This is a public arts school, which if they have in Canada the way they’re written in this book, I’m so jealous. Once he gets back home, he starts talking to her about auditioning for the programs at his school. She goes to meet her friend but ends up finding him in the hospital with his friend looking over him. After so much time of dealing with comments on her looks by other girls, and being looked over by teachers, and knowing that she doesn’t fit the classic look of ballet. But after, when she checks, she realizes she didn’t make it. The book starts out with Aisha at her private ballet school, trying to get into a program against the other girls in the summer program, and although she does so well that the Madam asks her to show the others. She also deals with ED as a consequence of feeling like she needs to fit the body type of classical ballerinas, and how that spiral within the book itself. Aisha has to deal with the racism that comes with an old, very “tradition” based dance such as ballet. His friend, whom Aisha starts having feelings for, gets anxious when speaking in front of people. With her friend falling into heavy drinking where the first we meet he’s in the hospital for alcohol poisoning. Thank you NetGalley and Annick Press Ltd. Ages 14–up.I read an eARC of When It All Syncs Up by Maya Ameyam. Via Aisha’s sensitive voice, Ameyaw steadily builds layered suspense about the crisis that separated Neil and Aisha three years prior and destroyed Aisha’s relationship with her mother to craft a tightly plotted and smoothly written novel that tackles issues of racism in classical ballet alongside mental health and body image conflicts.
As Aisha navigates her own internal challenges, however, she becomes increasingly disturbed about Neil’s growing reliance on alcohol and teams up with Ollie to help their friend. In Toronto, she wins a place at Korean Canadian best friend Neil’s public arts high school, where Aisha develops a possible romance with musician Ollie, of Algerian heritage, and cultivates an unexpected affinity for modern dance. With her caring stockbroker father in Tokyo and her estranged former professional ballerina mother forbidden from contacting her, Aisha struggles with an emerging dissociative disorder and relies on imaginary relationships with celebrated Black ballerinas, including Michaela DePrince, for reassurance. After she’s rejected for a ballet apprenticeship, Ghanaian Canadian 16-year-old Aisha Bimi returns to Toronto from her majority-white western Canada ballet academy. In Ameyaw’s thoughtful and absorbing debut, a trio of teenagers explore identities and relationships through their artistic gifts.
0 kommentar(er)
