Inclusive Teen Reads: Middle Eastern

After being dumped at the beginning of freshman year, Iranian-American Parvin Mohammadi sets out to win the ultimate date to Homecoming.

Fourteen-year-old Azar Rossi sets out to find her voice and win her local Battle of the Bands contest.

Eighteen-year-old Muslims Adam and Zayneb meet in Doha, Qatar, during spring break and fall in love as both struggle to find a way to live their own truths.

Adam and Zayneb embark on the Umrah, a pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, in Saudi Arabia, but as one wedge after another drives them apart while they make their way through rites in the holy city, Adam and Zayneb start to wonder if their meeting was just an oddity after all.

Fifteen-year-old Janna Yusuf, a Flannery O'Connor-obsessed book nerd and the daughter of the only divorced mother at their mosque, tries to make sense of the events that follow when her best friend's cousin--a holy star in the Muslim community--attempts to assault her at the end of sophomore year.

Janna Yusuf and her friends are planning for her brother's nikah. But what started as a simple marriage ceremony is turning into the biggest event of the summer-and a chance for Janna to finally reveal her crush...or so she thinks.

In this dual-narrative tale, a teenage American army private and an Afghan boy living under the horrors of the Taliban, caught on separate sides of the world during the tumultuous times leading up to and following 9/11, come to discover how much more they have in common than they ever could have imagined.

Dua struggles to find her place in her conservative family's household, but as she spends the month of Ramadan with her cousin in Queens, Dua finds herself learning more about her faith, relationships, and place in the world.

After her mom is taken by ICE, seventeen-year-old Rania's hopes and dreams for the future are immediately put on hold as she figures out how take care of her younger brother and survive in a country that seems to be closing around them.

Sixteen-year-old Allie, aged seven when she knew her family was different and feared, struggles to claim her Muslim and Arabic heritage while finding her place as an American teenager.

Ever since her family moved to Texas from Pakistan when she was a baby, seventeen-year-old Zara Hossain has only ever called Corpus Christi home. Being the only Muslim girl at her conservative Catholic school, blending in isn't really an option, especially with people like Tyler Benson always tormenting her. But one day Tyler takes thing too far by defacing Zara's locker with a racist message, which gets him suspended. As an act of revenge, Tyler and his friends vandalize the Hossains' house with Islamophobic graffiti, which leads to a violent crime that puts Zara and her family's entire future at risk.

Seventeen-year-old Rukhsana Ali is looking forward to going to Caltech and getting away from her conservative Muslim parents' expectation that she will marry, especially since she is in love with her girlfriend Ariana--but when her parents catch her kissing Ariana, they whisk Rukhsana off to Bangladesh and a world of tradition and arranged marriages, and she must find the courage to fight for the right to choose her own path.

When self-proclaimed 'not very bright' nineteen-year-old Danyal Jilani is chosen for a prestigious academic contest, he hopes to impress a potential arranged marriage match, only to begin falling for the girl helping him study instead.

On a field trip to SeaPlanet, seventeen-year-old Arab-American high school swimmer River McIntyre has a chance encounter with Indy, a happy, healthy queer person, which sets off a wrenching journey of self-discovery, from internalized homophobia and gender dysphoria, through layers of coming out, affirmation surgery, and true love.

Stranded at the Wildwood Motel while on their spring break road trip, Mira and Layla discover eight people died in their room and set out to find the connection between the deaths and the unexplainable things that keep happening inside Room 9.

At the front of a middle school classroom in Oklahoma, a boy named Khosrou (whom everyone calls "Daniel") stands, trying to tell a story. His story. But no one believes a word he says . . . We bounce between a school bus of kids armed with paper clip missiles and spitballs to the heroines and heroes of Khosrou's family's past, who ate pastries that made people weep and cry "Akh, Tamar!" and touched carpets woven with precious gems.

Told in their separate voices, six Muslim teens are falsely accused of an alleged attack on a Los Angeles beach and must trust or turn their backs on each other to prove their innocence.

The death of a beloved mentor, and the need to save and rebuild their fire-damaged Islamic Center, bring former best friends Said and Tiwa back together, rekindling their romantic relationship.

