Al-Amerikiya

Sophia Al-Maria's debut Al-Amerikiya tells the story of her redneck family in Washington State and her Bedouin family in Qatar. Beginning with the two runaways in Norway and Saudi Arabia whose rebellion over a century ago made the unlikely meeting and marriage of her parents possible, Al-Amerikiya plots Sophia's own zigzagging adventure from a raspberry-farm in Tacoma to a winter-camp outside Riyadh to a houseboat in Cairo to the back of a Harley in Stavanger. Intended as a contradiction in tone and content to the popular genre-memoirs of the victimized-Muslim-woman, this funny, moving coming of age story helps us realise that wars might be fought between cultures, but first they start between families.