The Secret Diary of Mona Hasan
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Mona learns to find her voice over the course of a year that sees her immigrating from Dubai to Canada in this novel for fans of Front Desk by Kelly Yang.
Mona Hasan is a young Muslim girl growing up in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, when the first Gulf War breaks out in 1991. The war isn’t what she expects — “We didn’t even get any days off school! Just my luck” — especially when the ground offensive is over so quickly and her family peels the masking tape off their windows. Her parents, however, fear there is no peace in the region, and it sparks a major change in their lives.
Over the course of one year, Mona falls in love, speaks up to protect her younger sister, loses her best friend to the new girl at school, has summer adventures with her cousins in Pakistan, immigrates to Canada, and pursues her ambition to be a feminist and a poet.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Twelve-year-old Pakistani Muslim Mona Hasan, who lives in Dubai, has big resolutions for 1991—such as not rolling her eyes behind her parents' back, and saving someone from danger—all of which she chronicles in her diary. "Nothing exciting ever happens in the UAE, but there is bad news happening all around us," Mona writes in a January entry and, by February, Americans have invaded and dropped bombs in Iraq, before subsequently departing. Believing that the first Gulf War is over ("except for a few chips and cracks, everything's back to normal"), Mona busies herself with pining for her crush, Waleed (a February entry features only his name, written 74 times), and trying to navigate puberty, until she overhears her parents discussing leaving the U.A.E. to avoid a shifting regime. Drawing on her own lived history, Hussain, who grew up in Dubai and emigrated to Canada as a teenager, touches on weighty topics such as racism, misogyny, and war. Mona's voice is good-humored, and her diary entries—comprising lists, poems, and letters from supporting characters—amalgamate into a wise and introspective debut. Ages 10–14.
