#nadine jolie courtney

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

🌙 Books for Arab American Heritage Month 🌙

🌙 Good morning, bookish bats, and Eid Mubarak to those who are celebrating. Eid al-Fitr ("the feast of breaking the fast") marks the end of Ramadan, an Islamic holy month of fasting and sacrifice. April is also Arab American Heritage month, which celebrates the 3.7 million Arab Americans across the country. This is an opportunity to combat Anti-Arab bigotry by challenging stereotypes and prejudices.

✨ One of the best ways to do so is to read books ABOUT Arab Americans. To help, here are a few books for Arab American Heritage Month you can read, discuss, or add to your ever-growing TBR!

[ List under the cut. ]

✨ Growing up, I didn't have books that represented my experiences as an Arab or Muslim American. My friends didn't have stories to read that could help them understand my perspective. With that in mind, I added children's books on the last slide, for the moms out there searching for diverse books--books that allow us to empathize and understand different perspectives and experiences.

🌙 A Woman Is No Man - Etaf Rum ✨ The Other Americans - Laila Lamami 🌙 You Exist Too Much - Zaina Arafat ✨ Grape Leaves - Gregory Orfalea and Sharif Elmusa 🌙 The Wrong End of the Telescope - Rabih Alameddine ✨ The Beauty of Your Face - Sahar Mustafah 🌙 Martyr - Kaveh Akbar ✨ Between Two Moons - Aisha Abdel Gawad 🌙 Tasting the Sky - Ibtisam Barakat ✨ A Game for Swallows - Zeina Abirached 🌙 Love Is An Ex-Country - Randa Jarrar ✨ The Thirty Names of Night - Zeyn Joukhadar

🌙 I Was Their American Dream - Malaka Gharib ✨ A Country Called Amreeka - Alia Malek 🌙 A Theory of Birds - Zaina Alsous ✨ Against the Loveless World - Susan Abulhawa 🌙 Arab in America - Toufic El Rassi ✨ The Skin and Its Girl - Sarah Cypher 🌙 Sex and Lies - Leïla Slimani ✨ Loom - Thérèse Soukar Chehade 🌙 Birds of Paradise - Diana Abu-Jaber ✨ Come With Me - Noami Shihab Nye 🌙 Girls of Riyadh - Rajāʼ ʻAbd Allāh Ṣāniʻ ✨ How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? - Moustafa Bayoumi

🌙 Evil Eye - Etaf Rum ✨ The Girl Who Fell to Earth - Sophia Al-Maria 🌙 What Strange Paradise - Omar El Akaad ✨ Girls That Never Die - Safia Elhillo 🌙 Bahari - Dina Macki ✨ Life Without a Recipe - Diana Abu-Jaber 🌙 Egyptian Diary - Richard Platt ✨ Man O'War - Cory McCarthy 🌙 The Cave - Amani Ballour, MD ✨ The Map of Salt and Stars - Zeyn Joukhadar 🌙 They Called Me a Lioness - Ahed Tamimi and Dena Takruri ✨ Salt Houses - Hala Alyan

🌙 Arabiyya - Reem Assil ✨ Mornings in Jenin - Susan Abulhawa 🌙 Shubeik Lubeik - Deena Mohamed ✨ The Wrong End of the Telescope - Rabih Alameddine 🌙 Conditional Citizens - Laila Lamami ✨ An Unnecessary Woman - Rabih Alameddine 🌙 It Won't Always Be Like This - Malaka Gharib ✨ Proud - Ibtihaj Muhammad 🌙 The Land in Our Bones - Layla K Feghali ✨ Everything Comes Next - Naomi Shihab Nye 🌙 The Immortals of Tehran - Ali Araghi ✨ Starstruck - Sarafina El-Badry Nance

🌙 Our Women on the Ground - Various ✨ The Jasad Heir - Sara Hashem 🌙 Tell Me How You Really Feel - Aminah Mae Safi ✨ Surge - Etel Adnan 🌙 Here to Stay - Sara Farizan ✨ We Hunt the Flame - Hafsah Faisal 🌙 A Tempest of Tea - Hafsah Faizal ✨ The Bad Muslim Discount - Syed M. Masood 🌙 A Girl Like That - Tanaz Bhathena ✨ Not the Girls You're Looking For - Aminah Mae Safi 🌙 All-American Muslim Girl - Nadine Jolie Courtney ✨ The Moon That Turns You Back - Hala Alyan

