{"id":745,"date":"2022-02-17T17:44:39","date_gmt":"2022-02-17T16:44:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.phil.hhu.de\/anglophoneliteratures\/?p=745"},"modified":"2022-02-17T17:46:09","modified_gmt":"2022-02-17T16:46:09","slug":"review-hani-and-ishus-guide-to-fake-dating-by-adiba-jaigirdar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.phil.hhu.de\/anglophoneliteratures\/2022\/02\/17\/review-hani-and-ishus-guide-to-fake-dating-by-adiba-jaigirdar\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Hani and Ishu\u2019s Guide to Fake Dating by Adiba Jaigirdar"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
by Alice Kronenberg<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFriends can talk about things. They can figure things out. Get past things. Dou you want a friend in your life who you can never disagree with? A friend who you can\u2019t grow with?\u201d<\/em><\/p>Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating, pos. 2808 (kindle)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
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https:\/\/adibajaigirdar.com\/hani-and-ishu<\/a> (last visited 01\/14\/2022, 12:50)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Humaira Khan and Ishita Dey are nothing alike: While easy-going and amiable Hani socializes with her friends, introverted and ambitious Ishu spends her days studying to prepare for university. Despite being pushed into the same box by their classmates for being the only two Bengali girls in their year, Hani and Ishu have very little in common and do their best to avoid each other on most days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is, until Hani\u2019s friends tell her that she can\u2019t possibly be bisexual if she has only dated boys and she hurriedly invents a fake relationship with Ishu. Hesitant at first, Ishu soon agrees to Hani\u2019s fake dating proposal, hoping that it will make her more popular and secure her classmates\u2019 votes in the election of Head Girl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this sunshine x grumpy, fake-dating story Jaigirdar brings to life a breezy, heart-warming romance while simultaneously tackling more serious issues like racism, biphobia, toxic friendships and family conflicts. Keeping the tone appropriate for a young readership, she sends her characters on a journey of growth and challenges, putting them through many uncomfortable moments and painful realizations. In the end, however, the positive feelings outweigh the negative ones, making this a story of queer joy rather than queer trauma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBefore all of this started, I didn\u2019t even know what being in a relationship was, but now I\u2019m pretty sure I can write a guide to real<\/strong> dating.\u201d<\/em><\/p>Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating, pos. 3745 (kindle)<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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https:\/\/kidovna.tumblr.com\/post\/654627115062509568\/ishu-smells-as-sweet-as-honey-and-i-have-to<\/a> (last visited 01\/14\/2022, 12\u00a0:51)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Both of the main characters have their own story in addition to their shared one. Hani starts out as a very accommodating character, constantly assimilating to her toxic white friends who don\u2019t show any respect for her culture, her religion, or her sexuality. She is somewhat caught in between wanting to commit to her Bengali and Muslim community and her fear that her friends will exclude her if she does. Thus, a big part of her character development is learning to stand up for herself, to choose her own happiness over her friends\u2019 opinion, and eventually to leave behind a friendship that she\u2019s held onto since early childhood. Thanks to her relationship with Ishu as well as her loving parents, she realizes that she deserves people who support her culture and sexuality instead of mocking it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ishu, on the other hand, is utterly unapologetic. She doesn\u2019t care what others have to say about her culture or her appearance. She does care, however, about her parents\u2019 approval \u2013 more than anything else, actually. Especially ever since her older sister announced that she wanted to take a break from med-school to get married, Ishu has felt the responsibility and pressure of being the \u2018good daughter\u2019 who achieves exactly what her parents expect from her. Over the course of the book, Ishu realizes that her sister might be right in choosing a different path for her life than she initially promised her family, and finds herself questioning her own plans for the future. The more she sides with her sister Nik, the more criticism she receives from her parents, and on top of that, she has to deal with people at school attempting to ruin her chances in the Head Girl election. In the end, Ishu lets go of her desire to please her parents and learns to put herself first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Adiba Jaigirdar thus created two contrasting main characters who somehow give each other exactly the type of encouragement the other needs. Through the duo-POV narration style, Jaigirdar shows how differently people connect to their culture and how varied the lived experiences of two brown queer girls can be. Her writing style and choice of words is engaging and easily accessible. Some passages may sound a bit juvenile, but if you consider the targeted age group, the language definitely feels appropriate. What stands out positively are the many Bengali foods, clothes, and traditions that were woven into the main story \u2013 as a non-Bengali reader, I really enjoyed learning about this culture through the characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One aspect I\u2019d like to discuss critically is the motivation behind the protagonists\u2019 decision to fake-date each other. For one, there is no mention of many other friends or acquaintances Hani has outside of her trio that would speak for her popularity, so it is a bit hard to believe that Ishu actually has a shot at becoming Head Girl just because she\u2019s dating Hani. It would have been nice to see Hani engaging with other people or being part of a larger social circle at school to show that she has an influence on the other students (e.g. by making her part of a sports team or popular school club). Also, as understandable as it is for Hani to want to prove to her straight friends that she is bisexual, and as much as I personally enjoy the fake-dating-trope, I wish there was a moment where she realizes that she should never need<\/em> to invent a girlfriend to convince people of anything<\/em>. She doesn\u2019t owe her friends an explanation, much less a whole relationship, to prove her sexuality. Even though Hani did \u2018break up\u2019 with her friends at the end of the novel, it felt like it was for other reasons \u2013 for framing Ishu, for making her ditch her father, for how they treated her after she came out to them. But she never says anything along the lines of, \u201cAnd by the way, I literally got a fake girlfriend when I really shouldn\u2019t have to, and you\u2019re still not taking me seriously\u201d, and I think that\u2019s the one thing that could be missing in her otherwise well-rounded character development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nonetheless, this is an amazing sapphic love story full of tropes we love. Hani and Ishu\u2019s Guide to Fake Dating<\/em> is both light-hearted and deep and provides the perfect balance of cheesy romance, coming of age themes, and more serious social issues. Jaigirdar handled the difficult aspects very carefully, responsibly, and thoughtfully, providing a rich variety of perspectives and experiences for the reader to consider. What I also like is that the novel ends on a positive note, but not a perfect one. There are still conflicts for the protagonists to resolve \u2013 Ishu is experiencing an estrangement from her parents, Hani has just lost her two best friends \u2013 but for now, both girls are happy with their lives and their growth. So, you close the book with a sense of knowing that Hani and Ishu will continue to work on themselves off-page, and I think that\u2019s beautiful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Alice Kronenberg \u201cFriends can talk about things. They can figure things out. Get past things. Dou you want a friend in your life who you can never disagree with? A friend who you can\u2019t grow with?\u201d Hani and Ishu’s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":229,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58837],"tags":[58969,58982,58983,58980,58981,58967],"class_list":["post-745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doubly-marginalised-queer-and-transcultural-young-adult-literature","tag-adiba-jaigirdar","tag-bengali-identity","tag-bisexuality","tag-hani-and-ishus-guide-to-fake-dating","tag-queer-muslim-identity","tag-ya-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.phil.hhu.de\/anglophoneliteratures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.phil.hhu.de\/anglophoneliteratures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.phil.hhu.de\/anglophoneliteratures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.phil.hhu.de\/anglophoneliteratures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/229"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.phil.hhu.de\/anglophoneliteratures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=745"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.phil.hhu.de\/anglophoneliteratures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":750,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.phil.hhu.de\/anglophoneliteratures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions\/750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.phil.hhu.de\/anglophoneliteratures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.phil.hhu.de\/anglophoneliteratures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.phil.hhu.de\/anglophoneliteratures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}