Nadia Hashimi has a habit of introducing her readers to characters and story lines they might not otherwise be drawn to or give much thought to. With 2014’s The Pearl That Broke Its Shell, she brought the long held tradition of bacha posh to the forefront. 2015’s WhenThe Moon is Low took us on an immigrant’s journey from war torn Afghanistan to England via Iran, Turkey and Greece. This year she introduces us to yet another unforgettable story with unforgettable characters in A House Without Windows.
Everyone in their small village knows that Zeba’s husband Kamal is a bad man. Public drunkenness is just one of the many things he does that goes against the teaching of the Quran. And while he is bad, he’s still a man in a place where men are not questioned and certainly not by a woman. When he’s murdered and Zeba is found standing over his body, there’s not much doubt that she killed him, but why?
As a boy, Yusuf’s family fled Afghanistan. Now an American attorney, he feels the pull of his motherland and returns to help those he can with legal assistance. With a closed mouth, borderline hysterical Zeba as his client, and neighbors unwilling to get involved and tell the truth about the kind of man Kamal was, Yusuf doesn’t stand much of a chance of defending her.
As she awaits trial in prison, a house without windows, Zeba reminisces about her childhood with her fiery mother, Gulnaz the sorceress, and her disappearing father. Through these flashbacks we learn how her mother’s domineering ways shaped Zeba into the docile woman that made her the perfect victim for Kamal’s abuse. Though she doesn’t appear to be as strong as her mother, readers will find that Zeba is every bit as determined and smart as the strong willed Gulnaz.
Her time in prison also introduces us to a lively cast of characters. There’s a very Orange is the New Black meets Wentworth vibe going on that makes for a bit of comic relief when Zeba’s story becomes too heavy. Much like Bea in Wentworth, Zeba becomes the unlikely leader of her fellow prisoners, a role she at first rejects and gradually accepts.
Once again, Hashimi approaches difficult subjects with class and grace – covering the life of women in Afghanistan and the struggles of Yusuf as an American raised, Afghanistan born man who has forgotten the written and unwritten rules of his country. Anything this author writes is guaranteed to be a good read and I can’t wait to see what she writes next.
432 p.
Published: August 2016 Disclaimer: Copy of book received from publisher, opinions are my own.
A House Without Windows by Nadia Hashimi
432 p. (Fiction; Afghanistan)
For two decades, Zeba was a loving wife, a patient mother, and a peaceful villager. But her quiet life is shattered when her husband, Kamal, is found brutally murdered with a hatchet in the courtyard of their home. Nearly catatonic with shock, Zeba is unable to account for her whereabouts at the time of his death. Her children swear their mother could not have committed such a heinous act. Kamal’s family is sure she did, and demands justice. Barely escaping a vengeful mob, Zeba is arrested and jailed.
Awaiting trial, she meets a group of women whose own misfortunes have led them to these bleak cells: eighteen-year-old Nafisa, imprisoned to protect her from an “honor killing”; twenty-five-year-old Latifa, a teen runaway who stays because it is safe shelter; twenty-year-old Mezghan, pregnant and unmarried, waiting for a court order to force her lover’s hand. Is Zeba a cold-blooded killer, these young women wonder, or has she been imprisoned, like them, for breaking some social rule? For these women, the prison is both a haven and a punishment; removed from the harsh and unforgiving world outside, they form a lively and indelible sisterhood.
Into this closed world comes Yusuf, Zeba’s Afghan-born, American-raised lawyer whose commitment to human rights and desire to help his homeland have brought him back. With the fate this seemingly ordinary housewife in his hands, Yusuf discovers that, like the Afghanistan itself, his client may not be at all what he imagines.
The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin
448 p. (Fiction; fantasy)
This is the way the world ends, for the last time.
The season of endings grows darker, as civilization fades into the long cold night.
Essun -- once Damaya, once Syenite, now avenger -- has found shelter, but not her daughter. Instead there is Alabaster Tenring, destroyer of the world, with a request. But if Essun does what he asks, it would seal the fate of the Stillness forever.
Far away, her daughter Nassun is growing in power - and her choices will break the world.