Eighteen-year-old Amir Azadi always knew coming out to his Muslim family would be messy-he just didn't think it would end in an airport interrogation room. But when faced with a failed relationship, bullies, and blackmail, running away to Rome is his only option. Right? Soon, late nights with new friends and dates in the Sistine Chapel start to feel like second nature . . . until his old life comes knocking on his door. Now Amir has to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth to a US customs officer, or risk losing his hard-won freedom.

Maya Aziz, seventeen, is caught between her India-born parents world of college and marrying a suitable Muslim boy and her dream world of film school and dating her classmate, Phil, when a terrorist attack changes her life forever.

After discovering the body of fourteen-year-old Jawad Ali in Jackson Park, seventeen-year-old journalism student Safiya Mirza begins investigating his murder and ends up confronting white supremacy in her own high school.

While still coping with her parents' sudden divorce and having to start at a new school midway through her senior year, Noor and two new friends take a stand against book bans at their small-town Illinois high school.

A terrifying, futuristic United Sates where Muslim-Americans are forced into internment camps, and seventeen-year-old Layla Amin must lead a revolution against complicit silence.

Jamie Goldberg, who chokes when speaking to strangers, and Maya Rehrman, who is having the worst Ramadan ever, are paired to knock on doors and ask for votes for the local state senate candidate.

Clinically-depressed Darius Kellner, a high school sophomore, travels to Iran to meet his grandparents, but it is their next-door neighbor, Sohrab, who changes his life.

Sy, a seventeen-year-old gay Muslim boy, travels the world for a second chance at love after a possibly magical heiress grants him three wishes.

Shirin is never surprised by how horrible people can be. She's tired of the rude stares, the degrading comments, even the physical violence she endures as a result of her race, her religion, and the hijab she wears every day. So she's built up protective walls and refuses to let anyone close enough to hurt her. Instead, she drowns her frustrations in music and spends her afternoons break-dancing with her brother.

It's 2003, several months since the US officially declared war on Iraq, and the American political world has evolved. Tensions are high, hate crimes are on the rise, FBI agents are infiltrating local mosques, and the Muslim community is harassed and targeted more than ever. Shadi, who wears hijab, keeps her head down. She's too busy drowning in her own troubles to find the time to deal with bigots. Shadi is named for joy, but she's haunted by sorrow. Her brother is dead, her father is dying, her mother is falling apart, and her best friend has mysteriously dropped out of her life. And then, of course, there's the small matter of her heart-- it's broken. Shadi tries to navigate her crumbling world by soldiering through, saying nothing. She devours her own pain, each day retreating farther and farther inside herself until finally, one day, everything changes.

After Kiran Noorani's mom died, Kiran vowed to keep her family-- dad and sister Amira-- together. When Amira announces that she's dating someone-- and might move across the country with him-- Kiran's world is turned upside down. Deen Malik is thrilled that his brother, Faisal, has found a great girlfriend. Three years ago Kiran and Deen dated in secret... until Deen ghosted Kiran. Now they are face-to-face: Deem just wants his brother to be happy; Kiran wants answers to Faisal's shady past. And Deem will do anything to keep her from reaching the truth.

The great-granddaughter of Iran's last emperor and the daughter of ardent Marxists describes growing up in Tehran in a country plagued by political upheaval and vast contradictions between public and private life.

Wedding harpist Quinn and cater-waiter Tarek develop feelings for each other, but while Tarek is a hopeless romantic, Quinn is not sure she believes in love, especially since the same boy she might be falling for spurned her the previous summer.

When America bans all abortion and the fight for bodily autonomy is taken underground, Laylah and Noor want to be part of the resistance. After graduation, Laylah plans to become an OB-GYN, and Noor an investigative journalist. In the meantime, they're writing an essential guide to getting an abortion. It's illegal and dangerous. What else are two perfectly respectable Muslim teens supposed to do? But what if it's not that simple? What happens if the underground abortion network is corrupt? What happens when it gets harder and harder to get safe medications, supplies, or help? And what happens when the need gets much more personal?