CULTURE
6 – INCLUSIVE LITERATURE
Budhos,
Marina Tamar. 2007. ASK ME NO QUESTIONS. New York: Scholastic. ISBN
9780545043557.
Brief Summary Plot
Fourteen-year-old
Nadira and her family have been living in the United States for several years.
Her father, Abba, is a hardworking man who wants to see his daughters succeed.
Aisha, Nadira’s older sister, is an excellent student, a teacher favorite, who
has assimilated into American culture quite naturally. She is a senior in high
school who has applied to many reputable universities. Unless the family’s
legal status changes, Aisha will not be able attend nor receive financial
assistance. When her father’s visa expires he hires a lawyer to help process
the paperwork. The lawyer takes the father’s money in what would eventually be
found out to be a scam. The family continues to live in New York and moves
several times without informing the proper authorities.
After
the events of 911 occur, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)
begins to move very quickly to detain and deport many people who are in the
country illegally, some through no fault of their own. Nadira’s father makes
the decision to seek asylum in Canada. At the Canadian border, the family is
turned away. The family has no other choice but to reenter the United States,
knowing that the father will be arrested, detained, and held for questioning
and possible deportation back to their homeland of Bangladesh. Nadira’s mother
remains with Abba, the father, and seeks refuge at Salvation Army until Abba’s
fate is determined. Nadira and her older sister, Aisha, return to school and
are told to “not say a word to anyone.”
The
story chronicles the journey of two sisters who are forced to rejoin their
daily activities as if nothing has happened. Aisha, who is strong and
resourceful, begins to falter under the stress. Nadira, the overlooked
daughter, begins to find within herself the resolve she will need to help get
her father’s case heard and possibly gain legal residency.
Critical Analysis
Marina Budhos has written an authentic story about the
effects Muslim families encountered after the events of 911. The process for
legal status in this country is difficult enough, but after 911 the racial
profiling of all Muslims being labeled terrorists, especially men, became
extreme. The author has effectively conveyed the paranoia Muslim families
experienced and the degree to which some would attempt to become invisible.
The plot of the story centers on Nadira and her family who
have emigrated from Bangladesh to the United States to get away from the
violence that has troubled their homeland. The family has established a life
for themselves in the United States although they keep a low profile. Nadira,
who is fourteen and overshadowed by her outgoing and academically gifted older
sister, Aisha. Their relationship is a cross between jealousy, survival, and
sisterly bond. Nadira feels that she always has to chase after her parents
approval because Aisha is as Nadira puts it, “like a firstborn son.”
As the story plays out, it is Nadira who steps out of her
sister’s shadow and seeks to find the evidence needed to rescue her father from
possible deportation. The story is balanced nicely with the unlikely disparity
between the two sister’s journeys. The reader sees Nadira grow in her ability
to assert herself and also is witness to Aisha’s decline from confident student
to a shell of her former self-fading quickly into depression. A majority of the
setting takes place in Queens, New York where the Hossain family has lived and
the girls currently attend high school. Other locations mentioned within the
plot include, Canada, Burlington, where Abba is detained, Dhaka, the small village
in Bangladesh where the Hossains grew up, and Flushing High, the school that
Nadira and Aisha attend. The style of writing is narrative and told from the
point of view of Nadira. The themes included in the story include illegal
immigration, citizenship, ethnic profiling, discrimination, prejudice, family,
culture, belief in one’s ability to be self confident, and to never give up. As
Nadira stated in the story, “Aisha, Are you just going to throw all of your
hard work away? All that you have worked for? We can’t give up! We can’t!”
The book, ASK ME NO QUESTIONS, is rich in cultural markers.
Skin tone is mentioned when Nadira states that “Ma and Aisha look a lot alike:
They’re both fair skinned and thin.” Dialect or first language is detailed by
the mention of the family speaking Bengali the language of Bangladesh. There
are words and phrases that which add to the authenticity of the book. These
include the phrase “ar chor gora, ei niye
amader jobon,” which translate into “The land breaks and new land forms.”
The words shada-chele mean white guy.
The character, Tareq, says “niger dom
noshto ko’ro na,” which means, “don’t waste your breath.”
Cultural markers for character names are seen abundantly
throughout the text. Examples of names include Nadira, Aisha, Tareq, Taslima,
Ahmed, Naseem, and Hossain. The cultural markers for form of address are noticed
by the mention of the sister’s calling their father “Abba.” The names of an
uncle, either friend or relative, is preceded by the first name and followed by
uncle. Examples of this form of address would be Ali-Uncle or Naseem- Uncle.
