March’s Book Pick: The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf
[ID: A dark purple book with an illustrated cover of a girl and a boy on a motorcycle riding next to a column of flames.The book sits on another open book laying on a gray wooden floor. Book page confetti and light pink carnations surround each corner.]
Happy March, bookish friends! I’m happy to announce the Chronically Iconic Book Club has selected The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf for our read this month!
We will be discussing the book at the end of this month via IG group chat. I will also make a discussion post with questions you can answer at your leisure. Send me a DM on Instagram or comment below if you’d like to join!
The Weight of Our Sky is one of my favorite books with disability representation so I’m thrilled to read it again with the club. I can’t wait to hear what you all think…
The Weight of Our Sky
Genre: YA/teen historical fiction
Representation: OCD rep (own voice)
Content warnings: racism, graphic violence, on-page death
Discussion Dates: Approximately March 25-28th
Synopsis:
Melati Ahmad looks like your typical moviegoing, Beatles-obsessed sixteen-year-old. Unlike most other sixteen-year-olds though, Mel also believes that she harbors a djinn inside her, one who threatens her with horrific images of her mother’s death unless she adheres to an elaborate ritual of counting and tapping to keep him satisfied.
But there are things that Melati can't protect her mother from. On the evening of May 13th, 1969, racial tensions in her home city of Kuala Lumpur boil over. The Chinese and Malays are at war, and Mel and her mother become separated by a city in flames.
With a 24-hour curfew in place and all lines of communication down, it will take the help of a Chinese boy named Vincent and all of the courage and grit in Melati’s arsenal to overcome the violence on the streets, her own prejudices, and her djinn’s surging power to make it back to the one person she can’t risk losing.
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