WHEN A BROWN GIRL FLEES

Eighteen-year-old Zahra Paracha’s tight hold on a secret spirals into a decision to run away from home.

A recent high school graduate who’s about to get married, Pakistani American Zahra feels suffocated by her controlling mother. Consumed by guilt from a mistake she made that’s at odds with her Muslim beliefs, she flees from California to Long Island. While attending prayers at the local masjid, she meets girls from a youth group and is befriended by the Chaudry sisters. They warmly invite her into their home, helping her find her bearings and a loving community. Struggling to control her depression and anxiety, a cautious Zahra slowly embraces her new life and begins to unpack her troubled mind and reevaluate her faith. As she heals, she confronts her past and seeks absolution to repair her new relationships. The story is an emotional journey of redemption, forgiveness, and moving forward that explores themes of friendship, mental health struggles, and finding oneself. While Qureshi introduces a number of mental health issues—depression, anxiety, emotional and physical abuse, self-harm, suicidal ideation, slut shaming, and PTSD—they are not explored with sufficient depth. The overwrought writing is vague about Zahra’s trauma. Many problems are met with impromptu solutions by the Chaudry sisters, and the resolutions of her interpersonal conflicts happen so easily that they feel anticlimactic.

An underdeveloped story that misses opportunities to examine underrepresented mental health issues in Muslim communities.