Savor

Title:  Savor:  A Chef's Hunger for More

Author:  Fatima Ali with Tarajia Morrell

Publication Information:  Ballantine Books. 2022. 384 pages.

ISBN:  0593355199 / 978-0593355190

Rating:   ★★★★★

Book Source:  I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence:  "I get up in Pakistan, playing cricket, basketball, oonch neech, and pithu gol garam with my brother, Mohammad."

Favorite Quote:  "When we think we have all the time in the world to live, we forget to indulge in the experiences of living. When that choice is yanked away from us, that's when we scramble to feel."

I was introduced to Fatima Ali through marketing for a season of the TV show Top Chef. Top Chef is a reality TV competition amongst chefs. During her seasons on Top Chef, Fatima Ali was voted the fan favorite competitor.

Her story and the cultural context of her story resonates with me. She was born in Pakistan. She spend part of her childhood in Texas before returning to Pakistan. She broke social norms by wanting to be a chef. She returned to the United States to study at the Culinary Institute of America. She competed on Chopped and then Top Chef. She worked in many different professional kitchens. "I didn't think I was so special, but actually that was the key: If this ordinary Pakistani girl could pursue the thing she loved most - cooking - and could make it to the tippy-top and do what she loved on TV, then what was to stop all of us little brown girls from carving out new paths, from calling attention to the hungry children, the silenced dreamers, the oddballs and rebels who long to go against the grain?"

Her dream was to open her own restaurant and introduce the world to Pakistan and Pakistani culture through food. Unfortunately, that dream was never realized as Fatima Ali died at age 29 of a rare form of cancer. This book is her story and her legacy. "Instead of my bucket list book, this is the story of my abbreviated life, short but nonetheless possessing secret love, joy and pain, adventure and hard work, luck and its opposite."

Unexpectedly, this book is also the story of Fatima's mother, Farezeh. Hers is a story of a different time and place and yet with similar themes of independence and strength. "There is nothing more empowering than knowing - no, believing - that all you really need is you."

The book describes the process of its own writing. Fatima Ali's original wish for her final year was to travel and experience the world. Unfortunately, her illness did not allow for that. That realization led to the writing of this book. Fatima's telling of her own story began through media such as Bon Appétit providing her a platform. Her conversations with author Tarajia Morrell, and Tarajia Morrell's subsequent collaboration with Farezeh have resulted in this book.

The cultural context of a young "brown" girl and a "brown" woman finding their own path and her voice resonates. The story of an immigrant finding freedom and their dream in the United States resonates. The power of food memories and the power of food to unite resonates. The story of a young life sadly cut short resonates. Fatima Ali's story is one I was going to remember even before reading this book. Reading this book and learning of the other challenges she and her mother overcame further reinforces that this is a life to remember.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

The Man Who Could Move Clouds

Title:  The Man Who Could Move Clouds

Author:  Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Publication Information:  Doubleday. 2022. 320 pages.

ISBN:  0385546661 / 978-0385546669

Rating:   ★★★

Book Source:  I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence:  "They say the accident that left me with temporary amnesia is my inheritance."

Favorite Quote:  "There was a difference between keeping knowledge secret, and living in secret. I could do the former, but I would not do the latter."

Ingrid Rojas Contreras biggest acknowledgment of this book credits her mother. "Thank you, most of all, to my mother, who told me stories, and in telling me stories, taught me how to live." The stories are of family, love, Colombian heritage, and of sight and magic.

The impetus for this book is an accident and a shared dream. An accident leaves Ingrid Rojas Contreras with temporary amensia for a period of weeks. She learns that her mother too suffered an accident as a child that left her with certain abilities that were her heritage. "They say the amnesias were a door to gifts we were supposed to have, which Mami's father, Nono, neglected to pass."

Nono is at the heart of this story. Nono, was a curandero, a traditional healer (like a shaman) gifted with "instructions for talking to the dead, telling the future, healing the ill, and moving the clouds." A dream that both the author and her mother have leads them on a quest back to Colombia to disinter and free Nono from the demands and the wishes people leave at his grave. Those requests keep him tethered.

"This is a memoir of the ghostly - amnesia, hallucination, the historical specter of the past - which celebrates cultural understanding of truth that are, at heart, Colombian. The stories in this memoir are the true lived experience of those who lived it, as told to me."

The cultural history in this book is fascinating. The story weaves back and forth between the present to stories of the past - the author, her mother, Nono, and other relatives. At times, the thread is difficult to follow. After a while, I stop trying to follow the chronology and float along on what is at most times a mythological journey. However, that approach disengages from any emotional impact of the book. It is more like reading a story than a memoir. In fact, I have a hard time remembering this is a memoir.

Perhaps, a more focused approach on one or two main story threads may have been a more emotionally compelling book. Perhaps, some greater explanation of the cultural paradigm underlying the curandero would be beneficial in grounding the book for a reader not familiar with the culture and ritual. With the myriad stories and the lack of a cultural context, I am not sure I completely understand the family story being told.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

Slow Noodles

Title:  Slow Noodles:  A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes

Author:  Chantha Nguon with Kim Green

Publication Information:  Algonquin Books. 2024. 304 pages.

ISBN:  1643753495 / 978-1643753492

Rating:   ★★★★★

Book Source:  I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence:  "In 1975, the Khmer Rouge informed the Cambodian people that we had no history, but we knew it was a lie."

Favorite Quote:  "A refugee must learn to be anything  people want her to be at any given moment. But behind the masks, I am only myself - a mosaic of flavors from near and far."

