Of Dystopia and Depictions: Farah Naz Rishi's 'I Hope You Get This Message' did almost everything right
For me, this was that book.
It was so weird to be so bored with a story that I should, by all accounts, have really liked. The writing was strong, there was a great female friendship, and my favourite trope of all time—protagonists from different settings coming together at the end—was a significantly important part of the narrative. And yet I felt like I was slogging through it all. I read almost three other books and a huge chunk of fan fiction before I could force myself to finish this. And forcing myself really was the only way I could have gotten through this, because I kept wanting to stop reading.
Not that it’s the most perfect book ever. The premise itself is pretty weak: an alien species has decided to blow the earth up within a week, and somehow managed to communicate this to NASA, which sends the whole world into a tail spin. Interspersed within the separate tales of three teenagers are scenes from a trial going on at the supposed planet, where a bunch of aliens argue back and forth about whether the earth should be blown up or not.
Seven billion lives were at the mercy of some distant planet, a speck they could hardly see with even the best telescopes. What did they want, really? They said Earth was going up for judgement: But what kind of judgement? What more could they want? The whole thing felt unfair. And why send a message of warning if humans could do nothing to change the outcome?
Even though all the scenes in the extraterrestrial setting felt repetitive and gimmicky, the whole ‘the world is ending’ aspect of the story was actually pretty well done in terms of its overall impact on the earth. Things started falling apart almost immediately, with riots breaking out, mass hysteria rising up, and families all torn asunder. That sense of urgency is repeated almost constantly throughout the novel, even though we mostly look at it from the perspective of three teenagers and the very specific ways that this news affects their lives. This type of storytelling, where the implications of such a large-scale event are portrayed through the very personalized narratives of singular characters, has always been a personal favourite of mine. Another reason why I should have loved this book, and weirdly did not like it at all. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that I spent pretty much a huge chunk of the time reading this book just thinking, ‘But you usually like stuff like this. Why are you so bored?’ Even the fact that a few smart sentences popped up here and there did not manage to assuage the tediousness I constantly felt.
“Honey, I’ve lived long enough to know that begging your oppressors to spare you never works. You either fight back, or remind the ones you love there’s something still worth fighting for.”
In fact, there were more reasons for me to like this book than others who have attempted the same thing, and that was because of the Muslim representation! Adeem, one of the three teenagers, is a Muslim, and as a reader, it’s exhilarating for me to see a Muslim character as a protagonist in a novel which doesn’t specifically focus on his religion as a selling point for the story. The world is coming to an end, and things are falling apart, and one of the three people telling us this story happens to be Muslim. It’s as simple as that, and that kind of subtle representation feels more valid than books specifically written with Muslim characters, because those can feel too performative or too focused on making a point. Adeem is simply a young boy who, confronted with the idea that the world is ending, decides to go find his runaway sister, and he also happens to be Muslim. I love that casualness, and yet. The flip side of this was that Adeem was, unfortunately, pretty much a Muslim in name only. Oh, what I would give to read a Muslimrep book which actually featured practicing Muslims. Muslims who pray and fast and read the Quran and yet still manage to have complex, defined lives without being defined by their religion. And I get that there are people all over the world who are Muslims and yet don’t actually follow any of the religious practices prescribed so strenuously, practices that I follow so fully myself, but creating a character as Muslim and not allowing them to actually follow any of the practices of the religion feels like such a cop-out. I am still waiting for that one novel, smart and well-written and entertaining, where one character just happens to casually get up to go pray or needs a break to open their fast, but for now, since that is such a pipe dream, I guess we’ll have to make do with what we have, which is a young adult novel that brings attention to islamophobia in the midst of a possible alien invasion.
He’d last been listening to a report of the sudden increase in violence—specifically, violence targeting Muslim communities. Three prominent West Coast mosques had burned down, the target of fanatical arsonist who believe that the end of days was here—and that Muslims had brought it.
What was even more interesting was the fact that not only was Adeem Muslim, a huge part of his narrative also focused on homosexuality. With seven days left until the world ends, in his part of the narrative Adeem sets off to find Leyla, his older, beloved sister who ran away from home after coming out to her parents. From the perspective of a story about a sibling’s coming out and the ensuing dramatic aftermath, the author handles stuff really well. Adeem is left confused and regretful, wishing he had done things differently and angry at his sister for not contacting him even once. I know that there are a significant number of stories out there where the character worries about coming out, only to find out that their loved ones are much more open to the idea than they had thought. But there are also a lot more stories about coming out to only be rejected, banished, or assaulted. All those possibilities are versions I have read, but I’ll be the first to admit that this was the first time I was reading one where the parents of a Muslim family aren’t immediately vengeful and sadistic.
Adeem had blamed himself, too. Not for saying the wrong thing, but for saying nothing. No that’s okay, Leyla. No we love you anyway. He’d been in shock. He’d been angry she hadn’t told him before. He’d made it about him. Maybe that was why she’d run away—so her life would finally belong to her.
