All My Rage

CHAPTERS 1-7

Reading Check

1. Advanced kidney disease (Chapter 5)

2. Dhi/daughter (Chapter 7)

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Salahudin and his parents love and care for each other deeply, but the role reversal due to his parents’ health conditions means Salahudin must take care of them instead of the other way around, and this strains their family bonds. (Various chapters)

2. Their relationship is one of intense subordination. Both parties believe that her uncle’s duty to care for his last living family member is a sign that Noor must show him eternal gratitude for taking her in after her parents died in the earthquake. (Chapter 3)

3. Misbah views Toufiq as a person suffering from a sickness, whereas Salahudin views his struggles as a deliberate choice. Misbah shows patience and compassion, which Salahudin considers enabling, and Salahudin reacts with rage. (Various chapters)

CHAPTERS 8-17

Reading Check

1. Handsome but sad (Chapter 8)

2. Her hope (Chapter 9)

3. Forgive (Chapter 10)

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Though both grew up in Pakistan, Noor’s uncle disavows all things Pakistani and wants Noor to have nothing to do with the culture, whereas Auntie Misbah embraces her culture and shares it joyfully with Noor by speaking Punjabi, making traditional dishes, enjoying Pakistani music and dramas, and taking her to the Mosque. (Chapter 10)

2. The motel was his mother’s dream and her life’s work. To Salahudin, losing the motel would be like losing her again. (Chapter 11)

3. For people like Jamie, the American Dream is viewed as an entitlement, which is reinforced by the comparative ease of navigating systems that were built for them, such as school and the college enrollment processes built on white American cultural norms. No one in admissions is “interrogating” Jamie’s personality and her “nature vs. nurture” like the UPenn interviewer speaking with Noor, showing that immigrants and other nontraditional students carry the extra burden of proving their work is authentic and representative of their true abilities and intentions. They must prove they deserve the American Dream, unlike Jamie, who assumes it is hers by right. (Chapter 12)

CHAPTERS 18-27

Reading Check

1. A shark (Chapter 21)

2. Electrocution (22)

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Noor is a victim of domestic abuse. In addition to her uncle being unreasonably controlling and intense, this is supported by the inconsistent make-up, Brooke’s history with abusive men, the extremely high stakes she associates with getting out of town, and the imagery of her uncle’s fists. (Chapter 20)

2. Through Misbah’s narrative, we learn that Toufiq was unable to save his cousin from tetanus, his mother from her substance use disorder, and his parents from their deaths. He also considers his failure to provide for Salahudin and save his wife as further evidence of his weakness and unworthiness. The grief and self-hatred feed his substance use disorder. A generation later, Salahudin holds himself responsible for his mother’s death and for maintaining the motel; this drives him to make the equally destructive choice to deal drugs. Tahir reveals through this generational continuum that trauma, addiction, and abuse are repeating cycles. (Various chapters)

3. By connecting substance use disorder with the concept of jihad, a spiritual struggle, Imam Shafiq avoids the judgment of assuming Salahudin’s father is weak or evil. He also normalizes it as part of a process that everyone undergoes, and that no one can overcome alone. (Chapter 27)

CHAPTERS 28-32

Reading Check

1. Apologize to Jamie (Chapter 31)

2. The heart necklace (Chapter 32)

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Jamie’s character exposes the evils of competition, entitlement, and white supremacy tied up in the America Dream. Though the dream appears available to all who work hard, the reality is that some must work harder than others and often achieve less because of stereotyping, racism, and other systemic biases created by those who have benefited generationally from the American Dream to jealously guard it. Jamie’s actions are a product of the harmful insecurities of a white generational privilege that exposes the lie of American meritocracy. Believing that Noor’s success undermines her own superiority and entitlements, she actively oppresses Noor and tries to thwart her efforts to achieve success. (Chapter 29; Various chapters)

2. Salahudin is a complicit enabler but does bear the full responsibility for Ashlee’s overdose, because Art sold her the patch and she chose to mix the two. Even had Salahudin not supplied her, experiencing an overdose was statistically likely for Ashlee at some point without intervention. Salahudin’s determination to take responsibility for the whole is less a fact and more a product of his guilt and need to assume control. (Chapter 30)

