Love, Hate and Other Filters

Fieldnotes:
Batavia, Illinois, Contemporary (p. 2018)

1 Muslim Indian American Teen
1 Film-making Dream that Meets with Parental Disapproval
Many Classic Movie References That I would Like to Explore

2 Overprotective Parents
1 Very Cool Aunt

1 Love Triangle that Lasts Maybe Half a Minute, Featuring:
* 1 Football Playing High School Royal with Dimples and Secret Depth
* 1 Handsome, Witty, Charming, Understanding College Boy with the Death Knell of Being Deemed "Suitable"

Tone Whiplash When the Cute RomCom Suddenly Involves:
* A Terrorist Attack on a Federal Building
* Islamophobia
* Actual Assault

The Short Version
When I picked this up, I was thoroughly charmed by Maya - her fascination for old movies, framing her life as scenes from movies and even show more hiding behind the camera to avoid the starring role. The tone felt similar to Netflix's Never Have I Ever (which I thoroughly enjoy). I wasn't enthusiastic about the love triangle (Forbidden Fruit v. Suitable Boy), but I'm rarely a fan of those anyway.

Despite the hints from small passages from the terrorist's point of view, I was taken aback (as was Maya) by the sudden and personal impact of Islamophobia. A lot of the aggressive and ignorant comments sounded incredibly familiar - though the teachers at my school certainly did even less to help address it. The incident really upends both Maya's life and the narrative - quite an effective device, but the tone doesn't stay changed. The climactic moments are drastic, but the epilogue is quite cute and hopeful with very little exploration of the emotional impact of the big decision.

I felt the ending lets the book down as the stakes suddenly climb to astronomical but the ending feels Hallmark-y. A shame because I was really quite invested in Maya and loved her POV. show less

https://iwriteinbooks.wordpress.com/2018/05/21/love-hate-and-other-filters-samir...

I wish I had had this book when I was a freshman in college.

I was about two weeks into my first year away from home, standing on campus in New York, when my best friend and I saw the towers come down.

At the time, I had never experienced anything like that but my Indian-Muslim friend stood next to me and said, “Please don’t let them be Muslim”.

Over the next few days, as she wept and worried with millions of other New Yorkers, fretting about how many of her friends and neighbors might have gone down in the crash, she had to deal with a level of anxiety the rest of us didn’t.

The American climate shifted immediately toward anti-Islam threats and when show more we went to the student chapel, that night, to pray, she was harassed for speaking in Arabic.

That moment has been stuck in my heart for 17 years, even as this friend used her resilience and intelligence to go on to become an attorney for the UN, never letting the negative voices stop her.

Because of that introduction of how horrible people can be in a time where we should be helping one another, Love, Hate, and Other Filters struck a deep chord with me.

In a somewhat similar (but altogether different) story, Ahmed’s protagonist., Maya, deals with the fallout of a terrorist bombing and the xenophobic aftermath from her classmates and neighbors.

It is a true testament to the work we still have to do as a country to refrain from judgment in moments we find ourselves acting in fear as opposed to understanding.

Ahmed’s voice is spot on for both the frustration as a Muslim teen among WASP peers and as an American teen in a traditional Indian household. The intertwined identities, code-switching, and balancing of her parents’ American Dream and her own personal search for truth and meaning are woven expertly into the larger themes at play.

I absolutely loved this story and I think it is an intensely important one, right now. show less

*I received a free copy of this book from the publisher at ALA Annual 2017. This is an honest review.*

I really, really enjoyed this book. Maya is an amazing YA character and I loved being able to read her story. She’s an Indian-American Muslim teen who is working up the courage to tell her parents that she wants to study film and become film director someday, which would mean that she went to NYU and move away from their cozy town in Illinois. She also heard that her crush just broke up with his girlfriend, and she wonders if that could become a thing, although she also kind of likes the guy she met at a wedding and who her parents very much approve of. In the midst of all this fairly-normal teenage stuff, a suicide bomber strikes the show more capital city of Illinois, and the main suspect shares Maya’s last name, so all of these worries are compiled as she faces members of her town turning against her, almost blaming her for what happened.

I liked the balance between heavy, hard-hitting ideas and typical YA romance stuff; while Maya is incredibly mature for her age, she’s also very much a teenager and is interested in boyfriends and crushes and kissing. This aspect of the book gives the story some much needed breaks of levity in between the instances of racism and Islamophobia. It also makes Maya seem like a much more complex, rounded character, and helped me to connect with her and engage with the struggles she has as an Indian-American Muslim on an emotional and intellectual level.

The main thing that I really appreciate this book is that it doesn’t back down. It shows racism and Islamophobia in stark, heart-breaking reality and shows just how much stress and heartache people experience because other people aren’t bothered to think complexly about issues and judge people based on religion or their skin color. It’s not sugar-coated, and Maya and her family struggle with incredibly difficult problems as they are targeted for attacks after the suicide bombing, which leads to a complete upheaval of their lives and of Maya’s plans.

