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A review by theknitpick
The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write by Sabrina Mahfouz
4.0
This book was so good! I don’t read a lot of anthologies, but I was very happy with this one. All of the authors included are so skilled and their stories are brutally honest, raw, and packed with emotion. I felt myself thinking about this or that story even after I had finished reading it and that speaks to me as the sign of good writing. This book would be great for any book club or discussion group. It has so many topics that are heavy and need a lot of unpacking to grasp. I would love to have read this when I was in college and been able have a classroom discussion. I think there are so many ideas and thoughts in here that should be talked about and more, which is the point of the book in the first place.
Many of the stories focus on the division between Pakistan and Israel and hostilities faced. I found these stories to be some of the most compelling. The poems included in this book vary in their impact – but many are, I believe, meant to be performed/spoken aloud, in which case I might have been more drawn to them if I were viewing these poems performed rather than reading them off a page. As a whole, I think this anthology is powerful and artistic and I very much enjoyed reading the different selections.
I think this book does help break some of the stereotypes that are attached to “being Muslim” and especially to being a Muslim woman. Cultural identity and feelings of being other are discussed as well as the idea of being free to be whatever we want to be. There are many moments of meaningful discussion within these pages and I would definitely recommend this book to those who would like to learn more and be a part of the discussion of diversity and acceptance.
Many of the stories focus on the division between Pakistan and Israel and hostilities faced. I found these stories to be some of the most compelling. The poems included in this book vary in their impact – but many are, I believe, meant to be performed/spoken aloud, in which case I might have been more drawn to them if I were viewing these poems performed rather than reading them off a page. As a whole, I think this anthology is powerful and artistic and I very much enjoyed reading the different selections.
I think this book does help break some of the stereotypes that are attached to “being Muslim” and especially to being a Muslim woman. Cultural identity and feelings of being other are discussed as well as the idea of being free to be whatever we want to be. There are many moments of meaningful discussion within these pages and I would definitely recommend this book to those who would like to learn more and be a part of the discussion of diversity and acceptance.