Title: Love From A to Z

Author: S.K. Ali

Publication Date: April 30th, 2019

Publisher: Salaam Reads

Genre: Romance, contemporary

Age Range: YA

Maybe that’s what living is—recognizing the marvels and oddities around you.

If I had to pick my favorite YA contemporary of all time, it just might be Love from A to Z. It contains so much heart, humor, unabashed discussion of Islamophobia, and validation for any person of color living in the current political climate. While it is a romance novel (with a swoon-worthy, realistic romance to boot), Love from A to Z goes above and beyond with its approach to how to be an ally, how to engage in difficult conversations with friends, and how family ties into the way we move through the world around us.

A marvel: something you find amazing. Even ordinary-amazing. Like potatoes—because they make French fries happen. Like the perfect fries Adam and his mom used to make together.

An oddity: whatever gives you pause. Like the fact that there are hateful people in the world. Like Zayneb’s teacher, who won’t stop reminding the class how “bad” Muslims are.

But Zayneb, the only Muslim in class, isn’t bad. She’s angry. When she gets suspended for confronting her teacher, and he begins investigating her activist friends, Zayneb heads to her aunt’s house in Doha, Qatar, for an early start to spring break. Fueled by the guilt of getting her friends in trouble, she resolves to try out a newer, “nicer” version of herself in a place where no one knows her.

Then her path crosses with Adam’s.

Since he got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in November, Adam’s stopped going to classes, intent, instead, on perfecting the making of things. Intent on keeping the memory of his mom alive for his little sister. Adam’s also intent on keeping his diagnosis a secret from his grieving father.

Alone, Adam and Zayneb are playing roles for others, keeping their real thoughts locked away in their journals. Until a marvel and an oddity occurs…

Marvel: Adam and Zayneb meeting.
Oddity: Adam and Zayneb meeting.

Love from A to Z is an unapologetic story about being Muslim in a very Islamophobic world and how to navigate teen romance in the midst of activism, chronic health issues, and rocky family dynamics. I absolutely loved reading the interactions between Zayneb and Adam and their respective families, but what I loved most were the moments with Adam’s group of friends in Doha.

One of my favorite things about Love from A to Z is that it represents and validates the diversity of experience within the same marginalized group. Not all people of color are going to have the patience to explain why something is racist, and not all people of color are going to have the emotional and mental capacity to do so either. Some people are able to let things slide in favor of saving their energy; others can’t stay silent in the face of bigotry – all of these reactions are valid, and I was honestly floored that Love from A to Z talked about this because it’s something I feel is underrepresented in all forms of media.

Seeing her totally okay, completely comfortable in life, made me tear up.

Zayneb is an absolute powerhouse of a narrator – after all, one of the very first things she does is get suspended from school for standing up to her teacher. But she’s also a young teenage girl who is unfairly hated for her religion and the color of her skin, I think it’s important that we see the vulnerable side of her. It’s hard and exhausting to be angry all the time, but it’s just as exhausting to look around you and know that no matter what you do, you’re never going to have it as easy as the blissfully unaware white child coloring on the plane.

Zayneb deserves to be treated with the same concern and care that the flight attendants show the white girl her age on the same exact flight, and she knows it. But while it’s perfectly acceptable and endearing for a white child to color on a plane, Love from A to Z highlights the automatic suspicion brown folks have to endure for doing something as simple as journaling.

Like, why be different, why be Muslim, why be anything that society tells you isn’t normal if you can’t actually be it freely? Why do we have to suffer to be us?

Love from A to Z highlights the macro and microaggressions that Muslim people especially face on a daily basis. It’s hard enough when you know you’re unwelcome by strangers who know nothing about you; it’s harder still when it comes from people you want to be friends with. It’s awkward and uncomfortable, and I really admire Zayneb for always standing up for what’s right despite all of that.

Overall, I think Love from A to Z has so much to offer. There’s so much for marginalized people to relate to throughout the book, and there’s so much to learn for allies as well. The heart, humor, and hopeful tone at the end of the novel have earned it a permanent place as one of my favorite books of all time.

