The Inheritance of Exile: Stories from South Philly [Hardcover]

InThe Inheritance of Exile, Susan Muaddi Darraj expertly weaves a tapestry of the events and struggles in the lives of four Arab-American women.

Hanan, Nadia, Reema, and Aliyah search for a meaningful sense of home, caught in the cultural gap that exists between the Middle East and the United States. Daughters of Palestinian immigrants who have settled into the diverse southern section of Philadelphia, the four friends live among Vietnamese, Italians, Irish, and other ethnic groups. Each struggles to reconcile her Arab identity with her American one. Muaddi Darraj adds the perspectives of the girls mothers, presented in separate stories, which illuminate the often troubled relationship between first and second generations of immigrants.

Her suite of finely detailed portraits of arresting characters, told in evocative, vivid language, is sure to intrigue those seeking enjoyment and insight.

Nobody believed what I said about Siti, not even my mother. Maybe she didnt want to accept it, maybe it was too painful, like opening your eyes to the yellow glare of the midday sun, so she resisted.

Nadia, your grandmother is dead, my mother said, soothing me back to sleep. She knelt on the floor, hovering over my bed, stroking my hair along my back the way she used to when, as a child of twelve, I cried for my father. A drunk driver had hit him that year, but it took him three months to die in the hospital. Theyll have to take me kicking and screaming, hed promise, lying still in his hospital bed, in too much pain to even clasp my hand. But he left without a sound.

Now my mother smoothed my hair again in long, com- forting strokes that ended in the middle of my back, before starting again at the top of my head, like a skier at the summit of a steep slope. Except that now I was twenty-one and seeing visions of my grandmother.

But I saw her, I repeated stubbornly, my shoulders still shaking. Id awakened,lcQ