6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Courtesy of Teens Read Too, January 6, 2009
After the sudden death of her mother years ago, Jamilah and her older brother and sister have been raised by their conservative Lebanese-Muslim father. Being the youngest is not easy, since her older sister, Shereen, is forever finding ways to irritate their father, and her brother, Bilal, is a constant disappointment. It's no wonder that Jamilah has begun to live a double life - one at home and another at school.
She has dyed her dark hair blonde and wears contacts to hide her dark eyes. At home she is Lebanese-Muslim, but at school everyone thinks she is just a normal Sydney-born Australian like the majority of the students in the tenth grade.
Unfortunately, things aren't going very well.
Jamilah loves her heritage - the music, the religious beliefs, the food, and the family, but she hates the rules that go along with all she loves. Her father believes in a strict curfew that requires her to be home by sunset. She dreams of having a boyfriend and going on a date, but that's totally out of the question. As a result, Jamilah finds herself trying to balance both lives. Her friends see one side of her and her family sees the other.
While at school, Jamilah observes members of the popular crowd viciously taunting any students from different ethnic backgrounds. To keep her own secret, she shamefully watches silently, afraid the cruelty could be directed towards her if she speaks up to defend the others. With her double life threating to crumble around her, she attempts to convince her domineering father that she needs more freedom than he is willing to allow.
TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT ME gives readers a glimpse into the Lebanese-Muslim culture and at the same time demonstrates that the true and honest path is not always the easiest to travel, but perhaps the most satisfying in the end.
Reviewed by: Sally Kruger, aka "Readingjunky"
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Does raise important questions about trust and self-confidence, March 4, 2009
Jamilah is leading a double life. At home she's a dutiful daughter, the "good girl" in her Lebanese Muslim family. Her older sister is a devoted Muslim --- she even wears the hijab in public --- but much to their widowed father's dismay, she has foregone college in favor of social and political activism. Her older brother parties, drinks and dates girls; he gets away with it because he's a boy. As for Jamilah, she's convinced that the only outings her father will let her go on are her weekly trips to madrasa, Arabic school. Jamilah loves madrasa --- she's the drummer for a talented Arabic band --- but she'd also really like to, say, go to a boy-girl party or even to her upcoming 10th grade formal dance. She knows he would never let her go, though, and she also knows that her friends from school would never understand his strictness.
That's because at school, Jamilah is known only as Jamie, and no one knows about her Lebanese heritage or her Muslim background. With her dyed-blonde hair and blue contact lenses, Jamie looks just as much like a "skip" as any Anglo kids in her school. Racism and ethnic prejudice run rampant at Jamie's Sydney, Australia, school, however, so, as Jamie explains, "I've hidden the fact that I'm of Lebanese-Muslim heritage from everybody at school to avoid people assuming I drive planes into buildings as a hobby."
Unfortunately, Jamie's crush, Peter, is one of the prime instigators of those kinds of racist taunts --- and because no one knows her real identity, she just has to sit idly by while the other Muslim kids take the verbal abuse of the "in group." When Jamie learns that Peter, one of the most popular and cutest boys in school, might just like her back, she's determined to find a way to go to the formal dance and keep her ethnic identity a secret from Peter.
But, as usual, fate has a way of intervening, and when Jamilah finds herself baring her soul --- both sides of it --- to an online correspondent known only as "John," she discovers the liberation of being truly honest about who she is and where she comes from. But can she translate that cyber-bravery into real-life honesty? And can she trust her true friends to stick by her true self?
Randa Abdel-Fattah's first book, DOES MY HEAD LOOK BIG IN THIS?, was widely praised for incorporating Muslim culture and identity into a "typical" young adult novel about a normal teenaged girl. In it, the heroine makes a decision to wear the hijab to her mainstream school as a gutsy declaration of her Muslim pride and identity. TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT ME has a somewhat less positive tone. In case you couldn't tell from the title --- which, despite its play on a popular movie title, manages to convey some real self-loathing --- Jamilah spends most of the book feeling down on herself, her family, even her choice of friends.
TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT ME does raise important questions about trust and self-confidence, and it, like its predecessor, does a good job of showing that Muslim families live everywhere and share many of the same concerns as their non-Muslim counterparts. Jamilah questions her father and her Arabic school teacher about the contradictions she sees within Muslim culture, and she certainly asserts her own will against her oppressive father's. But she also appreciates, and eventually embraces, her religious and ethnic identity in a positive way.
--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Ten Things I Hate About Me, February 15, 2010
Ten Things I Hate About Me has plenty of positive aspects which outweigh the few faults it does have. It's a little predictable with Timothy's subplot, as well as the overall big deal of Jamilah/Jamie's identity. It's a little preachy at times, but the moments of preachyness do fit in with the plot. The characters are pretty well-rounded, and I particularly enjoyed the characterization of Jamilah's father. It's conversational and relaxed storytelling, and while the writing's not the greatest, it's still a good book. I know it's one I and many other girls, Muslim and non, can relate to, maybe on different levels, but relate nonetheless. The environment Jamilah has been brought up in is captured really well and again, is something people can identify with. It is pretty unique to read a young adult book about Muslim cultural identity, and I applaud Abdel-Fattah for writing the way she does. I enjoyed this book, much more than Abdel-Fattah's other book, Does My Head Look Big in This? I thought this one was more down-to-earth and relatable.
Rating: 4/5
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