Links for Love from A to Z

Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Book Depository | Indie Bound

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Title: Our Wayward Fate

Author: Gloria Chao

Publication Date: October 15th, 2019

Publisher: Simon Pulse

Genre: Romance, contemporary

Age Range: YA

It’s Taiwanese and resilient, just the way I like it.

Our Wayward Fate by Gloria Chao, pg. 65

As soon as I read the synopsis for Our Wayward Fate, I knew it was going to be one of my all-time favorites – and I’m happy to say I wasn’t wrong. It is exactly the kind of book that I needed when I was in high school, when I was still struggling to overcome the subconscious shame in my identity that developed when I was going to a very white-centric elementary school. Our Wayward Fate is about complex family ties as well as who we are individually, and is jam packed with a refreshing sense of humor that doesn’t detract from the ways in which people of color can be isolated in a supposedly tight-knit town.

Our Wayward Fate tells the story of Ali Chu, a Taiwanese-American teenager living in a suburban (white) community in Indiana. To fit in, Ali has to snuff out even the most minute indicators of her culture that set her apart from everyone else. She has to learn to ignore casual – and not so casual – racism and stay silent about the assumptions people make about her, including the pronunciation of her name, which is supposed to be Āh-lěe instead of Allie. Her tentatively peaceful existence is disrupted when Chase Yu arrives at her school, and people automatically push them together because they are both Taiwanese. As much as Ali and Chase try to ignore the way everyone else believes they belong together, they inexplicably form a bond over their shared culture and the inside jokes and comfort that come along with finally being able to be exactly who they are – Taiwanese pineapple cakes in the midst of dry toast.

My mom believes in magic penises.

Our Wayward Fate by Gloria Chao, pg. 1

I can honestly say that no book has ever made me laugh as much as Our Wayward Fate. From the very beginning (literally, since that quote is the first line of the book), Gloria Chao’s voice comes across strong and clear. This book was something I could only ever dream of coming to life, and holding it in my hands was enough to bring tears to my eyes. Gloria Chao embeds wit and sarcasm into Our Wayward Fate so seamlessly, while also tackling the significant amount of racism that Asian people face on a daily basis, even from people we consider friends. I think one of the things that’s so special about the book is that it can resonate with people on so many levels, whether it be about the emotional distance felt between generations, feeling too American for some and too Asian for others and therefore not knowing quite how you fit in anywhere, or holding on tight to something that makes you feel grounded in your culture in a sea of dry toast.

“She called you a turtle’s egg,” Chase answered honestly, leaving out that he was giving the direct word-for-word translation and not what the term actually meant to Chinese folks, which was, for some reason, “son of a bitch.”

Our Wayward Fate by Gloria Chao, pg. 98

I don’t think I knew just how much I needed this book until I saw the Mandarin on the page, accents and all. Back in middle and early high school, and before I got so overwhelmed by school I couldn’t make time for anything else, I was devouring books as fast as possible. I would read 3-4 books a week, and still want more. But among all of those books, no matter how much I related to a character or wanted to relate to them, there were very few who actually represented me as a whole person. Because of that lack of representation, for a long time, my standards weren’t very high. I’d latch onto the bare minimum, including artificial sounding Mandarin with no tones, spoken by a half Chinese character written by a white author. Our Wayward Fate showed me that you can have it all. You can have jokes in two languages, and Asian characters who are feminist and badass, and vulnerable, and frustrated, and flawed, and so much more – because we are so much more.

This book was made for me. In many ways, I was like Ali at the beginning of the book, keeping my head down and letting what I thought were insignificant microaggressions pass over me because it was too exhausting to call them out and explain how racist they were. I swapped my own congee for plain, white bread sandwiches when I made the switch from a classroom of other third graders who looked like me to a classroom where I was one of three Asian kids, who also happened to always sit together. I’ve had friends tell me I should date the Asian boy who just walked into the room, despite them not knowing anything about him other than the fact that he was Asian. Like Ali and Chase, I don’t like talking to my non-Asian friends about my parents, or anything else they might find “restrictive” about my culture, because in doing so, they think they have an invitation to criticize something they know nothing about. I saw so much of myself and my friends in Our Wayward Fate, and I’m absolutely overjoyed that a book like this exists.

Links for Our Wayward Fate:

Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Book Depository | Goodreads