Point of View

This story is told from the point of view of a third-person narrator. Consider one of the first sentences in the novel: “When Yasmin began her first period, her mother had slipped her a pack of Kotex Maxi pads and murmured instructions not to touch the Quran” (1). Yasmin, the central character in the novel, is referred to by her first name or the third person pronouns “her” or “she”. The majority of the novel is told with Yasmin as a focus, but there are other characters of focus scattered throughout the novel including Harriet and Sandor. The perspectives of both Harriet and Sandor are important in the novel because the narrator is not omniscient. Since Harriet is distanced from Yasmin, there is no other way for the author to include her thoughts and emotions about what is happening with her son without the narrator focusing...