🌙 Ms. Marvel - Destined - Saladin Ahmed ✨ Americanized: Rebel Without a Green Card - Sara Saedi 🌙 Internment - Samira Ahmed ✨ Stardust Thief - Chelsea Abdullah 🌙 Once Upon an Eid - Various ✨ Farah Rocks Fifth Grade - Susan Muaddi Darraj 🌙 Barakah Beats - Maleeha Siddiqui ✨ Amira's Picture Day - Reem Faruqi 🌙 The Tale of Princess Fatima, Warrior Woman ✨ Lailah's Lunchbox - Reem Faruqi 🌙 In My Mosque - M.O. Yuksel ✨ Halal Hot Dogs - Susannah Aziz

🌙 The Proudest Blue - Ibtihaj Muhammad ✨ Silverworld - Diana Abu-Jaber 🌙 Other Words for Home - Jasmine Warga ✨ Time to Pray - Maha Addasi 🌙 Under My Hijab - Hena Khan ✨ Wishing Upon the Same Stars - Jacquetta Nammar Feldman 🌙 Amina's Voice - Hena Khan ✨ Yasmin the Recycler - Saadia Faruqi 🌙 The Shape of Thunder - Jasmine Warga ✨ Deep in the Sahara - Kelly Cunnane, Hoda Hadadi 🌙 The Turtle of Michigan - Naomi Shihab Nye ✨ Shad Hadid and the Alchemists of Alexandria - George Jreije

[roobylavender]

hello! could you recommend some of your favourite books? i read piper's son after your posts about it and I am now hooked on to marchetta and was hoping you would be having some other amazing books in your pocket!

going to cover a range of genres here so hope that's okay !

the queen's thief series by megan whalen turner (political fantasy. but very loose on the fantasy it's more like. greco-roman adjacent)

bruiser by neal shusterman (contemporary ya sci-fi)

rose daughter by robin mckinley (fairytale retelling)

aurora county series by deborah wiles (children's books)

i'll give you the sun by jandy nelson (contemporary ya realistic fiction)

the chocolate thief, the chocolate touch, & the chocolate heart by laura florand (contemporary adult romance)

say yes to the marquess by tessa dare (regency romance)

the girl who drank the moon by kelly barnhill (middle grade fantasy)

bear town by fredrik backman (contemporary adult realistic fiction)

all american muslim girl by nadine jolie courtney (contemporary ya realistic fiction)

the love experiment by ainslie paton (contemporary adult romance)

the flatshare & the road trip by beth o'leary (contemporary adult romance)

poison wars duology by sam hawke (political fantasy)

the f team by rawah arja (contemporary ya realistic fiction)

the final revival of opal and nev by dawnie walton (historical fiction)

good intentions by kasim ali (contemporary adult realistic fiction)

i wanna be where you are by kristina forest (contemporary ya romance)

[illustration-alcove]

Nadine Jolie Courtney’s All-American Muslim Girl. Cover design by Cassie Gonzalez · Illustration and lettering by Carmi Grau.

[just0nemorepage]

All-American Muslim Girl || Nadine Jolie Courtney || 415 pages -------------------------------------------------------------- Top 3 Genres: Young Adult / Contemporary / Realistic Fiction

Synopsis: Allie Abraham has it all going for her—she's a straight-A student, with good friends and a close-knit family, and she's dating cute, popular, and sweet Wells Henderson. One problem: Wells's father is Jack Henderson, America's most famous conservative shock jock...and Allie hasn't told Wells that her family is Muslim. It's not like Allie's religion is a secret, exactly. It's just that her parents don't practice and raised her to keep her Islamic heritage to herself. But as Allie witnesses ever-growing Islamophobia in her small town and across the nation, she begins to embrace her faith—studying it, practicing it, and facing hatred and misunderstanding for it. Who is Allie, if she sheds the façade of the "perfect" all-American girl? What does it mean to be a "Good Muslim?" And can a Muslim girl in America ever truly fit in?

Publication Date: November 2019. / Average Rating: 4.02. / Number of Ratings: 1650~.

[bookbabe92]

Currently Reading: How to be an  Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi and All-American Muslim Girl by Nadine Jolie Courtney

[cbcdiversity]

Author Q&A with Nadine Jolie Courtney

Tell us about your most recent book and how you came to write/illustrate it.

