Review: Just a Hat
Just a Hat by S. Khubiar Blackstone Publishing, 2023 Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Cheryl Fox Strausberg Buy at Bookshop.org As a thirteen year old kid growing up in the late 1970s in rural Texas, Joseph Nissan lives two lives. At school, he’s Joseph. He speaks English, he’s a math whiz, he just wants to fit in - not only to stop the persistent bullying from his white classmates but to be able to approach his first crush. At home, he’s Youssef. He speaks Farsi, he often translates for his Iranian immigrant mother who struggles with English, and he studies for his Bar Mitzvah. There’s a lot he doesn’t understand though, like why his parents are terrified of the police or why they never talk about their life in Iran. He follows their seemingly strict religious observance but wonders why he can’t play the piano on Shabbat, why he can only eat the food his mother cooks, and he wonders why, if community and religion is so important, they don’t live closer to the Iranian-Jewish community i