Call Me Al

This is a coming-of-age story about the cost of a name, the weight of immigrant sacrifice, and the nerve it takes to speak in your own voice. It's warm without being soft, and it treats a kid's notebook with real stakes. Read it if you've ever been misnamed, misread, or asked to shrink. It's especially for young writers, children of immigrants, and anyone who froze in a school cafeteria.

1. 1

   Act 1

   The Call

   Ali Khan sits in class in Mississauga, Ontario, already bracing. His teacher, Ms. Thomas, assigns a spoken word poetry project, and Ali dreads public speaking so much he's convinced the assignment will expose him as an outsider. Then he overhears his parents arguing about money at home—his father, Abu, drives a taxi for long hours, his mother, Ammi, worries about the bills—and Ali feels the full weight of what their sacrifice costs. His best friend Dan, white, easygoing, and genuinely curious about Ali's Pakistani culture even when he fumbles it, pushes him to try writing a poem. Ali does. He writes about his father's taxi, and one line stops him cold: 'My father's hands smell like gasoline and prayer.' He reads it alone in his room, startled by how much emotion it stirs. The cafeteria brings the low point: a white student named Jake mocks Ali's lunch, calls the smell of biryani 'disgusting,' and Ali freezes, then throws his food away. He carries that shame straight into his writing. When he finally performs for the class, his voice shakes—but Ms. Thomas tells him, 'You have a gift, Ali. Don't hide it.' Dan claps loudly, and a few classmates look at him differently.

2. 2

   Act 2

   The Response

   A substitute teacher can't pronounce Ali's name and calls him Al. Ali starts hiding a notebook under his mattress and writes the line that gives the book its title: 'Call me Al, like I'm a shortcut you can take.' At the mosque with his father, he watches Abu pray and notices the worn spot on Abu's forehead from prostration, writing, 'His faith has a geography I'm still learning to read.' Dan invites him to a classmate's party, where kids ask if he's 'allowed' to drink or date; Ali leaves early and walks home alone in the cold. His older sister Aisha finds the notebook—and instead of teasing him, she reads it and says, 'You're saying what I've been feeling for years.' She becomes his first real audience. Ms. Thomas enters him in a citywide youth poetry slam. Terrified, Ali practices in front of the bathroom mirror, reciting lines about his mother's dupatta and the scent of cardamom. At the slam, held in a downtown Toronto community center, he performs a piece titled 'Unpronounceable.' The audience snaps their fingers in appreciation. He doesn't win, but a Black girl poet tells him, 'You made me cry, brother.'

3. 3

   Act 3

   The Echo

   Abu finds the notebook. He reads it silently, then says, 'I did not come to this country for you to waste time on words.' Ali feels a rift open between them and stops writing for weeks, burying himself in math and science to become the son his father wants. Dan notices the change and says, 'You're disappearing, man. Where's the guy who wrote about gasoline hands?' Aisha confronts Abu: 'His words are not a waste. They're the only thing that makes sense to him.' Abu listens but says nothing. Later, Ali finds his notebook returned to his desk, a corner folded down. He starts writing again—this time a poem about the 1947 Partition, built from stories his grandmother told him, with the line 'Borders are just scars that forgot how to heal.' He reads it to Aisha, who weeps. At school, he's paired with Jake for a history project; Jake admits he didn't know anything about Pakistan before meeting Ali, and Ali turns that into a poem called 'The Education of Jake.' Then comes Multicultural Day: Ali recites a poem about his name at a school assembly, ending, 'Call me Ali. It's the first gift my parents gave me.' The auditorium is silent, then erupts. Abu shows up unexpectedly afterward and tells him, 'I heard you. I did not understand all of it, but I heard you.' They embrace in the parking lot.