***** BLOG TOUR *****

Review

The book poses a question. "When you must flee and can carry only one thing, what will it be? What single seed from your old life will be the most useful in helping you sow a new one?" That is the unimaginable choice faced by those flee or are forced to leave their home and their very lives. Time and time again, history describes such events. News stories today are full of them. Can anyone who has not lived it even come close to imagining it? I think not. That makes books such as this one so important. They offer a glimpse into a reality hopefully we are fortunate enough never to inhabit. It also offers an understanding of those who are flung into a refugee life. It offers lessons, perhaps, of how history seems to end up here over and over again despite each horror being followed by promises that it must never happen again. These memoirs bear witness.

In the 1970s, almost two million Cambodians died due to the policies and program of the Khmer Rouge regime. A genocide of almost two million!

The author, Chantha Nguon, survived. This is her story. "But the past never goes away. The fear and pain are still there, buried in our brains like mines. It is better to defuse them than to leave them entombed, quietly, waiting for a single misstep. That is why I am telling my story."

The facts of the book - the losses of this one individual, the time span, the history, the desperation, the risks - are moving. They are all the more so for the calm manner in which the narrative is related. Occasionally, I find myself stopping and re-reading a sentence over and over again to let the enormity of it sink in. This history of loss is measured in not days, weeks, months, or even years. It is over a decade! "Of course, I should have had more faith in impossible futures. After all, we'd already endured a series of them, each more unimaginable an unforeseen than the last."

What makes this memoir even more gripping is its anchor in food memories. "The dishes I loved best when I was small were the ones that took the longest to make. My puppy sense told me that time equaled loved, and love equaled deliciousness. On the time continuum, instant noodles tasted careless, like nothing at all; the kuy teav noodle maker's hand-cut mee were far superior. But the slowest and best noodles of all came from my mother's kitchen." Throughout the book, you find recipes. Some are for the dishes of the time and place. Some are conceptual as the "recipe" in the book description. Food memories is something we all share. A smell or a taste brings us to a time and place. The relatable memories bring the story closer to us. Although we may never comprehend the enormity of it, in some small way, we can understand a small piece.

The book ends on a note of hope. "But if there's one thing I learned from my mother, it's that losing everything is not the end of the story. She taught me that lost civilizations can be rebuilt from zero, even if the task will require many generations of work." Perhaps, there is hope yet as conflicts and genocides continue across the world today. Perhaps.

About the Book

A haunting and beautiful memoir from a Cambodian refugee who lost her country and her family during Pol Pot's genocide in the 1970s but who finds hope by reclaiming the recipes she tasted in her mother's kitchen.

RECIPE: HOW TO CHANGE CLOTH INTO DIAMOND

Take a well-fed nine-year-old with a big family and a fancy education. Fold in 2 revolutions, 2 civil wars, and 1 wholesale extermination. Subtract a reliable source of food, life savings, and family members, until all are gone. Shave down childhood dreams for approximately two decades, until only subsistence remains.

In Slow Noodles, Chantha Nguon recounts her life as a Cambodian refugee who loses everything and everyone—her home, her family, her country—all but the remembered tastes and aromas of her mother’s kitchen. She summons the quiet rhythms of 1960s Battambang, her provincial hometown, before the dictator Pol Pot tore her country apart and killed more than a million Cambodians, many of them ethnic Vietnamese like Nguon and her family. Then, as an immigrant in Saigon, Nguon loses her mother, brothers, and sister and eventually flees to a refugee camp in Thailand. For two decades in exile, she survives by cooking in a brothel, serving drinks in a nightclub, making and selling street food, becoming a suture nurse, and weaving silk.

Nguon’s irrepressible spirit and determination come through in this lyrical memoir that includes more than twenty family recipes such as sour chicken-lime soup, green papaya pickles, and pâté de foie, as well as Khmer curries, stir-fries, and handmade bánh canh noodles. Through it all, re-creating the dishes from her childhood becomes an act of resistance, of reclaiming her place in the world, of upholding the values the Khmer Rouge sought to destroy, and of honoring the memory of her beloved mother, whose “slow noodles” approach to healing and cooking prioritized time and care over expediency.

Slow Noodles is an inspiring testament to the power of food to keep alive a refugee’s connection to her past and spark hope for a beautiful life.

About the Author

Chantha Nguon was born in Cambodia and spent two decades as a refugee, until she was finally able to return to her homeland. She is the co-founder,of the Stung Treng Women’s Development Center, a social enterprise that offers a living wage, education, and social services to women and their families in rural northeastern Cambodia. A frequent public speaker, she has appeared at universities and on radio and TV news programs, including NPR’s Morning Edition. She cooks often for friends, family, and for private events. An excerpt from Slow Noodles in Hippocampus was named a Longreads Best Personal Essay in 2021.

Kim Green is an award-winning writer and public radio producer and contributor based in Nashville. Her work has appeared in Fast Company, the New York Times, and on NPR’s Weekend Edition, Marketplace, and The New Yorker Radio Hour. A licensed pilot, she was formerly a flight instructor.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives

Title:  Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives

Author:  Mary Laura Philpott

Publication Information:  Atria Books. 2022. 288 pages.

ISBN:  1982160780 / 978-1982160784

Book Source:  I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence:  "I remember now standing with my face to the horizon in the waist-deep tide of the Gulf of Mexico, making up a dance routine."

Favorite Quote:  "It's true: There will always be threats lurking under the water where we play, danger hiding in the attic and rolling down the street on heavy wheels, unexpected explosions in our brains and ours hearts and the sky. There will always be bombs, and we will never able to save everyone we care about. To know that and to try anyway is to be fully alive, The closes thing to shelter we can offer one another is love, as deep and wide and in as many forms as we can give it. Thank you for having me."

In the author's own words, "Bomb Shelter asks the question: How do any of us keep going when we can’t ever be sure what’s coming next?" The image on the cover is of a box turtle who lives in the author's back yard. Why a box turtle? According to the author, Frank the turtle is the perfect cover image because he literally carries a shelter with him at all times to keep him safe through whatever may arise.

