Map of Home, A

Author - Randa Jarrar ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Hardcover Book item from Other Press was reviewed on 4-Nov-2008.

Search ISBN:1590512723 offer from Abebooks or used books from Alibris. Map of Home, A Reference Book. Classifications : Contemporary Literature & Fiction Subjects Books Literary Literature & Fiction Subjects Books General AAS Literature & Fiction Subjects Books Hardcover Binding (binding) Refinements Books Printed Book . Click the following link to view the cover of Map of Home, A.

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1) Hardcover Book Map of Home, A by Other Press. This book started out really well... it captured my interest and attention. However, most of the middle part of the book I found to be rather slow. I think the author could have really condensed 10 of her chapters into 3 to pick up the pace. The end of the book was a good switch as this is where she moved to America, so it was quite different from the rest of the book and got interesting again.
I would recommend this book if you´re interested in different cultures and family life.¤

2) Hardcover Book Map of Home, A by Other Press. I know this book got rave reviews...but I can´t think of why. I was so bored...and thought that I´d give it a change...but as I got further into it...it never got any better. I say skip it.
¤

3) Hardcover Book Map of Home, A by Other Press. The other reviews on Amazon and elsewhere have done an excellent job of describing Randa Jarrar´s wonderful first novel. The review from "The Christian Science Monitor", extracted in the first Comment is particularly good; it concludes with a useful warning for parents: "It´s a shame that Jarrar didn´t tone down the profanity and the sensuality, because A Map of Home could have made a wonderful coming-of-age story for teens. As it stands, it´s decidedly R-rated, and with enough multilingual swearing to impress a rap artist."

At this writing, Amazon doesn´t offer the Search function for this book, but Random House does offer a few pages at from its catalog; the link is in the first Comment.

Here´s a small sample of the treasures here. In 1990, the morning of her 13th birthday, Iraq invaded Kuwait, and her family drove in a convoy to Egypt. Enroute she wrote this letter, never mailed, but brilliant nonetheless.

"Dear Mr. Saddam Hussein,

I am in my parents´ falling-apart car, and we are crossing your beautiful country, fleeing from your ugly army. My father has thus far distributed four bottles of Johnny Walker and three silk ties to checkpoint personnel. ...[W]hen you decided to invade the country where I grew up ... did you stop and consider the teenage population? How many were dying, just dying, for classes to resume and crushes to pick up where they left off in June?"

She is just as insightful and funny describing her parents´ difficulty in understanding Spanish or English when they move to Texas: "There is nothing sadder than a fourteen-year-old explaining a movie to her middle-aged parents ... not understanding a movie is the same as being illiterate."

Jarrar is far from being illiterate; she recently translated Hassan Daoud´s The Year of the Revolutionary New Bread-making Machine, and her personal blog is a joy to read:

"Um, let me ask this guy." Yells to guy in the kitchen: "Where´s the sauce from?"
"The Middle East."
"Where in the Middle East?" I said.
"The whole Middle East."
"No, I´ve never heard of it before."
Blank stare.
"I grew up there."
"Where?"
"Kuwait and Egypt, and a little in Palestine."
"Egypt is not in the Middle East."
"Of course it is."
"No. The Middle East is Lebanon and Syria."
"And a few other places."
"I can´t hear you." (He gets out of the kitchen and comes to the counter.)
"Where did the sauce originate?"
"With me, honey. I make the sauce. I´m the one who makes it."
"What´s in it?"
"Garlic, lemon, salt."
"And oil."
"Yeah."
"What kind of oil?"
"Olive."
"What else? It tastes heavy."
"Corn oil. It makes it taste better."
"Right. Thanks!"
"Egypt isn´t the Middle East."
"Okay. Bye."

I went home and enjoyed the sauce with Mr. Rockslinga and Mini Rockslinga. We are still licking our chops. Also: we know where the Middle East starts and ends.

***

A Map of Home is filled with similar fresh, insightful, honest prose; I felt deep empathy for her.

