Hailed as 'one of the finest writers of her generation' (Laila Lalami), Jarrar delivers a euphoric and critical, funny and profound memoir that will speak to anyone who has felt erased, asserting: I am here. On the way, she schools a rest-stop racist, destroys Confederate flags in the desert, and visits the Chicago neighborhood where her immigrant parents first lived. Reclaiming her autonomy after a life of survival-domestic assault as a child, and later, as a wife threats and doxxing after her viral tweet about Barbara Bush-Jarrar offers a bold look at domestic violence, single motherhood, and sexuality through the lens of the punished-yet-triumphant body. As an American raised for a time in Egypt, and finding herself captivated by the story of a celebrated Egyptian belly dancer's journey across the United States in the 1940s, she sets off from her home in California to her parents' in Connecticut.Ĭoloring this road trip are journeys abroad and recollections of a life lived with daring. Baba smells his hands when the bus stops at our neighborhood. The bus races through neighborhoods and picks up people in uniform. Nidali Ammar, the novel's heroine, chronicles her crazy family life, the heartbreaking, violent decline of her parent's marriage, and her own struggle to find her place in the midst of war, historical displacement, and the minefield that is female adolescence in a traditional culture. Our second year in America, approaching our third, and Baba still comes back from work on a bus. Randa Jarrar is a fearless voice of dissent who has been called 'politically incorrect' (Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times). Sixteen:The Shit No One Bothered To Tell Us. In this 'exuberant, defiant and introspective' memoir of a cross-country road trip, she explores how to claim joy in an unraveling and hostile America ( The New York Times Book Review).

A map of home by randa jarrar