All-American Muslim Girl is a YA novel born of my own experiences as a white-passing mixed-race Muslim in Georgia. I’m the daughter of a Jordanian-Circassian father and a blond Catholic cheerleader from Florida who converted to Islam when she and my dad got married. Most people have an image in their minds when they hear the words ‘Muslim girl’—and it’s definitely not me. As a result, I was exposed to a lot of harmful stealth Islamophobia over the years, moving unnoticed through predominantly white spaces as guards were down and people dropped casually bigoted comments. Post Trump, that stealth Islamophobia became blatant. I felt compelled to write an Islam-positive story of a young girl who, like me, initially struggles with a lack of connection to her religion but eventually chooses to actively embrace it, exploring how that affects her relationships along the way.

Do you think of yourself as a diverse author/illustrator?

I’ve always had lot of anxiety about my identity, something I address in AAMG (and tried to work through, in my MC of Allie Abraham!) On the one hand, I grew up feeling very much like an outsider, no matter what room I was in. When I was out with my visibly foreign father or my hijabi family members, the reception was noticeably different to what I’d get when out alone with my Barbie-esque mom. People would make fun of my last name (an impossible to pronounce Circassian name rife with consonants). Faces would change when they found out my family’s religion or background. But, on the other hand, my experience as a Muslim has still been very different from those of my Muslim friends and family members—to say nothing of my Brown and Black Muslim sisters. My lighter skin and ability to “pass” as a basic blonde has shielded me from the worst Islamophobia—something I am both grateful for and, honestly, a little ashamed of.

Who is your favorite character of all time in children’s or young adult literature?

It’s a four-way tie between Ramona Quimby, Anne Shirley, Jo March, and Hermione Granger. Feisty young women for the win!

Hypothetically speaking, let’s say you are forced to sell all of the books you own except for one. Which do you keep?

Oh my goodness! Okay, well, since this is purely hypothetical, I’m going to pretend we’re only talking about fiction books. From there…oof. When my husband and I got married, we thinned out our respective book collections, and it was torture. My answer would probably change depending on my mood, but for right now, I’d say my most dog-eared, weather-beaten book: an ancient, well-loved Norton Anthology of Poetry that I’ve had since I was 14. Barring that, my Harry Potter series, which I’m saving to read with my daughter when she’s old enough.

What does diversity mean to you as you think about your own books?

I feel like there’s often this checklist mentality toward diversity in literature, and it comes across as not only inauthentic but completely harmful. To me personally, diversity is about moving past seeing white as a default and not prioritizing the white gaze. It’s about recognizing that our stories are better when they reflect the world as it really is, in all its complexity. When you’re a marginalized teenager, maybe somebody who’s occasionally ill at ease around your peers, books can be your safe haven—a place where you can lose yourself and forget about whatever issues you’re going through, if briefly. Now imagine you read a book and it’s you, your life, your experiences reflected back on the page. How much less alone might you feel? How meaningful is that for a young person—questioning themselves, questioning their place—to realize there are others out there like them? That’s why I think it’s so important to not have publishing continue to churn out the same perspectives, the same heroes and heroines. Those stories have been told. Let’s shine the light elsewhere for a while and see what blooms.

What is your thought process in including or excluding characters of diverse backgrounds?

For All-American Muslim Girl, it was important to me to include Muslims from a variety of backgrounds, races, and ethnicities—because that’s the reality of Islam. It’s not just Arab Muslims, which is the default in the media. It’s Indonesian Muslims and Black Muslims and Desi Muslims and Muslim converts. I’m a Circassian Muslim, so though I’m fair like a lot of Muslims from the Caucausus region, my family have been Muslims for generations. I wanted to show not just that diversity of background, but also of thought: the book is full of a variety of young Muslim women who interpret the religion in vastly different ways and enjoy respectfully debating those disparate views. The Ummah is stronger and richer not in spite of our differences but because of them.

Nadine Jolie Courtney is the author of the upcoming YA novel All-American Muslim Girl (November 12, 2019, FSG), as well as the YA novel Romancing the Throne, and two adult books: Confessions of a Beauty Addict, and Beauty Confidential. A graduate of Barnard College, her articles have appeared in Town & Country, Angeleno, OprahMag.com, and Vogue.com. She lives in Santa Monica, California, with her family. 

Website: nadinejoliecourtney.com; Instagram: @nadinejoliecourtney; Twitter: @nadinecourtney

[avengerraven]

I just realized that the teen genre I normally refer to as The Dystopian Bachelor should really be called The Esther genre

[sorrow-suggestion]

― all american muslim girl, nadine jolie courtney

[social-beauty]

I think people assume being a beauty blogger leads to a plush life of fame, money, and free beauty products. While all of those things are part of the beauty blogging life, there is a dark side that many people don’t know even exist. Nadine Jolie Courtney, a beauty blogger, explains what her life was really like behind the computer screen. She was dropped from her blogging agency for not having “high enough numbers”--numbers typically meaning engagement, views, comments, likes, clicks, etc. For someone who was a full-time beauty blogger depending on blogging for salary, her life came down to a crashing halt in one fell swoop. She also mentions the struggle she experienced with trying to stay the same honest blogger she started of as while still keeping her numbers up--clearly not an easy task.

