All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir (audiobook)

genre: contemporary fiction

Salahudin (Sal) and Noor have known each other since they were young, as two Pakistani transplants in Juniper, a very white American small California town.  But while Sal lives with his mother and father in the motel they run, Noor lives with her uncle and works with him in his liquor store.  Neither of their lives are easy or smooth and until The Fight, they truly were the best of friends.  Now, though,  Sal's beloved mother, Misbah, is ill and Noor knows she has to get out of her angry uncle's house and out of Juniper all together.  They really do need each other's strength for what they don't even know is ahead.

This is a deep and heavy book.  So very heavy and sad.  Our story is from the points of view of Sal, Noor and Misbah - and every main character has lasting and damaging trauma that affects both how they see the world and how they interact with their loved ones in it.  They have to make impossible choices.  They have to be willing to give up things they want for things they want more.  Guardians do not always take good care of their children.  Safety is not a given.  Stability is not a given.  Where can you put the kind of anger that arises when you've seemingly got no one on your side?  But their strength, the faith they find in an unknowable future, the ways they find to show up for each other, those things are beautiful indeed.   This book made me feel compassion.  It made me think about what it is to be an immigrant and how hard it can be to move forward when the cards seem to be truly stacked against you.  It made me think about impossible choices and grief and the love that can exist between people - and what you have to do when you want that love so bad and it's just not there.

All the trigger warnings here - domestic abuse, child abuse, drug use, islamophobia, racism, death of a parent - she's not writing a story about people who get mad because they loose the big game. This is a survival story, a story of where to find strength when you're truly on your own - a story of forgiveness and compassion.  The audio is excellently performed and Sabaa Tahir has crafted a hauntingly beautiful story that will stick with me.