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A review by melodys_library
A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza
4.0
I’m so drawn to stories of first generation immigrant parents and their second generation immigrant children - The parents fulfilling the dream of giving their children better lives in the land of the free, yet reprimanding and forbidding them those freedoms and reinforcing the rules and expectations of the lifestyle, religion and culture of the country they left, leaving the children feeling at odds within themselves, eventually making conscious choices to preserve what is most important to them, shed what is not, and create lives and experiences that are uniquely theirs.
I felt a real emotional connection to each character in this novel. At first, I had to keep reading to find out what catastrophic event caused Amar to leave; but wound up getting so emotionally invested in the family that I too clung to the hope that Amar would return home.
The first-person perspective by Baba at the end got me. I could relate to the lengths that families go to in order to save face and protect their children - over protection is the only way they know. It is their act of love. That secret pride that parents conceal from their children when their children are only seeking praise and comfort. The author shows these emotions in little anecdotes, splicing the stories together with snapshots in time to tell the story of then and now, why and why not.
I felt a real emotional connection to each character in this novel. At first, I had to keep reading to find out what catastrophic event caused Amar to leave; but wound up getting so emotionally invested in the family that I too clung to the hope that Amar would return home.
The first-person perspective by Baba at the end got me. I could relate to the lengths that families go to in order to save face and protect their children - over protection is the only way they know. It is their act of love. That secret pride that parents conceal from their children when their children are only seeking praise and comfort. The author shows these emotions in little anecdotes, splicing the stories together with snapshots in time to tell the story of then and now, why and why not.