Having dabbled in beauty blogging myself, I do understand the motivation behind starting it: connection. I initially started my account(s) with the dream of finding a community of people who shared my love of beauty products (mostly skincare). After my follower count and engagement had grown, I began receiving offers for free products to review, with some even offering monetary compensation in hopes that I’d post a rave review. I always wanted to remain an honest beauty blogger and never accepted monetary compensation for posts or reviews because I did not want that to become my entire life; I had other dreams for myself. Another factor to consider is all of the bullying/harassment that blogging opens people up to--people feel they can say or do anything from behind a keyboard. When I found that the community and beauty blogging itself had become toxic, I gave it up and I have to say that I am much happier for it.

[mkecountyteenbookaward]

All-American Muslim Girl

Allie Abraham appears to be the perfect all-American teenager. But when she witnesses Islamophobia firsthand on an airplane, she can’t shake the horrible assumptions people make. Her dad is an American history professor who is Circassian and a nonpracticing Muslim, and her mom is a Caucasian-American psychologist who converted to Muslim when she married.  Allie has never explored her Muslim religion or heritage...until now. Allie longs to connect more with her dad’s family, especially her grandmother, and she begins to study Muslim and learn Arabic. At the same time, she starts dating Wells, whose father spews hatred and Islamophobia on a conservative cable network. As Allie dives into her Islamic heritage and becomes caught between two worlds, will she be able to find a place for herself as a Muslim-American girl?

Nadine Jolie Courtney expertly handles tough topics, such as Islamophobia, religion, feminism, racism, and equality with respect.  She creates a remarkable character in Allie that all teens can relate too, especially those navigating two different worlds.

[referberate]

books i read in 2020: all-american muslim girl by nadine jolie courtney

[pussreboots]

[epicreads]

What Percent Royal Are You?

[mobilepubliclibraryteens]

For the first time ever, the Weston sisters are at the same boarding school. After an administration scandal at Libby’s all-girls school threatens her chances at a top university, she decides to join Charlotte at posh and picturesque Sussex Park. Social-climbing Charlotte considers it her sisterly duty to bring Libby into her circle: Britain’s young elites, glamorous teens who vacation in Hong Kong and the South of France and are just as comfortable at a polo match as they are at a party. It’s a social circle that just so happens to include handsome seventeen-year-old Prince Edward, heir to Britain’s throne. If there are any rules of sisterhood, “Don’t fall for the same guy” should be one of them. But sometimes chemistry—even love—grows where you least expect it. In the end, there may be a price to pay for romancing the throne...and more than one path to happily ever after.

[arcadialedger]

For Eid: A List of Muslim Contemporary Novels

Love from A to Z by S.K. Ali

Love, Hate & Other Filters by Samira Ahmed

The Life and Lies of Rukshana Ali by Sabina Khan

All- American Muslim Girl by Nadine Jolie Courtney

A Very Large Expanse of Sea by Taherah Mafi

Saints and Misfits by S.K. Ali

Written in the Stars by Aisha Saeed

Sofia Khan is Not Obliged by by Ayisha Malik

The Bad Muslim Discount by Syed M. Masood

Zara Hossain is Here by Sabina Khan

[nolabballgirl]

Eid 2022: Muslim Books Wrap-up and Review Part ii

so in part i here, i focused on recently published contemporary literature/poetry, fantasy, and graphic novels (2017 to present) with muslim main characters i've read over the year. now i'm going to turn to young adult and lgbtq muslim fiction. frankly i was impressed by how many books have come out in the last few years alone in these categories. now i wish the quality of the writing was just as amazing (but that’s another story 🌙)

these books represent a wide spectrum of the muslim experience. from practicing, non-practicing, or questioning one's faith, to spanning cultures, nationalities, and ethnic origins from across the globe. and we're only scratching the surface. without further ado:

ya:

all my rage (2022/sabaa tahir *tw: abuse, addiction) - this book fully wrecked me. it's so heartbreaking and yet hopeful at the same time. a lovely friends to lovers story of two pakistani american kids living in the mojave desert in california, whose respective families are just trying to live out "the american dream." p.s. tahir's "an ember in the ashes" is an awesome fantasy series!

