Thoughts on : The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf

Posted by Kay on July 28, 2019 11:20 am in 4 stars reads | 2 comments

The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf
Genre : YA, Historical fiction
Stand alone

About the Book  :

Melati Ahmad looks like your typical moviegoing, Beatles-obsessed sixteen-year-old. Unlike most other sixteen-year-olds though, Mel also believes that she harbors a djinn inside her, one who threatens her with horrific images of her mother’s death unless she adheres to an elaborate ritual of counting and tapping to keep him satisfied.

But there are things that Melati can’t protect her mother from. On the evening of May 13th, 1969, racial tensions in her home city of Kuala Lumpur boil over. The Chinese and Malays are at war, and Mel and her mother become separated by a city in flames.

With a 24-hour curfew in place and all lines of communication down, it will take the help of a Chinese boy named Vincent and all of the courage and grit in Melati’s arsenal to overcome the violence on the streets, her own prejudices, and her djinn’s surging power to make it back to the one person she can’t risk losing.

My Thoughts :

The Weight of Our Sky is such a unique young adult novel. It combines many topical themes – mental health, racism – and a historical setting that, I assume, will be unfamiliar to many readers. I can’t compare it to another YA book I’ve ever read, but I’m so glad it exists.

I haven’t read a lot of books that take place in Malaysia, and I’ll admit I didn’t know about the events of May 1969 before reading this one. It was so heartbreaking. I think the author did a really good job of recreating this part of history in a way that readers who, like me, aren’t familiar with it can quickly grasp what is going on.

I also really appreciated Melati as a narrator. She was a complete character before the events started, so I didn’t feel these completely defined her as a character. She had her own issues (OCD and grief) to deal with, wich were explored in a very respectful way. To me, it was also interesting seeing how other people from other times or places might have dealt with mental health issues.

I do wish we could have seen more of the people Melati spends her time with during this period of her life. Days go by without much details except for how Melati is feeling, and I would have liked to know the people living with her better. I think seeing more of their interactions could have offered some other different perspectives and facilitated even more our connexion to this part of history.

This being said, I really liked this book. It offered something different, opened my eyes to a part of history I knew nothing about, and overall I felt it was well executed. I also really appreciated the author’s foreword, which helped put everything into context. Now I’m really curious to see what will be next from this author, I’ll be keeping my eyes opened for it for sure!