This is an important book to be out in the world, and I’m so glad Samira Ahmed wrote it. It’s an amazing book that I think teens will both enjoy and learn from, and it can hopefully help other Muslim teens feel heard and like they’re not alone. It’s a powerful story that I hope ends up in a lot of libraries, classrooms, and readers’ hands. Definitely check it out.

Also posted on Purple People Readers. show less

Maya Aziz just wants to attend NYU film school and become a renowned documentarian. Her parents want her to attend the University of Chicago and study premed or prelaw. Maya has been crushing on a white boy she attends high school with. Her parents want her to marry a suitable Indian-Muslim boy. Balancing what she wants from her life with what her parents want from her seems impossible. The balancing act gets worse in the aftermath of a terrorist attack that is initially blamed on an Egyptian Muslim who shares Maya's last name. Suddenly, her community seems far less safe than it used to as bigotry and fear take over. Her parents are more insistent than ever that she stay close to home so they can watch over her. Maya isn't willing to show more give up on her dream that easily, but her options don't look too good.

Maya is a non-religious Muslim character. Like many culturally Christian characters, religion is marginal at best, though nonetheless a part of her identity and the worldview she was raised with. If you're looking for religious Muslim representation, this isn't the book for you. It's a better pick for secular Indian-Muslim representation.

The romance in the book was pretty boring, to be honest. There were two love interests throughout the book: suitable Kareem who checks ever box on her mother's list, and Phil who she's attended school with for years and has had a crush on for the last year. Maya feels an instant connection with Kareem because of shared experiences, but she quickly decides she's not interested in pursuing a relationship with him. Her relationship with Phil is more complicated since he has a girlfriend at the beginning of the novel and he's definitely the type of boy her parents would never approve of. Yet the spark between them means she ultimately chooses him. The romance between Maya and Phil is pretty fluffy and quick despite the girlfriend drama. None of it was my style and I would have been just as happy not to deal with them. I did appreciate that it seems like Maya and Phil kind of weren't together when they were in college because the more important part of their stories was going to the school of their choice to follow their dreams. But otherwise, I could have lived without any of the romance.

Of more importance, was the plot related to the terrorist attack and the resulting Islamophobia and bigotry that Maya had to deal with. A terrorist drives a truck filled with explosives into a government building in the state capital. Tensions immediately ratchet up following the attack. The initial suspect for the attack is a Egyptian Muslim because his passport was found at the scene. It's later discovered that he was a victim of the attack, present because he was undergoing his citizenship ceremony. The actual attacker was a white nationalist. Throughout the book, there were interludes from the point of view of the terrorist. Initially these interludes were vague regarding the identity of the attacker, phrased in such a way that it could have been the Muslim terrorist that everyone initially suspected because it fit those stereotypes, but also works with the Christian white nationalist it was in reality.

It was interesting (and disheartening) to see the way the tone of these interludes changed as the information about the terrorist came out. When it was discovered the terrorist was a white man, there were all kinds of attempts to humanize him, to come up with a reason why he acted the way he did. There was a focus on his abusive father, how much of a loner he was. If the terrorist had truly been Muslim, none of this type of information would have come out because the media would have accepted "he's Muslim" as reason enough for his actions. I appreciated this subtle way of displaying the racism inherent in the way the media handles terrorist attacks like this. I would have appreciated it more if the media's racism had been explicitly called out, though. show less

Review also posted on my blog: https://bennilovesbooks.wordpress.com/2018/02/05/review-love-hate-and-other-filt...

This book has content warnings for racism (not condoned), Islamophobia (not condoned), terrorism, and physical assault.

Love, Hate and Other Filters took my heart out of my chest. I could not think about any other books for days after reading this one — not nearly as deeply anyways. This was such a strong book, and the beautiful writing left me craving Samira Ahmed’s next one.

What really sold me about this book was the complexity with which Maya and her parents were written. Maya herself is a rather non-conservative Indian Muslim teenager who isn’t fully invested in tradition and wants to forge her own path by going to show more film school in New York for college. At the same time, she really cares about what her parents think and worries a lot about whether she’ll be disappointing them. Her parents are much more conservative Muslims who immigrated to the United States, and they themselves are struggling with their own identities because they immigrated to get away from certain strict traditions and yet others are core to their beliefs and being. They really struggle with how much of their traditions they want to impose on Maya because they want her to be more traditional like they are, but at the same time they know that she is a person who wants to make her own life, like they did when they immigrated.

