Thursday, June 16, 2011

YA Contemp Month: Ten Things I Hate About Me

Welcome back for another edition of the YA Contemporary Month giveaways. I'm your host Claaaaaaiiire Daw-awn!

lol!

First congratulations to the winner of last week's giveaway

of The Lipstick Laws by Amy Holder...

BEE!!!!

Bee, email me at muchlanguage (at) gmail (dot) com with a full name and address, and I'll mail it right off to you.

---


From Goodreads:
"At school I'm Aussie-blonde Jamie -- one of the crowd. At home I'm Muslim Jamilah -- driven mad by my Stone Age dad. I should win an Oscar for my acting skills. But I can't keep it up for much longer..."

In honour of the concept I thought I'd give you Ten Things I LOVED about this book.

1. Finally a multiculturally YA that doesn't make me want to strangle myself with a United Colors of Benneton flag.

2. Jamie/Jamila. :S

3. Teen views of tensions between Muslims and whites.

4. Sydney, Australia.

5. Mustafa, the rapping Aussie Lebanese-Muslim teen.

6. Even though it's totally not a love triangle, waiting to see if she picks Timothy or John.

7. Jamilah's Dad. You get him, but you still ache for her.

8. The way how the issue is so obviously important but still totally irrelevant. (Not a lot of books do that without getting preachy, and I'll admit this one had a few borderline moments.)

9. Shereen, Jamilah's political activist sister.

10. Jamilah's piping hot and steamy big brother, Bilal. *Grins*

Answer this question in the comments to enter: Were there racial tensions at your high school? (or neighbourhood/workplace/etc)
Open internationally and to anyone.
Open until Wednesday, June 22, 1159 pm EST.

3 comments:

Abby Stevens said...

I went to an inner city high school, and racial tension was definitely present. That, and there was some major gerrymandering in my city, so that one school got most of the well-off kids of one color, another school got most of the well-off kids of another color, and my school was all of us poor kids who were left.

Bidisha said...

Woot! Thank you SO much, Claire :)
My yahoo is down, so I can't send you an email now *grumble* but I will as soon as it's up again. Hopefully, it'll be soon.

Great job featuring 10 Things I Hate About Me. I own this one, and it's a gem. There was no racial tension in my school, although there were other kinds of tension. Don't enter me, though.

Thanks, once again!

Marsha Sigman said...

OMG, I love the cover and the premise of this book. I can relate with the religuous family aspect of it since I grew up in a very strict christian house.

And no on the racial tension in high school. I grew up in a tiny midwest town and the school was entirely white (except for some American Indian which we totally didn't count because all of us had a little of that thrown in). How freaky is that?