Reviews with content warning for Islamophobia - A Place for Us

Reviews tagging 'Islamophobia'

A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza

23 reviews

foxowl2005's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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bookishcookiemonster's review against another edition

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reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I have never felt so seen and understood until this book. I have also never cried as hard as I did during the last few pages of this book. This is the kind of book I waited my whole life to read. Thank you Fatima for writing a story about us !

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annreadsabook's review against another edition

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Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

If anyone asks me why I'm crying in the club, it's because of Part 4 of this book.

A Place for Us follows an Indian Muslim family living in California—the family experiences love, loss, and hardship across the years as the children come to understand themselves through the lens of their heritage and faith. Amar struggles to find a place within his family beside his high-achieving eldest sister, while Hadia deals with her own inner turmoil as the oldest child who bears the weight of her family’s needs and expectations. Each of the family members, but particularly Amar and Hadia, grapples with understanding their faith both as a means of connecting with community and as a personal commitment.

Something I loved about A Place for Us was the way in which Mirza depicts the parents’ relationship to their children. Mirza’s characterization of Rafiq, the patriarch, was so compelling in its depth and care—he is strict and often unbending in ways his children sometimes find alienating, but his love for his children nevertheless shines through. Similarly, we see Amar striving time and again to please his parents despite feeling, in many ways, constricted and underestimated by them. Mirza has crafted a beautifully three-dimensional portrait of a family trying (and often failing) to do right by each other.

If you loved Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You or other books that are slow-paced and character-driven, this is right up your alley!

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grobe_liz's review against another edition

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emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

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kirstym25's review against another edition

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emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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prrrrrsh's review against another edition

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emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Absolutely loved this book, until the last section. Very moving, honest and raw. An intimate look into a Muslim american family and the ways that our actions and words affect those closest to us. The only thing that knocked it down half a star for me was the the final part, when the POV switched to the father’s. I felt like it over-explained and lost some of the emotion that came from the character’s actions in the first sections of the book.

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saracatalyst's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

A Place for Us is a beautiful book about family, generational change, and finding your place in the world. The specific context is a Muslim Indian family in which the parents are immigrants and the children are first generation Americans. As a white woman who studied STEM, I had little prior knowledge of these cultural intersections to draw on going into this book. I feel like a learned a lot and the author did a good job of providing a nuanced and complicated image of both the culture and the specific characters. The character development was great for most of the characters, but I felt like the middle child, Huda, was largely left out of much of the story. The narrative is nonlinear and made me think of The God of Small Things in some ways.

Overall I would recommend this book. I could understand some people liking it less than me if you really need a story to be plot-driven or fast paced. There's plenty of plot, but large sections are primarily character-driven, and the book is on the longer side. I'm always a big fan of family epics like this. If you liked Pachinko, I could see you really enjoying this book.

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