Divorce is in the Air by Gonzalo Torne
320 p. (Fiction; Spain)
There’s a lot about Joan-Marc that his second wife doesn’t know—and that he now sets out to tell her, come what may. He begins with his disastrous first marriage to an American named Helen, and the vacation they took in a last-ditch attempt to save their relationship. From there Joan-Marc unfurls the story of his life, from early memories of adolescence to a reckoning with mortality in his forties: friendships he abandoned, women he wronged, the wide swathe he cut across polite society in Madrid and Barcelona. Joan-Marc may be the kind of man we love to hate, yet his caustic wit, nostalgia, and self-pity are ultimately as winning as they are devastating.
Born Bright: A Young Girl's Journey from Nothing to Something in America by C. Nicole Mason
256 p. (Non-fiction; biography)
"Standing on the stage, I felt exposed and like an intruder. In these professional settings, my personal experiences with hunger, poverty, and episodic homelessness, often go undetected. I had worked hard to learn the rules and disguise my beginning in life..."
So begins C. Nicole Mason's compelling memoir, which gives us a rare insider's look into the lives of the American poor. Born in the 1970s in Los Angeles, California, Mason was raised by a 16-year-old single mother who dropped out of high school. From wondering where her next meal would come from to learning the deadlines for college entrance exams by eavesdropping on the few white kids in her predominantly Black and Latino high school, Mason describes in vivid detail the chaos, failing systems, isolation, and violence that make the American Dream out of reach for so many.
While showing us her own path out of poverty, Mason examines the conditions that make poverty nearly impossible to escape and exposes the presumption harbored by many—that the poor don't help themselves enough. In truth, the convoluted, bureaucratic lattice of societal rules that govern everything from education to criminal justice is structurally impenetrable by the poor. With first-hand experience learning these rules for herself, Mason illuminates the sheer fortitude that it takes to navigate systems designed only for the success of the few.
The Rest I Will Kill: William Tillman and the Unforgettable Story of How a Free Black Man Refused to Become a Slave by Brian McGinty
240 p. (Non-fiction; history)
Independence Day, 1861. The schooner S. J. Waring sets sail from New York on a routine voyage to South America. Seventeen days later, it limps back into New York’s frenzied harbor with the ship's black steward, William Tillman, at the helm. While the story of that ill-fated voyage is one of the most harrowing tales of captivity and survival on the high seas, it has, almost unbelievably, been lost to history.
Now reclaiming Tillman as the real American hero he was, historian Brian McGinty dramatically returns readers to that riotous, explosive summer of 1861, when the country was tearing apart at the seams and the Union army was in near shambles following a humiliating defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run. Desperate for good news, the North was soon riveted by reports of an incident that occurred a few hundred miles off the coast of New York, where the Waring had been overtaken by a marauding crew of Confederate privateers. While the white sailors became chummy with their Southern captors, free black man William Tillman was perfectly aware of the fate that awaited him in the ruthless, slave-filled ports south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Stealthily biding his time until a moonlit night nine days after the capture, Tillman single-handedly killed three officers of the privateer crew, then took the wheel and pointed it home. Yet, with no experience as a navigator, only one other helper, and a war-torn Atlantic seaboard to contend with, his struggle had just begun.
It took five perilous days at sea—all thrillingly recounted here—before the Waring returned to New York Harbor, where the story of Tillman's shipboard courage became such a tabloid sensation that he was not only put on the bill of Barnum’s American Museum but also proclaimed to be the "first hero" of the Civil War. As McGinty evocatively shows, however, in the horrors of the war then engulfing the nation, memories of his heroism—even of his identity—were all but lost to history.
I'm always appreciative of authors that teach as they write. Nadia Hashimi appeared on the literary scene last year with The Pearl That Broke Its Shell, a novel that delved into the lives of girls growing up in Afghanistan living as bacha posh. I was immediately drawn into the lives of the characters in The Pearl and with When the Moon is Low, Hashimi once again pulls readers into the stressful and chaotic lives of her characters.
