A review by leahjanespeare
Jasmine Zumideh Needs a Win by Susan Azim Boyer

informative inspiring fast-paced

4.0

This is a solid debut. Jasmine gets herself into some tricky situations, and learns how to embrace her Iranian roots during a time in the US when its relationship and media coverage of the Middle East in general were particularly bad. It’s very much a Bildungsroman story since by the end she’s reflected on how she acted throughout the story (very bad friend, dirty campaigning, and not true to herself) and learns from her mistakes. If she hadn’t told a small white lie this would have been a very different story. While this story takes place in 1979, much of the politics can of course be equated to today’s atmosphere; especially regarding white Americans’ rampant xenophobia and ignorance, tendency to latch on to what the media says, and general misconceptions about different cultures and other countries’ political situations. 

I got a little caught up in how stupid that lie was, and how she continually made glaringly bad decisions to cover up and snowball that lie, but I think this is a case of ‘she’s literally a teenager’ so a fault of mine, as an adult reader, rather than anything against the writing/characterization itself. If you’re a teenager, you’ll probably look at her actions as logical at the time.
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