Hope Ablaze

Gr 7 Up–Kidwai’s training as a classical singer enables an impressive range of emotive voices that significantly upgrades debut novelist Rana’s meandering pages—a prose/poetry hybrid—into a notable performance, bolstered by writer and narrator’s shared Pakistani American heritage. When Nida is intimidated, frisked, and her hijab forcibly removed by police patrolling a political rally for a Senate Democratic candidate, her reaction is to write out her helpless frustration, anger, fear, and truth. When that poetry is submitted—without her knowledge—to a national competition and wins, Nida is thrown into a glaring spotlight she never wanted. Rampant Islamophobia gets her labeled a terrorist, not unlike her wrongfully incarcerated poet uncle. Kidwai’s Nida is richly multi-layered—thoughtful, bewildered, tenacious. Kidwai also excels as wise older sister Zaynab, myopic white friend Alexis, and entitled hypocritical politician Wilson.