3. Ms. McCann’s denial of the overdose reminds Salahudin of his mother’s denial of his father’s alcohol use disorder, and this helps him see the roles family, shame, and denial play in substance use disorder. He can admit to himself aloud that his father’s condition is real, which overcomes the stigma and helps her see that without intervention with her addiction now, it might spiral further out of control. (Chapter 32)

CHAPTERS 33-40

Reading Check

1. A dream manifest (Chapter 33)

2. The laundry room/touch (Chapter 37)

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. As part of her ability to survive her uncle’s assaults, Noor internalizes the lie that he tells her—that without him, she would not be there, and that she ruined his life. Auntie Misbah wanted her to know that she was more than that lie, and that she deserved to get out and find a better life. (Chapter 36)

2. Both Salahudin and his father hold themselves responsible for the bad that has happened to others and their inability to protect them. Just as Toufiq holds himself responsible for Salahudin’s assault and for his cousin’s, parents’, and wife’s deaths, Salahudin holds himself responsible for Ashlee’s overdose and Noor’s abuse. (Chapter 38)

3. Fear is the primary reason Noor never shared her secret and covered for her uncle. She feared being separated from her last living relative, she feared being placed in foster care, and she feared that if she told anyone her secret, she might not be believed—which could result in her remaining in the home and being beaten for telling. (Chapter 39)     

CHAPTERS 41-53

Reading Check

1. Eight years in prison (Chapter 43)

2. A+ (Chapter 50)

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. The stereotyping, racism, and quickness of the police to draw conclusions based on circumstantial evidence circumvents the possibility of justice for those society deems different. Noor loses hope when she realizes that people see what they want to see. (Chapter 42)

2. In both cases, the police involve close family to rattle them. They tell Noor that they suspect her uncle’s liquor store is a cover for dealing, and that they will charge him, too; they also tell Salahudin to consider how his arrest will inspire his father to drink himself to death. Despite being an institution of justice and safety, law enforcement scares and manipulates the young people, coming across as bullies rather than heroes. This underscores the fact that patterns of secrecy, abuse, and manipulation can extend beyond families into wider systems. (Chapter 43)

3. Salahudin can get reduced time, but only if he agrees to implicate Noor for the larger amounts of narcotics under her seat. (Chapter 49)

CHAPTERS 54-58

Reading Check

1. Like a demigod (Chapter 57)

2. A drastic intervention (Chapter 57)

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Khadija insists Noor go to graduation despite the impending trial because she has worked hard and will regret skipping it in the future. Though Noor concedes, she struggles to imagine a future that does not include prison. (Chapter 55)

2. Through various lenses, the story has exposed systemic inequalities and injustices in the United States. However, Ashlee’s use of social media to expose Jamie’s racist bullying and force Princeton to rescind their offer to her suggests that there is still hope for justice, and that speaking up about abuse makes a difference. (Chapter 55)

3. When Misbah told Noor on her deathbed to forgive, she thought Auntie Misbah meant for her to forgive Salahudin, because they had gotten into a fight. However, Misbah wants Noor to forgive her for not seeing the abuse sooner, and for being unable to finish helping her before she died. (Chapter 58)

CHAPTERS 59-65

Reading Check

1. Music/Crown of Fates (Chapter 61)

2. Violence (Chapter 62)

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. The judge shows leniency because Salahudin said the truth to prevent his friend from facing undeserved consequences. Silence and secrets have been an unhealthy pattern for Salahudin and Noor, so to speak the truth so publicly—to serve justice and be rewarded—underscores the idea that speaking up is the right choice, even if it is hard and carries grave consequences. (Chapter 60)

2. Salahudin never understood his mother’s hope and faith, but she always shared her belief that the more impossible things seemed, the more God stepped in to make way for the faithful. When Salahudin finds himself with the kind cellmate he knew from his first night in jail and learns the meaning of the Biblical verse, he sees evidence of the divine planning his mother believed in for the first time. (Chapter 62)

3. The final scene is one of forgiveness, with symbolic gestures that represent the quieting of the rage that has divided the characters. Salahudin’s offering of tea to his mother despite not liking it and Noor’s gentle song show that they have forgiven Misbah and each other. (Chapter 64)