The personalities of Jamie's hang-loose 18-year-old brother, her tired immigrant father, who speaks in broken English, and her rhetoric-spouting revolutionary sister sound authentic. She soon settles into the material, however, and delivers an engaging, energized performance, easily handling a multitude of characters of different ethnic backgrounds, social classes, and ages.
At the beginning of the book, Rebecca Macauley's characterization of teenage conversation is too loud and brash. "This coming-of-age story chronicles the world of Jamie, an Australian teenager of Lebanese Muslim descent, who struggles with peer pressure and racism at school and with her widowed father's rules at home. (Jan."A warm and loving portrait of family life. For all the defining details, Jamilah is a character teens will readily relate to. On the other hand, the author brings a welcome sense of humor to Jamilah's insights about her culture, and she is equally adept at more delicate scenes, for example, Jamilah's father recounting memories of Jamilah's mother. ) follows a predictable pattern and uses familiar devices, such as the understanding teacher (“If don't know the real you, then you've already lost them”). Abdel-Fattah ( Does My Head Look Big in This? Tensions at home and school culminate when the band she plays in at her madrassa (Islamic school) is hired to perform at her 10th-grade formal. Passing as “Jamie” is fraught with difficulties: she can't invite friends to her house, lies to cover up her widower dad's strict rules and reveals her true self only to an anonymous boy she meets online (her e-mail address is “Ten_Things_I_Hate_About_Me”). Jamilah Towfeek hides her Lebanese-Muslim background from the other kids at her Australian school “to avoid people assuming I fly planes into buildings as a hobby.” She dyes her hair blonde, wears blue contacts and stands by when popular kids make racist remarks.
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