We Are All We Have
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
When a teenage girl’s single mom is taken by ICE, everything changes—all of her hopes and dreams for the future have turned into survival.
Seventeen-year-old Rania is shaken awake in her family's apartment in Brooklyn. ICE is at the door, taking her mother away. But Ammi has
This was supposed to be Rania’s greatest summer: hanging out with her best friend, Fatima, and getting ready for college in the fall.
But it’s 2019, and nothing is certain.
Now, along with her younger brother, Kamal, and a new friend, Carlos, Rania must figure out how to survive. A road trip leads to searching for answers to questions she didn’t even think to ask.
In this vivid exploration of what happens when the country you have put your hopes into is fast shutting down, award-winning author Marina Budhos shows us how one girl bursting with dreams navigates secrets, love, and the lure of the open road.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detains her mother, Pakistani teen Rania Hasan struggles to navigate the aftermath in a gut-wrenching tale by Budhos (The Long Ride). Following her journalist father's disappearance when Rania was younger, she and her pregnant mother fled Pakistan, immigrating to the U.S. Now, living in 2019 Brooklyn, her mother's "routine check" of their asylum application goes terribly wrong; she's detained by ICE in the middle of the night, leaving now-17-year-old Rania to care for her eight-year-old brother Kamal alone while attempting to graduate high school. But after a neighbor informs child protective services that she and Kamal are without a guardian, the siblings are taken to a shelter for unaccompanied minors. Determined to save her mother and get their lives back, Rania and Kamal, joined by a fellow shelter resident, Latinx-cued Carlos, escape and embark on a road trip to meet an estranged relative. Budhos populates this hopeful tale with a large cast of kind-hearted characters, whose boundless compassion for Rania and Kamal, and sense of helplessness in the face of an unfair and impossible government system, is palpable. Ages 12–up.
