Customer Reviews

Map of Home, A

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

There is so much about this book I related to--from the sexy shyness and confusion of the teenage Nidali (though I didn't have to worry about getting beaten for kissing a boy) to the loyalty to her family, to the feelings of otherness, I felt like I knew this girl. The prose is gorgeous and sparkling, and very, very funny. Insights into Palestinian culture and history, the first Gulf war, and growing up in a Muslim family were new to me, though questions of identity, love of one's culture, and the confusion of growing up were very familiar.


I read this book in just a few short days, commuting to work and at home in the evening. It is a fast, engaging read, with lots to ponder. I am so glad that I was able to read a book about Muslim culture that gave me a new understanding of the Middle East and of Muslims. I think this book is definitely what America needs to read right now. I read Towelhead when it came out, which has some similarities (the time, the Gulf War, and the setting, Texas), but this book is just so much more mesmerizing and genuine.

Parts of the narrative also reminded me of Satrapi's Persepolis, and the way that she relates the duality of loving one's culture and history while simultaneously being frustrated by its government and dictates.

A book full of love, humor, and insight. I loved it.

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.

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

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.

Randa Jarrar's A Map of Home is both hilarious and heartbreaking. 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. Nidali is an Arab Muslim woman whose heritage is almost as diverse as the Arab world itself. Her father is Palestinian, and her mother the Egyptian daughter of a Greek Christian mother. After a lively description of her birth and naming in Boston (Nidal means struggle in Arabic, Nidali literally means "my struggle" but was her father's bizarre attempt also to feminize the male name he'd hope to use on a male child), we first meet the Ammar family in Kuwait, but follow them as Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait force them to flee to Egypt, finally to settle in Texas. With each move, Nidali must start anew, and figure out who she is, where she fits in, and how she can survive in this new place. Typically in such tales, the outsider finds a certain sort of welcome in America, supposed home to all sorts of cultural outsiders. But not so for Nidali. Always an outsider, Nidali realizes that in America, "everyone here was half one thing, half another. I thought this would make me feel at home but instead I was so sad that I was no longer special." Even though this is primarily a coming of age tale, Jarrar's sense of the historical really amplified the personal quest for identity. In other words, she shows how "big" historical events like the loss of Palestinian territories in 1967, Nasser's defeat, and Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait shape one little girl's childhood, and form the fabric of her family's quirky dynamics.

The best thing about Jarrar's writing is her ability to create such an endearing heroine with such an original, ironic, self-reflective, and funny voice, which recalls Saleem Sinai from Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children and Khadra Shamy from Mohja Kahf's The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf. Nidali is witty and ironically self-deprecating as she chronicles her many blunders, misunderstandings, and cultural faux pas. As a young girl, I too loved Wonder Woman, but through a young Arab woman's eyes, it's plain to see how Wonder Woman's black hair, golden eagle, lasso, and stars she really could be emblems for parts of her Egyptian, Palestinian, and American identities. "I wondered if Wonder Woman was Egyptian and Palestinian and American, like me." That sort of misunderstanding comes across as hilarious in the novel, but underneath it is the heartbreaking attempt to put together the pieces of one's heritage, to find a way in which they all can really fit together as a whole being. Maps form the central metaphor for home, identity, and belonging in the novel. For Baba, the map of Palestine is politically contentious and ever-shifting, but is something that must be known by heart. For Nidali, it's only when she can erase the borders of those maps that she can live in the present, and feel free of the constraints these maps impose on her life.

I loved A Map of Home; as a coming of age story, it felt so real to me. But as a coming of age story of an Arab girl, it really spoke truth to power, and that is what makes this such a powerful read. At times I laughed so hard I almost fell off the couch, and at other times I had to reach for the box of tissues. Of all the recent Arab American works of fiction, it is among the best. I can't wait to read what Jarrar writes next!

Nidali Ammar, born in America to a Greek/Egyptian mother and a Palestinian father, spends her childhood in flux between Kuwait, Palestine, Egypt, and Texas. A Map of Home chronicles her childhood from birth to departure to college, and has such a biographical feel that I was unsurprised to find that first-time author Randa Jarrar is also the daughter of a Greek/Egyptian mother and a Palestinian father who spent her youth moving from country to country. Jarrar set out to write a book that would represent her own identity, and I imagine she has succeeded as in many instances Nidali's narrative feels very real.

That very authenticity makes the verbal and physical abuse in Nidali's family even more starkly depressing. There is obviously love among the Ammar family members, but that doesn't keep Nidali's father from berating (whore is a popular epithet) or hitting Nidali and her mother. While Nidali's mother, a former pianist, squeezes some joy out of life in each of their homes, her once poetic father seems to have a bleak and resentful existence. Nidali is blunt, sarcastic, and spirited, but her family life made me ponder why people treat the ones they love so miserably. While many scenes, including those of family strife and a fairly depressing deflowering, have a raw authenticity, other scenes appear more contrived, and sometimes the sophistication of the narrator is out of scale with her chronological age. The narrative and writing is strong enough to overcome these flaws, though in my eyes the book does suffer from at least one significant shortcoming.

