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A review by emtees
I Love I Hate I Miss My Sister by Amélie Sarn
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I Love I Hate I Miss my sister is a short book that takes on huge topics and handles them with care and complexity. The characters are both representative of different points of view in the debate on religion, immigration, feminism and freedom and very specific to themselves. It is a painful and infuriating book.
Sohane is a Muslim teenager, the daughter of Algerian immigrants living in France. Her sister, Djelila, is dead. The details of her death take a while to come out, but the fact of it, and the violence and injustice of it, are made clear up front. This is one of the best choices Sarn makes. It means that while the weight of Djelila’s death hangs over the story, there is never a mystery to solve or suspense to endure. Plot happens, but the plot is not allowed to distract from the themes, or from Sohane’s grief and regret as she tells her story, jumping back and forth in time.
Sohane and Djelila are on the surface very different, but the problems they face stem from a common source. Djelila may be Muslim and Algerian but she thinks of herself as primarily French, and she wants to assimilate fully into French culture. At school she wears tight, stylish clothes and makeup, dates boys, and plays on the basketball team, and she goes to parties and drinks alcohol. She is typical of a European teenager, but in the immigrant-dominated housing project where the family lives, Djelila encounters a gang of young Muslim men who feel the right to harass and punish her because of those choices. Djelila is a feminist, and she is brave enough to stand up to these boys, and that is what eventually costs her life. At the same time, Sohane is much more religious and conservative, not only in comparison to her sister but even to her parents and grandmother. Sohane hates the sexual excess of modern Western culture, seeing it as demeaning and exploitive, and chooses to dress in concealing clothes and, eventually, to wear the hijab. It is a choice that stems from religion and cultural identity, but from other sources too - the hijab is a feminist choice, a statement that her body and her hair are for her, not for the view of men she hasn’t chosen to share them with. Both Sohane and Djelila explicitly identify as proud feminists, but the same belief in freedom and choice leads them to very different decisions. For Sohane, a gifted and serious student who dreams of college and a career, wearing the hijab means coming up against the secular laws that forbid French students to wear religious identifiers in schools and ultimately gets her expelled. For Djelila, choosing to live as she wants leads to her death.
There is nothing stereotypical in the depictions of either of these girls or their Algerian-French family. Sarn digs into the nuances of immigration and assimilation, depicting a family that came to France hoping to be embraced but struggles with their identities in their new land. The girls’ grandmother is a free thinker, an immigrant who loves the openness of her adopted home and has no interest in conservative religious values, who shocks her sons with her outspoken behavior, but who also deeply loves her culture. Their father and uncle are first generation and feel torn between France and Algeria, knowing that the country of their birth doesn’t accept them and looking back on something they never really had as if it could be home. And then there are the two girls, fully French in their own minds, but finding different paths towards balancing their identities. If it weren’t for the dark road this story takes, it could be a fascinating glimpse into the experience of immigrant families and the way that later generations can turn back to what their ancestors gave up in their quest for identity. But Sohane and Djelila also live in a society of prejudice, where women’s choices are constrained on every side.
Sohane is the narrator and a very well drawn character. She is complex and flawed, but the nature of the story allows her to examine her own flaws with harsh reality. While Djelila fully supported her sister’s choices even when they differed from her own, Sohane admits that she sometimes hated Djelila, that she didn’t understand her sister’s choices and that angered her. She feels tremendous guilt over Djelila’s death and determination to see her sister remembered for who she was. She has a complex identity of her own, French and Algerian, Muslim, a student and sister, and she fights for a way to express all of those that feels natural to her. Sarn sets her in contrast to both the misogynistic Muslim men in her complex and the ignorant white secularists who dominate her society, showing that no issue has only two sides, that there are nuances and blurred lines in every debate, in every identity. The most striking scene to me was not Djelila’s death or the harassment she endured before it or the arguments Sohane had with her teachers over her choice to cover her hair. It was a scene in which Sohane attempts to attend a community talk about her sister’s death and the white women running it, none of whom know her or knew Djelila, ask her to leave because they feel her hijab is insulting to the cause they’ve co-opted her sister to represent. It echoes back to a conversation Sohane had with her sister before her death, when Djelila reflected that both the men harassing her and those trying to control Sohane were coming from the same place - one of not allowing women choices.
