Darius the Great Is Not Okay

Product Information

Darius Kellner speaks better Klingon than Farsi, and he knows more about Hobbit social cues than Persian ones. He's about to take his first-ever trip to Iran, and it's pretty overwhelming—especially when he's also dealing with clinical depression, a disapproving dad, and a chronically anemic social life. In Iran, he gets to know his ailing but still formidable grandfather, his loving grandmother, and the rest of his mom's family for the first time. And he meets Sohrab, the boy next door who changes everything. Horning, Kathleen T. (2019). CCBC choices 2019. Merri V. Lindgren, Megan Schliesman, Madeline Tyner, University of Wisconsin--Madison. Cooperative Children's Book Center. Madison, Wisconsin. ISBN 978-0-931641-29-9. OCLC 1096332792. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher ( link) Darius Kellner speaks better Klingon than Farsi, and he knows more about Hobbit social cues than Persian ones. He’s a Fractional Persian—half, his mom’s side—and his first-ever trip to Iran is about to change his life. Is it important for writers to insert themselves into their characters? What value does this add to a story? This book is about a boy named Darius, who has never really been in touch with his Persian identity until visiting Iran—and his family—for the first time. It’s about family and friendship and mental health and learning to be okay with not being okay. It’s about finding who you are and making connections with other people and it’s just overall a beautiful story about a boy coming to terms with himself.

Darius the Great Is Not Okay | LitCharts Family Theme in Darius the Great Is Not Okay | LitCharts

Dad swallowed his pills dry; his prominent Teutonic Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he did it. And then he turned to me and said, “So, you heard that Babou went to the doctor today?”I took my empty cup of genmaicha to the kitchen and washed and dried it by hand. Then I filled a regular glass with water from the fridge and went to the cabinet where we kept everyone’s medicine. I sorted through the orange capsules until I found my own. The next day, Sohrab joins Darius’s family on their trip to the ruins of Persepolis. There, Darius sees carvings of his namesake, Darioush the Great—but he doesn’t feel great and brave like Darioush. Babou drives, but on the way home, he gets angry and pulls over. Dad finishes the drive and Sohrab whispers to Darius what happened: Babou got lost. He won’t be able to drive again after this. Darius has never really fit in at home, and he’s sure things are going to be the same in Iran. His clinical depression doesn’t exactly help matters, and trying to explain his medication to his grandparents only makes things harder. Then Darius meets Sohrab, the boy next door, and everything changes. Soon, they’re spending their days together, playing soccer, eating faludeh, and talking for hours on a secret rooftop overlooking the city’s skyline. Sohrab calls him Darioush—the original Persian version of his name—and Darius has never felt more like himself than he does now that he’s Darioush to Sohrab.

Darius the Great Deserves Better - Common Sense Media Darius the Great Deserves Better - Common Sense Media

No one had ever made me feel like it was okay to cry. Or bumped shoulders with me and made me smile. The next morning, Darius wraps a pair of cleats he bought as a going-away present for Sohrab to replace Sohrab’s two pairs, which are falling apart. But when Darius gets to the Rezaeis’ house, Sohrab and his family members are distraught—Sohrab’s dad was killed in prison. Wild with grief and anger, Sohrab tells Darius to go away and that nobody wants him. Darius believes Sohrab and runs to the public restroom roof, where he sits for hours and cries. After a meet-cute involving a post-soccer-game shower*****, Sohrab and Darius find themselves "joined at the shoulder," and (without any spoilers), the most probable narrative arc unfolds from there: there are confidences, moments of adorable whimsy, fights and reconciliations. In other words, not exactly the kind of stakes that are going to blow anyone away. Is your heart still full from reading Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda? Well, do we have the perfect book for you. Adib Khorram’s Darius the Great Is Not Okay is a tender look into the life of Darius Kellner, a nerdy half-Persian teenager who’s having difficulty finding his place in the world.” Without his Persianness, in other words, Darius is a socially isolated, monosyllabic, and not-very-well-defined character. Which is not only a writerly failing on Khorram's part, but somewhat sociopolitically problematic. I am, on the one hand, cheered by the proliferation of Iranian-American literature since the advent of the Trump era, and on the other hand, a little concerned by the commoditization and solidification of the Iranian-American identity, of which Khorram seems guilty here****.I had a very sharp memory of Dad yelling at me to stop crying so he could examine my hand, and how I wouldn’t let him hold it because I was afraid he was going to make it worse. SBarta (March 25, 2019). "Announcing the 2019 RITBA Winner and the 2020 List! | Rhode Island Teen Book Award". Rhode Island Teen Book Award . Retrieved January 1, 2022. One of the things I loved most about this book was the depression representation, which was… absolutely amazing. Granted, I haven’t seen a LOT of depression rep in books, but this is definitely one of the best representations I’ve read.