There are many amazing stories about moving from somewhere to elsewhere, about the process of elsewhere becoming somewhere.
Take Rabindranath Maharaj’s The Amazing Absorbing Boy – literally, amazing. It’s right there on the cover.
It’s a real favourite of mine, in which seventeen-year-old Samuel reads comic books in Trinidad to prepare for his new life in Toronto, and although his lingo falls short of the mark (“Oh gosh. That’s swell. Thanks, Buddy. How awful. You gotta be kidding. Great Scott.”) he persists and endures.
“Make contact. I liked the phrase and it made me feel like a shadowy hero with a secret identity. Shy and often puzzled on the surface but understanding everything, all the confusing Canadian customs and laws, in my hero identity.”
“The comfort of belonging.”
Abu Bakr Al Rabeeah, Homes
(written with Winnie Yeung)
Other favourites:
Cristina Henriquez’s The Book of Unknown Americans (2014)
Esmeralda Santiago’s When I Was Puerto Rican (1993)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013)
Xiaolu Guo’s A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers (2007)
Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake (2003)
Sharon Bali’s The Boat People (2018)
Dionne Brand’s In Another Place, Not Here (1986)
Monica Ali’s In the Kitchen (2009)
Reading these stories of discovery is sometimes made more powerful when they are combined with the kind of discoveries one makes growing up
Books like Esmeralda Santiago’s memoir and Rabindranath Maharaj’s The Amazing Absorbing Boy spend significant time in the formative years. It’s especially easy to relate to this kind of disorientation and unease.
But Maharaj’s other books, like Homer in Flight, consider adjustments that newcomers face in the working world too. Monica Ali’s In the Kitchen is told from the perspective of a kitchen manager whose relationships with the workers in his restaurant (immigrants, all) must change as he comes to understand the difficulties they face in the present and the horrors they carry from their pasts.
There are some young characters in Henriquez’s The Book of Unknown Americans, too, and a child in Sharon Bali’s The Boat People.
The narratives in Thuy’s Ru and Lahiri’s The Namesake move back in time to provide some context for the older characters, and Adichie’s Americanah eventually includes another young character as the story unfolds in a startlingly powerful direction.
In Bezmozgis’ The Free World, the characters are older, but in his first collection of linked stories, Natasha, readers “come of age” with the family over time.
In these novels by Brand and Guo, Lahiri and Adichie, however, the focus is on the 20-something years, which hold another kind of discovery.
Why people chose to emigrate is a part of these stories, but often it is summarized succinctly or implied via short scenes in memory. Occasionally, the traumas experienced in the past are directly referenced, even described (one kitchen worker in Monica Ali’s novel describes scenes that “a friend” endured and survived) but the emphasis is not only on today, but tomorrow.
Abu Bakr Al Rabeeah’s Homes (written with Winnie Yeung, a teacher in Edmonton) devotes the bulk of the narrative to his boyhood experiences in Syria (in Damascus and Homs), the process of emigration and the long wait for his family to be approved to leave.
The story opens in the middle, with a memorable scene of violence. Most people, in the face of chaos, run from it, he explains, but people in Syria run towards it, towards a site where friends and family may need assistance. The story, then, flashes back to establish Abu and his siblings (including Maryam, Abeer, Aiesha, Asmaa, Abrar and Naser) and older family members and their life in Baserah, where the divisions between Muslim denominations carried great weight.
“I never really realized how bright, crowded, and colourful my world was until I had to leave it.”
There is a chapter called “My First Massacre” and there are scenes with bullets and patrols, shelling and sobbing, and weapons and rebels.
There are “rules to follow, danger to avoid”. And there are “terrifying muffled sounds outside bedroom doors”.
But there are also video games and bike-riding, hijabs and abayas and brightly coloured fabric, geraniums and oranges.
And so many cups of steaming, spiced black tea, generously sweetened.
Winnie Yeung includes references for further reading but reminds readers that this is not a journalistic work but a collection of family memories.
As such, the details which stick with me are not the ones I searched for in an atlas or online (for images of Umayyad, a mosque in Damascus).
The sensory details pulled from everyday life are the parts which pulled me most completely into this memoir.
In the bakery in Homs, for instance, where Abu “would watch the bakers pull and stretch the dough, tossing it back and forth, hand to hand, not a movement wasted.”
You can feel and taste not only the dough but the air in the bakery.
“The pale disc of dough would be slapped onto the sides of the searing hot tabun oven, and just as the bread started to bubble, the baker would deftly flip it with the trusty paddle. I loved breathing in that tangy sweetness with a hint of smoke.”
But, these are not the only details about the bakery:
“Once, a man came into our bakery and bought some bread. He went across the street to eat it in the park and was killed by a stray bullet.”
