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A review by dobbsthedog
Behind You Is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj
5.0
I’m trying to read more non-western books, and though this is set in Baltimore, I think it counts, because it is about the Palestinian community in the Baltimore area of Maryland. So, while it has a western setting, it is very non-western culturally.
This is a collection of stories that are loosely interconnected, as I don’t imagine that the Palestinian community in Baltimore is very large. It follows this community over a number of years, I would say that it covers a generation? I listened to the audio of this and I always have a difficult time tracking the passage of time in audio, unless it explicitly says, which this didn’t.
These stories are a really interesting look at Palestinian life in the diaspora, and the hierarchy between families, based on how/why they immigrated to the US. I appreciated seeing how the cultures the Palestinian families brought with them both melded with and conflicted with a western culture. How two people in the same circumstance were treated very differently by their families, who and what are valued and how those values are embraced or rejected, a lot of times depending on the generation. I also appreciated that not all of the families (or any, if I’m recalling correctly?) are Muslim, some are Christian, some are catholic.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book.
This is a collection of stories that are loosely interconnected, as I don’t imagine that the Palestinian community in Baltimore is very large. It follows this community over a number of years, I would say that it covers a generation? I listened to the audio of this and I always have a difficult time tracking the passage of time in audio, unless it explicitly says, which this didn’t.
These stories are a really interesting look at Palestinian life in the diaspora, and the hierarchy between families, based on how/why they immigrated to the US. I appreciated seeing how the cultures the Palestinian families brought with them both melded with and conflicted with a western culture. How two people in the same circumstance were treated very differently by their families, who and what are valued and how those values are embraced or rejected, a lot of times depending on the generation. I also appreciated that not all of the families (or any, if I’m recalling correctly?) are Muslim, some are Christian, some are catholic.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book.