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A Novel
by Susan Azim Boyer
A fresh spin on the cult-classic Election meets Darius the Great Is Not Okay in Jasmine Zumideh Needs a Win when an international incident crashes into a high school election, and Jasmine is caught between doing the right thing and chasing her dream.
It's 1979, and Jasmine Zumideh is ready to get the heck out of her stale, Southern California suburb and into her dream school, NYU, where she'll major in journalism and cover New York City's exploding music scene.
There's just one teeny problem: Due to a deadline snafu, she maaaaaaybe said she was Senior Class President-Elect on her application―before the election takes place. But honestly, she's running against Gerald Thomas, a rigid rule-follower whose platform includes reinstating a dress code―there's no way she can lose. And she better not, or she'll never get into NYU.
But then, a real-life international incident turns the election upside down. Iran suddenly dominates the nightly news, and her opponent seizes the opportunity to stir up anti-Iranian hysteria at school and turn the electorate against her. Her brother, Ali, is no help. He's become an outspoken advocate for Iran just as she's trying to downplay her heritage.
Now, as the white lie she told snowballs into an avalanche, Jasmine is stuck between claiming her heritage or hiding it, standing by her outspoken brother or turning her back on him, winning the election or abandoning her dreams for good.
Told with biting insight and fierce humor, Susan Azim Boyer's Jasmine Zumideh Needs a Win is a fresh, unforgettable story of one Iranian-American young woman's experience navigating her identity, friendship, family, her future, and a budding romance, all set against life-changing historical events with present-day relevance.
"A thoughtful coming-of-age story with a relatable protagonist." —Kirkus Reviews
"A thought-provoking debut." —Publishers Weekly
"Packs an impressive number of ups and downs, including everyday high-school and family drama, [and] remains grounded in its historical setting and committed to cultural domestic touches, particularly around food, which truly makes it a win." —Booklist
"Told against the backdrop of the Iran Hostage Crisis and a high-stakes high school election, Jasmine Zumideh Needs A Win is a whip-smart look at identity and girlhood in a story where the political is very much the personal." —Christina Hammonds Reed, New York Times bestselling author of The Black Kids
"Bursting with charm, insight, and humor, Jasmine Zumideh Needs a Win is so compulsively readable, I couldn't put it down." —Amanda Glaze, author of The Second Death of Edie and Violet Bond
This information about Jasmine Zumideh Needs a Win was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Susan Azim Boyer (she/her), author of Jasmine Zumideh Needs a Win, writes young adult fiction featuring Iranian American heroines she *never* encountered growing up, who make messy, complicated choices that rapidly snowball into avalanches. She hails from Nebraska but grew up in Los Angeles before spending several years in San Francisco and the next twenty in Sonoma County. She now lives in the Coachella Valley with her husband, Wayne, and her Pug mix, Teddy. Their son, Alec, lives in New York.
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