The book comes from a "lifelong worrier" whose worries all come to fruition one night when she finds her teenager on the floor unconscious. The book is not really about the aftermath of her son's illness and diagnosis. That is the starting point.

The book is rather a series of essays on the realization of this fear, of other fears particularly about those we love, and the ability to navigate through life keeping this fear at bay. The titles of the individual essays range from "Pinwheel," to "To the Woman Screaming on the Quad," to "The Great Fortune of Ordinary Sadness," to "Spatchcock This." The topics of the essays are just as varied, ranging from her son's illness, to the family dog, to the turtle in the back yard, to the COVID-19 pandemic, to empty nester emotions. Several of the essays have been previously published through outlets such as The New York Times and The Atlantic.

My reaction to the essays varies as is expected in an any book using this format. It depends which of the situations and emotions resonate with my own experiences. Some I find myself laughing along with and nodding my head. Some I find myself skimming because they are not relevant to me or the experiences like the pandemic are too close to my own reality for me to want to read about as yet.

On occasion, I do find the writing style challenging. I find myself having to re-read to parse out and understand the meaning. For example, "...I was beginning to understand for the first time what would later, in other circumstances, hit me harder: that time was a finite resource. The more time you had in life, if you were lucky, the more opportunities you had to love and be loved, and the, at a certain point, the tide would turn, and time would start to run out, taking the ones you love with it." I absolutely agree with the central thought that time is precious and short. However, that is a lot of phrases strung together with commas to wade through to get to that point. The same point more simply put would be more powerful to me.

The book at times feels long, even at under 300 pages. Perhaps, that is the essay format for me and its inability to tell a cohesive story. Perhaps, it is repetition of the same themes throughout. Perhaps, it is reading an entire collection of essays in book format rather than pieces individually here and there. I come to the conclusion that while the individual essays are interesting, perhaps I am not the right reader for this book format.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

Beautiful Country

Title:  Beautiful Country: A Memoir

Author:  Qian Julie Wang

Publication Information:  Doubleday. 2021. 320 pages.

ISBN:  0385547218 / 978-0385547215

Book Source:  I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence:  "My story starts decades before my birth."

Favorite Quote:  "Secrets. They have so much power, don't they?"

"Whatever happens, say that you were born here, that you’ve always lived here." This is the lesson repeated time and again in Qian Julie Wang's childhood in New York City. What she knows is that she and her parents leave China for a new home in America because they have to. She is seven. Her life in New York becomes the only life she has ever known. It is life of struggle as her parents work in sweatshops, adapt to a new country, a new language, and a new way of life. Within that confine, they seek to provide their daughter an education.

To her, this is the only home she has ever known. She wants to fit in and belong. It is her parents at times who seems restrictive and challenged and different. 

What she does not realize is that her parents and she remain in the United States in the shadows, long after their temporary visas expire. They do no have a legal means of remaining in the country. In China, both parents were professors - one of English, the other of mathematics. Here, they take whatever job they can find simply to survive. This memoir is an adult looking back on this childhood narrative through the eyes of that young girl who does not know any of this and does not understand.

The understanding of the adult is the retrospective at the end of the narrative:

• "First and foremost, thank you to the members of the undocumented community, and in particular, the Dreamers and DACA recipients. To those whose stories I know and those whose stories I've yet to hear:  your courage and resilience are my inspiration, and I look forward to continuing to learn from you. I am now privileged beyond belief but I will stand with you for as long as you will have me."
• "And finally to Ba Ba ... and to Ma Ma ... When you had nothing, you somehow managed to give me everything. For that alchemy, no thank you can every be enough."
• "I like that I could help Ba Ba believe that one day, no one would think we were immigrants, that we really and truly belonged here."

Spoiler alert .... Although not really a spoiler if you read author biographies first. Qian Julie Wang is a Yale law graduate and managing partner in a law firm specializing in education and civil rights. Clearly, she and her family found a way to survive and thrive. My read of this book is not a conversation on the legality or illegality of the immigration. The law is the law, and the decision made were those of adults. 

To me, this is a compelling story about a child who has no hand and no control in those decisions, a child who has no knowledge of that decision, a child whose mother hides an illness for fear of what a doctor's visit will mean for her undocumented family, a child who has no home other than the known streets of New York. What is to become of this undocumented child as she becomes an adult? Where is home? Where does this child belong? What does a parent's decision mean for the life of this child?

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

Mango and Peppercorns

Title:  Mango and Peppercorns

Author:  Tung Nguyen, Katherine Manning, Lyn Nguyen

Publication Information:  Chronicle Books. 2021. 224 pages.

ISBN:  1797202243 / 978-1797202242

Book Source:  I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence:  "As the Vietnam War came to a close in the spring of 1975 with North Vietnam victorious, people began to flee impending Communist rule."

Favorite Quote:  "Refugees are here because they have no choice. They also bring enormous gifts and talents, as Tung did. They just need an opportunity. I  hope our story inspires others to understand that people from different backgrounds can find common ground if we just listen to each other. We can all be bigger than our individual selves. We all have tremendous power to change the lives of others and help the world become more mixed and accepting ... Everyone can get to know people who are different than they are. Everyone can help where they see a need. We all have stories to tell, and the best thing we can do for ourselves and the world is to listen to each other."

Tung Nguyễn fled Vietnam in 1975, 23 years old, pregnant, and alone. She landed in Miami and had the good fortune to meet and be given shelter and friendship by Kathy Manning. Kathy Manning was a graduate student at the time and opened up her home to refugees. Upon their meeting, neither imagined how far their friendship and partnership would flourish. Neither imagined that they would become friends, family, and business partners. "Why has their friendship endured for so many years, despite so many differences in culture and personality? Their values are the same. They share a firm sense of right and wrong. They take care of others who need help, even when doing so makes their own lives harder. They both always stand on their own two feet, proudly defining and making their own success."