I, perhaps unfairly, long for works of fiction to have an overarching point, which A Map of Home appears to lack. What does it mean that this girl has experienced these events in her life? An autobiographical work, a real person's story, needs no justification aside from the mere existence of a person who has lived. In a work of fiction I want more, a meaning, a message, some kernel of truth about humanity. I am left not knowing exactly what Jarrar wanted to tell me with this novel, except that a girl like Nidali might exist out there. Perhaps that is enough.

Nidali has an American passport, since she was born in Boston. Her Mama is Egyptian and Greek, her father is Palestinian, making Nidali "half-and-half." Growing up in Kuwait, she never quite feels at home - she has her friends, but she is on a different wavelength. She is a smart girl, but it's never quite enough for her father, a man who expects her to become a famous professor. While the story of her parents' courtship is one she remembers, somehow, with fondness, Nidali now deals with the almost constant fights in her household. And, on her thirteenth birthday, Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army invades Kuwait, leaving her mixed family with no option but to flee to Egypt where Nidali once again wonders what it means to be at home. When finally Nidali's family makes their last move to Texas, she decides that there is one way to escape her overbearing father and eccentric mother, to step out into the world and find herself and her home.

A Map of home is an unusual, poetic book that simply has no equal in contemporary literature to date. Jarrar's language is fluid, honest, and liberating, painting a beautiful picture of the Middle East that one would think impossible during times of turmoil. Nidali's account of growing up - from school and friends to sex and politics - transcends culture and unites us all in the struggle that is adolescence. At the same time, this is a novel that shines a new light on coming of age in an Arab family. Jarrar is a storyteller in the truest sense of the word, using charm and humor as much as hardship to bring us close to her characters and her truly musical narrative.

Nidali is the daughter of an Egyptian-Greek mother and a Palestinian father, and although she was born in the United States, she grows up in Kuwait. A Map of Home details Nidali's coming of age in Kuwait, Egypt (after being forced to flee Kuwait during the 1990 Iraqi invasion), and finally Texas. Nidali struggles against an overly protective, dictatorial, and caring father as she comes to terms with what she wants in life, including being a writer.

A Map of Home is not autobiographical, although Jarrar, also the daughter of an Egyptian-Greek mother and a Palestinian father, similarly grew up in Kuwait and later moved to America. Nonetheless, her novel has a distinctly memoir-like feel to it as Nidali narrates moments from her life not in a traditional narrative form, but in bits and pieces with minimal specifics in time.

In many ways A Map of Home is a traditional coming-of-age novel with the twist of Nidali's family background and living situations. Much of the book concerns Nidali's relationship with her father (Baba) and her parents' own love/hate relationship. Her father's certainty about Nidali's future (she will get her bachelors, then her masters, then her Ph.D. and become a famous writer) and certainty that she will become a whore (even when she's just at the library studying; even when she really is hooking up) Nidali alternatively accepts and rejects. She learns how to challenge her father and get what she wants while also getting stellar grades and pursuing her own desire to become a writer. Her parents' tumultuous relationship forms another central part of the novel, and Nidali describes their interactions with each other in terms of battles and war.

Baba's characterization was one of my favorite parts of the book. He beats Nidali, her brother, and her mother with relative frequency. But Nadali considers his beatings as perfectly normal among the Kuwait families, and Baba obviously cares for and is concerned about his daughter. He is proud of her and wants her to have success in life, even though that success is often guided more by what he wants than what Nidali wants. His and Nidali's relationship is often hilarious, and I loved Nidali's passive-aggressive rebellions (when Baba makes her spend weekends writing college application essays, one such composition begins, "I come from a great line of crazy hoes" (261).) Baba is never demonized, and the reader's own feelings towards him shift back and forth throughout the book. It was difficult to establish the line between Baba evidencing the cultural expectations he was raised in and him unfairly reacting to his daughter. That ambiguity, though, is probably more real to life than a more black and white picture.

The political background of the novel was interesting, but it never eclipses Nidali's story. Some other reviewers have complained about the explicit cursing and sex, which didn't bother me, but it might be surprising to someone used to reading YA-marketed books of this kind. I enjoyed the book's tone, which is frank, sarcastic, and full of teenage life.

A Map of Home was a good combination of familiar (adolescent maturity) and unfamiliar (Kuwait in the '80s; Nidali's parents' experiences).

This book is laugh-out-loud funny, while telling an entertaining and sometimes moving story of an Arab family's 17-year journey from America to Kuwait to Egypt and back to America again. During that time, its narrator Nidali grows from her arrival as a newborn at a hospital in Boston to her departure from home for college. Hers is a tightly-knit family, her father Palestinian and her mother Egyptian. From beginning to end there are stormy scenes between parents and between parents and children. Though their domestic life is interrupted by the Gulf War, requiring them to flee by car across Iraq to Jordan, global politics seem to have little effect on the real focus of their lives - being a family.

Nidali is independent minded from an early age, a trait she inherits from both of her parents. She takes liberties whenever there is opportunity, resulting in nearly never-ending disputes with her father and conflicts with teachers. Meanwhile, her mother demands to be her own person, as well, and both suffer more than their share of abuse for the privilege of doing exactly what they please. Father may know best but he seldom gets his way. There's plenty of trash talk and unembarrassed references to sex, which may put off readers accustomed to more idealistic portrayals of family life, but discord seems to be the tie that binds in this bittersweet story. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

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.

If you haven't read this book in hardcover, it is now available in paperback with cool cover art. Buy it!