Muslim Girl Superhero.

• Author: Ahmad, Meher
• Position: 'Ms Marvel Series' - Book review

Muslim Girl Superhero

Ms. Marvel Series

By G. Willow Wilson

Marvel Comics. 32 pages each. $11.

I read The Joy Luck Club when I was in fourth grade, perhaps a little too early to begin confronting my immigrant identity, but it was my first exposure to an entire genre of immigrant experiences. It was a good place to start because I suddenly realized I wasn't the first to have a doting immigrant mother attempting to make me into her own image of success. My mom didn't try to persuade me into becoming a chess star for bragging rights like Waverly Jong, but she did try to fashion me into a mathlete, a task which I inevitably failed to accomplish.

The story of the new Ms. Marvel, Kamala Khan, isn't so different from mine. She, too, has a doting mother and a concerned father praying for her to choose a career in medicine. That isn't so much an immigrant story as the American teenage story. Kamala is struggling to define her sense of self, all the while brooding and quarrelling with her parents.

But Kamala's character, gifted with the superpower of shape shifting, isn't just another American teen. She's Marvel's attempt at introducing its readers to an American Muslim Teen.

Major plotlines in Kamala's comic series are dedicated to her struggle with her Muslim faith. I can relate. I grappled with Islam's cultural expectations around the same age as Kamala's sixteen-year-old self. But I cringe a bit at the gee-whiz presentation of the Muslim immigrant experience, which seems intended for a white audience that will find Kamala's cultural background exotic.

There is the familiar immigrant narrative line: a doting mother, a distant but hard-working patriarch, one sibling that clings to tradition and another that rebels. Marvel has been applauded by virtually all media coverage of Kamala Khan for introducing a Muslim superhero. But the cookie-cutter immigrant story here is not so revolutionary.

That said, it is refreshing to have a superhero that is so like myself in the pages of one of the biggest superhero comics in the world.

Pakistanis are rarely introduced in popular media in any form except as a member of your friendly terrorist cell next door a la 24. There aren't any Pakistani teens in Modern Family, on the Disney Channel, or in the Twilight series. Kamala is one of the first to break into popular culture from our country-- and as a superhero at that.

There's no doubt that Marvel has taken a big step creating a character from a demographic that...