salaam with love (2022/sara sharaf beg*tw: gun violence) - good post ramadan read as it follows a pakistani american teen from a small town who visits relatives in nyc for the entire month of ramadan. it's a coming of age story but also about the main learning more about the religion and ramadan in general. there's an unnecessary subplot involving gun violence that took away from the tone mid-story, and the ending was slightly unbelievable, but otherwise a fun read.

misfits in love (2021/s.k. ali) - this is a sequel to saints and misfits but you don't really need to have read the first one to read this. we follow our egyptian-indian hijabi protagonist at her brother's wedding and like all weddings, there's lots of drama (especially boy drama!) this was light-hearted and fun, but also did a good job in addressing intra-muslim racism (especially anti-black racism) and how to cope when it occurs amongst family members.

all american muslim girl (2019/nadine jolie courtney) - despite the cheesy title, i thought this was a fresh take on the muslim teen experience. it's a coming of age story of a white passing Circassian girl from a non-religious muslim family near atlanta, georgia. in exploring her heritage, racism, and fitting in, she comes to islam and decides to be muslim. so it's all about her finding her faith and making sense of it all, with some really layered intra-faith explorations amongst her friend group too.

love, hate, and other filters (2018/samira ahmed*tw: terrorism) - okay, this book was a mess. ostensibly a coming of age story about an indian muslim girl living in the midwest us. but it was full of cliches (brown girl pining for the white crush; oppressive indian parents, etc.) structurally, the author drops a mass casualty/terrorism event in the middle of the book, but then picks up with the "romance" like nothing happened. very little grappling with the main's cultural and religious identity. and the ending is incomprehensible given the 200 pages that came before it.

a very large expanse of sea (2018/tahereh mafi) - a coming of age story set in 2002 (right after 9/11) of a hijabi persian breakdancing teen. i enjoyed the subversion of stereotypes and the realistic depiction of racism and double standards in that time. i could have done with a little less romance but overall the main's conflicting emotions felt very real.

lgbtq lit (mostly wlw):

note: there aren't too many books with practicing queer muslim rep yet. most have mains that fall into the category of culturally muslim/raised in a muslim household but marginally practicing or not at all. for practicing rep, in addition to one book below, i would highly recommend watching "we are lady parts" on peacock (wlw hijabi who regularly prays!)

the henna wars (2020/adiba jaigirdar) - wlw high school rivals romance between a bengali girl and brazilian irish classmate in ireland (not exactly enemies to lovers but eh, close enough). so this isn't the most well-written book, but it was cute. props to an interracial woc couple and complicated sibling dynamics.

hani and ishu's guide to fake dating (2021/adiba jaigirdar) - fake dating and grumpy/sunshine tropes galore between muslim and hindu (?) bengali high school girls in ireland. kudos for a practicing muslim bisexual co-main! a nice exploration of culture and religion overall with both girls, who are quite well-developed on their own. i just wish we got more of their relationship together which felt the most underdeveloped of the whole novel so i wasn’t as invested in their relationship as i was in them separately. but overall, cute.

the love and lies of rukhsana ali (2019/sabina khan *tw: intense homophobia; sexual assault; death) - okay, i really disliked this book. setting aside the writing style which i did not care for, this book verged on trauma porn for me by taking the kitchen sink of homophobia, misogyny, racism, etc. and throwing it all at this poor bengali girl. yes, life is not all sunshine and roses but this was bleak. and don't get me started on the ending! the book would have benefitted from sticking with 2-3 topics and exploring them well.

zara hossain is here (2021/sabina khan *tw:islamophobia) - so i liked this better than her first book (love lies of rukhsana ali). but this author still has the propensity of putting her queer characters through harrowing situations so be warned. this novel is about a bisexual pakistani teenager in texas and the racism and islamophobia she and her family face. again i think focusing on a few major themes would have helped focus the storyline.

you exist too much (2020/zaina arafat *tw: addiction) this was a hard book, not only for the subject matter but because the main, a bisexual palestinian woman, is pretty unlikeable. but the writing is honest and there's something to be said for rooting for a woman to overcome her addictions, tackle her mental health issues, and stop her self-destructive behavior. i also enjoyed the vignettes of self-discovery from her childhood in palestine/jordan.

honorable mention: darius the great is not okay (2018/adib khorram) - this is cheating because the main isn't muslim; he's a persian, zoroastrian boy. but this book is so good and really deftly tackles the subject of mental illness, loneliness, family pressures and trying to fit in. it mostly takes place in iran with some gorgeous descriptions of the architecture/mosques in yazd too.