When first we meet Fereiba, she's a Cinderella-like character. In an attempt to find a mother figure for newborn Fereiba and her two year old brother, Asad, her father marries KokoGul. While Asad, as a boy, is looked upon favorably, Fereiba becomes a bit of a whipping post for KokoGul, who goes on to birth her own daughters. Kept home for years to assist KokoGul with housework, Fereiba watches all of her younger sisters and brother attend school. Is it because KokoGul really needs help around the house or is it because she wants to limit Fereiba's future? I would say both. KokoGul strikes me has a hateful and petty character. We see this when Fereiba is being courted by a neighbor boy, but KokoGul pushes Najiba, her daughter by birth, forward for marriage instead. Again and again, we see Fereiba face adversity, but we also see her find a way to work around her circumstances and that will serve her well in the long run.
Fereiba marries Mahmoud, an engineer, who is much better suited for her than her former suitors. With him, they have a son, Saleem, and daughter, Samira. Life in Kabul takes a turn with the rise of the Taliban and Fereiba's family finds that their only means of survival is fleeing their home.
When the Moon is Low follows Fereiba's journey with her children, taking them from Afghanistan to Iran, Turkey, Greece and hopefully, eventually, England. Her grit and determination are passed on to her children, Saleem in particular, who takes on responsibility for the family when his mother needs him to do so, but also Samira in her own way.
Samira was just nine years old on that night. She was an extension of me. Her moods ebbed and flowed in response to my moods, just as the tides respond to the moon. If I brooded, Samira quieted, blowing her dark bangs away from her crinkled forehead. If I was happy, my daughter walked with a skip in her step.
I loved this book. Told from the perspective of Saleem and Fereiba, Hashimi brings us the story of immigrants from a war torn country with such care and concern. I found myself shaking my head, realizing that I'd never really given much thought to how bad things were in other countries or the difficulties citizens had in escaping the oppressive regimes. As long as Hashimi keeps exposing and exploring such fascinating topics, I'll keep reading.
400 p.
Publication date: July 2015 Disclaimer: Copy of book received from publisher, opinions are my own.
Big Freedia: God Save the Queen Diva! by Big Freedia
272 p.
Publication Date: July 7, 2015
From the eponymous star of the most popular reality show in Fuse TV’s history, this no-holds-barred memoir tells the story of a gay, self-proclaimed mama’s boy who exploded onto the formerly underground Bounce music scene—a hip-hop subgenre—and found acceptance, healing, self-expression, and stardom!
As the “undisputed ambassador” of the energetic, New Orleans-based Bounce movement, Big Freedia isn’t afraid to twerk, wiggle, and shake her way to self-confidence, and is encouraging her fans to do the same. In her engrossing memoir, Big Freedia tells the inside story of her path to fame, the peaks and valleys of her personal life, and the liberation that Bounce music brings to herself and every one of her fans who is searching for freedom.
Big Freedia immediately pulls us into the relationship between her personal life and her career as an artist; being a “twerking sissy” is not just a job, she says, but a salvation. A place to find solace. To escape from the battles she faced growing up in the worst neighborhood in New Orleans. To deal with losing loved ones to the violence on the streets, drug overdoses, and jail. To survive hurricane Katrina by living on her roof for two days with three adults and a child. To grapple with the difficulties and celebrate the joys of living.
In this eye-opening memoir that bursts with energy, you’ll learn the history of the Bounce movement and meet all of the colorful characters that pepper its music scene. With her own unique voice and unabashed enthusiasm, Big Freedia tells how she arrived at this defining moment in music, and how Bounce ultimately has allowed her to become her own version of diva, one booty-pop at a time.
Side note: I fell in LOVE with Big Freedia & her no holds barred attitude after watching her show on Fuse. Below is a promo from last season's show.
The Girl Who Wrote in Silk by Kelli Estes
400 p.
Publication Date: July 7, 2015
A scrap of silk will reach across a century to reveal a forgotten woman's tragedy and threaten a powerful family.
In 1886, Mei Lien is washed up on Orcas Island, the lone survivor of a cruel purge of the Chinese from Seattle.She is determined to tell her heartbreaking story the onlyway she knows how: through needle and thread. A century later Inara Erickson, enlisting the help of a local professor, uncovers details in Mei Lien's delicate stitching that could have far-reaching repercussions for her own life. Should she bring shame to her family and risk everything by telling the truth, or tell no one and dishonor Mei Lien's memory? This brilliant debut is atmospheric and beautifully written, and serves as a poignant tale of the importance of our own stories.
The Way Things Wereby Aatish Taseer
576 p.
