Tell Me How You Really Feel by Aminah Mae Safi

Through intense, diarylike chapters chronicling Charlie's journey, the author captures the brutal and heartbreaking way 'girls who write their pain on their bodies' scar and mar themselves, either succumbing or surviving. Feeling rejected, Charlie, an artist, is drawn into a destructive new relationship with her sexy older co-worker, a 'semifamous' local musician who's obviously a junkie alcoholic. But things don't go as planned in the Arizona desert, because sweet Mikey just wants to be friends. After spending time in treatment with other young women like her-who cut, burn, poke, and otherwise hurt themselves-Charlie is released and takes a bus from the Twin Cities to Tucson to be closer to Mikey, a boy she 'like-likes' but who had pined for Ellis instead. Seventeen-year-old Charlie Davis, a white girl living on the margins, thinks she has little reason to live: her father drowned himself her bereft and abusive mother kicked her out her best friend, Ellis, is nearly brain dead after cutting too deeply and she's gone through unspeakable experiences living on the street.

Safi’s debut novel offers Arab and Muslim readers a teenager they can relate to as they too learn to navigate racial and religious tensions in a predominantly white society.ĭelightful and funny but still giving voice to serious issues of sexual consent and xenophobia.Īfter surviving a suicide attempt, a fragile teen isn't sure she can endure without cutting herself.

Lulu’s stubbornness and desire to make both her worlds meld lands her in isolation from both family and friends. Navigating high school is tough enough with graduation, boys, gossip, family, and friends, but Lulu also has to deal with Islamophobia at school, a war that threatens her family thousands of miles away, an incident in which sexual boundaries are overstepped, and the cross-cultural puzzle that every child of immigrants must learn to piece together in their own way. It’s hard when your Muslim dad is from Iraq and you’ve grown up as an Arab-American Muslim who drinks and frequents all the latest parties but still fasts during Ramadan. But that’s not possible when your (presumably white) Catholic mom is from Louisiana and her family has been openly hostile since your maternal grandmother, the matriarch of the family, passed away. Lulu just wants to be an Iraqi-American living a normal teenage life in Houston, Texas.

Leila “Lulu” Saad is about to graduate from high school with her three best friends by her side, but things get messy and senior year becomes a little more complicated than expected.

Tell Me How You Really Feel by Aminah Mae Safi