Day 28: Samira Ahmed
As foreshadowed, we're back to YA land, which represents a lot of what I've been enjoying from the library lately.
I've read "Hollow Fires", "This Book Won't Burn", and "Love, Hate, and other Filters" by Ahmed, along with "Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know" which is quite different. All four are teen ~romances with interesting things to say about racism & growing up as a South Asian Muslim, but whereas the first three are set in small-town Indiana, the third is set in France and includes a historical fiction angle involving Dumas and a hypothetical Muslim woman who was (in this telling) the inspiration for several Lord Byron poems.
Ahmed's novels all include a strong and overt theme of social justice, and it's refreshing to see an author not try to wade around the topic or ignore it. Her romances are complex, with imperfect protagonists and endings that aren't always "happily ever after" although they're satisfying and believable.
My library has a plethora of similar authors I've been enjoying, including Adiba Jaigirdar (who appeared earlier in this list), Sabaa Tahir ("All my Rage" is fantastic but I'm less of a fan of her fantasy stuff), Sabina Khan ("The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali"), and Randa Abdel-Fattah ("Does My Head Look Big In This?"; from an earlier era). Ahmed gets the spot here because I really like her politics and the way she works them into her writing. Her characters are unapologetic advocates against things like book bans, and Ahmed doesn't second-guess them or try to make things more palatable for those who want to ban books (or whatever). Her historical fiction in "Mad..." is also really cool in terms of "huh that could actually totally be true" and grappling with literary sexism from ages past.
#30AuthorsNoMen
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