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About Adiba Jaigirdar
Adiba Jaigirdar was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and has been living in Dublin, Ireland from the age of ten. She has a BA in English and History, and an MA in Postcolonial Studies. She is a contributor for Bookriot. All of her writing is aided by tea, and a healthy dose of Janelle Monáe and Hayley Kiyoko. When not writing, she can be found ranting about the ills of colonialism, playing video games, and expanding her overflowing lipstick collection.
I have always been a very angry person. Even since I was a kid all the way up until now. Anger is probably one of the most instinctive emotions that comes to me very naturally. Now, being an angry woman comes with a lot of baggage. Nobody really asks you why you’re angry all the time. For me, it was definitely largely to do with the fact that my childhood was very unstable, I was used to moving around every few months, and didn’t really have any long-term friends. I was also dealing with culture shock after moving to Ireland at the very young age of ten, along with racism, islamophobia, misogyny and after a while, homophobia too.
On top of that, anger has so many different associations. If you’re a white woman, anger is seen as unattractive. In my South Asian household, it was the exact same. But outside of my South Asian community, being an angry Brown woman meant that I was often labelled as aggressive, and my opinions completely dismissed. Because if you come from place of anger, apparently nothing you say is valid.
Growing up as an angry Bangladeshi Muslim girl was difficult, because I was constantly told that I need to tamp down my anger. I was dismissed, and told that anger is bad, and shouldn’t have a place in my life. What was worse is that the one place where I turned to understand the world — books — seemed to share this exact viewpoint of anger. It didn’t have a place for angry girls like me. It rarely even had space for angry girls who were absolutely nothing like me.
The first time I read about an angry girl in literature that I could relate to absolutely, was Zayneb from S.K. Ali’s Love From A To Z. Reading that book and learning about Zayneb, I truly wished I could have read a character like this when I was a teen. A character that could have helped me understand my own anger, where it came from, and how to deal with it.
When I finished reading Love From A To Z, it took me a long time to process exactly what I had read, and specifically to process Zayneb as a character. I could relate to her on a level that I thought was almost impossible. Reading her was like looking in a mirror. Like seeing a reflection of my teenage self in book form.
Zayneb is a character who is fuelled by anger. She’s angry because of the injustice of the world. Because she’s a Brown Muslim hijabi who has been unfairly treated by this world, and the society that she lives in, simply for being who she is. Like a younger me, Zayneb’s anger is often not given the weight that it deserves. She’s told that her anger is not useful, and made to feel lesser for it. Despite that, Zayneb is determined to fight the injustice that she faces in this world. She’s also determined to fight the injustices that others face, even the ones that she doesn’t yet understand. For Zayneb, her anger is the fuel and fire that gives her this determination.
It’s not easy to fight those injustices when everyone is telling you that your anger needs to be tamped down. That it doesn’t have a place in this world. That you’re being more troublesome than you should be.
But Zayneb shows us that anger is okay. In fact, it can be good and important. She uses her anger to learn more about the injustices of this world. She uses it to fight for herself, and to fight for others. And at the end of the book, Zayneb’s anger is not a bad thing. It’s something that she learns to use. It’s a part of her — an important part of her.
Like Zayneb, I’ve come to the realisation that anger is a really useful emotion to have. Anger is the fuel that drives me. It’s an important part of who I am. It doesn’t matter that people dislike angry Brown women — because it’s who I am. And it helps me be a better person, and it helps me fight for a better world. But maybe if I had read about a character like Zayneb when I was a teen, I could have realised all of this a lot faster.
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Title The Henna Wars
Author Adiba Jaigirdar
Intended Target Audience Young Adult
Genre Contemporary, Realistic Fiction, F/F Romance
Publication Date May 12th 2020 by Page Street Kids
Find It On Goodreads ● Amazon ● Chapters ● The Book Depository ● Barnes & Noble ● IndieBound
Nishat doesn’t want to lose her family, but she also doesn’t want to hide who she is, and it only gets harder once a childhood friend walks back into her life. Flávia is beautiful and charismatic, and Nishat falls for her instantly. But when a school competition invites students to create their own businesses, both Flávia and Nishat decide to showcase their talent as henna artists. In a fight to prove who is the best, their lives become more tangled ― but Nishat can’t quite get rid of her crush, especially since Flávia seems to like her back.
As the competition heats up, Nishat has a decision to make: stay in the closet for her family, or put aside her differences with Flávia and give their relationship a chance.