Publication Date: July 7, 2015
An absorbing family saga set amid the commotion of the last forty years of Indian history.
The Way Things Were opens with the death of Toby, the Maharaja of Kalasuryaketu, a Sanskritist who has not set foot in India for two decades. Moving back and forth across three sections, between today's Delhi and the 1970s, '80s, and '90s in turn, the novel tells the story of a family held at the mercy of the times. A masterful interrogation of the relationships between past and present and among individual lives, events, and culture, Aatish Taseer's The Way Things Were takes its title from the Sanskrit word for history, itihasa, whose literal translation is "the way things indeed were." Told in prose that is at once intimate and panoramic, and threaded through with Sanskrit as central metaphor and chorus, this is a hugely ambitious and important book, alive to all the commotion of the last forty years but never losing its brilliant grasp on the current moment.
Confession of the Lioness by Mia Couto
208 p.
Publication Date: July 14, 2015
A dark, poetic mystery about the women of the remote village of Kulumani and the lionesses that hunt them.
Told through two haunting, interwoven diaries, Mia Couto's Confession of the Lioness reveals the mysterious world of Kulumani, an isolated village in Mozambique whose traditions and beliefs are threatened when ghostlike lionesses begin hunting the women who live there.
Mariamar, a woman whose sister was killed in a lioness attack, finds her life thrown into chaos when the outsider Archangel Bullseye, the marksman hired to kill the lionesses, arrives at the request of the village elders. Mariamar's father imprisons her in her home, where she relives painful memories of past abuse and hopes to be rescued by Archangel. Meanwhile, Archangel tracks the lionesses in the wilderness, but when he begins to suspect there is more to them than meets the eye, he starts to lose control of his hands. The hunt grows more dangerous, until it's no safer inside Kulumani than outside it. As the men of Kulumani feel increasingly threatened by the outsider, the forces of modernity upon their traditional culture, and the danger of their animal predators closing in, it becomes clear the lionesses might not be real lionesses at all but spirits conjured by the ancient witchcraft of the women themselves.
Both a riveting mystery and a poignant examination of women's oppression, Confession of the Lioness explores the confrontation between the modern world and ancient traditions to produce an atmospheric, gripping novel.
When the Moon is Low by Nadia Hashimi
400 p.
Publication Date: July 21, 2015
From the author of The Pearl That Broke Its Shell, an unforgettable story of terror, survival, perseverance, and hope that chronicles one extraordinarily brave Afghan woman’s odyssey to save her family and find asylum in the West—a tale of a daring escape, a perilous trek across Europe, and the courage and tenacity of one defiant woman.
Mahmoud’s passion for his wife Fereiba, a schoolteacher, is greater than any love she’s ever known. But their happy, middle-class world—a life of education, work, and comfort—implodes when their country is engulfed in war, and the Taliban rises to power.
Mahmoud, a civil engineer, becomes a target of the new fundamentalist regime and is murdered. Forced to flee Kabul with her three children, Fereiba has one hope to survive: she must find a way to cross Europe and reach her sister’s family in England. With forged papers and help from kind strangers they meet along the way, Fereiba make a dangerous crossing into Iran under cover of darkness. Exhausted and brokenhearted but undefeated, Fereiba manages to smuggle them as far as Greece. But in a busy market square, their fate takes a frightening turn when her teenage son, Saleem, becomes separated from the rest of the family.
Faced with an impossible choice, Fereiba pushes on with her daughter and baby, while Saleem falls into the shadowy underground network of undocumented Afghans who haunt the streets of Europe’s capitals. Across the continent Fereiba and Saleem struggle to reunite, and ultimately find a place where they can begin to reconstruct their lives.
Undocumented: A Dominican Boy’s Odyssey from a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League by Dan-el Padilla Peralta
320 p.
Publication Date: July 28, 2015
An undocumented immigrant’s journey from a New York City homeless shelter to the top of his Princeton class.
Dan-el Padilla Peralta has lived the American dream. As a boy, he came here legally with his family. Together they left Santo Domingo behind, but life in New York City was harder than they imagined. Their visas lapsed, and Dan-el’s father returned home. But Dan-el’s courageous mother was determined to make a better life for her bright sons.