Sohane is a Muslim teenager, the daughter of Algerian immigrants living in France. Her sister, Djelila, is dead. The details of her death take a while to come out, but the fact of it, and the violence and injustice of it, are made clear up front. This is one of the best choices Sarn makes. It means that while the weight of Djelila’s death hangs over the story, there is never a mystery to solve or suspense to endure. Plot happens, but the plot is not allowed to distract from the themes, or from Sohane’s grief and regret as she tells her story, jumping back and forth in time.
Sohane and Djelila are on the surface very different, but the problems they face stem from a common source. Djelila may be Muslim and Algerian but she thinks of herself as primarily French, and she wants to assimilate fully into French culture. At school she wears tight, stylish clothes and makeup, dates boys, and plays on the basketball team, and she goes to parties and drinks alcohol. She is typical of a European teenager, but in the immigrant-dominated housing project where the family lives, Djelila encounters a gang of young Muslim men who feel the right to harass and punish her because of those choices. Djelila is a feminist, and she is brave enough to stand up to these boys, and that is what eventually costs her life. At the same time, Sohane is much more religious and conservative, not only in comparison to her sister but even to her parents and grandmother. Sohane hates the sexual excess of modern Western culture, seeing it as demeaning and exploitive, and chooses to dress in concealing clothes and, eventually, to wear the hijab. It is a choice that stems from religion and cultural identity, but from other sources too - the hijab is a feminist choice, a statement that her body and her hair are for her, not for the view of men she hasn’t chosen to share them with. Both Sohane and Djelila explicitly identify as proud feminists, but the same belief in freedom and choice leads them to very different decisions. For Sohane, a gifted and serious student who dreams of college and a career, wearing the hijab means coming up against the secular laws that forbid French students to wear religious identifiers in schools and ultimately gets her expelled. For Djelila, choosing to live as she wants leads to her death.
There is nothing stereotypical in the depictions of either of these girls or their Algerian-French family. Sarn digs into the nuances of immigration and assimilation, depicting a family that came to France hoping to be embraced but struggles with their identities in their new land. The girls’ grandmother is a free thinker, an immigrant who loves the openness of her adopted home and has no interest in conservative religious values, who shocks her sons with her outspoken behavior, but who also deeply loves her culture. Their father and uncle are first generation and feel torn between France and Algeria, knowing that the country of their birth doesn’t accept them and looking back on something they never really had as if it could be home. And then there are the two girls, fully French in their own minds, but finding different paths towards balancing their identities. If it weren’t for the dark road this story takes, it could be a fascinating glimpse into the experience of immigrant families and the way that later generations can turn back to what their ancestors gave up in their quest for identity. But Sohane and Djelila also live in a society of prejudice, where women’s choices are constrained on every side.
Sohane is the narrator and a very well drawn character. She is complex and flawed, but the nature of the story allows her to examine her own flaws with harsh reality. While Djelila fully supported her sister’s choices even when they differed from her own, Sohane admits that she sometimes hated Djelila, that she didn’t understand her sister’s choices and that angered her. She feels tremendous guilt over Djelila’s death and determination to see her sister remembered for who she was. She has a complex identity of her own, French and Algerian, Muslim, a student and sister, and she fights for a way to express all of those that feels natural to her. Sarn sets her in contrast to both the misogynistic Muslim men in her complex and the ignorant white secularists who dominate her society, showing that no issue has only two sides, that there are nuances and blurred lines in every debate, in every identity. The most striking scene to me was not Djelila’s death or the harassment she endured before it or the arguments Sohane had with her teachers over her choice to cover her hair. It was a scene in which Sohane attempts to attend a community talk about her sister’s death and the white women running it, none of whom know her or knew Djelila, ask her to leave because they feel her hijab is insulting to the cause they’ve co-opted her sister to represent. It echoes back to a conversation Sohane had with her sister before her death, when Djelila reflected that both the men harassing her and those trying to control Sohane were coming from the same place - one of not allowing women choices.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexism, Murder, Religious bigotry, Violence, and Racism
The story centers on a Muslim girl expelled from school for wearing the hijab and another girl murdered by Muslim men for being too secular, so themes of racism, sexism and religious bigotry are very prominent. A woman is brutally murdered.