Synopses & Reviews
A mesmerizing novel in verse about family, identity, and finding yourself in the most unexpected places--for fans of The Poet X, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, and Jason Reynolds.
Nima doesn't feel understood. By her mother, who grew up far away in a different land. By her suburban town, which makes her feel too much like an outsider to fit in and not enough like an outsider to feel like that she belongs somewhere else. At least she has her childhood friend Haitham, with whom she can let her guard down and be herself.Until she doesn't.
As the ground is pulled out from under her, Nima must grapple with the phantom of a life not chosen, the name her parents didn't give her at birth: Yasmeen. But that other name, that other girl, might just be more real than Nima knows. And more hungry.And the life Nima has, the one she keeps wishing were someone else's. . .she might have to fight for it with a fierceness she never knew she had.
"Nothing short of magic...One of the best writers of our times."-- Elizabeth Acevedo, New York Times Bestselling author of The Poet X
Review
“Nothing short of magic.” Elizabeth Acevedo, New York Times bestselling author of The Poet X
About the Author
Sudanese by way of D.C., Safia Elhillo is the author of The January Children and Home Is Not a Country, and co-editor of the anthology Halal If You Hear Me. Winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, an Arab American Book Award, and the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, she is also the recipient of a Cave Canem Fellowship and a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from The Poetry Foundation. Her work has appeared in POETRY Magazine, Callaloo, and The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-day series, among others. Currently a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, she lives in Oakland, California.