All My Rage

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

ACTIVITY 1: “Character Concept Albums”

In this activity, students will create two music albums, including relevant cover art and songs, that capture Noor’s and Salahudin’s character arcs.

Throughout the story, Noor turns to music to process her emotions and seek comfort. In this activity, you will create two albums, one for Salahudin and one for Noor, using relevant cover art and songs that capture their character arcs. Your albums should include conflict, plot, theme, and resolution, as well as an insert or key with songs, lyrics, and a brief explanation as to how each song relates to the character. Albums will be shared with the class and publicly displayed.

• Step One: Brainstorm - Build a list of songs you know that might fit each character. Consider choosing songs that explore similar themes and conflicts, or that you think might appeal to the characters based on the songs mentioned in the novel. Your songs should follow each character arc, meaning they should capture the characters from the beginning, middle, and end of the story, in order. Aim for 8-10 songs each.
• Step Two: Draft - Create a concept for your album art and organize your images, playlists, lyrics, and explanations to fit your medium (LP cover, CD insert, or digital version). Get feedback to be sure you are meeting criteria.
• Step Three: Finalize - Create your final draft. Be sure to include a brief explanation for how each song connects to the character.

Share your completed work with the class, then reflect on the albums created by your classmates. Are there any parallels between genres, themes, or songs?

Teaching Suggestion: Students may benefit from exploring songs from the novel in more depth and from looking at examples of LP covers or CD inserts prior to beginning the activity. Listing and discussing major themes, motifs, and conflicts as a class may streamline student brainstorming. To display student work, consider implementing formal class presentations, informal gallery walks, or digital displays on a class webpage. To address time constraints, consider having students choose only one character or build playlists without the cover art component.

Differentiation Suggestion:  For students with organizational or executive functioning differences, graphic organizers or step guides may be beneficial. For multilingual learners, preselected and/or prehighlighted passages related to their character may help with time management and ease the transition from language comprehension to character analysis. Feedback at each phase may benefit all students. To include more learning styles and cultural preferences, consider allowing options for group work, expanding the assignment to allow performance art substitutions, such as performing a song for each character, or creative writing forms, such as the creation of original lyrics.

Use these essay questions as writing and critical thinking exercises for all levels of writers, and to build their literary analysis skills by requiring textual references throughout the essay.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners or struggling writers, strategies that work well include graphic organizers, sentence frames or starters, group work, or oral responses.

Scaffolded Essay Questions

Student Prompt: Write a short (1-3 paragraph) response using one of the bulleted outlines below. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. Rage is a recurring motif within the novel. Choose only one character as the focus for this essay.

• How is rage a conflict for this character, and how does this character overcome and heal from its effects? (topic sentence)
• Explain how this character experiences rage, both internally and externally, and discuss the consequences of that rage.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, explain what this character learns about rage and how to resist and/or heal from its effects.

2. Each character has a coping mechanism for dealing with conflict and deep emotions. Choose only one character as the focus for this essay.

• How does Tahir use this coping mechanism as a tool of characterization? (topic sentence)
• Explain how this character uses their coping mechanism and how their relationship with it changes as their character grows and conflicts deepen.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, explain what the character’s relationship with this coping mechanism reveals about the character’s growth and development by the end of the novel.

3. Secrets and omissions play an underlying role in the conflict between Noor and Salahudin.

• How do secrets undermine Noor and Salahudin’s relationship with each other and/or their relationships with their families? (topic sentence)
• Choose 2-3 examples from the text, explain the context of these examples, and discuss how secrets undermine Noor and Salahudin’s relationship(s).
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, reflect on Friendship and Honesty as a Means of Growth and what this shows about the role of secrets in undermining trust and/or preventing healing.

Full Essay Assignments

Student Prompt: Write a structured and well-developed essay. Include a thesis statement, at least three main points supported by text details, and a conclusion.

1. Generational differences within the immigrant experience are foundational to the novel’s exploration of the American Dream. How does Tahir describe both the immigrant experience and the American Dream through the eyes of the characters? In what ways do first and second-generation attitudes toward both America and Pakistan differ? In what ways do these different attitudes manifest as conflict within families, and to what degree are these conflicts open to reconciliation?

2. Choose a symbol or motif from the novel and trace its development. What does it mean to the characters, and how does this meaning change over time? How does this symbol or motif evolve with the characters? What underlying themes and messages does it help reveal and why?