This is a story of the immigrant roots of our nation, the welcoming shore, the contribution of immigrants - first generation and beyond - to this nation. "In all this strangeness, this tree gave me comfort and familiarity and strength. It was once a young tree, planted in new soil. Now it had grown higher than Kathy's roof. its red flowers providing cover for the yard and the house. I began to think of myself as a tree, too: a young tree, planted in new soil in the land of America. Now that I had water and dirt, I, too, would grow - roots, branches, and soon, the first young leaf."

This is also a story of food. Tung Nguyen learned how to cook in her family home. The food comes from the heart, and she is an inspired cook. Kathy Manning saw the potential and encouraged a career based on that talent and passion. They began with home parties and went on to create the immensely popular restaurant Hy Vong. Tung was the chef, while Kathy managed the business. This led to both progress and conflict.

Sadly, the restaurant closed in 2015, but its following remains. The book, which includes family photos and 20 recipes from Hy Vong, is marketed both as a memoir and a cookbook. According to its website, the restaurant offers pick up on certain dates with a menu that changes with each pick up date.

Ultimately, this is a book about the American dream, and the challenges and hurdles that face who try to achieve it. Both Tung and Kathy face different struggles, each in their own way searching for that elusive ideal. This book chronicles their challenges and the occasional moments when they appear to have achieved it. This book gives a face - one of many - to refugees and immigrants wanting and working so hard to achieve the ideal they believe possible. Through Tung's story, it highlights just one story of why someone may leave all they love and know behind to begin again. It brings to life the challenge of life as an immigrant, where, at times, you seem to fit not in your adopted home and not in the place you left. In Kathy's story, it epitomizes the welcome and the support that created the melting pot of this nation. Given the political climate in this nation at this point, this is a timely book.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

The Last Nomad

Title:  The Last Nomad: Coming of Age in the Somali Desert

Author:  Shugri Said Salh

Publication Information:  Algonquin Books. 2021. 304 pages.

ISBN:  1643750674 / 978-1643750675

Book Source:  I received this book through NetGalley and a publisher's blog tour free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence:  "How can I be the last one?"

Favorite Quote:  "Survival is woven into the fabric of who I am. I never asked, 'Why did this happen to me?' bur rather, 'How can I overcome this situation?' It is easy to let past trauma or injustice rule your life forever, but I want to be free, so I needed to understand and forgive others ... above all, I keep in mind that my happiness is up to me now ... I am very proud of my ancestors, my home country, and my past. I have just learned to leave out the parts that don't serve me as a woman, a mother, a human."

***** BLOG TOUR *****

Review

The memoir begins by stating why it is written. "Stories have always created understanding and connection between humans. In this era of great misunderstanding, I wish to help rein us back in to our shared humanity. The beauty of my culture was imprinted on me when I was very young, and I cherish it so deeply that my desire to share it only grows. Like an archeologist desperately excavating a forgotten world, Want to bring the details of my nomadic upbringing to life before it is lost forever."

It then goes on to provide a snapshot. "The resilience I learned from surviving life in the desert carried me through the unexpected death of my young mother, being chased from my country by civil war, and defying my clan's expectations after I dared to fall in love with a man from the 'wrong' country."

The first person narrative then delves into the details of those stories and that journey that begins in the desert of Somalia and, today, continues in the hills of California. In between is death, abuse, genetic mutilation, near rape, an orphanage, a civil war, and a new country. However, in between also is family, faith, friendship, courage, resilience, and love.

The only hesitation I have about this book is the distance I sometimes feel. Perhaps that is the distance of an adult reflecting on her past. Perhaps it is the distance needed to not drown in the emotions this journey entailed. Perhaps, it is none of these and simply is a writing approach. This book tells of a heart wrenching reality. More often than not, it "tells" the story rather and making me feel as if I am "living" it. Not that I would wish to live some of these experiences. Yet, in a book, it is this difference that completely transports me into the world of the book. This transition happens at brief, emotional moments in the book, but then it reverts to telling the story.

Other than that, this memoir both moves and educates. I have friends who are from Somalia, but some of the experiences described in this book are not ones we would ever discuss. By her willingness to share her story, the author provides an insight into the culture and traditions of Somalia and provides me with a better understanding of my friends. For that, I am grateful.

The author brings to life her nomadic life in the dessert and pays tribute to her grandmother who sounds life a fierce, amazing woman. Interestingly, the young Salh is wrenched away from that nomadic life and brought to city life. Yet, for so much of her life, she remains a nomad due to circumstances - family choices, civil war, and life as a refugee.

The fact that she eventually finds a home in the United States makes this a particularly timely story. By describing the cause, the journey, the fact that no one becomes a refugee by choice, and the willingness to work for an adoptive home, the book speaks to the plight of people around the world forced into similar situations. Perhaps, the book may educate on that broader scale as well and promoting understanding.

About the Author

Shugri Said Salh was born in the desert of Somalia in 1974 and spent her early years living as a nomad. In 1992, she emigrated to North America after the civil war broke out in her home country. She attended nursing school at Pacific Union College and graduated with honors. And although this is her first book, Shugri has been storytelling since she could talk. From her grandmother and the nomadic community in which she was raised, she heard stories and learned of their power to entertain, teach, and transform. She lives in Sonoma County with her family.

About the Book

Born in Somalia, a spare daughter in a large family, Shugri Said Salh was sent at age six to live with her nomadic grandmother in the desert. The last of her family to learn this once-common way of life, Salh found herself chasing warthogs, climbing termite hills, herding goats, and moving constantly in search of water and grazing lands with her nomadic family. For Salh, though the desert was a harsh place threatened by drought, predators, and enemy clans, it also held beauty, innovation, centuries of tradition, and a way for a young Sufi girl to learn courage and independence from a fearless group of relatives. Salh grew to love the freedom of roaming with her animals and the powerful feeling of community found in nomadic rituals and the oral storytelling of her ancestors.

