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I'm working on a movie!  FARAH GOES BANG makes its internet home .

FARAH GOES BANG tells the story of Farah Mahtab, a woman in her twenties who tries to lose her virginity while on the road campaigning for presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004. Farah and her friends K.J. and Roopa follow the campaign trail across historic Route 66 on their way to Ohio, the central battleground state of 2004, seizing control of this charged moment in their lives and the life of their country.

FARAH GOES BANG is a valentine to contemporary feminism, youth in revolt, and the passionate politics of idealism. It is the travelogue of three women out on a highway belonging not to suicidal housewives or bubblegum pop stars, but to young women as agents, as doers, as authors of their own American odyssey. In this way, FARAH updates the classic American tradition of the Western, telling a new trail story–whose subjects are both cowgirls and Indians, both heroines and outlaws–in a diverse, powerful, and hilarious female voice.

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The four teenagers who make up the suburban Minnesota all-girl hip-hop group Sister Mischief might not seem to have much in common. Esme, our narrator, is lesbian, Jewish, and riddled with abandonment issues from her mother’s long-ago departure; Marcy, her lifelong friend and fellow motherless misfit, is Catholic, straight but the epitome of a teenage tomboy; loyal teen-queen Tess is the only one of the group who fits into the town’s SWASP (straight white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) majority; and Rowie, short for Rohini, is brilliant, Hindu, and the embodiment of the phrase “still waters run deep.�� When their school introduces a policy to ban all hip-hop music and attire from school property, the girls fight back by founding a school group dedicated to studying hip-hop as an art form. Additionally, a secret love affair blossoms between Esme and the deeply closeted, questioning Rowie. Footnotes incorporate a background babble of text messages, Facebook updates, and lyric snippets scribbled in notebooks, playing with the omnipresence and multi-threadedness of text culture in modern teen life; the group’s lyrics are provocative and smart while still believably teen-written. The book is distinguished by its ambitious engagement with issues of race, both in the complexities of white girls appropriating hip-hop as their mode of self-expression, and in its exploration of the racial, religious, and socioeconomic divisions that fragment the town and the school. The image of a white, middle-class midwesterner laying down rhymes like “She ain’t no prima donna, Michelle Robinson Obama/ An educated mama who’s a mama role model�� brings up a wealth of issues, but Goode lays them right out on the table, allows her characters to put forth their own arguments for and against their right to use the music and language that speaks to them, and leaves it to readers to decide whether they agree or not. An odd yet appealing combination of programmatic and subversive, this eminently discussable debut novel captures the vibrancy and messiness of teen life. CG

–Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, Sept. 2011

The four teenagers who make up the suburban Minnesota all-girl hip-hop group Sister Mischief might not seem to have much in common. Esme, our narrator, is lesbian, Jewish, and riddled with abandonment issues from her mother's long-ago departure; Marcy, her lifelong friend and fellow motherless misfit, is Catholic, straight but the epitome of a teenage tomboy; loyal teen-queen Tess is the only one of the group who fits into the town's SWASP (straight white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) majority; and Rowie, short for Rohini, is brilliant, Hindu, and the embodiment of the phrase "still waters run deep." When their school introduces a policy to ban all hip-hop music and attire from school property, the girls fight back by founding a school group dedicated to studying hip-hop as an art form. Additionally, a secret love affair blossoms between Esme and the deeply closeted, questioning Rowie. Footnotes incorporate a background babble of text messages, Facebook updates, and lyric snippets scribbled in notebooks, playing with the omnipresence and multi-threadedness of text culture in modern teen life; the group's lyrics are provocative and smart while still believably teen-written. The book is distinguished by its ambitious engagement with issues of race, both in the complexities of white girls appropriating hip-hop as their mode of self-expression, and in its exploration of the racial, religious, and socioeconomic divisions that fragment the town and the school. The image of a white, middle-class midwesterner laying down rhymes like "She ain't no prima donna, Michelle Robinson Obama/ An educated mama who's a mama role model" brings up a wealth of issues, but Goode lays them right out on the table, allows her characters to put forth their own arguments for and against their right to use the music and language that speaks to them, and leaves it to readers to decide whether they agree or not. An odd yet appealing combination of programmatic and subversive, this eminently discussable debut novel captures the vibrancy and messiness of teen life. CG

–Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, Sept. 2011

Goode's debut is a provocative, authentic coming-of-age story that explores of the power of language in shaping identity, structured around the subversive, expressive nature of hip-hop music. "Word nerd" Esme is a 16-year-old Jewish lesbian in the "sterile minivan parade" of Holyhill, Minnesota. She and her friends �� butch Marcy, religious Tess, and Indian Rowie �� are hip-hop crew Sister Mischief, who write rhymes to confront issues of race, gender, class, and sexuality. When the principal outlaws "violence-inducing culture," including hip-hop, the girls plan a guerilla performance to bring awareness to the masses, while Esme's and Rowie's burgeoning relationship sends them spinning in new directions. Esme's flowing, slangy narrative is expressive and idiosyncratic, and her relationship with Rowie is sweet and seductive. All of the girls realistically defy stereotypes, and their strong relationships with each other and

their families (particularly Esme's and Marcys' amazing dads and Rowie's mom) are the linchpin of the story. Goode sometimes tries too hard to deconstruct hip-hop culture, and the slang may trip up some readers, but overall this debut is full of big ideas, big heart, and big poetry, with a positive, activist message. Sex, language, and alcohol/drug use limit this to older teens.

�� Krista Hutley, Booklist, June 1st edition (starred review)