Unless they have family involved, most middle schoolers in the United States are probably not impressed by President Obama’s announcement of support for a Palestinian homeland. Hand them Randa Abdel-Fattah’s novel Where the Streets Had a Name, and they may gain new insight into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the toll it has taken on families on both sides. This is Abdel-Fattah’s third book to be published for young people in the United States. All the stories deal with issues of conflict within and between cultures as seen through the eyes of children and teens; all promote a message of understanding and acceptance.

BREAKING STEREOTYPES

I had the pleasure of meeting Randa Abdel-Fattah in August 2010 in Sydney, Australia, where I was conducting research toward my dissertation on Australian authors for young adults. She was on her lunch break from her job as litigation attorney, and we arranged to meet at a restaurant. Ironically, having read Does My Head Look Big in This?, which features a young woman deciding whether or not to wear the hijab, or Muslim head covering, I was on the lookout for someone in a chic but modest headscarf. It took me a few minutes to realize that the woman in a business suit—no hijab—looking searchingly up and down the busy street was Randa. Since it was a Muslim period of fasting, we decided the restaurant was just too tempting and retreated to a quiet, comfortable lobby.

With a Palestinian-born mother and an Egyptian-born father, Randa Abdel-Fattah is a first generation Australian, having grown up in Melbourne in the 1980s. Like the United Randa Abdel-Fattah’s novel Where the Streets Had a Name provides new insight into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the toll it has taken on families on both sides. Australia has long attracted immigrants from a variety of countries. And, as in the United States, while there are vibrant ethnic communities in every city, the young people in those communities are torn between honoring family traditions and heritage, and assimilating into the modern mainstream culture. Young Randa attended a Catholic elementary school, then an Islamic secondary institution with an International Baccalaureate program. Studying law at the University of Melbourne, she became involved in a variety of human rights movements, especially those focusing on immigration and women in Islamic culture. Her passion for the rights of all human beings continues unabated to this day.

AN AUTHOR EMERGES—AT AGE FIFTEEN

Randa grew up in an extended family with a strong tradition of storytelling, so it was natural that she turned to crafting stories of her own. She also grew up reading: Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton, Judy Blume, and series like Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley High. She wrote the first draft of Does My Head Look Big in This? at the age of fifteen. Recognizing even then that the novel’s material was unique and filled a gap in literature for young readers, she looked into getting it published—only to have it returned to her with notes criticizing it as too didactic.

Eight years later she returned to the manuscript, recognized its youthful shortcomings, and revised it. This time it was published, first in Australia, then in the United Kingdom, before being picked up in the United States. The story focuses on Amal, a Muslim teenage girl in Australia surrounded by friends of various nationalities and faiths. Like many teens, Amal experiences a religious awakening, a search for her deepest beliefs and how she can express them in everyday life. She chooses to begin wearing the hijab. Meanwhile, she discovers that being true to her faith involves much more than a fashion statement, as she is increasingly attracted to a male friend.

Abdel-Fattah did indeed wear the hijab in high school—which, even in an Islamic school, not all girls did. She was “frustrated with the prejudice and discrimination” Muslims who openly professed their beliefs faced, and with the general public’s misconceptions and negative opinions of the rights of women in Muslim society. Eventually she realized that the hijab did not make her feel any more—or less—Muslim, and she continues to see it as a matter of personal choice. The novel made a smooth transition from Australia to the United States. Abdel-Fattah notes that, when a foreign title attracts the U.S. market, it is often because it fills a need. Judging by the reaction of Muslim students in my school, Does My Head Look Big in This? took positive steps to fill just such a need.

