August 4, 2008
The debut memoir from veteran academic Zonana, currently an associate professor at CUNY, Manhattan, is thick with family angst and restless spirits, documenting Zonana's protracted quest for belonging among numerous locales and people. Born in Cairo, Egypt, Zonana's family emigrated to Brooklyn after the Egyptian-Israeli War of 1948, when she was a small girl. There, she grew up a misfit among the European-dominated New York Jewish community; for much of her life, she was "overwhelmed by the conviction that I had in fact been exiled... whenever I moved I experienced the same confusion: Had I chosen to leave, or had I been forced?" An epiphany about her "one true home" (the Earth) comes by way of a Native American moon lodge ceremony, but it's built on her love affair with ethnic food (recipes are included), her discovery of resettled family in Brazil, her father's illnesses and her own debilitating fears of independence; eventually, it leads her to New Orleans, academic success and the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Zonana's memoir is a somewhat disjointed affair, but captures with honesty and beauty the suffering and uncertainty of migration and assimilation, whether forced or formulated.
September 15, 2008
Leaving Cairos familiar, if chaotic, streets in 1951 for the uncharted territories of America, Zonana finds herself a distinct minority. Even her fellow Brooklyn Jews know nothing about the traditions of Egyptian Jews, a community nearly obliterated in the aftermath of 1948s Arab-Israeli conflict. Zonana grows up speaking French and English and doting on foods found only in Arab-owned stores. Her father prays daily, but the family neither keeps a kosher home nor observes the Sabbath. A parade of relatives passes through their Brooklyn home, including a grandmother devoted to Arab music unintelligible to the rest of the family. Zonana visits another beloved grandmother in Brazil, a journey that leaves her with indelible memories of the continent and a sense of a large and far-flung family. Eventually, Zonanas academic gifts yield a professorship in New Orleans in time to endure the rigors of Katrinas devastations. Zonana makes every human encounter lively.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)