{"id":144,"date":"2008-06-12T21:57:13","date_gmt":"2008-06-13T01:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/2008\/06\/12\/review-of-ask-me-no-questions-by-marina-budhos\/"},"modified":"2008-10-11T20:42:01","modified_gmt":"2008-10-12T00:42:01","slug":"review-of-ask-me-no-questions-by-marina-budhos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=144","title":{"rendered":"Review of Ask Me No Questions, by Marina Budhos"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ask_me_no_questions.jpg\"<\/em><\/p>\n

Ask Me No Questions,<\/em><\/p>\n

by Marina Budhos<\/p>\n

Simon Pulse, 2007.\u00a0 First published in 2006.\u00a0 162 pages.<\/p>\n

Fourteen-year-old Nadira is from Bangladesh, but she has grown up in America.\u00a0 Her father’s visa has expired, and they tried to get legal residency, but their money was taken by a lawyer running scams.\u00a0 It didn’t seem to matter — everyone else seemed to be in the same situation.<\/p>\n

Then September 11th happened.\u00a0 The INS was cracking down.\u00a0 Rumors were flying.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nadira’s older sister, Aisha, is a senior in high school and the star of the debate team and\u00a0every teacher’s favorite student.\u00a0 She has applications in to prestigious schools, but she can’t apply for financial aid unless their legal status changes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They hear a reliable (they think) rumor that they should go to Canada and apply for asylum.\u00a0 The result is disaster.\u00a0 The Canadians do not let them cross the border, and they are promptly detained.\u00a0 Nadira’s father, Abba, is arrested and held in a detention center.\u00a0 They have no idea how long he will be held or if the whole family will be deported.<\/p>\n

Nadira and Aisha have no choice but to go back home to New York and go back to school.\u00a0 They will stay with their cousin.\u00a0 Aisha doesn’t have a license, but she drives them back.\u00a0 Ma must stay at the border to try to get Abba’s case heard.<\/p>\n

So begins Ask Me No Questions.\u00a0 <\/em>Can Nadira and Aisha help in any way to get their father’s case heard?\u00a0 How can they go on with ordinary high school life?\u00a0 How can Aisha focus on tests and college interviews?<\/p>\n

Nadira says:<\/p>\n

Tuesday morning Aisha and I are back at Flushing High as if nothing happened.<\/em><\/p>\n

We’re not the only illegals at our school.\u00a0 We’re everywhere.\u00a0 You just have to look.\u00a0 A lot of the kids here were born elsewhere — Korea, China, India, the Dominican Republic.\u00a0 You can’t tell which ones aren’t legal.\u00a0 We try to get lost in the landscape of backpacks and book reports.\u00a0 To find us you have to pick up the signals.\u00a0 It might be in class when a teacher asks a personal question, and a kid gets this funny, pinched look in his eyes.\u00a0 Or some girl doesn’t want to give her address to the counselor.\u00a0 We all agree not to notice.<\/em><\/p>\n

I remember when I was little, crouching in a corner of the playground and hearing a group of girls chant:\u00a0 <\/em>Ask me no questions.\u00a0 Tell me no lies.\u00a0 That’s the policy of at school.\u00a0 <\/em>Ask me no questions, we say silently.\u00a0 And the teachers don’t.\u00a0 “We’re not the INS,” I once heard one of them say.\u00a0 “We’re here to teach.”\u00a0 But sometimes I feel like shaking their sleeves and blurting out, <\/em>Ask me.\u00a0 Please.<\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Find this review on the main site at:<\/p>\n

www.sonderbooks.com\/Teens\/ask_me_no_questions.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ask Me No Questions, by Marina Budhos Simon Pulse, 2007.\u00a0 First published in 2006.\u00a0 162 pages. Fourteen-year-old Nadira is from Bangladesh, but she has grown up in America.\u00a0 Her father’s visa has expired, and they tried to get legal residency, but their money was taken by a lawyer running scams.\u00a0 It didn’t seem to matter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contemporary","category-teen-fiction-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}