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4.5
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!
