MARK MY WORDS

Fifteen-year-old British Pakistani Dua Iqbal is a passionate student journalist and determined truth-teller.

While Bodley High is undergoing construction, Dua and other Year Elevens are attending Minerva College, located in a wealthier part of town where the majority of students are White. At Minerva, Dua experiences Islamophobia and microaggressions, such as being called by another hijabi’s name in class. Meanwhile, Bodley students are subjected to harsher disciplinary treatment even as Minerva students’ transgressions are overlooked. Dua is also worried about her chemistry teacher mum, whose mental health is deteriorating, and working on her relationship with her dad, the owner of a comic-book shop. Her parents are divorced, and her mother was disowned for marrying a man from a lower caste. When she isn’t chosen for a position on the Minerva Chronicle, Dua and Liam, her White best mate, persuade Bodley principal Mohamud Aden, who is Somali, to let them create a paper focusing on Bodley students’ experiences. When it gets shut down by Mr. Aden after publishing controversial exposés about those in power, Dua and her team start an anonymous online paper. Throughout the book, Dua discovers a lot about herself—growing, changing, and mending relationships—and doesn’t back down even after receiving a vicious death threat. Khan’s gripping novel, with its upbeat and aspirational resolution, focuses on privilege, corruption, and power, interweaving details about Dua’s and her classmates’ family dynamics, relationships, and socio-economic situations.

A captivating story about seeking and exposing the truth.