All My Rage
by Saba Tahir
Book Cover Picture:
Category: Printz Winner
Target Age Group: 16+
Format: Hardback
Summary: All My Rage follow Noor and Sal, best friends who are outcasts because of their Pakistani background growing up in Juniper, California. Sal's mother, who was an acting mother to both Noor and Sal, passes away. Sal's dad is an alcoholic who can't be relied on. Sal is left to take care of the family's failing motel business and turns to some nefarious ways to come up with the money to keep them afloat. Noor lives with her abusive uncle who runs a liquor store. The uncle saved her life when her family died in an earthquake when she was little and holds it over her head. He doesn't support her religious beliefs or want her to go away to college. Meanwhile, Noor and Sal are in their senior year of high school and are navigating college aspirations.
Justification: This books is a Printz prize winner, National Book Award winner, and was made popular on TikTok.
Review: This review will examine the themes, the music referenced thorough out the novel, and the ethnic representation.
This was a very heavy book. I strongly encourage readers to take a look at the trigger warnings prior to picking up this book. You can find a full list of the trigger warnings at Triggerwarningdatabase.com (2024). The ones that I found to be super heavy are Islamophobia, sexual assault of a child - though not graphic or in detail, alcoholism, death of a parent, drug abuse and dealing, and physical abuse. These are all necessary to the progression of the novel, however, it made reading though the story difficult. I needed to put the book down and step away on several occasions. If you are reading for escapism, this is not the book for you. However, stories like these need to be told and it was done very well. Everything heavy thing has it's purpose.
Noor, the female main character, has a deep connection with music and has a playlist going in her ear most of the time as a way to cope with her life. She has a song for every situation and they are referenced throughout the book. I love when books incorporate a playlist. I recognized a lot of the songs that were mentioned. Having a song to associate with a scene gives a good frame of reference of what the characters are feeling and reacting to certain situations. If you are a person who likes to have music playing in the background while you read, you can find the playlist for this book on YouTube (Biehl, 2023).
I am half Pakistani-American who was raised Muslim. When I saw that this book had Pakistani main characters, I was very excited to pick it up. There are not a lot of novels with representation that I can connect with. Our experiences as Pakistani Americans is fairly unique. Muslim characters are even harder to come by. The representation was fantastic. The author nailed the otherness feeling in high school. There is one character in the book who is very racist. She calls Noor some racial slurs throughout the book but people in her inner circle just overlook the things she says even when their body language shows they don't agree with her.
Overall, the book was very well written. The representation was great. But it was very heavy and for me hard to read through straight. 3 stars.
Overall, the book was very well written. The representation was great. But it was very heavy and for me hard to read through straight. 3 stars.
Resources
All my rage by Sabaa Tahir. (2022, September 1). Trigger warning database. Retrived April 27,2024, from https://triggerwarningdatabase.com/2022/09/01/all-my-rage-by-sabaa-tahir/
Beihl, A. (2023, January 24)All my rage playlist [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrjQ_dmIfQGajfoO94XaJi6yhdy3hYniO
Tahir, S., (2022). All my rage. Razorbill.
