In Skunk Girl, 11th grader Nina Khan feels trapped between 2 cultures: middle America and her Pakistani-Muslim heritage. She’s got all the usual high school troubles: cliques, friends starting to drift apart because of interests in boys, academic pressures, body/self esteem issues, and a crush on a really hot guy; and if that weren’t hard enough, she’s got the expectations left at school from her “supernerd” older sister, restrictions on who she can hang out with, traditional/conservative parents, andof course being the only Asian student in the school. Nina feels bound and constrained by her parents’ traditional values, unsure about her own feelings, and reluctant to choose one way or the other.
Author Sheba Karim raises a lot of issues for Nina to deal with, some of which are influenced by her ethnicity and religion, others are not. Readers can easily identify with Nina’s struggles and for minority readers, it’s refreshing to see their unique issues approached in a non-judgmental, competent way. Plot and characters share many similarities to other books (Born Confused, Does My Head Look Big In This) and movies (Bend It Like Beckham), making this a solid edition to the “2nd generation multicultural teen-angst” canon.
- Posted by Cori