Review: IraqiGirl, Diary of a Teenage Girl in Iraq by Hadiya

ragic and inspiring, the story of fifteen-year-old Hadiya living and blogging in Mosul, Iraq is presented in print form by Haymarket Books, Chicago’s own progressive and nonprofit book publisher.  IraqiGirl is a series of edited—for grammar—blog posts from Hadiya as she attempts to make sense of what is happening in native country.   As an American reader, I was intrigued to read the details of her and her family’s lives as they attempted to live in a war torn country.

I like this book because it offers a different view than what one normally gets to see on the news about the war in Iraq.  For Hadiya, the war is not a sequence of military victories and defeats, it is a sequence of days, some normal, some terrible.  She writes of power outages, of the hospitals overflowing with injured Iraqis, of missing her sister, of her house rumbling with explosions, of her flooded school yard that the students can barely enter.  Her anger at Americans and at George Bush in particular is omnipresent in her writing.  Some of her posts start by detailing her grades on a physics exam and end with her describing explosions near her house, hiding inside to avoid gunshots.  IraqiGirl offers a perspective on life in Iraq that will likely be eye-opening and fascinating to American readers.

At times Hadiya’s writing may seem a bit choppy or blunt, but this is largely due to her writing in English, which is her second language.  A comparison between the book and her blog will easily reveal that the book has been edited for grammar but not for content.  Hadiya’s voice is broadcasted clearly on each page, and it is a voice asking for freedom from a young woman who is not willing to accept that her future must be shaped by war and violence.  An excellent read.