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A review by melbsreads
Bestest. Ramadan. Ever. by Medeia Sharif
3.0
2.5 stars. Also reviewed on my Youtube channel.
I was pretty excited when I found this on the shelf at my local library. I mean, a Muslim American teenage girl struggling to balance the two halves of her identity during Ramadan? Uh, yes. And in some ways, that was what I got. Almira is 15 years old and, after a monumental didn't-even-last-a-day failure the previous year, has decided to participate in fasting for Ramadan for the first time. Unable to eat while the sun is up, she finds herself struggling through school, her friends taunting her with chocolate, and a growing crush on the cute boy in her science class. She's also taken aback when a new girl - who's ALSO Muslim - starts at the school, and is rather more...abrasive...than expected.
Almira discovers a lot about herself and her family in the course of this book. In the early stages, she's totally grossed out and embarrassed by her mother's fitness obsession and love of gym clothes. By the end of the book, she thinks it's great that her mother's found something that makes her happy. She also realises that her grandfather's attitudes towards women (if they don't dress the way he thinks women should dress, he calls them "prostitutes", and will even yell it out the car window at women walking past) are far more toxic than she'd thought.
So yes, in a lot of ways it was great to see a teenaged Muslim America narrator and the struggles she goes through attempting to maintain her fast.
BUT.
I absolutely loathed the obsession with Almira's weight that we're subjected to throughout. She starts the book by telling us that she's chubby and eats terribly and that she could probably lose a few pounds. She then tells us that she's a SIZE EIGHT. Which, NO. Over the course of the book, basically all her friends and family members tell her how much better she looks now that she's losing weight. And she basically only decides to start exercising at the end of the book so that she can stay a particular size. She spends entire days obsessed with food, asking her friends what they're having for dinner or lunch, and then telling herself that it will all be worth it once she's thin.
I just...ugh. Ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh. Teenage girls have enough to worry about without being told that a size 8 is fat. And there are so few books with Muslim American narrators that we *really* don't need one where the main character essentially treats a religious event as a diet.
So yeah. There was stuff that I liked, and stuff that I hated. And at this point, that's balancing out to 2.5 stars.
I was pretty excited when I found this on the shelf at my local library. I mean, a Muslim American teenage girl struggling to balance the two halves of her identity during Ramadan? Uh, yes. And in some ways, that was what I got. Almira is 15 years old and, after a monumental didn't-even-last-a-day failure the previous year, has decided to participate in fasting for Ramadan for the first time. Unable to eat while the sun is up, she finds herself struggling through school, her friends taunting her with chocolate, and a growing crush on the cute boy in her science class. She's also taken aback when a new girl - who's ALSO Muslim - starts at the school, and is rather more...abrasive...than expected.
Almira discovers a lot about herself and her family in the course of this book. In the early stages, she's totally grossed out and embarrassed by her mother's fitness obsession and love of gym clothes. By the end of the book, she thinks it's great that her mother's found something that makes her happy. She also realises that her grandfather's attitudes towards women (if they don't dress the way he thinks women should dress, he calls them "prostitutes", and will even yell it out the car window at women walking past) are far more toxic than she'd thought.
So yes, in a lot of ways it was great to see a teenaged Muslim America narrator and the struggles she goes through attempting to maintain her fast.
BUT.
I absolutely loathed the obsession with Almira's weight that we're subjected to throughout. She starts the book by telling us that she's chubby and eats terribly and that she could probably lose a few pounds. She then tells us that she's a SIZE EIGHT. Which, NO. Over the course of the book, basically all her friends and family members tell her how much better she looks now that she's losing weight. And she basically only decides to start exercising at the end of the book so that she can stay a particular size. She spends entire days obsessed with food, asking her friends what they're having for dinner or lunch, and then telling herself that it will all be worth it once she's thin.
I just...ugh. Ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh. Teenage girls have enough to worry about without being told that a size 8 is fat. And there are so few books with Muslim American narrators that we *really* don't need one where the main character essentially treats a religious event as a diet.
So yeah. There was stuff that I liked, and stuff that I hated. And at this point, that's balancing out to 2.5 stars.