A Place For Us: Race

 Racism and talks on race are prominent ideas portrayed in A Place For Us. Mirza shows us the effects of racism and the way she implements race into the story is fascinating. I really like how separate characters have their own encounters with racism. For Hadia, there is the moment at her elementary school where the book says "She hates when anything draws extra attention to her. She already looks so different from them, being the only girl who wears hijab" (26). This shows us that Hadia is self-aware of her differences, but Mirza portrays this situation in a way where Hadia is in a situation where she just has to accept it. Another situation that has acts of racism is Amar's interaction with Brandon and Grant. Grant says "Look, terrorist in a white shirt" (111), Amar being the person in the white shirt. Brandon adds on saying "Why don't you go back to your own country?"(111). At this moment, we can sort of contrast the actions of Hadia and Amar as Amar replies with "This is my country", but instead of sounding that angry he seems his voice had "discomfort of defensiveness" in it. There is also a moment when Brandon and Grant ask if Amar's dad is a terrorist in which Amar replies "Shut the f**k up, man." Later on, Amar resorts to violence as he proceeds to get into an altercation with the boys consequently getting them all suspended.  Hadia's situation is quite different from Amar's situation, but both involve some type of racism and race and I think the way each character handled their situation (in comparison to the severity of each situation) is supposed to show us what racism can lead to and how bad it can get.