#MiddleGradeMay: Other Words for Home

Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga. Grades 4-7. Balzer + Bray, 2019. 352 pages. Reviewed from galley provided by publisher.

Booktalk:

Jude always dreamed of America, but her dream was nothing like what actually happened. She dreamed of becoming a famous movie star just like in the American movies she and her best friend watched from their seaside city in Syria. It was nothing like what actually happened - leaving her father and brother to travel to stay with family in Cincinnati as things grow more and more violent. Actually living in America is way different than the movies.

In America, Jude is "Middle Eastern". She gets looks from people and realizes that they assume that she has come from violence. She struggles to learn English and to make friends at her new school where her American cousin wants nothing to do with her. When she wants to try out for the school play, her cousin and her friends frown on it, assuming that someone with an accent will never get cast. Can this place ever feel like home? Will she ever be reunited with the other half of her family?

My thoughts:

There were so many details that struck me throughout this story - like the reaction that Jude gets when she starts wearing hijab. Strangers approach her to tell her that she doesn't have to cover herself in America, but Jude has never seen hijab as anything but a joyous symbol of growing up. And the moment when Jude realizes that everyone here assumes that her country is violent and wartorn, when in fact Syria was peaceful for most of her life and she believes it will be again. Reading this book as a white woman, it shone a light on a lot of assumptions that American make about Muslim people and Middle Eastern countries. Jude learns what it's like to see her country through the eyes of others and it's much different than how she views her own home.

And the verse is so beautifully crafted, there were so many passages that made me sit up and take notice. Jason Reynolds has a blurb on the back of the galley where he says this is a story that "peels back layers of culture and identity, fear and prejudice, exile and belonging" and that is the perfect way to explain why this story is so important.

Readalikes:

Readers who rooted for the intrepid young heroine Ha in Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai (HarperCollins, 2011), another novel in verse about a refugee girl coming to America, will root for Jude, too.

This is an older title, but another great novel in verse about the refugee experience is Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate (Feiwel & Friends, 2007). The way that Kek, a refugee from Sudan, experiences the overwhelming new world of America is similar to what Jude goes through. Both are lyrical portraits of the refugee experience.

And readers interested in contemporary stories of Muslim girls navigating middle school will also enjoy Amina's Voice by Hena Khan (Salaam Reads, 2017). Amina is a Pakistani-American girl and Jude is a Syrian immigrant, but both face prejudice and stereotyping as Muslim girls. Both also have a hidden talent for singing.