All My Rage

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2022

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-7

Part 2, Chapters 8-17

Part 3, Chapters 18-27

Part 4, Chapters 28-32

Part 4, Chapters 33-40

Part 5, Chapters 41-53

Part 5, Chapters 54-58

Part 6, Chapters 59-65

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

The Cost of the American Dream

Many immigrants come to the United States in search of a better life. America offers education, job opportunities, societal stability, and a fresh start. The possibilities America offers draw immigrants Riaz, Misbah, and Toufiq to the US from Pakistan. Riaz and Misbah, in particular, are motivated by their respective American dreams: Riaz works toward becoming an engineer and Misbah buys the motel, hoping to turn it into a successful family business. However, each finds that their dreams are not as easily obtained as they thought, as life circumstances get in the way. Tahir shows how the younger generation, namely Noor and Salahudin, must pay the price for the failed dreams of their elders.

For Riaz, chasing the American dream means forsaking his Pakistani culture. He doesn’t eat Pakistani foods, practice Islam, speak Punjabi or Urdu, or celebrate Pakistani holidays. Noor, under his guardianship, suffers because of this choice, as she is unable to connect freely with her cultural heritage. Although she finds ways to honor her Pakistani roots, she has to hide her efforts from Chachu. Furthermore, when Riaz’s American dream is derailed because he has to care for Noor, he becomes bitter and resentful. Noor bears the cost of his failed dream as he takes out his anger on her through physical abuse.

Riaz plans to pursue his dream by continuing his engineering studies once Noor graduates and can run the liquor shop. He is so obsessed with bringing his dream to fruition that he takes away Noor’s chances of pursuing her own dream of becoming a doctor. For Noor, Riaz’s failed American dream costs her her future, her physical and emotional well-being, and her connection to her culture. For Riaz, the cost of his American dream is his contentment, his culture, and his character.

Misbah’s American dream is to own a motel. Before she came with Toufiq to the US, she wanted to own a restaurant or motel and collect people’s stories as they passed through. She gets her dream when they move to Juniper and purchase the Clouds’ Rest, but the cost of keeping this dream proves to be high. Many circumstances contribute to the downward spiral of the motel, including Toufiq’s drinking problem, Misbah’s failing health, and a lack of steady customers.

When Misbah passes away, her dream of the motel falls on Salahudin’s shoulders. He feels he let Ama down in many ways and equates keeping the motel with making up for his failures. He knows the motel was precious to her, and wants to keep it to honor her. Ironically, Toufiq wants to sell the motel for similar reasons; it reminds him of Misbah, which is too painful for him. Both men are motivated by their love for Misbah and the grief of losing her, yet they have opposing ideas regarding the motel.

Salahudin’s need to save the motel by paying off debt motivates him to sell drugs. For him, the cost of clinging to Ama’s American dream turns out to be 18 months in prison and the betrayal of Noor’s trust. Just like Noor, another person’s dream almost costs him his future. Through Riaz and Misbah’s examples, Tahir shows that the failed American dream of one generation can be too heavy a weight for the next generation to bear.

Generational Healing and Family Ties

Tahir’s choice to structure the novel using flashbacks and switches between different characters’ points of view allows her to emphasize family, intergenerational trauma, and the lasting effects of one generation’s life and decisions on the next. However, she offers hope that past wounds can heal and mistakes made by the older generation need not ruin the lives of the younger generation.

Misbah and Toufiq’s life, revealed through flashbacks, contains pain, loss, and tragedy. The storms they each weather take a toll on their emotional health, most noticeably in Toufiq’s case, who turns to alcohol to cope with the pain of the compounding guilt that he is unable to protect those he loves. Tahir suggests that Toufiq’s mother, who also had a drinking addiction, is a contributing factor to Toufiq’s alcoholism, thereby adding another layer of generational wounds.

Salahudin pays the price for his father’s pain. Toufiq does not give Salahudin the protection, care, and love a father should. His alcohol addiction takes a toll on Salahudin’s life and is a factor in Salahudin’s decision to deal drugs and the consequences that come with that decision. This situation illustrates the generational effects of trauma yet offers hope for healing. Toufiq works to become sober, and Salahudin pays for his crime and makes peace with himself and the circumstances life gave him.

Noor’s family situation is complex as well. She has few memories of her family and village in Pakistan and has no way to obtain more information about them; Chachu is the only one who can tell her about her family, and he refuses to do so. The trauma of the earthquake left some emotional wounds, but the biggest difficulty Noor faces is the guilt she feels for surviving and altering Chachu’s future. She holds herself responsible for his failed dream of becoming an engineer and lives under his constant blame and abuse.

Once Noor moves in with Khadija and Imam Shafiq, she learns to release herself from this burden. In a confrontation with Chachu, she acknowledges, “I’ve paid for it” (289), referring to Chachu saving her from the earthquake rubble. Obligation and guilt shackled Noor to Chachu for 18 years of her life, but she escapes that guilt and starts to heal once she is out from under his roof.

Through the backstories of Misbah’s family, Toufiq’s family, and Chachu’s life before the earthquake, Tahir shows the interconnectedness of struggles within a family and how the sins and circumstances of one generation continue into the next. Even so, she offers hope that cycles of pain, guilt, loss, and addiction can be broken and healing is possible.

Friendship and Honesty as a Means of Growth

Through the ups and downs of Noor and Salahudin’s friendship, Tahir illustrates the personal growth and healing that friendship and honesty can bring. As children, both Noor and Salahudin struggled to fit in at school. They each reflect on ways they were different from their classmates—Noor because of cultural differences and a language barrier, and Salahudin because of the effects of the trauma he endured, such as negative reactions to physical touch.

They found familiarity and comfort with each other, and their friendship as children saved them from loneliness. Furthermore, Misbah reflects that when Sal and Noor played together as children, they were careful around each other, seeming to recognize the sensitivities of the other that resulted from their respective traumas. Their friendship begins at a young age and helps them grow into the young adults Tahir focuses on in the novel.

When the novel begins, Salahudin and Noor are in the midst of a months-long fight that has kept them from speaking to each other. However, Ama’s death brings them back together, and the restoration of their friendship leads to growth when they share their burdens with one another. Sal shares the burden of Abu’s addiction to alcohol, the debts his family owes on the motel, and the struggle of keeping up the motel and apartment without Ama. Noor shares about her college application rejections, the hate she gets from Jamie, and the fear that she will be stuck in Juniper after graduation.

Sharing these difficulties is helpful for them, but both keep secrets from each other, which hurts their relationship and personal growth. Noor doesn’t tell Salahudin that Chachu is abusing her, and Salahudin is ashamed to tell Noor he’s selling drugs. When Chachu’s abuse is finally exposed, their friendship grows stronger, and they experience increased closeness at Veil Meadows. However, trust and closeness between them are severed when Salahudin isn’t honest, and his choice to sell drugs is exposed in a way that hurts Noor and her future.

Tahir places these plot events—closeness in Veil Meadows and the arrest for having illegal drugs—in rapid succession to contrast the growth that honesty produces and the damage that deception causes. She suggests that honesty is a defining element of friendship and that personal growth and the strengthening of a friendship are hard to achieve without vulnerability.

By the novel’s end, Noor and Salahudin choose forgiveness and restore their friendship, but in this case, their restored friendship is a result of personal growth, as both have taken steps to heal individually. Even so, Tahir shows that Salahudin is a major part of Noor’s healing process, as she imagines him next to her during her first year at UCLA. Overall, Tahir shows the power of friendship to give hope and bring healing, and she cites the important role that honesty plays in creating meaningful relationships with others.