Skunk Girl

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'As soon as I make it home I run upstairs to my room and tear my clothes off. I twist my head to get a good view of my back. And that's when I see it. A wide line of soft, dark hair running from the napeof my neck down to the base of my spine. A stripe right down the centre of my back, like a skunk. I'm not just a hairy Pakistani Muslim girl any more. I am a skunk girl.' Nina Khan is sixteen, and has a few problems at hand. She is the only South Asian student at Deer Hook High; she doesn't care about calculus, unlike her over-achieving older sister; she has a genetic disposition for excessive body hair; and if her parents had a whiff of her thoughts about Asher Richelli, the cute new Italian transfer student, she would be grounded forever. In this funny, wryly witty debut novel by Sheba Karim, Nina navigates her way through the first year of high school, dealing with friends who don't even need to wax, and who don't have a ghazal-listening father waiting round the corner. She realizes that though balancing two cultures is never easy, with a little spunk and a lot of humour, one can always find a way.