“Huda F Are You?” by Huda Fahmy (Dial 2021) is a graphic novel “dedicated to my mom (who wants everyone to know she hates
the title).” This book is funny, insightful, and heart-warming from beginning to end. It is autobiographical but not strictly an autobiography.
Huda is a hijab-wearing (hijabi) Muslim American who is having an identity crisis, as most teenagers do. At her old school her identity was the hijabi girl. The family moves to Dearborn, Michigan where many girls are “the hijabi girl.” Is she a hijabi fashionista or athlete or gamer? Well, she’s not any of those things. Who is she?
Huda has four sisters and her mother changes up the pairs by reassigning their bedrooms periodically—which all the sisters find excruciating, but Mom wants them all to bond. Huda characterizes each sister with a perfectly simple yet profound drawing and labels them, “The sporty one, the smart one (Huda), the popular girl, the mysterious one (dotted outline and a question mark for a face), the funny one. Yep! They basically birthed a girl band.” Later she has the five sisters striding over a crosswalk, a doppelganger of the Beatles “Abbey Road” album cover.
We learn a lot of Muslim culture—at least the Fahmy family’s culture. Higher education is obligatory, loans are taboo making scholarships a necessity. Expectations and pressure are high. Classmates and teachers mispronounce Huda’s name (Honda, Hydra, Hubba…) throughout the story. Insults to Muslims are rampant, “goat-lover” “boater” “’cuz you came fresh off the boat.” Sometimes the insults arrive out of ignorance, maybe, such as, “I love how hairy your hands are.” “Must be like having a cat you can pet whenever you want.” Huda says, “Yes, it is exactly like that, Yay me.”—with the picture of her face saying something quite different.
Fahmy draws Huda with little Hudas sitting on her shoulder from time to time who voice some of Huda’s opposing thoughts. Or she draws herself as a cubist Picasso when she says “I didn’t fit in at my old school . . . So why should I expect to fit in here?” A universal student quandary.
Her parents tell her, “You’re going to be a lawyer.” But what does Huda want? “I fake interest in whatever other people are talking about.” Can she base a whole personality on being smart? Getting 100s. Huda is depressed at home so her mother thinks she’s on drugs. She’s not.
Jon, a smart boy, says he likes her art. So she tells Jon she likes him. He says, I’m not your type. One teacher is clearly Islamaphobic. Her mother tries to support her at a meeting with the principal, but Huda retracts her accusations of the prejudiced teacher and breaks her mother’s heart. Picture: Huda crushing a human heart in her hand. But the principal must be insightful because suddenly the Islamaphobic teacher is giving Huda deserved As. Huda and her mother reconcile and more. Her mother is a support and “Huda F Is Gonna Be Fine.” I loved this enlightening and universal story.
Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning books: Lift As You Climb; Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue all signed and for sale at Jane Addams bookstore. Books forthcoming about women’s suffrage, Martha Graham, and Ella Fitzgerald. talesforallages.com
