Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah

Amal is a sixteen-year-old Australian Palestinian Muslim living in the Melbourne suburbs and a student at a private school. One day she decides that she is going to wear her Muslim head scarf or hijab full-time. After her transformation, she is ridiculed, stared at, stereotyped, and insulted for her hijab. Amal's friends are supportive, while her friend Adam, whom she likes, causes her to rethink their friendship because of his actions. Later, Amal and Adam learn to understand each other, including her parents, and in the end, she lets all the negative things around her go and learns to focus on her career and life. A novel that is over a decade old but "offers a world of insight to post-9/11 readers." (An Australian-Muslin-Palestinian," 2007)

Critical Analysis

Does My Head Look Big in This? is a realistic fiction novel told in first person narrative. Themes include religion, cultural and religious identity, and Islamophobia. Amal's character traits include courage, intelligence, and perseverance. Arabic cultural details in the story include the Arabic language, food, clothes, the Islamic religion like the holiday of Ramadan, fasting, and references to Arabic music. Randa Abdel-Fattah is of Palestinian and Egyptian heritage and won the ABIA Awards' Book of the Year for Older Children in 2006.

The story's strength is its unique perspective of looking at Islamophobia from a teenager's point of view. Its weakness is that the story does not show Amal succeeding later in life. Readers may enjoy The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi with a similar subject about Muslim identity.

References

Abdel-Fattah, R. (2007). Does My Head Look Big in This? Orchard Books.

"An Australian-Muslin-Palestinian." (2007, May 1). Does my head look big in this? Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved July 29, 2022, from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/randa-abdel-fattah/does-my-head-look-big-in-this/