Robert C. Ross 2008¤

4) Hardcover Book Map of Home, A by Other Press. An absolutely delightful book that takes you from Boston to Kuwait to Egypt and finally settles in Texas. The author weaves a very interesting tale of Nidali Ammar and her eccentric family. Nidali is a girl born to a Palestinian father and an Egyptian mother. Unlike many books that I have read about the Middle East, Nidali´s parents do not want her to marry young rather her father stresses education almost above everything else. He wants her to be a famous professor who can hold her own against any man. Her father´s ambition feels like he is trying to live vicariously through her and since her younger brother shows early on that he is not a book worm her father rationalizes his obsession. Her father, Waheed, was forced to leave Palestine because of a war and he moved to Egypt where he got his university degree in Architecture/Engineering. But it is clear that his chosen career would most likely have been different had he been able to grow up in his own country, free of the turmoil of war. With this in mind, he concerntrates his efforts on making his daughter into all that he wished he had been.

The story of the meeting and courtship of Nidali´s parents is in stark contrast to the present that Nidali and her brother are forced to inhabit. Her parents fight often and use choice langauge in private and in front of their children. Her father is physically violent both to his wife and children. Yet despite his volatile temper, you find it a bit hard to hate him, I certainly did not like him but I think that the way that the story is crafted makes you acknowledge his numerous faults without fully detesting him. Her mother is somewhat odd but is essentially a good and feisty soul who feels trapped by the situations she finds herself in.

On Nidali´s thirteenth birthday, Sadaam Hussein attacks Kuwait which is Nidali´s residence at the time. She and her family are forced to flee to Egypt and eventually end up in Texas where he father finds a job. Again she trys to find where she fits in and school becomes her refuge as it had been all her life. But again her father will not let her be her own person and they fight over her choices.

Its almost impossible not to love Nidali. She is such a lovely young lady. Her observations about life are sometimes rib achingly funny. But even in these moments of hilarity, one is gleaning a picture of her world. A world that is frought with loneliness, displacement, loss and the search for an identity that is independent of your parents and culture, whilst still loving one´s parents and culture. This book is very reminiscent of Marjane Satrapi´s Persepolis and it articulates many similar themes. I could have done without some of the crass and vulgar language. Also reading about a thirteen year old masturbating was certainly not a highlight of my day. But all in all I would absolutely recommend this book.¤

5) Hardcover Book Map of Home, A by Other Press. I love this book. It is a great example, along with Junot Diaz´s writing, of how the voice of a narrator can make you fall in love with a character and what she might have to say before the story really even begins. It is a bildungsroman, starring Nidali, a spunky charismatic firecracker of a girl, who is born in America, grows up in Kuwait and then after war displaces her, moves to Egypt, and then after more difficulties moves to Texas.

I can´t tell you how many times this book had me laughing my ass off. The humor is informed by sadness and struggle (in Korean we call that feeling "han"-and not incidentally, Nidali´s very name means "struggle") and I found myself identifying SO much with Nidali. The humor is effective because it has layers of meaning, because we know what it is trying to deflect, and because it drives us forward in a narrative that is, in the end, unflinching in its honesty.

And despite all the laughing throughout my reading (there are sooo many killer lines in this book that sometimes I wondered if Randa was guided by Margaret Cho´s spirit), in the end, I burst into tears. "Stop crying, stop crying!" my husband playfully admonished me, as I closed the book.
¤

6) Hardcover Book Map of Home, A by Other Press. NIDALI, THE REBELLIOUS DAUGHTER OF AN EGYPTIAN-GREEK mother and a Palestinian father, narrates her story from her childhood in Kuwait, her early teenage years in Egypt (to where she and her family fled the 1990 Iraqi invasion), to her family’s last flight to Texas. Nidali mixes humor with a loving and vibrant celebration of an eccentric middle-class family in the Arab world, and this perspective keeps her buoyant through the hardships she encounters: the humiliation of going through a checkpoint on a visit to her father’s home on the West Bank; the fights with her father, who wants her to become a famous professor and stay away from boys; the end of her childhood as Iraq invades Kuwait on her thirteenth birthday; and the scare she gives her family when she runs away from home. Funny, charming, and heartbreaking, A Map of Home is the kind of book Tristam Shandy or Huck Finn would have narrated had they been born Egyptian-Palestinian and female in the 1970s.¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 2-Dec-2008, 15905127239781590512722, 650-900-731-591-351-231-8

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