EXPLORING IDENTITY THROUGH FICTION

Abdel-Fattah continued her exploration of identity, stereotype, and prejudice in her second novel, Ten Things I Hate about Me. Naturally dark-haired, dark-eyed, teenage Jamila is of Muslim Lebanese descent. But to fit in at her mainstream Australian high school, she dyes her hair blonde, pops in blue contacts, and introduces herself as Jamie. (As a teen devouring the Sweet Valley High books, Abdel-Fattah’s internal image of herself was as a blonde, blue-eyed American.) No one in her new circle of friends guesses her true identity; having heard their derogatory terms for non-Anglo Australians, Jamila is desperate to keep it that way. Then she begins an online friendship where she can finally reveal her true self and be liked for who she is. She begins to appreciate the special nature of things like Lebanese food and the Arabic music she performs. As Abdel-Fattah notes, “She needs to gain self-respect to gain the respect of others.”

A FATEFUL TRIP TO PALESTINE

In 2000, Abdel-Fattah traveled to the land that used to be Palestine but is now part of Israel, the land of her father’s birth. She saw the home where he and his family once lived, the home he could never return to; and she felt firsthand the pain of being dispossessed of one’s homeland. She turned that pain into Where the Streets Had a Name. Thirteen-year-old Hayaat and her Palestinian family now live in Bethlehem, but her beloved grandmother often speaks of the lovely countryside that surrounded the family’s home outside Jerusalem—while her father simply and silently mourns their loss. When the grandmother falls ill, Hayaat is convinced that touching a bit of soil from her old home will make her feel better. She and her plucky friend Samy set off on an illegal, excruciating journey across the six kilometers that separate Bethlehem from Jerusalem. Along the way, they encounter checkpoint after checkpoint and find both help and hindrance from the area’s Muslims, Jews, and Christians. While the reader’s sympathies are with Hayaat and her Palestinian relatives, it becomes clear, with human faces taking the place of verbal arguments, that the issue of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank is far from black and white. On her website, Abdel-Fattah compares the situation with the arrival of Europeans in Australia: They saw the land as unclaimed and fair game, in spite of the Aborigines who had called it home for millennia.

NEWEST WORKS

Abdel-Fattah’s most recent books are not currently available in the United States. One is a middle grade children’s novel, The Friendship Matchmaker is coming out in the U.S. (Walker) in July 2012. Another is a picture book, Buzz Off!, with illustrations by Dan McGuiness, about a boy who can understand the language of those annoying flies of summer. While the family in the story happens to be Muslim, Abdel-Fattah is quick to assert that the story is not about Muslims. Then there is a new young adult book that draws upon the author’s legal background, a departure from her girl-centered quests for identity. Noah’s Law at first sounds a bit reminiscent of Francisco X. Stork’s Marcelo in the Real World. Noah, a barrister’s son, finds himself working at his aunt’s law firm during the holidays to atone for some youthful indiscretion. As the firm investigates a woman’s wrongful death, Noah discovers that right and wrong are not always easy to tell apart. The thriller has been named to the Children’s Book Council’s Notables List.

LAW, SOCIAL JUSTICE, WRITING AND A VOICE FOR MUSLIM TEENS

Randa Abdel-Fattah currently lives in Sydney with her husband and two children. Balancing her family, her job as a lawyer, her commitments to social justice, her writing, and a busy schedule of school visits, she hopes “to get a full night’s rest sometime after 2020.”

Ever conscious of the image of women, especially teen women, in the Muslim Middle Eastern world, Abdel-Fattah tells me with some pride that there is an emerging literature for young adults in Arabic countries. In addition, she reports that an affiliate of the large and respected children’s/young adult publishing house Bloomsbury is beginning to translate its line into Arabic for that market. She does not mention whether her own novels, full of young people’s real, positive, humorous search for Muslim identity in a multicultural world, are among those under consideration.

Randa Abdel-Fattah’s website can be found at www.randaabdelfattah.com.

BOOKS BY RANDA ABDEL-FATTAH

Available in the United States:

Does My Head Look Big in This? Orchard Books, 2007.

Ten Things I Hate about Me. Orchard Books, 2009.

Where the Streets Had a Name. Scholastic, 2010.

Published only in Australia to date:

Noah’s Law. Pan Macmillan Australia, 2010.

The Friendship Matchmaker. Scholastic Australia, 2011.

Buzz Off! Illustrated by Dan McGuiness. Scholastic Australia, 2011.