Does my head look main stream in this?
I recently read a book called Does my head look big in this? I wrote to Ruth Starke about it because I have some strong feelings about and she asked me to review it for a Melbourne magazine called Viewpoint. But, just in case it doesn't get published: here's the review:
Does My Head Look Big in This?,
By Randa Abdel-Fattah
Does My Head Look Big in This? (Pan Macmillan, 2005, 0 330 42185 9, $16.95 pb.) tells the story of Amal Mohammed Nasrullah Abdel-Hakim, a sixteen-year-old Australian-Palestinian-Mu slim school girl in her second semester of year 11 at a Melbourne High School. It is a tumultuous time for Amal. The book begins with her decision to wear hijab ‘full time’ (ie. in the presence of males who aren’t immediate family) and follows her life through the second six months of 2002. Her experiences are as normal as those of any teenage girl: she hangs around with her friends, she becomes interested in a boy, she hates the bitchy popular girl, she argues with her parents, she learns things about the world around her, she worries about her appearance; the list could go on. In fact it does. And this is a shortcoming in Abdel-Fattah’s book about a teenage girl proud of being a Muslim growing up in Australia.
As a young “Australian-born-Mu slim-Palestinian-Egyptian -choc-a-holic” Abdel-Fattah has achieved something very important with her first novel: giving an enlightened, accessible and educative view of Muslim life in modern Australia. The novel has much to teach about a religion still regarded with suspicion and fear by many non-Muslims. Amal’s experiences and feelings about her Islamic identity are genuine and well drawn. The reader shares the nervousness of her first outing in hijab with her mother at a shopping mall and her increasing fury with the array of empty-headed assumptions and prejudices she faces every day. The scene in which she is turned down for a job in a fish’n’chip shop because of the veil is an excellent example of the impotent frustration of racism in a supposedly multicultural society. Does My Head Look Big in This? is a wonderful picture of post-September 11 Australia from a Muslim point of view.
The main problem is that it is just a picture. Nothing really moves, nothing is hidden, everything is laid out for the reader to see. It is deliberately aimed at young adults, teenage girls especially. The text is peppered with references to Big Brother, Survivor, Craig David, J. Lo, Friends, Cosmo and a dozen other markers of popular culture, which often have little or no bearing on the story itself. It feels forced, as though the author is pushing her hip’n’groovy pop-cultural credentials to the younger audience in an attempt to win their approval. Unfortunately, as she showers the reader with lists of slightly-less-than-curren t television shows and musicians, Abdel-Fattah commits the biggest sin in writing for teenagers: trying too hard to be cool. While trying to show how current and up-to-date her teenaged characters are through the culture they consume, she takes away any individuality they might have expressed through their tastes in music, television or anything else. The boys get to be interested in soccer and little else, the girls discuss reality television and gossip magazines.
These pop culture references also often reveal the author’s less than rigorous research. In the second half of 2002 Amal’s friends seem to have a supernaturally uncanny grip on the Zeitgeist because they foresee the creation of the ‘Fab Five’ of Queer Eye For The Straight Guy and the rise of Paris Hilton by at least a year (neither appeared in the mass media until late in 2003). And yet, for teenagers with their fingers so firmly on the pulse, they still argue about who will win the World Cup, apparently oblivious to the fact that Brazil was crowned champion two months previously.
It is in this striving for identification with mainstream culture that Does My Head Look Big in This? wears itself thin. It is as though every reference, every conversation and every character must be as familiar and identifiable as possible to the largest number of readers. Abdel-Fattah casts her net wide, constantly striving for the lowest denominator to show how ‘normal’ life is for a Muslim teenage girl in Australia. This approach costs the characters the depth they need and her audience the respect they deserve.
The story is another disappointment. This is a book that must bear comparison to that most-stolen school library book in Australian literary history: Looking for Alibrandi. Melina Marchetta managed to weave an intriguing plot about family history and secrets of paternity into her tale of a non-Anglo teenage girl discovering her identity in modern-day Australia. Randa Abdel-Fattah has opted for a throwing a few smallish, non-intersecting side-plots into her novel. Amal and her friends spend more time worrying about their clothes and fledgling romances than the Bali bombings or the increasingly worrying attempts by one of their number’s parents to marry her off. The bombings would seem to be the only reason for setting the story in 2002, yet the attack flits by in a single chapter sandwiched between Amal rejecting a friend’s advances and the heart-breaking, ruined-friendship aftermath. The story ends with one of the traumatic side plots taking centre stage before bowing and leaving quietly so that another happy side plot may pop in at the last minute to finish the book off on a hopeful, reflective note, worthy of a Whitlams song.
Australians, particularly young Australians, both Muslim and non-Muslim, need a book like this to learn from and to identify with. Does My Head Look Big in This? works hard at showing the dignity and diversity of Islamic culture without resorting to compromise and assimilation and, on the whole, it succeeds. A fine example of this is in Amal’s cringe-worthy Aunt Mandy and Uncle Joe (Aysha and Ismail). They are two of the more interesting characters in the book, ones who give Amal a chance to think about her culture and define herself within it. This is where the book is strongest – when it stays within the bounds of cultural and religious consideration and explanation. As soon as it ventures outside this area into the bright, funky world of ‘what the kids are up to these days’, it loses its credibility and authenticity. Indeed, it falls prey to the very dilemma that faces Amal and her Muslim friends: the difficulty of both staying true to their religion and trying to fit in as ‘normal’ Australian teenagers. Abdel-Fattah has succeeded in the former, but much less so in the latter. Her teenagers are too normal to be interesting, too non-unique to be memorable.
Randa Abdel-Fattah has thrown many balls in the air with Does My Head Look Big in This? and has caught a lot of them. She has written a unique and timely book that will contribute to the understanding and acceptance of Muslim Australians, particularly among young readers. However, the shortfalls of its plot and characterisation stop it from being the truly wonderful book it should have been.
Sam Franzway