Review by Ella Richards
Orca Book Publishers, 2023
208 pages, Paperback, $12.95 CAD, 9781459834910
Middle Grade, Ages 9-12
Fiction, Contemporary, Humour
APDIA, Islam
“Really?” I said. She didn’t seem to understand the seriousness of my situation. “How would you react if someone came to your school in Pakistan and said ‘Hi, my name is Sara Pithi’?”
She burst out laughing. Pithi is a very crude way of saying butt in Urdu.
My mom took my hand and looked me right in the eye. “Alina, beta,” she said, still smiling, “everything about you is what makes you you. Never be ashamed of who you are. You must learn to love your name and own it with pride. And when you do, everyone around you will love it too.”
I was not sure I believed that.
Who could ever love a butt?
Middle school is mortifying for just about everybody— a pivotal time of growth and change, where you’re expected to “find yourself” and “discover who you are.” But in Ambreen Butt-Hussain’s debut novel, The Unlovable Alina Butt, eleven-year-old Alina Butt begs the question: how can you figure all that out when you don’t like who you are to begin with?
The novel follows Alina, a Pakistani middle-schooler forced to navigate the daunting terrain of a new school in a new country, on a journey toward self-acceptance. Despite her attempts to blend into the crowd and hide her real last name from her classmates, Alina is destined to stand out— whether she wants to or not. When Alina is selected to join her class’s advanced math group, she is faced with the best and the worst of her new school. Between incessant bullying, the struggle of trying to impress a group of friends from a completely foreign culture, auditions for the school play, and an embarrassing last name, Alina has a whole lot on her plate.
The Unlovable Alina Butt aims high, intending to represent the experience of being a young immigrant and the cruelty of racist, anti-immigrant bullying. Though Butt-Hussain represents this with displays of juvenile othering like Alina being teased for the traditional food in her lunchbox and for her foreign surname, I think most young readers are ready to be handed a bit more depth and nuance here. Butt-Hussain never explicitly dives into the racist roots behind Alina’s bullying, and some of the comments made towards the character end up feeling a bit too cartoonish and goofy, minimizing the seriousness of bullying as subject matter. I would have loved to see a more honest and heartfelt representation of bullying, not only as it is a central theme and plot-point of the novel, but also in order to ensure that middle-grade readers don’t feel that their concerns with bullying, racism, or xenophobia are dismissed so easily.
Where Butt-Hussain really succeeds, though, is with the depiction of her charming cast of characters, especially Alina’s family members. Family is a big priority for Alina, and that shows with how well-developed the relationships are between each family member. The dynamics within the Butt household are thoughtful and intentional, each character laden with their own quirks and engaging personalities, providing a solid foundation for the rest of the story to build upon. The scenes that took place within the home were always the most heartwarming for me. I also really enjoyed that, although the novel does tell an overarching narrative, each chapter has the duality of feeling like a standalone vignette of its own. I felt like I could pick up the book, read a chapter or two, and come out feeling satisfied.
Though The Unlovable Alina Butt may have missed the mark in handling its subject matter in a way that resonates earnestly with young readers, it is still a clear winner in telling a sweet story about a young girl with a silly last name overwhelmed by the complexity of a constantly changing life.
Ella Richards is an undergraduate student studying English Literature in UBC’s Honours Program, born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada. When they aren’t curled up with a good book, you can find them performing with UBC Improv, watercolouring, or experimenting in the kitchen.
YOUNG ADULTING 