As she came of age, though, both she and her beloved Somalia were forced to confront change, violence, and instability. Salh writes with engaging frankness and a fierce feminism of trying to break free of the patriarchal beliefs of her culture, of her forced female genital mutilation, of the loss of her mother, and of her growing need for independence. Taken from the desert by her strict father and then displaced along with millions of others by the Somali Civil War, Salh fled first to a refugee camp on the Kenyan border and ultimately to North America to learn yet another way of life.

Readers will fall in love with Salh on the page as she tells her inspiring story about leaving Africa, learning English, finding love, and embracing a new horizon for herself and her family. Honest and tender, The Last Nomad is a riveting coming-of-age story of resilience, survival, and the shifting definitions of home.

Press Release

“I am the last nomad. My ancestors traveled the East African desert in search of grazing land for their livestock, and the most precious resource of all—water. When they exhausted the land and the clouds disappeared from the horizon, their accumulated ancestral knowledge told them where to move next to find greener pastures. I am the last person in my direct line to have once lived like that.” These lines open Shugri Said Salh’s captivating and utterly original debut memoir, THE LAST NOMAD: Coming of Age in the Somali Desert (Publication Date: August 3rd, 2021; $26.95.) Chronicling Salh’s remarkable journey from her idyllic childhood with a nomadic grandmother in Somalia to her escape from her country’s brutal civil war to her unfamiliar new homes in Canada and then California, THE LAST NOMAD is an unforgettable story of hope, survival, and the shifting definitions of home.

Born in Somalia in 1974 as the fourth daughter in a society that saw daughters as a burden, Salh was sent to live with her beloved ayeeyo (grandmother) at the age of six to learn a once-common way of life. She left behind her parents, her father’s multiple wives, her many siblings, and her home in the city of Galkayo. Though the desert was a dangerous place threatened by drought and hunger and plagued by predators, she grew up courageous and free, learning how to herd camels, raise her own goats, and become a part of the community found through the courtship rituals, nightly stories, and cooking songs of her ancestors. She was even proud to face the rite of passage - a brutal female circumcision - that all “respectable” girls undergo in Somalia.

After the death of her mother and the violent political turmoil that took over the country, Salh was wrenched from the nomadic life she loved. Living first in a refugee camp on the Kenyan border, and ultimately moving to North America, she became a different kind of nomad who was thrust into a new way of life – a life that required navigating everything from escalators to cold weather to marriage and parenthood. With engaging wit, a fierce feminism, and vivid writing that transports readers instantly, THE LAST NOMAD portrays a rich portrait of one woman’s indomitable spirit, and the many vastly different worlds she has encountered in one lifetime.

“There is a saying in my culture that loosely translates: death is inevitable, so make sure your words prevail,” Salh explains. “I realized that if I didn't write this story of mine, it would die with me. It is not only my story, but the story of my family, nomadic culture, my country, and what it is like to be a Somali woman. It is important for me to record my unique upbringing, so my children and their descendants know the strong women they come from. I hope my story ultimately inspires those who have faced adversity in their lives, and brings us all together as humans, regardless of our backgrounds, religion, nationality and gender.” Salh now lives in Sonoma County, California with her husband and three children, and works as an infusion nurse.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

Nowhere Girl

Title:  Nowhere Girl

Author:  Cheryl Diamond

Publication Information:  Algonquin  Books . 2021. 320 pages.

ISBN:  1616208201 / 978-1616208202

Book Source:  I received this book through NetGalley and a publisher's blog tour free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence:  "My first near-death experience occurs at the age of four, when the brakes fail, with my dad at the wheel, sending us hurtling down the Himalayas."

Favorite Quote:  "I've noticed people often complain about the monotony of life. How sometimes very day is just like the last and they all blend together. Do they know how lucky they are? But maybe that's the problem with a smooth pleasant routine, you begin taking it for granted."

***** BLOG TOUR *****

Review

Cheryl Diamond, born (I think) with the name Harbhajan Khalsa Nanak, becomes a New York City model at age sixteen. She publishes her first novel at age twenty-one. She has since published a second novel and this memoir. She currently lives in Luxembourg. Before, however, comes an entire lifetime, filled with more than most people live in their entire lifetimes. "By the age of nine, I will have lived in more than a dozen countries, on five continents under six assumed identities. I'll know how a document is forged, how to withstand an interrogation, and most important, how to disappear."

Her family - parents, brother, sister, and her - is on the run. The first half of the book is country to country, identity to identity, and life to life. Parts are a child's adventure. Many more parts are sudden goodbyes, no friendships, and constant new beginnings. Some other parts get even more harrowing with abuse, interrogation, and escape.

The question that is not addressed until almost the middle of the book is why? Why is this family on the run? What and who are the running from? The events described make the first part of the book so very sad, but the constant question of why lingers. When finally answered, it is not quite as I expect, but it provides the needed context. I think I would have preferred the context earlier if only to shift the focus from that question to the actual events. Given the current structure of the book, the question of why looms over the entire first half of the book, overshadowing some of the events themselves.

The answer to the "why" seems to be the fulcrum of the book. Before comes the childhood, such as it is. After, although still a child, the book jumps to the emergence into adulthood. What stands out throughout the book is the fractured relationships of this family. I am still not entirely sure of why the fractures exist and why they loom larger and larger. How and why does abuse and violence find its way into this family? How is it allowed to remain? The fact that the constant moves and no past and no future leaves them nobody but each other. That kind of the dependence perhaps leads to many things. This is one family member's perspective; part of me is left wondering what story would show from a different perspective.

