An Apology to the Muslim Community and People of Colour for My Harmful Review

This post is an acknowledgement and an apology, as I have realised earlier this week, I posted a harmful review.

Yesterday, Vicky of Vicky Who Reads shared a thread on Twitter about how awful reviews of books featuring people of colour about pain that say the stories aren't painful enough. This immediately made me think of my review on Internment by Samira Ahmed, which I then re-read, and realised it's harmful.

Continue reading An Apology to the Muslim Community and People of Colour for My Harmful Review

Review: Internment by Samira Ahmed (#Ad)

I received this eProof for free from Atom via NetGalley for the purposes of providing an honest review.

Internment by Samira Ahmed

Published: 19th March 2019 | Publisher: Atom | Cover Designer:  | Source: NetGalley
Samira Ahmed's Website

Rebellions are built on hope.

Set in a horrifying near-future United States, seventeen-year-old Layla Amin and her parents are forced into an internment camp for Muslim American citizens.

With the help of newly made friends also trapped within the internment camp, her boyfriend on the outside, and an unexpected alliance, Layla begins a journey to fight for freedom, leading a revolution against the internment camp's Director and his guards.

Heart-racing and emotional, Internment challenges readers to fight complicit silence that exists in our society today. From Goodreads

Trigger Warnings: This book features racism, Islamophobia, imprisonment, violence, violence against women, death, discussion of torture, discussion of internment camps - specifically Manzanar internment camp and Nazi concentration camps, and discussion of the Holocaust.

Review edited on 5th July 2019. My original review was harmful, due to discussing inconsistencies that had me questioning why there wasn't more pain for the Muslim charcters of colour. You can read my acknowledgement of my mistake and apology here. For transparency, you can find a screen cap of the original wording here.

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Review: Love, Hate & Other Filters by Samira Ahmed (#Ad)

Love, Hate & Other Filters by Samira Ahmed

I received this eProof for free from Hot Key Books via NetGalley for the purposes of providing an honest review.

A searing #OwnVoices coming-of-age debut in which an Indian-American Muslim teen confronts Islamophobia and a reality she can neither explain nor escape.

Maya Aziz is torn between futures: the one her parents expect for their good Indian daughter (i.e.; staying nearby in Chicago and being matched with a "suitable" Muslim boy), and the one where she goes to film school in New York City--and maybe, just maybe, kisses a guy she's only known from afar. There's also the fun stuff, like laughing with her best friend Violet, making on-the-spot documentaries, sneaking away for private swimming lessons at a secret pond in the woods. But her world is shattered when a suicide bomber strikes in the American heartland; by chance, he shares Maya's last name. What happens to the one Muslim family in town when their community is suddenly consumed with hatred and fear?

Trigger Warning: Terrorist attack and Islamophobia.

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