture, 18-year-old Zahra is given two choices by her mother: become a doctor or marry. Unable to reconcile her past decisions, she runs away before her nikah from her home in California to Long Island, where she is quickly welcomed into the local Muslim community while attending prayers at a masjid. Two boisterous sisters, Haya and Sadaf Chaudry, facilitate Zahra's fresh start as she traverses her shame and guilt. But as her lies grow and the past she escaped draws nearer, she must decide if moving forward means leaving her family behind. Qureshi's latest novel boldly explores mental health issues, a known taboo topic in the Muslim community. For Zahra, those issues stem from the cultural expectation for Muslim women to be perfect. Though the writing sometimes feels labored, desi readers in particular will warm to the familiarity of the customs and language shown on the page. In the end, we may all see a bit of ourselves in Zahra's attempts to simply be enough for herself.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.