An Emotion of Great Delight by Tahereh Mafi

As we talked about recent favorite books, several students praised the Shatter Me series by Tahereh Mafi.  They will also appreciate her new standalone novel, AN EMOTION OF GREAT DELIGHT. Mafi is an amazingly talented writer; her A Very Large Expanse of Sea was longlisted for the National Book Award. She sets AN EMOTION OF GREAT DELIGHT in 2003, shortly after the September 11 attacks and explores Islamophobia as well as coming of age issues dealing with parental expectations, questions of faith, friendships, and first love. Shadi is finishing high school while trying to deal with several family traumas. The circumstances are overwhelming and she muses, “People thought I was growing up, and perhaps I was, perhaps this was growing up – this, this, an uncertain spiral into a darkness lined with teeth.”

Mafi’s words invoke empathy for Shadi and also for students who may be dealing with individual situations (particularly in the last fifteen months) of which teachers and other adults may not be aware. As Shadi says, “I made it to the sidewalk and stared at my feet, my heart beating erratically in my chest. I’d been fighting tears all day, all week, all year; it was exhausting.” Shadi’s struggles encompass health issues and a death in her family, plus feelings for Ali, brother of her best friend Zahra, all of which are tempered by cultural expectations: “I could not deny the beliefs that shaped me any more than I could deny the color of my eyes. It made for a lonely life …. lived, always, on the uncertain plane of a hyphen.” I strongly recommend this novel, both for the important universal themes it explores and for the quality of the writing (“The sunlight was heavy today, fingers of heat forming sweaty hands that braced my face…”).  AN EMOTION OF GREAT DELIGHT received enthusiastic stared reviews from Booklist (“A bluntly powerful read that shouldn’t be missed”), Kirkus, and School Library Journal.