Foods are mentioned throughout the story. Examples of food
would include luchis, a deep fried dough, doodh-cha, tea with milk, palao,
moori, a puffed rice dish, bhel pooris, which is dish made with rice, and
mustard oil.
Articles of clothing include shalwar kameez, worn by Nadir’s
mother. A sari, an unstitched length of clothe, draped around the body. Men for
religious reasons wear a skullcap.
Cultural markers for hairstyle mentioned the use of applying
coconut oil to the hair of both men and women. Abba’s friend Ali-Uncle is
described as wearing a kurta, a long skirt, and having a beard. Nadira mentions
that her mother and sister have frizzy hair. Ma wears her hair in a bun or long
braid.
A final cultural marker is the brief mention of religious
practices and celebrations. Although the Hossain family has not attended
mosque, Nadira mentions “Abba and Ma they do some holidays, like they fast for
Ramadan, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen Abba pull out the prayer rug
rom the closet.” There is also mention of prayer five times a day. Celebrations
include Ramadan and the Bengali New Year.
The story, ASK NO QUESTIONS, is a relevant story to today’s
headlines and the amount of fear that is experienced not only by those of the
Muslim faith, but by those who falsely label an entire culture as terrorist due
to their lack of tolerance and ignorance. I thought the addition of portraying
the female characters as strong and opinionated showed promise and gave a voice
to a subculture within the Muslim culture. If we could all see as Aisha asked
at her high school graduation, “All I ask of you is to see me for who I am. I
want what you want.”
It really is that simple.
Awards
American Library Association Notable Books for Children,
Winner 2007
Best Children’s Book of the Year Bank Street College of
Education, 2007
James Cook Book Award, Winner 2007
YALSA Best Books for Young Adults, American Library
Association, 2007
Review Excerpts
The Bulletin of the Center
for Children’s Books reviewed March, 2006:
Fourteen-year-old Nadira s family has been living illegally in the United
States since she was seven; they, like many others, came on tourist visas from
Bangladesh and never left. In the post-9/11 world, however, a new law requiring
Muslim men to register with the government has led her family to journey to the
Canadian border and pleads for asylum. They are denied and, upon returning to
the U.S. border crossing, her father is arrested and imprisoned. Budhos novel
follows Nadira and her sister Aisha, who return to New York City and attempt to
go about life as usual while their mother moves into a Vermont shelter to be
near their father and help his cause. The complexity of this novel comes in the
myriad other conflicts the two girls are dealing with in addition to their
father s imprisonment; in many ways, the novel reads like an exploration of
different methods of coping, from the angry to the silent, from finding one s
voice to losing it. Much of the novel is devoted to exploring the tension
between Nadira, an average, overweight, passive freshman, and eighteen-year-old
Aisha, the seemingly perfect, overachieving valedictorian (You’re on the road
with your sister, and your father is in INS detention, and your ma is sleeping
on a shelter cot, and you figure maybe the two of you have a lot to talk about.
We don’t). It is, in fact, Aisha s own self-destruction that motivates Nadira
to be more proactive, and this surge of activity unearths the information
necessary to help get her father out of jail. Budhos has composed a compelling
and thought-provoking contemporary examination of the human side of the law;
further, in illustrating the secret burden that Nadira and Aisha carry with
them to school each day as they pretend that nothing is the matter, she reminds
readers to think differently about the people around them. Sure to elicit
discussion, this novel would work very well for a teen book club selection. An
endnote is included. – Hope Morrison
Horn Book Magazine
reviewed March 1, 2006: Budhos alludes to the grueling horrors of detention but,
appropriately for her audience, focuses on its indirect emotional impact on her
teenage protagonist. Nadira and Aisha's strategies for surviving and succeeding
in high school offer sharp insight into the narrow margins between belonging
and not belonging, and though the resolution of the story is perhaps more
optimistic than realistic, it feels earned.
Connections
Students can discuss the stereotypes that are associated
with the Muslim community and what can be put in place to make sure that
discrimination is not tolerated.
Students can discuss the effects of 911 and if any student
has experienced those effects.
Have a guest speaker of the Muslim faith come and speak to
the class. Have students prepared to ask relevant questions.
Pair this book with La Linea by Ann Jaramillo, which details
the harsh conditions, experienced by two youth crossing the Mexican-American
border illegally to reach their parents.
References
The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books. “Ask Me No
Questions.” bccb.lis.illinois.edu/
(accessed November 22, 2015)
TWU Library Database – Books In Print
(accessed November 22, 2015)
TWU
Library Database - Children’ Literature Comprehensive Database
(accessed November 22, 2015)
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