The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali by Sabina Khan

The Love & Lies of Rukhsana Ali by Sabin Khan
January 29th 2019 | Scholastic Press
Source: Bought

Seventeen-year-old Rukhsana Ali tries her hardest to live up to her conservative Muslim parents’ expectations, but lately she’s finding that harder and harder to do. She rolls her eyes instead of screaming when they blatantly favor her brother and she dresses conservatively at home, saving her crop tops and makeup for parties her parents don’t know about. Luckily, only a few more months stand between her carefully monitored life in Seattle and her new life at Caltech, where she can pursue her dream of becoming an engineer.
But when her parents catch her kissing her girlfriend Ariana, all of Rukhsana’s plans fall apart. Her parents are devastated; being gay may as well be a death sentence in the Bengali community. They immediately whisk Rukhsana off to Bangladesh, where she is thrown headfirst into a world of arranged marriages and tradition. Only through reading her grandmother’s old diary is Rukhsana able to gain some much needed perspective.

Rukhsana realizes she must find the courage to fight for her love, but can she do so without losing everyone and everything in her life?

This is not an easy book to review. There are so many facets of this story I want to talk about that I don’t know where to begin. I guess I’ll start by saying that this isn’t an easy book to read. There are a lot of content and trigger warnings you need to keep in mind (homophobia, domestic abuse, rape, murder, Islamaphobia all come to mind) when reading this book.

(I want to make a point that I am not aware if this book is OwnVoices for the queer rep.) I’ve seen some criticism of this book being a little too much about queer pain and I have complicated feelings about this. In many cases, books that are about queer pain aren’t often stories about BIPOC queer people. While queer pain is hard to read, this can be cathertic for many people, writing or reading it, and we need to have a variety of those experiences depicted in books. There are aspects of BIPOC queer experiences that don’t match up with those of white queer people. (Characters and plot points in this story were inspired by real LGBTIA+ Bangaldeshi events. Xulhaz Mannan was one of the founders of Roopbaan--an LGBTQIA+ magazine in Bangladesh).

Even more so, I resonated a lot to this story in other ways as well. I am Indian but grew up in West Bengal, and Bengali culture is one that I’m familiar with. When Rukhsana was in Bangladesh and eating the food (poochka and jhalmuri) and celebrating Pahela Baishakh (Bengali New Year), I felt like a part of my childhood came back. There is so much shared history and culture in that part of the world and I loved reading it. There were so many aspects of Desi and South Asian culture that we all share which made reading certain moments extremely hard.

At the same time, as much as I enjoyed this story, I had issues with the writing. Throughout the book, I didn’t connect to any of the characters. I liked them, yes, and for the most part, I was rooting for them (Rukhsana and her Nani especially), but there wasn’t more to it. The writing was distant, for a lack of a better word, so even though Rukhsana was emotional about what was going on in her life, I didn’t really feel any of them. This was especially a big issue for me with Rukhsana’s girlfriend. I really should’ve felt for her and wanted what’s best for her, but I was just frustrated at how much she didn’t try to understand Rukhsana. I know they’re 17 years-old and we’re very different people at that age, but I really wanted more empathy from her that she didn’t give. Aside from that, the writing was also disjointed at times and there were issues with the writing voice changing in certain moments.

Overall, I really enjoyed this story. While I had issues with the craft of the story, I’m glad that it exists. I loved seeing my culture represented and I wanted more about Bangladesh and Bengali culture. I also want more queer stories about BIPOC and by BIPOC (especilly those who are queer). It’s so important that we get to write our stories, whether they are about queer pain or queer joy.