Yara, a Palestinian-American woman, is the protagonist in this absorbing novel; married to a good-looking Palestinian American entrepreneur called Fabi, she has two young daughters. The family live in North Carolina where Yara works as an art teacher and graphic designer.
Despite having been ‘allowed’ by her husband to finish her degree and then take a job, she has a deep well of unhappiness within her which she has never addressed. She knows that compared with the lives of the previous generation of Palestinian women who came to live in the USA after the Nakba* in 1948, her life is far better. Nonetheless the weight of cultural traditions and expectation hang heavily round her.
When a trip for college students to spend 10 days in Scandinavia studying their art and way of life is proposed, she is invited to apply to be one of the accompanying chaperones. The possibility thrills her. However, Fabi and her family are appalled by the idea, and she feels she has no option but to turn down the offer.
At a subsequent meeting about the trip Yara is goaded into a physical response to a fellow teacher’s racist comments. After a disciplinary hearing she is sanctioned by the college board and told that to keep her job she must attend therapy. She does this reluctantly, and it is not until the therapist suggests that she keeps a journal of her feelings that she engages in the process. In her journal she begins to examine her childhood and the lives of her mother and beloved grandmother who lived in the West Bank.
Misogyny, violent domestic abuse and the subservient role of women have been engrained into Palestinian culture as normal and carried across the world and through the generations of families like her own. Yara sees that for the sake of her daughters she must break the cycle. After several false starts, she finds a way to make her life work and her inner despair fades.
Knowing nothing about Palestinian life and culture I was prompted to read the book as a result of the massive media attention on the situation in the Middle East.
I enjoyed the book and found the characters very interesting.
*Nakba ‘The Catastrophe’ – is the time in 1948 when Palestinians were forced out of their lands in order to make place for the new State of Israel, thus enabling Jews to have a homeland of their own
Reviewed by a library member