I am also not entirely sure of the fate of some of the family members, but perhaps that is the nature of a memoir. This story is not over yet. However, it does leave me wondering about what happens to the others particularly Frank and Chiara. One point of closure is offered. "Your father loved you. That was never a lie. But you outgrew him, Harbhajan. Simple as that. He's a con man, who gave birth to an idealist. And after a certain point, the two just don't go together anymore."

The truth of this memoir is truly stranger than fiction.

About the Author

Cheryl Diamond is now a citizen of Luxembourg and lives between there and Rome. Her behind-the-scenes account of life as a teenage model, Model: A Memoir, was published in 2008. Diamond´s second book, Naked Rome, reveals the Eternal City through the eyes of its most fascinating people.

About the Book

Cheryl Diamond had an outlaw childhood beyond the imaginings of most. By age nine, she had lived in more than a dozen countries on five continents and had assumed six identities as her parents evaded Interpol and other law enforcement agencies. While her family lived on the run, she would learn math on an abacus, train as an Olympic hopeful, practice Sikhism and then celebrate her bat mitzvah, come to terms with the disappearance of her brother, become a successful fashion model, and ultimately watch her unconventional yet close-knit family implode. Diamond’s unforgettable memoir, NOWHERE GIRL: A MEMOIR OF A FUGITIVE CHILDHOOD (Publication Date: June 15, 2021; $27.95), is a harrowing, clear-sighted, and surprisingly humor-filled testament to a childhood lost and an adulthood found. With its page-turning candor about forged passports and midnights escapes, this is, in the end, the searing story of how lies can destroy a family and how truth can set us free.

Diamond, whose acclaimed first book, Model: A Memoir, earned her accolades as “America’s next top author” in The New York Times Style Magazine, begins her story with her earliest memories as a four-year-old in India. Even at that tender age she had been schooled by her complicated and controlling father to never make a mistake, never betray the family, and never become attached to a place or other people. As the family continent-hopped, switched religions, paid for everything in cash, assumed new names time and again—always one step ahead of the law—young Cheryl (then called Bhajan) developed the burning need to achieve and win approval. By twenty-three she had seen so much of the world, but only through a peculiar lens that had somehow become normal. And she was plagued by fundamental questions: Who am I? And how can I find the courage to break away from the people I love most – because escaping is the only way to survive.

“For a long time, I felt that having had such a strange and often traumatic childhood had somehow marked me and made it impossible to be understood or connect with the outside world, to ever have a good life,” Diamond reveals. “It was only when I forced myself to begin to open up, make friends, and talk about what I had survived that I realized how many people had gone through similar challenges. Perhaps not as many, but enough that we genuinely understood each other. I decided to write NOWHERE GIRL because I came to see how many people carry some sort of shame or fear about not fitting in, often never voiced. But the very act of baring our darker side actually brings people closer—rather than the judgment we so fear.”

“An absolutely breathless read,” says Paul Haggis, Academy Award-winning writer/director of Crash, Million Dollar Baby, and Casino Royale. “NOWHERE GIRL is a courageous, heart-breaking, and beautifully written story of a girl doing everything in her power to protect the ones she loves.”

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The Women I Think About at Night: Traveling the Paths of My Heroes

Title:  The Women I Think About at Night: Traveling the Paths of My Heroes

Author:  Mia Kankimäki (Author), Douglas Robinson (Translator)

Publication Information:  Simon & Schuster. 2020. 416 pages.

ISBN:  1982129190 / 978-1982129194

Book Source:  I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence:  "I'm M."

Favorite Quote:  "It seems likely that even today women's attitudes have not been entirely freed from this messy skein of duty and guilt. I haven't raised any children or been responsible for my parents' care (yet), but it seems to me that I have nevertheless spent my entire life to date living according to unspoken expectations - under the sway of conditioned obedience and conscientiousness.  I took the expected university degree, entered the profession for which I was qualified, strove ambitiously to advance in that profession for nearly a decade and a half ... all quite willingly, even enthusiastically. But then, somehow, it began to pall on me. Was this all there was to life? Did life have nothing new to offer me? (Probably it was at this juncture the many of my friends started families.) I began to feel that I'd had enough of doing the things I was supposed to do. I'd been conscientious, decent, obedient, and sensible long enough. I didn't want to be sensible any longer!" 

Based on the title and the description, I immediately want to read this book. Mia Kankimake, in her own words, is a "fortyish woman [who] seeks meaning of life." She manages to arrange her life to travel and seek inspiration in the paths of women - ten pioneers - she finds inspiring. She reads their works, contemplates their lives, and travels to their destinations from Africa to Japan to Italy. The book is described as blending "travelogue, memoir, and biography as she recounts her enchanting travels."

I expect to travel to far off destinations. I expected to learn about these women. More importantly, I expect to learn about the author's vision of these pioneers. Most of all I expect to be inspired. Unfortunately, for me, I find myself still seeking and determine that I am not the reader for find these goals in this book.

Travel:  I love travel and the idea of learning and immersing myself in the places and cultures I find myself in.  Unfortunately, on her first trip, the author has this to say. "When you travel, everything is always strange and scary at first - the food, the huts, the people, the animals, the smells, the sounds. But then at some point you begin to adjust, your organism says Okay, fine, your eyes open, and you begin to see past the strangeness. That's why I want to stay on this trip for a long time. I want to wait till I start seeing. That usually happens around the tenth day. We're not there yet." That outlook seems to last the entire book. The commentary is that of a judgmental tourist.

