The short version of this review is that Mariam Sharma Hits the Road is a gem and a treasure that I want to hug very hard directly in its face. Did y’all know about Sheba Karim and not tell me? Is that the situation? Because it’s very hurtful if so.
When Mariam’s friend Ghaz ends up on a sexy billboard in Times Square, Mariam and their third BFF Umar come up with a scheme to rescue her from her furious, abusive parents: They take her on a road trip to New Orleans, where this year’s Islamic Association of North America is taking place. Along the way, Mariam tries to make some stops to form connections with her estranged father, who left the family when she was very small. Mainly, though, it’s a road trip story about three Pakistani-American teenagers trying to figure out who they are and what family looks like.
Oh, where to begin? There are too many good things about Mariam Sharma Hits the Road to find a coherent order in which to list them. Maybe the biggest thing is that I love Sheba Karim for refusing to make any group a monolith. Not the desi families — Ghaz’s parents are abusive; Umar’s family gives him a lot of freedom but won’t support him if he comes out; and Mariam’s mother hooks her up with birth control and talks frankly with her about any issues that arise in her day-to-day-life. Not the South — I was tense as hell when the kids stop in a diner in Nashville, and Sheba Karim delicately avoided all of my concerns. And not Islam — though we see Umar face a lot of homophobia, his own faith remains strong, and he challenges Muslims who use the Quran to prop up bigotry. As an adherent of another faith with many m a n y intolerant practitioners (Roman Catholicism!), this portrayal of queer-friendly Islam meant a lot to me.
(Well, okay, Sheba Karim is pretty sunshiney about New Orleans and how great it is. But que voulez-vous? New Orleans is extremely great!)
A common frustration I’ve heard about YA is that it always insists on incorporating romance. If you are one of the people who have voiced this frustration to me, look no further than Mariam Sharma Hits the Road! The characters talk about their romantic and sexual histories — and maybe Umar hits it off with another kid at the conference, or maybe he doesn’t, who can really say — but the heart of the book is always and only the friendships. Though Umar and Ghaz and Mariam struggle with their families and identities, their allegiance to each other is unquestioned and unquestionable. Their support of each other manifests as much in shared jokes as in serious discussion of the issues, but both felt so resonant to my teenagerhood.
Content note for fatphobia: There’s a moment where Ghaz says that fried food is the reason people in the South are so overweight, and Mariam thinks to herself: “It was true that everyone in the restaurant, except the teenagers who’d already left, were not exactly the picture of health.” This was a rare moment in which the author fails to deal with social issues in a thoughtful and compassionate way.