Review by New York Times Review
In a future dystopian United States, an Indian-American teenager named Layla Amin and her fellow Muslim Americans are slowly being stripped of their civil rights. Under the new president's "Exclusion Laws," there are strictly enforced curfews for Muslim households and firing Muslims from government jobs is legal. But it is still a horrific shock when Layla's family is forced to leave their California home for Camp Mobius, a desert internment center. There, Layla is torn between her parents' commitment to safe compliance and her need to vent her fury at being unreasonably detained. She finds a group of like-minded young people, and they channel their rage into secret acts of resistance, some of which result in tragedy. Layla is left asking why her community was denied the privilege Americans are promised, and pondering the cost of freedom. This raw portrait of a young activist coming into her own is not subtle, but it's not meant to be. Layla deliberately draws direct comparisons between Mobius and Manzanar, the World War II JapaneseAmerican internment camp. And it's not hard to guess the inspiration for the novel's political leaders, who praise Nazi sympathizers as "very fine people." These signposts compel readers to acknowledge the very real fear experienced by many Muslim Americans and other marginalized groups at this pivotal present moment. Though Layla angrily asserts, "Forgetting is in the American grain," her near-future story serves as a potent and impassioned reminder of what American nationalism led to in our not so distant past.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 9, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
Set shortly after the 2016 presidential election, Ahmed's novel presents a chilling depiction of America, in which U.S. citizens allow themselves to be controlled by prejudice and fear and succumb to the hateful rhetoric of a populist leader. Seventeen-year-old Layla Amin and her parents are among the Muslims rounded up and transported to Manzanar, an internment camp for Muslim American citizens. While most people quietly comply, Layla is determined to fight back for the freedom that is rightfully hers. Layla finds allies both inside and outside the camp, and before long, she herself is at the center of a rebellion against the despicable people in charge. This is a poignant, necessary story that paints a very real, very frank picture of hatred and ignorance, while also giving readers and marginalized individuals hope. It emphasizes that the oppressed have a voice and the power to speak up and fight back, while also reminding us that all citizens have the obligation, responsibility, and power to raise their voices and defend their fellow citizens from mistreatment or abuse. Though it might recall dystopian novels of the recent past, this carries so much more weight and is infinitely more terrifying, since its setting a near-future U.S. could very well exist today, tomorrow, or only a handful of years from now. This timely, important novel should spark many conversations about contemporary issues.--Enishia Davenport Copyright 2019 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Ahmed (Love, Hate & Other Filters) sets her chilling novel in the very near future: two-and-a-half years after an election that brought about a Muslim ban, Exclusion laws, and the internment of Muslims in a disturbing echo of the Japanese internments of the 1940s. Layla Amin, the rebellious 17-year-old Muslim narrator, is enraged by the changes that her small liberal California community accepts: curfews, book burnings, required viewing of the U.S. president's weekly National Security Address. On a personal level, she was suspended from school for kissing her non-Muslim boyfriend in public, and her poet-professor father has lost his job. Still, her family's abrupt nighttime "relocation" to a camp-during which each arrival is branded with ultraviolet identification encoding-is a shock. While her parents shrink into compliance, Layla quickly makes friends and allies who band together to bring public attention to internees' treatment, close down the camps, and put an end to the country's fascism and Islamophobia. Ahmed keeps the tension mounting as Layla faces increasingly violent consequences for her actions; the teenagers' relationships are depicted authentically, and their strength and resistance are inspiring. An unsettling and important book for our times. Ages 12-up. Agent: Eric Smith, P.S. Literary Agency. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up--In a not-so-distant America, Muslim Americans are forced to register and abide by curfews and a separation from society, which at first is an inconvenience for Layla Amin's social and romantic life. But these troubles quickly seem a distant memory when Layla and her family are taken away in the middle of the night, along with hundreds of other Muslim Americans, and forced into internment camps. Layla is determined to not let the camp, or the country, decide her fate based on the discrimination against her and her religion. With the help of others inside and outside the camps, Layla leads a resistance that challenges the idea that a person's beliefs determines their value in society. This story becomes more and more timely every day, with chants of "send her back" echoing in the news among stories of children being held in cages and camps. What seemed like a fictional premise has now become a cautionary tale that cannot be ignored. Listeners will be drawn into the story immediately as it's read by Soneela Nankani, who does an incredible job bringing Layla's story to life. VERDICT Fans of Love, Hate, and Other Filters will not be disappointed by Ahmed's second novel, which should be included in all YA audiobook collections.--Erica Coonelly, Monroe Township Middle School, NJ
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
Xenophobic fear-mongering, book burnings, terrified families rounded up in the middle of the night to be thrown into internment campsall painfully familiar elements of Americas past and presentdescend upon Layla Amins near-future dystopian world like a drizzle that steadily becomes a torrent. Seventeen-year-old Layla watches as a racist and Islamophobic president emboldens a hateful regime that considers all Muslims to be threats. Ripped from her home and sent to a desert camp, Layla resists the appalling injustice, refusing to accept terror and imprisonment as normal. And she is not alone: other teens and even a few guards join Layla in plans to expose the camp and attain their freedom. But with fellow Muslims being beaten or disappearing to black-ops sites and a sadistic camp director prepared to destroy the resistance by any means, freedom may come at the cost of lives. The line between speculative fiction and contemporary realism has never been fuzzier, and Ahmed doesnt so much balance on it as erase it, in an emotionally authentic, devastatingly intimate, and startlingly concrete portrait of democratic impotence, governmental oppression, and the mechanics that keep them in place. anastasia m. Collins March/April 2019 p 74(c) Copyright 2019. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Layla was a regular American teenager until the new Islamophobic president enacted Exclusion Laws.Muslims are being rounded up, their books burned, and their bodies encoded with identification numbers. Neighbors are divided, and the government is going after resisters. Layla and her family are interned in the California desert along with thousands of other Muslim Americans, but she refuses to accept the circumstances of her detention, plotting to take down the system. She quickly learns that resistance is no joke: Two hijabi girls are beaten and dragged away screaming after standing up to the camp director. There are rumors of people being sent to black-op sites. Some guards seem sympathetic, but can they be trusted? Taking on Islamophobia and racism in a Trump-like America, Ahmed's (Love, Hate Other Filters, 2018) magnetic, gripping narrative, written in a deeply humane and authentic tone, is attentive to the richness and complexity of the social ills at the heart of the book. Layla grows in consciousness as she begins to understand her struggle not as an individual accident of fate, but as part of an experience of oppression she shares with millions. This work asks the question many are too afraid to confront: What will happen if xenophobia and racism are allowed to fester and grow unabated?A reminder that even in a world filled with divisions and right-wing ideology, young people will rise up and demand equality for all. (Realistic fiction. 13-18) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