The Women: Interestingly, this book details the reasons the author "rejects" a woman from her list. Some are because of profession or destination which is understandable. Some rejections - "filthy-rich aristocratic heiresses ... whine-fests ... endearingly nerdy aunties" - again bring in a negative judgement which is off-putting. For the women chosen, a lot of this book is excerpts from writings by or about the women the author chooses to study. The excerpts are interspersed with the author's own musings. As such for me, they lose continuity and do not paint a picture of the woman in question. It leaves me wondering if rather than reading these snippets, I should just read the original writings to get a more cohesive vision.

Inspiration:  I am not familiar with some of the women the author chooses as her heroes. However, the term heroes implies a respect. It implies lessons to be learned. It implies approaches to be emulated. It implies choice. Unfortunately, in the process close to the beginning of the book, she asks the question if one of these women in an "unbalanced b**tch". Although she determines that this conclusion may be a result of an author's presentation, the book continues with this tone of annoyance and judgement.

This book has been translated into English. In that, I wonder if something (or everything!) is lost in the translation. Unfortunately, I found this book titled to be about heroes to be anything but inspirational.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

The Color of Love

Title:  The Color of Love

Author:  Marra B. Gad

Publication Information:  Agate Bolden. 2019. 256 pages.

ISBN:  157284275X / 978-1572842755

Book Source:  I read this book as a selection for a local book club.

Opening Sentence:  "My friend Rosa often says that she is amazed that I can be loving or kind or happy."

Favorite Quote:  "I have a lens into the world very few share. I am the luckiest."

Marra B. Gad is what she refers to as a "mixed-race Jewish unicorn." Her biological parents are a white Jewish woman and a black father. The pregnancy was unplanned, unwanted, and hidden. The baby was to be put up for adoption through a rabbi who had made the placement of Jewish babies with Jewish families his priority. Marra's adoptive parents are white, Jewish, and from Chicago. They adopted Marra at three days old in 1970 and then went on to have two biological children - Marra's brother and sister.

Marra's experiences outside of the family certainly resonate. It is the story of being always made to feel the other. In the black communities, the question arises about how could Marra possibly be Jewish? In Jewish communities, she is made to feel that she does not belong because she is black. Apparently, being black or bi-racial as Marra is and Jewish is a combination that does not exist in people's minds. Hence a unicorn. I do wish this aspect of her life was explored more in the book. These are relevant conversations, and I would be intrigued to hear details of and her perspective on these situations.

For Marra and for many others, this experience spills over into family as well. Her parents, siblings, and grandmother surround Marra with love. However, not everyone is as kind or as accepting. This memoir brings the focus of these relationships down to one - Marra's Great-Aunt Nette. Nette and Marra's mother are close until her comments about Marra drives a wedge in that relationship. As far as Marra's mother is concerned, her daughter is her daughter. Anyone not okay with that is not okay with her.

Fast forward, fifteen years. The family discovers that Nette has Alzheimer's. Because of illness and other family commitments, it seems that Marra is the only one of her siblings or her mother in a position to be able to help. She can walk away because of Nette's treatment of her, or she can help. As she says many times throughout the book, Marra chooses love. This book narrows down in focus down to one relationship and to some extent shifts focus to Alzheimers. I think I would have appreciated a broader view into her perspective and experiences as a biracial, Jewish woman.

At times, this aspect of the book reads as very self-serving. There are repeated statements about how she has the choice to walk away but does not. There are repeated statements about the Four Seasons being a home away from home. There are repeated statements about her IQ and her business acumen. Sometimes, that is part and parcel of the fact that life as a minority often means having to stand up for your qualifications and having to prover yourself over and over again. However, anyone who chooses to read this book does not need that proof.

That being said, this book is ultimately a story about family and love. Choosing love is always good idea.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

Vesper Flights

Title:  Vesper Flights

Author:  Helen Macdonald

Publication Information:  Grove Press. 2020. 288 pages.

ISBN:  0802128815 / 978-0802128812

Book Source:  I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence:  "Back in the sixteenth century, a curious craze began to spread through the halls, palaces and houses of Europe."

Favorite Quote:  "Most of all I hope my work is about a thing that seems to me of the deepest possible importance in our present-day historical moment:  finding ways to recognize and love difference. The attempt to see through eyes that are not your own. To understand that your way of looking at the world is not the only one. To think what it might mean to love those that are not like you. To rejoice in the complexity of things."

I was originally introduced to Helen MacDonald's work through H is for Hawk. I kept reading about the book over a period of time until I finally decided to read it for myself. That book is a poignant journey through grief. Even though I know nothing about hawks or falconing, the emotion of that book resonated through the writing. It spoke to me.

Hence, I was excited to read this book. A "vesper" is an evening prayer. It is a time for contemplation and reflection. Some flights - of the birds - in this book are literal. Others - of thoughts and emotions - are figurative. The title symbolizes what the rest of the book presents - an interplay between philosophy and the natural world.

Vesper Flights is a collection of about 40 essays - some previously published and some new - on a wide variety of topics. In the introduction, the author describes the book as a wunderkammer, a cabinet of curiosity which "held natural and artificial things together on shelves in close conjunction ... The wonder these collections kindled came in part from the ways in which their disparate contents spoke to one another of their similarities and differences in form, their beauties and manifest obscurities." 

My review of this book has unfortunately been impacted by the fact that the version I received is one contiguous block of text. Although the finished book is comprised of a set of essays, the version I received has no divisions or other marking between the essays. As such, it is very challenging - if not impossible - to determine where one ends and the other begins. The quality of this writing is that it combines facts about the natural world with philosophical musings and interpretations about life in general. As such, it is not easy to identify topically where the author intended for the reader to pause and reflect on a unit. I am disappointed.

As with H is for Hawk, the writing is beautiful. I find myself underlining sentences. This book is not shy about making its stance and the author's viewpoints clear - whether on politics, climate change, immigration, the politics of climate change, the relationship between humans and the planet we inhabit, the relationships between humans, and other related topics. A reader's reaction to any particular essay will likely depend on their outlook on that issue. However, knowing who Helen MacDonald is and what she does, would you pick up her book if you were not similarly included? Probably not.