There are many adjustments after the family moves to Canada, and sensory detail makes this experience of immigration real too:
“Here, it was so quiet. No rumbling explosions, rattling gunfire, or wailing sirens. But also no boisterous crowds or rowdy gangs of cousins.”
Abu Bakr Al Rabeeah’s memoir is a short and evocative peek into a rich and eventful life: Homes reminds you to appreciate both the quiet and the bustle and to listen to young people’s stories, amid all the rest of the noise.
I love stories of the immigrant experience because if you look at a lot of the U.S. news you may think it’s all the same but in reality a lot of reasons take immigrants elsewhere and the experiences are so different. I’ve read several of the books on your list and have really enjoyed them. Great topic!
That’s true: the stories tend to get painted with the same brush (and, sometimes, similarly dismissively). Reading a variety of stories is always helpful to broaden one’s understanding. There are some great mysteries which take on the topic as well…
What fascinating books. Out of those you list, I’ve read Americanah and The Namesake. I love books about emigration and a great one I read recently was Yusruh Mardini’s “Butterfly” about travelling as a refugee from Syria to Germany.
That memoir sounds quite interesting, Liz; I’ve added it to my TBR (partly because the swimming part reminds me of Leanne Shapton’s Swimming Studies and Angie Abdou’s The Bone Cage, both of which I enjoyed).
“The sensory details pulled from everyday life are the parts which pulled me most completely into this memoir.” – Yes! Unlike many books about war when I am deeply grateful to be living here and not there, I could see the ‘home-yness’ of where he lived.
Well, now that I know the Amazing Absorbing Boy uses the word “swell”, I’m going to have to read it! I also love that he reads comic books to help him get ready for the transition to Canada – I didn’t know that!
I imagine when writing these kinds of memoirs, the conflict is hard to write past. And, also, of course it’s vitally important to tell that story, so I can see why some writers don’t choose to write past that. But these other images add to the power of the rest of the story, when we really get a sense of what was lost, especially when it’s an area of world we haven’t lived in ourselves and I really appreciated that too. Homeyness – yes! And I’m sure you would love the Maharaj novel: he’s a great character to hang out with on the page!
Of your selections I’ve only read The Boat People and Ru. I love the sound of The Amazing Absorbing Boy and In the Kitchen. And of course there’s our recent buddy read, Small Island, about Jamaicans becoming English.
Heheh Funnily enough, I had started this post before we had started reading Small Island, but it struck me what serendipitous bookishness that was! I think you’d especially enjoy comparing it with In the Kitchen (although the kitchen manager is just moving from north to south, and it’s the minor characters who have travelled much further). Have you read Ali before? I’d meant to, but this was my first.
No, I’ve not read any of hers, but I’ve seen the movie of Brick Lane.
We take books and movies in the opposite order, but your reasoning sounds sensible all the same. 🙂
I loved The Namesake. It seemed to describe the disconnect between first and second generation immigrants so well to me.
I love her way with words. Such simplicity. And yet she captures very complex situations and relationships so that they feel authentic and, often, moving.
My current read is about a different kind of migrant experience – one that was forced. It’s Kate Grenville’s The Secret River about a transported convict and his relationship with the Aborigines.
That’s one I really found impressive. I was about to say ‘enjoyed’. But although I found it quite engaging and the substance of the story immensely satisfying, i thought it was a challenging read in a number of ways (the story itself, although historically accurate I’m sure). I also loved her novel The Idea of Perfection and I suppose those two characters didn’t really feel they belonged anywhere in particular either: they had a kind of “drifting” feel to them (in the beginning, anyway).
I’m sure there are many books that talk about belonging (which does not always imply displacement) in my collection, but one Canadian title that comes to mind is Shyam Selvadurai’s The Hungry Ghosts. The narrator not only moves to Canada in the late 70s, but feels torn between his new home and life and obligations (and more) back in Sri Lanka. I saw Selvadurai speak here several years ago and the theme was, with reference to that sense of dislocation that comes when one migrates, “writing from the hyphen”—from that very point of intersecting identity.
Another non-Canadian book on the theme of belonging that I love is WG Sebald’s The Emigrants.
It’s a common theme on my shelves too and Selvadurai hits on it in every book to some degree. I really liked The Hungry Ghosts too. (Especially the bookstore and his sense of belonging among books!) I’ve not heard him speak, only in an interview (on “The Next Chapter”, I think): was the event what landed his book on your stack, or were you already reading him? The Emigrants is a great one (why didn’t I think of that? laughs) which I just read for the first time earlier this year! Do you have a favourite Sebald?
This is such a timely topic right now (although really, when is it not?), but Canadians in particular seem to be eating up this kind of literature. I’ve got Homes on my shelf right now, but based on your review and Naomi’s, I really need to read it!
Its accessible tone would also make it a good a single-sitting read, if the size of your TBR is an issue, though In my stack of chunksters, it was satisfying in a series of shorter sittings.