This YA novel was published in 2022 and won a National Book Award. It contains many difficult themes and triggers, including: racism, physical abuse, drug use/addiction/overdose, trauma, death and grief,
The main characters/narrators in All My Rage are Noor, Salahudin and his mother Misbah. They live in a small desert community in Juniper California, near a military base that employs many in the town. Noor and Salahudin are high school seniors who have been friends since they were little, but when the story opens, near the end of their final year of high school, they have had a falling out and have not spoken for weeks. Misbah’s declining health brings them back together in an uneasy truce, but over the next few weeks, a series of events will threaten not just that friendship but their very futures.
Noor and Salahudin are both Pakistani Muslims. Salahudin was born in the US but his parents — Misbah, whose dream was to own an inn and spend a life hearing other people’s stories, and Toufiq who is an engineer — were born and raised in Lahore. Through Misbah’s recollections, the reader learns more about their life there before moving to the US. In Juniper, Salahudin’s family does indeed own and operate a small motel, which is Misbah’s pride and joy. His father, however, is an alcoholic. This is something Salahudin has never understood and always resented; he is especially bothered by his mother’s forgiveness of Toufiq’s constant failings. Toufiq can’t stay sober or hold a job. Noor is an orphan whose family was wiped out in an earthquake in Pakistan when she was 6 years old. Her only living relative is her uncle, aka Chachu. When Chachu inherited Noor, he was a college student in the US studying math/engineering, but he had to give up his studies to raise her. He bought a liquor store in Juniper, but his goal is to go back to college. He has made it clear that once Noor graduates high school, she will have to run the liquor store while he goes to school. Noor, for her part, is desperate to get out of Juniper. She is an excellent student, volunteers at the local hospital and plans to study biology. Secretly she has applied to some colleges, but when the rejection letters arrive, she despairs of ever getting out of Juniper.
Several mysteries drive this excellent story along. First, there is the matter of the falling out between Noor and Salahudin; we learn early on that it happened when Noor confessed her love for Salahudin and he lashed out. But why did Salahudin react that way to her, especially when we see that he loves her too? Second there is Noor’s anger. She certainly has good reason to be angry; at school, she has a bully named Jamie who cannot keep her nose out of Noor’s business, and there is the matter of her uncle not wanting her to go to college and Salahudin’s rejection of her. But we see that there is something more. Both Salahudin and Noor have secrets within that eat away at them, and the one person who knows both of these teens and knows their secret pains — Misbah — is not there to help them.
This novel, as mentioned above, deals with some heavy topics, including drug use, addiction, and abuse. Tahir writes about these hard topics in a very forthright way; she does not flinch from showing readers the hardship and trauma in her characters’ lives. And given that these characters are brown-skinned and Muslim in the US, you better believe there is trauma and danger. It was heartbreaking to read about what Noor and Salahudin have to endure and the incredibly hard decisions that they have to make and then live with. The theme of loss and how to live with it runs throughout the book and figures into an essay Noor has to write for school about a poem by Elizabeth Bishop called “One Art”. I very much liked that way Tahir incorporated that poem and Noor’s musical preferences into her story.
There is a lot of sadness in this book and some very harsh reality. It is absolutely worth your while, and again shows that YA novels are some of the best literature being produced today. YA lit tackles current problems head on in a way that doesn’t insult the intelligence of its readers and gives us a lot to think about.I highly recommend All My Rage. It is, sadly, more topical now than ever.