Huda Fahmy is an Egyptian American author who writes about her experiences as a Muslim woman in America. One of her works, “Huda F Are You?”, is a personal narrative set in her freshman year of high school. Internal and external conflicts, such as her struggle to find cultural identity, the discrimination she faces as a Muslim American, and the expectations of her family, drive the plot forward and shape her high school experience. Throughout the book, Huda struggles with cultural identity and finding a place to fit in. She had moved from a town with a relatively small Muslim population, to Dearborn, a town where she wasn’t the only Muslim in her school. This caused her to struggle to fit in, shown when she said, “Now I’m not the Muslim, I’m …show more content…
This internal conflict is resolved later in the book, when she finally begins to accept who she is and stops forcing herself to be a part of the community because it’s what she “should do”, shown when she said, “I don’t follow “the rules” to make my parents happy. And I don’t wear hijab because it makes me stand out. I’m Muslim because I want to be Muslim”, (Fahmy, 123). This quote shows how she’s beginning to accept herself and her community because it’s what she wants. One of the major external conflicts throughout the novel is the struggles with prejudice Muslim Americans face. One incident of Islamophobia present in the book is when a boy in Huda’s school is arrested for a radio that the police mistook for a bomb in his backpack. The headline of the newspaper read, “Muslim boy, 14, Raidio mistaken for bomb”, (Fahmy, 128). This highlights the tension and discrimination Muslims face in the community. Another instance of Islamophobia, closer to Huda, would be when her teacher instructed the class to read an Islamophobic text, saying, “Today you’re annotating an article on how the Islamic religion encourages violence among its followers”, (Fahmy,