4. 4

   Act 4

   The Song

   Ali is invited to perform at a larger youth festival in Toronto. He writes a new poem about his mother, describing her hands 'stained with turmeric and worry,' and when Ammi hears him practice, she cries quietly in the kitchen. At the festival he meets Khaled, a Pakistani-Canadian rapper who tells him, 'Your words are a bridge. Don't let anyone burn it.' Ali keeps the advice in his notebook. Then a video of his performance of 'Gasoline and Prayer' goes viral. Strangers message him saying his words made them feel seen, and Ali is overwhelmed and a little scared. Fame strains his oldest friendship: Dan jokes that Ali is 'famous now' and will forget his old friends, and Ali yells, 'You don't get it—I'm still the same guy who can't eat lunch without someone staring!' They reconcile later on a park bench. Ali writes his final poem, addressed to his future self: 'Remember the boy who wrote in the dark. He was trying to turn on a light.' He closes the notebook and goes downstairs to dinner. The book ends at the table—Ali, Aisha, Ammi, and Abu together. Abu asks Ali to read something he's written. Ali hesitates, then recites a short poem about family. Abu nods and says, 'Good. Now eat.'

• AAli KhanAn eighth-grader in Mississauga who dreads public speaking and hides a poetry notebook under his mattress. He wants to be seen without being exposed—and by the end, he's reading aloud to his family.
• AAbuAli's father, a taxi driver working long hours, whose worn forehead from prayer Ali studies like a map. He calls poetry a waste of words, then shows up at the assembly to say he heard his son.
• AAmmiAli's mother, who worries about bills and whose hands are 'stained with turmeric and worry.' She cries quietly in the kitchen when she hears his poem about her.
• AAishaAli's older sister and his first real audience. She defends his writing to their father and weeps at his Partition poem.
• DDanAli's white best friend—easygoing, curious about Pakistani culture, prone to awkward comments. He pushes Ali to write, calls out his disappearance, and fights and reconciles with him over fame.
• JJakeThe classmate who mocked Ali's biryani, then admits during a history project that he knew nothing about Pakistan. He becomes the subject of Ali's poem 'The Education of Jake.'
• MMs. ThomasThe teacher whose spoken word assignment starts everything. She tells Ali he has a gift and enters him in a citywide poetry slam.
• KKhaledA Pakistani-Canadian rapper Ali meets at a youth festival. He tells Ali his words are a bridge and not to let anyone burn it.

The notebook under the mattress

Ali's hidden self, literally stashed beneath where he sleeps. It's discovered twice—by Aisha, who becomes his first audience, and by Abu, who calls it a waste before quietly returning it with a corner folded down. Its journey from hiding to dinner-table reading tracks Ali's own.

The folded corner

Abu returns the confiscated notebook with a corner folded down—wordless, but a mark. It stands for a father who can't yet say 'I was wrong' but can leave a sign he read every page. It's the hinge between the rift and the parking-lot embrace.

Abu's taxi

The vehicle of sacrifice—long hours, bills, a father's hands smelling of 'gasoline and prayer.' Ali's first poem is about it, and 'Gasoline and Prayer' goes viral, so the symbol of what Ali feared becoming ashamed of becomes the thing the world applauds.

The worn spot on Abu's forehead

The physical mark of prostration, noticed by Ali at the mosque. It stands for faith lived so long it leaves a trace—devotion as geography Ali is 'still learning to read.' It's how Ali learns to see his father as a text worth studying rather than an obstacle.

The ending is deliberately small: a dinner table, a request, a short poem, and 'Good. Now eat.' Abu doesn't deliver a speech about art or apology. He asks to hear the writing he once called a waste, then folds it back into the ordinary ritual of family—food, presence, no ceremony. That's the interpretation with the most weight: acceptance arrives in the father's native language, which is provision, not praise. A competing reading is that the reconciliation stays partial—Abu says he heard but didn't understand all of it, and 'Good. Now eat' could be read as deflection, affection that stops short of full recognition. The book seems to accept that ambiguity as honest. What makes it land is the reversal of the opening: Ali began dreading being heard in public and ends being asked to speak at home, the hardest room. The final poem, addressed to his future self—'Remember the boy who wrote in the dark. He was trying to turn on a light.'—frames the whole story as a message the boy leaves for the man. The light isn't fame or the viral video; it's a father saying 'Good' and meaning it.

1. 1.Abu says, 'I did not come to this country for you to waste time on words,' yet the book ends with him requesting a poem. Is his change of heart earned by Aisha's confrontation, the assembly performance, or something the novel leaves unspoken—and does the folded notebook corner count as an apology?

Young writers who keep their work hidden, and anyone who grew up translating between home and school. It's a natural pick for classrooms and for parents trying to understand what their kids are actually carrying.

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