You Truly Assumed

"Very uplifting to see two cultures represented and them being teenagers reminds me that I can stand up for my own cultures"

"I mostly liked this book and I was so happy to finally get Black Muslim rep in a book! It was a pretty good read. I really liked the sense of camaraderie that the story fostered between the main characters. <br/><br/>I’m rating it a 3 though because of a few issues:<br/>1) The writing was off at sometimes. It seemed a little unedited? Some sentences didn’t flow well at all, and I’m pretty sure there were a couple of times that the sentences were just sentence fragments. I had to reread lines a couple of times to fully understand what was being said. <br/><br/>2) Supporting characters were a bit underdeveloped and one-dimensional. But I know that since this book was covering a lot of ground, it was probably a bit hard to really develop the supporting characters along with the main characters. <br/><br/>3) I felt disappointed at times with the representation. I was so excited to finally have not just 1, but 3 main characters that I could look to for shared experiences. And there were moments of this book where I felt truly seen. However, I was disappointed by some things that I felt didn’t really represent the Islamic aspects such as how common it was for the characters to have boyfriends. Dating and kissing etc. was never addressed as even slightly being an issue, which was weird to me. I know there are Muslims who do date and I’m not judging those who do, but that’s definitely not the norm and most of the time doesn’t come without some level of either secrecy(on the part of those who are dating) or backlash from parents and community. <br/>There were other things like that felt inauthentic on the Muslim side of things. But I know my experience as a Black Muslim woman is not everyone’s experience so I didn’t dwell on them too much."

"4.5 <br/><br/>I really liked this and I’m glad I picked it up because I think reading about different experiences is really important (and something I need to do a bit more). It was a good short read that I could have knocked out in a day or two (except I was lazy and sick and doing schoolwork) but it was really good and a good viewpoint for me to understand more about being Muslim and black in America. There were a lot of lines in the book that I felt like even I understood even though I’m a white non-religious girl, and I think my favorite line of the book was “But if our being is politicized, does that mean everything that's an extension of ourselves is politicized too?” or “‘There's nothing wrong with anger. Wallow in it if you need to, and let it push us forward. I think anger can be converted to hope through action…’”. <br/>I really think this is an important book that touches on a lot of things and it should really be read by more people!!<br/><br/>CWs: Islamophobia, racism, hate crime, bullying, racial slurs"