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Sophia Al-Maria

Författare till The Girl Who Fell to Earth: A Memoir

6+ verk 122 medlemmar 5 recensioner

Verk av Sophia Al-Maria

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The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories (2017) — Bidragsgivare — 276 exemplar

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Beautifully written, daring, honest. A hard but fascinating life. I felt for her tremendously, and I'd like to ask her so many questions. Where is the sequel?
 
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PipRosi | 4 andra recensioner | Oct 21, 2022 |
This is an autobiographical account of a girl growing up in Tacoma, USA, and amongst settled Bedouin in Qatar, with camping trips in the Saudi desert and university in Cairo. The author's self-protagonist is neither heroine nor villain, although she does choose to emphasise her roles as an outsider. The prose is readable, and the content is interesting. These aren't the usual published perspectives on life in any of these societies. Although I was left wondering about the status of the Bedouin family's maid, who is mentioned once by name as a cook and then never referred to again. On the whole, a satisfying read.

Quotes

On flying out of Qatar: "She folded the hijab up and slipped it into her seat pocket with the barf bag and escape instructions."

Generation gap: "At ten years old I had played Oregon Trail on a computer, shooting squirrels with pixel bullets and getting virtual dysentery on a wagon train. My father, at ten, was on an actual epic trek, hunting with an actual falcon and risking very real tuberculosis while riding in a bona fide camel caravan."
… (mer)
 
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spiralsheep | 4 andra recensioner | Jan 20, 2021 |
Part American and part Bedouin--Growing up in at least two cultures

When Sophia Al-Maria’s father was a boy his family still lived a traditional Bedouin lifestyle, traveling around the deserts of Qatar and Saudi Arabia and sleeping in tents under skies dark enough to be filled with stars. After being forced by boundary-loving authorities to settle in a gender-segregated family compound her father’s wanderlust remained, which is how he ended up in Seattle unable to speak English but still managing to meet and marry an American girl, giving Al-Maria the dual or maybe triple or even quadruple cultural heritage that makes this memoir so mind expandingly and eye openingly interesting.

Al-Maria spent part of her childhood in her grandmother’s small, isolated house in rural Washington state, where the protective paranoia of her mother made Al-Maria feel more trapped than when she stayed in her father’s crowded multi-generational and now stationery home in Qatar. Even though while in Qatar there were substantial cultural and religious restrictions on her ability to move around freely and meet with whomever she wanted, being part of a larger family crowd felt liberating.

While she lived in Qatar Al-Maria spent her time getting to know her substantial Bedouin family, attending an international school mainly for foreigners, brawling with her male cousins in the wrong side of their gender divided home because she couldn’t stand that being older meant she was no longer able to play Mortal Kombat with them (well, this happened just once), assisting her uncle’s carefully choreographed subterfuge as he sneak-courted a non-Bedouin girl unacceptable to their family (which helped her figure out how to spend forbidden time with her boyfriend when she fell in love), and attending rowdy, sexually charged all female parties that seemed to be part of the insular culture of women. Al-Maria also got to experience a little of her traditional Bedouin heritage when the whole family would take off to camp in the desert.

Several of Al-Maria’s perspectives and insights on hot topics like burka wearing are not what I’ve encountered anywhere else, and she experienced class divides I knew nothing about. The book presents a fascinating almost disorienting set of interrelated worlds and Al-Maria’s vivid energetic writing sweeps the story along, allowing me the deep pleasure of being able to visualize that wide, star-rich desert sky but leaving me hanging a little at the end wondering what she did next. I’m hoping for a follow up book.

Thanks to Zanna on GoodReads for bringing the book to my attention. Her review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1025469661?book_show_action=false&page...
… (mer)
 
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Jaylia3 | 4 andra recensioner | Dec 17, 2014 |

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Statistik

Verk
6
Även av
1
Medlemmar
122
Popularitet
#163,289
Betyg
½ 3.4
Recensioner
5
ISBN
8
Språk
1

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