Not only does the book traverse topics, it travels to different parts of the globe, pulling in stories that demonstrate the interconnectedness of us all. Even without any overt statements as to that global connection, the compilation itself makes that point.

I think I will have to start this book over with the proper demarkations. I will keep it on my side table, pick it up and read one essay at time, perhaps in order perhaps randomly, at times when I need to feel that connection and grounding in the natural world.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

The Dragons, The Giant, the Women

Title:  The Dragons, The Giant, the Women:  A Memoir

Author:  Wayétu Moore

Publication Information:  Graywolf Press. 2020. 272 pages.

ISBN:  1644450313 / 978-1644450314

Book Source:  I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence:  "Mam."

Favorite Quote:  "I think, as women of color, especially women of color who come from some means, any means really, we tend to play down the unpleasant things we've experienced. To bury them ... Perfection or the desire for it, it becomes a mask ... a uniform. But there is something underneath. What's underneath makes us real."

Wayétu Moore was born in Liberia. She grew up in Spring, Texas. She studied in California, New York, and Washington, DC. She currently lives in Brooklyn. Her debut novel drew upon Liberian history and mythology. This book explores the same but through the lens of her own life.

The memoir seemingly comprises of three parts. The first is from the perspective of five year old Wayétu. Uprisings and war has broken out in Liberia. She, her sisters, and her father flee to a remote village. Her mother lives in America, although it is not clarified at this time how or why. The second section jumps forward to Wayétu as an adult in the United States. This segment traverses through time and tells of the US immigrant experience, particularly as a person of color. It also presents the challenges she faces in coming to terms with her own childhood and the scars of war. The third part unexpectedly jumps to the story of Wayétu's mother, how she came to be in the US, and what she went through to bring her family out of Liberia. In some ways, this section goes back to the beginning of the book and tells the other side of the story. The memoir is clearly not linear. It is a more literary description of an experience.

The first part is by far my favorite section. It depicts a child's innocence and the courage of the adults around her who manage not just to keep the family safe but also to maintain some semblance of a childhood. The incorporation of an almost fairly tale of the dragon, the giant who is her father, and the women - her mother and the women of the village - encapsulates the horrors of war. This section also introduces me to the history of Liberia, one of my main reasons for choosing to read this book. This part of the world and this history is one with which I am unfamiliar, and this book provides the introduction to learn more.

The second part introduces the experiences of immigration and of racism:

• "Barely one year in and our new country let us know, every day, that we were different."
• "I could be beautiful in a place and still not enough, not because of who I was or anything I had done, but because of something as simple, and somehow as grand in this new place, as the color of my skin."

The section seems somewhat scattered as it captures the struggle of an adult coming to terms with her own history, the traumas of childhood, and the reality of her adopted home. It is not easy to read, but, in its very telling, captures the emotion of being adrift and trying to determine where you belong.

The third section is surprising because the story completely shifts to her mother's. "When I tell them the story, I tell them that the only thing that made me stay was wanting my daughters to know that they could go after anything they wanted, that they could fly too." Her mother's story is essential for context and to complete the history. However, at that point, does this book shift from memoir to something else? Is this truly her mother's story of her mother's story as Wayétu herself understands it? Perhaps, the telling of it is essential to her coming to terms with the past. Perhaps, I will not understand, and that is okay.

A history I did not know and a story that once again documents the strength and resilience of individuals makes for a powerful read.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

Things My Son Needs to Know about the World

Title:  Things My Son Needs to Know about the World

Author:  Fredrik Backman

Publication Information:  Atria Books. 2019. 208 pages.

ISBN:  1501196863 / 978-1501196867

Book Source:  I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence:  "To my son:  I want to apologize."

Favorite Quote:  "I just want you to know that I love you. Once you're older, you'll realize that I made an endless line of mistakes during your childhood, I know that. I've resigned myself to it. but I just want you to know that I did my very, very best. I left it all on the field. I gave this every ounce of everything I had."

I have read four previous books by Fredrik Backman. A Man Called Ove is still on my to read list I have rated three out of the four with five stars. In other words, I have loved most of the books. This one is no exception even though it is a completely different book.

This is a nonfiction collection of essays written about the same time as A Man Called Ove. The collection was released in Sweden several years ago. It is just this year being released in the United States. The essays, as the title suggests, are lessons for his son who was then very young. It would be interesting now to see what the young man has to say about these lessons. Actually, Fredrik Backman now has two children. It would be wonderful to know if his lessons remain the same.

As a parent myself, I find myself nodding along with many of the stories - laughing, reminiscing, and reflecting on my own parenting adventures. My favorite aspect of this book of lessons to a child from a father is the unequivocal love he displays for his wife - the mother of his children. ".. the reason I don't know much about love is that I've really only ever loved one woman. But every day with her is like being a pirate in a magical land far away full of adventures and treasures. Making her laugh is a bit like wearing rain boots that are a little too big and jumping into the deepest of puddles. I'm blunt and sharp and full of black and white. She's all my color."

It is clear that the love encompasses his wife and his children. "And when you dance, you and she... if I could choose one single moment to live inside for all eternity, it would be that."

The remaining lessons vary from the mundane to statements of love to philosophical lessons about equality and tolerance. At times, the book is corny and cheesy as you might expect in a collection as this one. At times, it is pensive and serious. "So...it's not easy to teach you what a man is. It's different things for different people. With different people." What shines through is the love and the recognition that we as parents may not always know what we are doing, but hopefully, we do the best we can.

In a world where negativity is so prevalent, I will take the positive message of love. "You and your mother are my greatest, most wonderful, scariest adventure. I'm amazed every day that you're still letting me follow along."

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.