3. Consider Tahir’s use of Misbah as a third narrative voice. To what degree does this voice contextualize both Noor’s and Salahudin’s conflicts as well as her own? What does the gradual reveal of Misbah’s secrets and struggles add to Noor’s and Salahudin’s stories, and how does this support themes such as Generational Healing and Family Ties and/or The Cost of the American Dream?

Multiple Choice and Long Answer Questions create ideal opportunities for whole-text review, exams, or summative assessments.

Multiple Choice

1. What was the catalyst of the fight between Noor and Salahudin over the summer?

A) Noor expressed judgment against his father’s use of alcohol.

B) Noor confessed feelings for Salahudin, and he reacted unkindly.

C) Noor accused him of being too selfish to see how sick his mother was.

D) They promised to go to college together, but Salahudin backed out of the plan.

2. What does the fortune teller tell Misbah about her children?

A) They will hurt her deeply.

B) They will learn to forgive her.

C) Their lives will be tragic.

D) She will fail them all.

3. What does Salahudin want the police at the hospital to understand about him and his father?

A) His father is simply upset.

B) They are not at the hospital to make trouble.

C) Their actions are not who they are.

D) He cannot let his father drive home.

4. Why is saving the Cloud’s Rest from foreclosure so important to Salahudin?

A) It is what remains of his mother and her dreams.

B) Without the motel, he and his father will be without a home.

C) He has warm childhood memories there.

D) He wants to show his father he can fix their problems.

5. What does Misbah’s wedding day reveal as a source of Toufiq’s sadness?

A) He is responsible for his parents’ deaths.

B) His mother drinks excessively to cope with her past trauma.

C) His mother and father have disowned him for drinking alcohol.

D) His parents believe he is marrying beneath his station.

6. What did Salahudin’s mother mean when she told him the more a person asks for in prayer, the better?

A) Asking shows faith by giving control to something greater than yourself.

B) Divine intervention is given to those who ask the most.

C) Some things are impossible to handle without divine intervention.

D) In America, everyone can dream big.

7. What does Misbah suggest to Noor as the antidote to rage?

A) Sympathy

B) Faith

C) Forgiveness

D) Love

8. What character trait does Misbah retain despite being robbed soon after opening the motel?

A) She does not lose her belief in good hospitality.

B) She does not lose hope.

C) She does not lose her determination.

D) She does not lose her life savings.

9. Which unlikely person sticks up for Noor when Jamie threatens to go to ICE with Noor’s expired green card?

A) Ashlee

B) Art

C) Salahudin

D) Atticus

10. What does Ms. McCann’s denial of Ashlee’s overdose remind Salahudin of?

A) Noor’s failed interview with the UPenn representative

B) His grandmother’s tragic death

C) His own rejection of his father

D) Misbah’s denial of his father’s sickness and her own

11. What does the lottery represent to Noor’s uncle?

A) It is as exciting as the American Dream.

B) It is everything that is wrong with Noor’s dream of college.

C) It is a statistical improbability he can profit from.

D) It is the American Dream made manifest.

12. Which one of the following points does the incident in which Salahudin was assaulted as a child make about abuse?

A) Salahudin’s mother should not have kept the memory from him.

B) People are defined by their traumas.

C) Abuse impacts whole families, not just direct victims.

D) Friendship is sufficient for overcoming trauma.

13. What other relationship does Brooke’s complicity in Noor’s abuse mirror?

A) Toufiq’s complicity in his father’s plan to match him with Misbah.

B) Salahudin’s complicity in Ashlee’s overdose.

C) Jamie’s bullying of Noor.

D) Art’s role as the school’s drug dealer.

14. What hurts Noor more than any pain her uncle caused her?

A) Salahudin’s lies and betrayal

B) Six college rejections

C) Disappointing her English teacher

D) Facing the possibility of eight years in prison

15. What saves Noor and Salahudin’s friendship in the end?

A) Personal growth

B) Time apart

C) Faith

D) Honesty

Long Answer

Compose a response of 2-3 sentences, incorporating text details to support your response.

1. Who or what is the antagonist, or central source of conflict, in the novel? Why?

2. How do Salahudin, Misbah, and Noor remain resilient despite the hardships they face?