The Henna Wars by Adiba Jaigirdar is a young adult novel about a teenage girl called Nishat living in Ireland. Nishat is a lesbian who has come out to her Bengali parents who aren’t too pleased about it. At a wedding she reconnects with her primary school friend Flavia. A held hand makes sparks fly and Nishat can’t get it out of her head. If only she could see her again…
After the holidays end and Nishat and her sister Priti go back to school Nishat gets quite the surprise when she finds Flavia opening the locker next to hers. How can she be here? Torn between keeping away from her to avoid her feelings and wanting to spend more time with her Nishat walks her to class. Flavia seems very interested in being friends with Nishat and maybe being more. But then things take a negative turn.
Flavia is the cousin of nasty girl China who is responsible for rascist rumours about Nishat and her father’s restaurant. When both girls need to compete for business class and they both choose to start up henna businesses Nishat feels angry with her newly re-found friend. Flavia had only been to one Bengali wedding and liked the henna there. Nishat feels that for Flavia to do henna would be stealing from her culture. Nishat tries telling Flavia how she feels but she gets brushed off, her feelings pushed aside. This means war.
Nishat does everything she can to win the competition and to stop Flavia from winning, including buying up all of the henna in the hope of slowing her down. The further the competition goes the more alienated Nishat becomes, pushing away her friends to run her business solo and feeling pushed out when Flavia and China join forces and popularity becomes important for henna sales.
Throughout the book Priti is by Nishat’s side and her biggest supporter. She is everything you could want in a sister. The pair are incredibly close. Priti may be the little sister but she is incredibly protective of her older sister. You really feel like she’d do anything to make things better for her sister or to stop other people from doing anything to hurt her. Hence her warnings about Flavia.
As you’re reading the book you really don’t know if things will ever happen for Flavia and Nishat. Things seem so promising at the start but the book really doesn’t progress the way you might expect. Is Flavia a good person? Is she listening to China’s opinions of everyone? Does she like Nishat and is still working out her own sexuality? You’ll have to read and see!
This is a well written and modern look at what it’s like to be young, studying and dealing with issues of love and race. How it feels to have someone take something from your culture that you feel they have no right to and for others to judge your choice of sexuality. This book takes such a good look at these areas and really would be a good read for teenagers to better understand these issues and educational for adults alike. We could all benefit from spending a little more time thinking about how our comments and actions might make others feel.
literbugbooks 