quillandquire.com
Friday July 19, 2019
The Youth of God is a novel by Hassan Ghedi Santur. (Mawenzi House)
Hassan Ghedi Santur’s novel The Youth of God is a heart-stopping story that traces the life of Nuur, a teenager growing up in a Somali neighbourhood of Toronto. This is also a story about Mr. Ilmi, Nuur’s kind-hearted teacher, who has experienced a sense of displacement from his own faith and culture. Through Mr. Ilmi’s eyes, we get a glimpse into the ways in which the education system fails racialized students and teachers. Santur effortlessly depicts a cross-section of the Somali community, with all its complexity, from the devout to the doubting.
Nuur is a sensitive and intelligent boy torn between his academic dreams and his sense of duty to his religion. Santur masterfully documents the susceptibility of youth to believe in a cause they may not fully understand, and the ways in which bad choices are frequently based in a need for survival and belonging. Through a series of escalating consequences that unravel at a furious pace, Santur demonstrates the concurrent failure of institutional systems and good-hearted individuals to protect disenfranchised youth.
The desire to wrap things up in a perfect bow might be tempting for any writer, but such a resolution
In its essence, The Youth of God is a story about love, and how the lack of embodied love can starve a young person’s ability to make choices in their best interests. It is a painful reminder of the immense vulnerability of promising third-culture kids who navigate a double exile. While nominally a work of fiction, The Youth of God should be read as a cautionary tale of what can transpire when at-risk youth are allowed to slip through the cracks.