There was no doubt in my mind that Maya and her parents deeply cared for each other. I don’t think that the decisions either of them made were easy ones; Maya wanted to please them, but at the same time she didn’t want to live her life for them — she wanted to live it for herself. After the terrorism incident and the targeting the three of them went through, it’s also understandable that keeping Maya safe was a top priority for her parents. Neither point of view was presented as more right than the other; there are thoughts of regret and sadness that come into play after their interactions, and they do come to understand each other somewhat. I really loved how her parents weren’t demonized; it felt like they were being unfair at times, but Maya did come to understand why they were the way they were. They weren’t blamed; they weren’t blameless, but it wasn’t all placed on their shoulders. I really admired this, and I think Ahmed did a great job of making these characters feel well-rounded.

I also really loved seeing Maya struggling with some parts of her identity while still being secure in others. She LOVES film — it’s a core part of her being. It’s a passion that transcends every part of her life, and it’s something that she can’t live without. I loved her confidence when it came to her craft; she knew that it was what she wanted, beyond a shadow of a doubt. At the same time, she struggled with herself as a Muslim teen, as an Indian teen, and as an American teen, and figuring out how her identities worked together was a struggle for her. There was so much complexity and depth in her character, and I loved seeing her be so sure about something when large parts of the rest of her were seemingly falling apart.

The terrorism aspects are heavy in this book — Maya and her parents face real threats and real danger after a terrorism attack happens elsewhere in the country, and it’s heavy and scary. The heavy elements of the book also paired nicely with the lighter aspects like the romance in the book and Maya’s relationships with her best friend and her free-spirited aunt. There was a complexity in the tone that I really loved; it had a lot of depth to it that really made the book special.

I know it’s only the start of February, but this is one of my favorite books of 2018 so far. It’s close to my heart, and I am so happy that I got to read it.

Final rating: 5 of 5 stars show less

Disclaimer: I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

I fell in love with Maya immediately.

I don’t take to characters that quickly very often. Usually it takes a couple chapters, but Maya is instantly lovable. She’s sweet, kind, and trying desperately to be independent. She is Indian Muslim and with that come certain expectations. Her mother wants her to marry young, and she must marry appropriately. She does not drink wine or eat pork – Islam forbids it. Family and obedience is important, and her parents have a career planned out for her.

But Maya Aziz wants to kiss a boy. She wants to go to NYU and she wants to make show more movies. She isn’t a bad daughter. She doesn’t mean to disrespect her culture. She just wants to follow her dreams, even if that means doing it secretly.

Whatever headway she makes vanishes as a terrorist attack in Springfield, OH is attributed to a Muslim man and Islamophobia rears its ugly head.

I am not Indian, and I am not Muslim, so I cannot speak to how this book fares in its representation. From what I’ve read in other reviews, I hear that the Indian rep is pretty good (if somewhat stereotypical at times) and the Muslim rep is not as prominent as readers would like. As this is an #OwnVoices book, I like to think that the culture and sentiments expressed as Samira Ahmed’s, and they are true to her. I thought it was great, but I have no right to judge.

Beyond that, I absolutely adored this book. Contemporary is very hit-or-miss for me, but when I love it, I really love it. I loved Love, Hate, & Other Filters. I admired Maya’s courage, her friendships, and her normality. She never felt like a caricature, as too often happens in contemporary. She’s rounded, well-written… and as I said in the beginning, so so likable. Violet, her best friend, is steadfast and true. In both Phil and Violet, I like to believe there’s a better version of America than the one that so often makes the news. Neither of these two characters ever see Maya for the color of her skin or where she goes to pray. They are respectful, but not awkward. They are good friends, and prove themselves over and over.

The only part I would criticize is the ending. Story-wise, I actually liked it. As someone who was disowned by her parents for several years (after, like Maya, making life choices that starkly stood against their beliefs), it was strange and nice to see that in a book. I imagine it will be an ending like mine – where things are strained but new trust and understanding is sown with the help of others and a relationship is reformed. What I didn’t love about the ending was how rushed it felt. In a few short pages, everything is tied together with a boy in a summary, back and forth in different scenes. After all the time I spent getting to know Maya and rooting for her, it felt anticlimactic.

Otherwise, I cannot recommend this book enough. It was thoughtful and intriguing. It added more diversity to YA in places sorely missing it. But I don’t think this book should be read just because it is an #OwnVoices novel. This is a genuinely good book with excellent writing and characters (Hina. Amazing.) and a story that will make readers think about the way their behave and perceive things. There are so many strong quotes and lines and I loved it. show less

Samira Ahmed has written a timely and entertaining story of Indian-American teenager, Maya, and her struggle with being a "good" Indian girl for her parents and an independent budding documentarian. I loved Maya's story because it exposes the universal desires that American teenaged girls experience, regardless of culture or home-life, in addition to exposing the often undiscussed issues that come with growing up as a Muslim Indian-American. Maya is a witty, complex character, and through her lens, we see thematic elements of prejudice, cultural and generational conflict, and struggle with identity. This novel is a relevant read, and I highly recommend it.