Towelhead

by Alicia Erian (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2005

  $3.24

  A painfully funny, shocking, tender and redemptive novel about a girl failed by her parents, and trying to find the love she needs.When Jasira's mother discovers her boyfriend's feelings for her thirteen-year-old daughter, she packs Jasira off to Houston, Texas, to live with the Daddy she barely knows. Her father is a remote figure, unable to show his daughter the love she craves, and still less able to handle her feelings about her changing body, which Jasira begins to suspect disgusts him. School is a lonely place for a 'towelhead' in the run up to the first Gulf War, and when her father meets, and forbids her to see, her boyfriend, Jasira has to look elsewhere for affection. She begins her search close to home, with a neighbour, Mr Vuoso: a man with an extensive collection of Playboy, who doesn't seem to think there's anything wrong with Jasira's body at all...

• Used

  Paperback
  2006

  $3.24

  A dark, deliciously grown-up take on Judy Blume - the story of a young girl's challenging coming-of-age that is funnier than it ought to be. Jasira, a teenaged Arab-American girl, is sent away by her mother to live with her father, after the mother's boyfriend begins paying her too much attention. But Jasira's father is unable to show her the affection she craves, or to handle her feelings about her rapidly changing body. America is about to go to war in Kuwait, and Jasira becomes ever more isolated at school, and begins to look for love in all the wrong places. Mr Vuoso, a neighbour and army reservist who catches her looking at his copy of Playboy while she is babysitting his son, is quick to take advantage of her vulnerability. Things look very bad for Jasira until a pregnant neighbour, Melina, offers her a lifeline, and in the novel's hilarious, and heartbreaking climax, manages to bring father and daughter, finally, a little closer to one another.

• New

  Paperback
  2006

  $20.90

  It is August 1990. Saddam Hussein has just invaded Kuwait, and Jasira's mother has bought her daughter a one-way ticket to Texas to live with her strict Lebanese father. Living in a neat model home in Charming Gates, just outside of Houston, Jasira struggles with her father's rigid lifestyle and the racism of her classmates, who call her towelhead. For the first time, the painful truth hits her: she's an Arab. Her aching loneliness and growing frustration with her parents' conflicting rules drive her to rebel in very dangerous ways. Most disturbingly, she becomes sexually obsessed with the bigoted army reservist next door, who alternately cares for, excites, and exploits her.