I cannot remember how I found this book, which is sad because I LOVED THIS. It is amazing and it tackles the sensitive topic of race and a difficult time in Malaysia’s history with great skill and empathy.

The Weight of Our Sky is set during the 13 May 1969 racial riots. Melati and her best friend, Saf, are at the cinema when the riots start. The entire cinema is divided by race and the Malays are killed; Melati is only saved due to the intervention of a kind Chinese auntie. Stranded in a suddenly hostile city, Melati has to depend on people that she doesn’t know if she can trust to find her way back to her mother.

There are many reasons why this book moved me but let’s start with Melati and the Djinn inside of her. Melati suffers from OCD but due to the lack of understanding about mental health in those days, it manifests as a Djinn inside her who threatens death to all the people she loves unless she carries out the rituals. Using the Djinn to show her compulsions and obsessions made Melati’s OCD understandable and grounded in the context of her time. I also really appreciated the fact that this book features a protagonist with a mental health issue without trivialising the severity of it.

The second reason why I was so affected by this book was because of its portrayal of race. We’re currently in a controversy over brownface and the appropriate way to respond to it (“is responding to it by insulting the majority race valid?” being the main thing people are arguing about) and this book just felt very timely. Alkaf manages to show that there is mistrust on both sides and that the only way we can bridge this gap is to learn to put down our barriers and work together. I really appreciated that there were good and bad characters from both races because stereotyping groups of people is the exact reason why people are so quick to misjudge one another.

Please note that this is not an easy book to read. If you need, check out the Wikipedia article of the riots and see if this is something you can handle. Race issues are difficult to read and when there’s a lot of violence going on, it can become very painful to witness the worst of humanity even if through the page. I definitely think this book is worth reading but if you’re in a place where you just need a light-hearted read, come back to this book in another time.

Overall, this is an eye-opening book about a painful period in Malaysia’s recent past. I’m ashamed to say that even though I am Singaporean, I only knew about our racial riots and not our immediate neighbours. But this is a timely book, given the current racial tensions all over the world, and I cannot recommend it strongly enough (provided you are in a mental and emotional place where you can handle the topics).