Without papers, she faced tremendous obstacles. While Dan-el was only in grade school, the family joined the ranks of the city’s homeless. Dan-el, his mother, and brother lived in a downtown shelter where Dan-el’s only refuge was the meager library. There he met Jeff, a young volunteer from a wealthy family. Jeff was immediately struck by Dan-el’s passion for books and learning. With Jeff’s help, Dan-el was accepted on scholarship to Collegiate, the oldest private school in the country.
There, Dan-el thrived. Throughout his youth, Dan-el navigated these two worlds: the rough streets of East Harlem, where he lived with his brother and his mother and tried to make friends, and the ultra-elite halls of a Manhattan private school, where he could immerse himself in a world of books and where he soon rose to the top of his class.
From Collegiate, Dan-el went to Princeton, where he thrived, and where he made the momentous decision to come out as an undocumented student in a Wall Street Journal profile a few months before he gave the salutatorian’s traditional address in Latin at his commencement.
Undocumented is a classic story of the triumph of the human spirit. It also is the perfect cri de coeur for the debate on comprehensive immigration reform.
It’s not shocking that being a boy is more advantageous than being a girl in most parts of the world. Every morning in Afghanistan there are girls that wake up, dress and leave the house acting as boys, or bacha posh, as they’re called. The reasons for this vary, but the bottom line is that it is safer and more privileges are afforded when you’re seen as a boy. In some homes, girls become bacha posh because it allows them to work and bring in income to a household that greatly needs it. In others, mothers need a child that can run to the store for them. As bacha posh, it is safer and allowable for a boy to walk the streets when women and girls cannot. The stories of two generations of women posing as bacha posh are at the heart of The Pearl That Broke Its Shell.
Initially, readers are drawn into the story of Rahima. In 2007 Kabul, she’s one of five sisters living with their mother and opium-addicted father. Prior to his addiction, Rahima’s father worked, but only sporadically gave enough money to support the household. Having a son would provide the family with money, since Rahima would be allowed to work. It would also allow her sisters safe passage to school, since she would be able to walk with them and serve as their protector. It seems like a win-win situation for all and, as the most rambunctious of the sisters, Rahima readily agrees.
Generations ago, Rahima’s great-aunt Shekiba also became bacha posh and while Rahima’s story is interesting, I found Shekiba’s most fascinating. A beautiful child, Shekiba was scarred and left disfigured at an early age. Already undervalued by her extended family, she’s shunned even more for her appearance. She’s kept close to the family home where her parents and brothers adore her. As her family succumbs to illness, a teenage Shekiba finds herself living alone, but determined to keep it a secret from her father’s family. Married off against her will, she soon finds herself living in the royal palace as bacha posh.
With Rahima’s life juxtaposed against Shekiba’s, it’s difficult to say who leads a more difficult life, but as Rahima’s Aunt Khala tells her Shekiba’s life story, you can see Rahima gathering strength from it. Though the circumstances and outcomes of becoming bacha posh differ for them, both endure and are triumphant in the end.
This is absolutely an amazing effort from Nadia Hashimi. She puts such thought into her characters and their emotions; it’s easy to tell that she was heavily invested in telling the story of these women and doing it properly. In addition to Rahima and Shekiba’s stories, she takes care to explore what happens with Rahima’s sisters, her mother and fellow wives, as well as Shekiba’s fellow eunuchs, offering a peek into the lives of other Afghani women. There were no lulls in any of the story lines and, at the end, I sad to say goodbye to Rahima and Shekiba, but grateful for what I learned from them.
464pp
Published: May 2014 Disclaimer: Copy of book received from publisher, opinions are my own.
I have two copies of The Pearl That Broke Its Shell to give away. If you'd like a copy, leave an answer in the comments to the following question: Would you live as bacha posh if your family asked you to? Two winners will be chosen and announced on Sunday, September 21, 2014.
Nadia Hashimi has a habit of introducing her readers to characters and story lines they might not otherwise be drawn to or give much thought to. With 2014’s The Pearl That Broke Its Shell, she brought the long held tradition of bacha posh to the forefront. 2015’s When The Moon is Low took us on an immigrant’s journey from war torn Afghanistan to England via Iran, Turkey and Greece. This year she introduces us to yet another unforgettable story with unforgettable characters in A House Without Windows.
432 p.
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