Home is Not a Country
by Safia Elhillo (Author)
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Booktalk: Nima wishes she were someone else. She doesn’t feel understood by her mother, who grew up in a different land. She doesn’t feel accepted in her suburban town; yet somehow, she isn’t different enough to belong elsewhere. Her best friend, Haitham, is the only person with whom she can truly be herself. Until she can’t, and suddenly her only refuge is gone.
As the ground is pulled out from under her, Nima must grapple with the phantom of a life not chosen–the name her parents meant to give her at birth–Yasmeen. But that other name, that other girl, might be more real than Nima knows.
And the life Nima wishes were someone else’s. . . is one she will need to fight for with a fierceness she never knew she possessed.
Snippet:
Baba
The photographs of my father are everywhere
alone in a suit framed in the living room
seated with his afro full taped to the mirror of my mother’s dresser
in the one on the coffee table he stares awestruck at his bride
a passport picture in mama’s wallet a single furrow in his brow
i like the one of him younger rounded & serious as a child
dusty-kneed as a teenager crowded with other boys arund a ball
before the car crash that took him from knowing me
before the father-sized ache before my mother all alone
still crowding herself to one side of the bed saving his place
soft browns of sepia photos
making him impossibly far away
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