Does My Head Look Big In This? By Randa Abdel-Fattah

Cover and details amazon

Started reading 1 April 2007
Finished reading 3 April 2007

A joyous read and a celebration of a young adult's life told in an engaging writing style. I have yet to see another book which details the predicaments of a Muslim girl on the cusp of taking that momentous step of covering herself. In this story, the girl is a sixteen year old Australian born Muslim of Palestinian-Egyptian parents.

We get to see how she came to the decision, and the consequences. It was not smooth sailing all the way but the feisty teenager manages to surmount the obstacles to live another day.

There are similarities with what Malaysian Muslim women must have felt the first time they wanted to take the plunge. But the challenges are different considering that the story is focused on Muslims as a minority compared to their majority status here. This book might be the catalyst for a Malaysian Muslim woman writer to tell her version of the situation.