Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind

Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind
By Suzanne Fisher Staples
Knofp, 1989. 240 pgs. Middle grade/Teen fiction

Eleven-year-old Shabanu lives in the deserts of Pakistan, helping her father raise camels. As her twelve-year-old sister is preparing for her arranged marriage, Shabanu is beginning to think about her own arranged marriage, which will take place the following year. Just as Shabanu has come to accept the prospect of marriage and be excited about her future husband, disaster strikes and Shabanu will have to become the fourth wife of a much-older man in order to save her family--or decided to defy them by refusing and leaving.

This book was a tough read--it's fascinating but it's also disturbing. It's difficult to stomach the fact that even in today's world there are children forced into marriages that will make them miserable, that there isn't really a way to have a realistic, happy ending in many cases. So it was hard to read the book, with Shabanu continually facing loss and disappointment and there not really being a way for her to triumph. Yes, she has a triumphant spirit, but it's hard to think of a child facing what she's facing. At the same time, I really enjoyed the look at this culture, so different from my own. It was very eye-opening, and I appreciated the fact that the author showed a very loving family, who wanted to do their best to care for each other even though the restraints of their culture and socioeconomic status forced them to make really difficult decisions.

4 stars. (There's some talk about developing bodies and crossing into womanhood, but otherwise, it's a clean read.)



As a side note, at what point does a book become "historical fiction" instead of contemporary? This book was published in 1989, and I'm not sure how to classify this one. I'd also be interested in seeing what, if any, changes have come about in Pakistan since then--maybe the designation has less to do with the actual number of years but the social, political, and cultural climate...

Where the Streets Had a Name

Where the Streets Had a Name
By Randa Abdel-Fattah
Scholastic, 2010. 313 pgs. Middle Grade Fiction

Hayaat is thirteen years old and lives in Bethlehem, where her family has been forced to relocate after the creation of Israel and subsequent conflicts between the Israelis and the Palestinians. A Muslim Palestinian, Hayaat must live with curfews and restrictions on travel. Although her family lives only six miles from their beloved Jerusalem, they are not allowed to go there. However, Hayatt believes that getting a jarful of soil from her grandmother's (former) land in Jerusalem, she will be able to prolong her grandmother's life. So Hayaat and her best friend Samy, a Christian Palestinian, set out for Jerusalem.

This book is phenomenal. Have grown up in the U.S., I think there's definitely a bias toward Israelis and against Palestinians, since the U.S. has traditionally been an ally of Israel's. I think there's a prejudice toward Palestinians, thinking they're all a bunch of Muslim terrorists. However, this book does much to encourage readers to think about the Palestinian-Israeli conflicts and see how there are many similarities between the peoples; just as many Jews wanted a place to live and feel safe following the Holocaust, Palestinians wanted to have their ancestral land. There are some very thought-provoking scenes in this book and characters of a variety of faiths (Jews, Muslims, and Christians) representing a variety of beliefs. It's also a great coming-of-age story as Hayaat faces her fears and finds peace in herself and hope in the future even in a situation where it would be tempting to lose hope. Although this book is being promoted as Abdel-Fattah's "middle-grade debut" (she's written two other great books for young adults), I think the story is interesting enough to drawn in older readers as well.

Four stars.