In fact, I can easily admit that this book put me in a very confusing position, where the open-mindedness of the parents felt too surreal to be believable. The truth is that Pakistan, where I grew up, is not a country that is kind to homosexuality. Trapped between culture and religion, most of the population would rather stone to death anyone who publicly claims to be attracted to the opposite gender rather than consider the possibility of accepting such a life style. Homophobia is rampant and widely accepted, and the books I read with positive LGBTQ representation might as well be written about people living on Mars. This puts me in a very awkward position: ideally, I want representation of Muslim parents who are open to homosexuality and not the stereotypical products of our society, but when I do get it I roll my eyes because it sounds so unbelievable, so not reflective of the reality I know. I get the dichotomy, I’m aware of it; as aware as I am of the fact that there must be Muslim parents out there who don’t have an immediate ‘we banish you forever’ response to their child’s emergence from the closet. But the reality I inhabit doesn’t allow this fact to seem plausible, which makes the story so very hard for me to swallow. I suppose this just makes the argument for books like these to be more widely available, so that this possible reaction also becomes something we can accept.
The worst part? His parents hadn’t even said the wrong things. It wasn’t as though when Leyla had admitted in shaky whispers that her best friend, Priti, was way more than just a friend, they’d told her to leave and never come back. They weren’t like Qasim Uncle, who’d cast out his own son a few years ago, openly called him horrible things in front of the whole mosque.
Another thing that was done differently was the representation of mental health in authority figures, and how it can affect the children around them. The only other story I remember that comes close to such a treatment is Marchetta’s Saving Francesca, one of my all-time favourite young adult novels, where the heroine’s mother suffers from depression. Over here Cate, the only female protagonist in the story, has a mother suffering from schizophrenia, in what is once again a really well-handled narrative arc. Cate is a wonderful character, multifaceted and capable of being both responsible as well as impulsive and reckless in all her teenage glory. Of course, that still doesn’t mean I enjoyed reading any of her chapters, but then again none of my reactions to this book made any sense to me, so there you have it.
Mom, who loved sci-fi movies, who asked too many questions about Cate’s nonexistent social life, who made the best mind chocolate chip brownies. Mom, who heard voices in the walls, and starved herself, and begged Cate to forgive her in spite of everything.
In fact, this book deserved even more points than usual because Cate was that rare breed of teenaged characters in young adult who actually like their parents. Even though Cate’s mother ends up in a hospital at the very beginning of the last week on earth and sends Cate on a wild-goose chase looking after her absent father, her presence permeates every moment of Cate’s story. This story, of children forced to grow up too quickly because of parents who are unable to bear responsibility, is one I have read in multiple other places, but in almost all of these situations the parents are seen as burdensome and a restriction to the teenager’s ability to live their life to the fullest. Cate’s story also includes that perspective to a degree, but there was one particular part which had me blinking in surprise, amazed that a young adult novel could look at things from such a refreshing angle.
She had to be strong for Mom. She had to be strong for her because, for better or worse, that’s who Cate was: stupidly, stubbornly dutiful, until the end. And that was okay. Living for her mom wasn’t such a bad thing. She loved her.
So Adeem was great because of the Muslimrep and Cate was great because of the complexity (and also because her angle included the female friendship bit that I loved), but it was the third character whom I should have loved the most. Jesse, single child of a single mother, is a troublemaker, full of angst and yet kind at the centre, just the way I like my characters to be. His story includes a diabolical scheme to make money in desperate times (good guy forced to do bad things), a cute love interest (so the romance aspect) and proper gay representation. All of these things I should have cared for, but from the very beginning, when it is established that Jesse lives in Roswell, I just could not invest. I vaguely remembered the place Roswell from that American TV show a few years ago that I never actually watched, and only ever associated with aliens in my head. In this book, Roswell is the central hub of all our alien activity: it is the place where Jesse lives, and the other two are drawn towards. So Jesse was just the right mixture of cynical and wanting to believe, angry and desperate for affection. So much possibility for me to like the book. Sadly, none of it translated into the reality of the reading experience.
Could it be real? He was a Roswell kid, for Christ’s sake. Half the tourists that came through believed in little green men. He knew better than to fall for this shit.
The final nail in the coffin was the ending, which I can’t exactly discuss in detail except to say that I don’t care for the ‘guess what happened next’ vibe in fiction. I want to know what happened. Real life is confusing and ambiguous enough; books are supposed to wrap things up in one neat little package so I can carry that version of the end in my head, nicely balancing out the more perplexing aspects of actually living in this world. I kept waiting, throughout the book, to reach that point where I would get hooked, or I would at least sufficiently care enough to want to flip the page, but it just never came. Which is honestly a sad state of affairs, and all in all I hope I never have to go through this experience ever again.
Recommendation: I honestly couldn’t say. By all accounts it’s a very smart novel, which managed to bore me to death. That’s the only caveat I can give. Read if you must.
“I know it’s stupid. But if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that fear”–she gestured around them–“makes people kind of lose their heads.”