When the girls’ business class teacher assigns them to launch their own businesses, artistic Flávia sees nothing wrong in doing henna designs-after all, she loved the ones she saw at the Bengali wedding where she and Nishat reconnected. in postcolonial studies motivated her to take on the challenge of writing about cultural appropriation in teen literature. Today, she teaches English as a foreign language to immigrants in Dublin, many of them Brazilian, and she has a 16-year-old sister and young cousins, all of whom helped inform the authentic teenage voices in the story. Jaigirdar describes her book as essentially being about “growing into who you are and being comfortable with who you are.” She wrote it, she says, “because of family, community, culture-it was a way to express all of these things that are all so important to me.” Jaigirdar, 26, attended an all-girls’ Catholic school after her family arrived in Ireland from Bangladesh when she was 10. Their connection is founded on a powerful sympathy as queer girls of color in a mostly white Catholic school, yet an entrepreneurial project strikes at the heart of thorny questions of appreciation versus appropriation. Jaigirdar focuses on Nishat, a Bangladeshi Irish teen who comes out as lesbian to her parents, and Flávia, the biracial (black Brazilian/white Irish) girl Nishat is in love-and conflict-with, in a friends-to-enemies-to-lovers storyline. Even stories centering characters from marginalized groups frequently focus on their struggles in relation to the dominant culture-as if stories can’t exist without a normative reference point.

In too many teen novels, queer characters and characters of color-and we still rarely meet queer characters of color-appear in the role of best friend to the straight, white protagonist. Kirkus’ review describes Adiba Jaigirdar’s debut, The Henna Wars (Page Street, May 12), as “impossible to put down” and with good reason: It’s simultaneously a charming rom-com, a thoughtful work of social commentary, a testament to strong female relationships, and a fresh addition to YA literature.

The henna wars by adiba jaigirdar