Assignment 1: THE ACT OF STORY STATEMENT
Story statement:
Hanoona and Romana are a pair of unlikely friends. After Romana is sexually assaulted by a boy from school, they must work through their own personality flaws to come together and receive justice in their own ways.
Assignment 2: THE ANTAGONIST PLOTS THE POINT
Ms. Arfa is one of the teachers at the private Islamic School Hanoona and Romana attend. She is middle aged women with children that lives a boring life. She is invested in her students’ lives more than she should and cultivates an environment of negativity as well as misogyny among her students. As a teacher of the two friends, she is meant to be a mentor or even a friend but when she takes of advantage of her position of power over the girls and she makes Romana believe she is someone who she can confide in other than her mother who might not be as understanding. Romana tells Ms. Arfa some details of what the boy from her class has done to her, Ms. Arfa takes the side of the boy. Ms. Arfa favors the boys over the girls generally, but she is especially fond over the boy who Romana is accusing of sexual assault. With the information Romana tells her she decides to disregard Romana’s feelings and tells the rest of the teachers an incorrect version of the story to villainize Romana. Hanoona although struggling to understand Romana and why someone whom they both trusted would betray them takes matters into her own hands.
Assignment 3: CONJURING YOUR BREAKOUT TITLE
Some People Don’t Deserve Names
Assignment 4: DECIDING YOUR GENRE AND APPROACHING COMPARABLES
A Women Is No Man, by Etaf Rum, centers Muslims women’s voices while navigating violence.
Shatter Me, Tahereh Mafi, uniquely writes Muslim characters into unconventionally story lines.
Genres: Young Adult, women’s fiction.
Assignment 5: CORE WOUND AND THE PRIMARY CONFLICT
In the moments leading up to Romana’s inevitable faceoff with her friends and teachers about what happened to her, she begins to understand that in her life, SOME PEOPLE DON’T DESERVE NAMES.
Assignment 6: OTHER MATTERS OF CONFLICT: TWO MORE LEVELS
After Romana trusts the boy she’s been talking to at school takes advantage of her at their local park. Romana is only a middle schooler and has no idea how to comprehend what as happened making her feel an immense amount of guilt. After the boy leaves her at the park, she walks to her cousin’s house in a daze and is unable to speak about what happened when her cousin notices something is wrong.
The internal spiral Romana is experiencing hinders her from fully forming what took place and she begins to blame herself as well as her circumstances. Not being able to process her own trauma Romana becomes insufferable to be around. She takes zero accountability of her actions and the pain she causing to the people around her through herself destructive actions. When Romana returns to school after her own classmate assaults her. She chooses to focus on how he ignores her and blames herself. She makes up a plan to talk to him and apologize to him contrary to what she knows deep down she deserves. The anxiety and depression she develops is subconsciously making it harder to confront how she really feels and ask for help. Romana wrestles with the idea of suicide in Islam and why God has made it forbidden for her while she continues to go back to that idea many times.
Hanoona’s major internal conflict comes from her social anxiety and quiet nature. How could someone who has lived her life as a fly on the wall stand up to the teachers she has idolized for so long for her friend. Hanoona pushes her limits to come out of her shell to defend Romana’s name but at the cost of ruining her reputation and getting in trouble something she has avoided her whole life. She knows she can’t ask her mom for help without telling her the story, so she asks her sister while pretending the story she is telling is not about Romana. Hanoona fights the internal judgement she feels towards Romana in order to try and help her but struggles to find a middle ground between defending her friend and having to deal with the backlash for her.
Assignment 7: THE INCREDIBLE IMPORTANCE OF SETTING
The First Half of the novel takes place in Rural New Jersey. A small quiet town that has a small but growing Muslim population. The main two characters Romana and Hanoona are middle schoolers and mainly are seen in their private Islamic school and their homes. Although ‘private school’ sounds fancy theirs is anything but. It is a tiny school with not many students and derives from the small Muslim community that is not wealthy but middle class enough to pay for their children to attend a school that holds their values. The school itself it run down and functions more like a community center than a school which is obvious by the close-knit relationship of the teachers with their students and their families, everyone knows everyone mindset. The characters homes but more importantly their rooms are where their personalities flourish. The opposite styles of room décor show case the major difference in Romana and Hanoona’s personality. The setting offers a realistic tone to the story as it is very relatable to the American- Muslim experience. The second half of the novel finds the two girls as adults on opposite ends of the country. Hanoona in college and working hard in New York City to build her journalism career, and Romana in California after dropping out of college and working a minimum wage page job as a barista. Hanoona stills lives at her childhood home but is making a name for herself in the field, the stark contrast in settings of the girls adult lives showcases the way each of their decisions has lead them to living vastly different lives.
