Him, Me, Muhammad Ali
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"In her first story collection, Jarrar employs a particular, rather than rhetorical approach to race and gender. Thus we have "How Can I Be of Use to You," with its complicated relationship between a distinguished Egyptian feminist and her young intern, demonstrating that gender politics are never straightforward, and both generations-old and new-take advantage of each other. There's also a healthy dose of magic surrealism, as in the wild and witty story "Zelda the Halfie" which follows a breed of half Ibexes/half humans and their various tribulations. The writing is peppered with gorgeous imagery: a moon reflected in an ice cream scoop, breath that runs ahead of its body, and two apartments in a high rise whose tenants precisely mirror each other. Randa Jarrar is the author of a highly successful novel, A Map of Home, which received an Arab-American Book Award and was named one of the best novels of 2008 by the Barnes & Noble Review. She grew up in Kuwait and Egypt, and moved to the United States after the first Gulf War. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Utne Reader, Salon.com, Guernica, the Rumpus, the Oxford American, Ploughshares, and more. She blogs for Salon, and lives in California"--
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Collection of short stories by an Arab-American author. It took me a while to get into it, because I struggled to find a through-line in the introductory stories. The collection is broken into three parts, and I couldn't really figure out why; in my opinion, Part 3 was the strongest and most cohesive.
To me, the best stories were:
Lost in Freakin' Yonkers - snapshots during the pregnancy of teen girl whose family disowns her for keeping the baby and not marrying the father.
Grace - ohhhhh but it so creeped me out - about a child who is kidnapped from the grocery store, and raised in a commune
Him, Me, Muhammad Ali - a young woman goes back to Egypt after her father's death in an attempt to fulfill his wish of having his ashes scattered in his home country. I thought the device of the title with this one was clever.
The Story of My Building - about the social gatherings of the men and women in one boy's family, and how the children entertain themselves, and what happens when the building is bombed.
The Life, Loves and Adventures of Zelwa the Halfie - about a woman who is half ibex, whose father wants her to have surgery to become fully human, and the discovery of family secrets
I have other books by Jarrar on my TBR list, and I'm looking forward to seeing if maybe I connect better overall with some of her other writing.
