Retaliation - Softcover

The inspiration behind Retaliation:
I was scheduled to conduct a self-esteem workshop with teen girls in Washington, DC. When I arrived and began my presentation, none of the girls would talk to me. Everyone was silent. I began to ask the group questions about their lives. Again, I was met with silence. I then asked the group, "What do you love? What do you hate?" One brave voice responded, "I hate the girls who jumped me."

That conversation combined with research and so many other conversations where young women spoke about the violence that impacted their lives inspired me to write a fictional story in which girl fighting was at the center.

Though Retaliation is a work of fiction, it is inspired by the climate of girl violence that has invaded our schools, our buses, the malls, and everywhere girls go in the US. Because so much of my research took place in Washington, DC, the book takes place there.

Retaliation is the first young adult novel that I've ever written.  Writing it, though, felt so natural--like breathing. For a little less than a month, I sat down for 4 hours a day and worked on the manuscript and the words came effortlessly. I've never written a book so fast or so painless.
It was almost as if my brain and my hands were waiting for me to write this story.

Everyday, violence and danger run rampant on the streets of Washington, DC, and on one seemingly quiet day, the Odom family finds its world destroyed when the baby girl of the family, seventeen-year-old Tashera is brutally attacked by a group of high school girls. Tashera, finds herself trying to rein in her growing anger at being an innocent bystander as she worries about how this event will affect her family. Sheila Odom, Tashera?s mother, has to deal with her secretive past, her one mistake that threatens to come back to life and destroy any and everyone involved on the attack of her daughter. Khalil, Tashera?s brother?a wheelchair bound, former gang member?is willing to become active again in the Deuce Tr?s crew in order to send a message.In her novel Retaliation, Yasmin Shiraz exposes the corrupting existence of violence in our communities and the retaliatory measures ? whether right or wrong ? that families go through in order to protect themselves and their children.