Nima, a Sudanese-American teenager, struggles with the friction between her Arabic heritage and her life in an unwelcoming American suburb. Living with her widowed mother, she feels haunted by the ghost of a life she never lived—a version of herself named Yasmeen who might have existed had her father survived and her parents stayed in their homeland. When a traumatic event fractures her reality, Nima enters a surreal landscape where she confronts these alternate timelines and the ancestral secrets her mother keeps hidden. Through sequences of free verse, the narrative examines the specific weight of post-colonial displacement and the search for identity within the diaspora.
Readers of contemporary verse novels and those interested in the immigrant experience find a technical study of linguistic and cultural duality here. The book appeals to anyone navigating the tension between inherited tradition and modern assimilation. Instead of a linear plot, the audience encounters a rhythmic examination of how nostalgia shapes a person’s sense of belonging. Readers finish the book with a deeper understanding of how the loss of a mother tongue and the physical distance from a family’s origin create a permanent feeling of suspension between two worlds.
- Published
- 2021
- Language
- EN
