Randa Jarrar

This facilitated book group meets from 7:00-8:30pm the 4th Wednesday of each month at Charis to discuss books which feature queer characters/ storylines as well as a strong attention to literary craft and style. January's selection is "A Map of Home" by Randa Jarrar, a very funny coming of age tale about ... (more)an audacious Muslim girl growing up in Kuwait, Egypt and Texas. Jarrar explores familiar adolescent ground—stifling parental expectations, precarious friendships, sensuality and first love—but her exhilarating voice and flawless timing make this a standout.

Published by Penguin, Randa Jarrar's paperback of her novel A Map of Home is coming and so is she! Randa will be here for a signing on Sept. 23rd at 5PM. A Map of Home has won the Arab American Book Award for best fiction of 2008.

A MAP OF HOME is an enthralling, unconventional coming-of-age tale. Nidali, the quick-witted protagonist, tells her story of growing up as a Palestinian-Egyptian-Greek American-Born girl in Kuwait with a quirky mother and at-times hot-tempered father. It is hard not to see the parallels between Nidali’s ... (more)life and Randa’s. Both were born in the US but quickly swept off to live in her parents’ native land – settling in Kuwait, like many middle-class Arabs at the time. And like so many of those who came looking for a better life, fled when Saddam invaded in the 90’s. Both Randa and her character find themselves in Egypt for a brief period of time only then to move back to the US, a country where they were born but could not recall. Randa settled in Austin and to this day considers it the only place that has ever felt like home. After receiving her MFA in Ann Arbor, she is moving back to the city she is so fond of – just in time for the publication of this paperback edition.

Novelist, translator (from the Arabic), and blogger (randajarrar.com) Randa Jarrar makes this welcome first appearance here to read from her debut novel, A Map of Home (Other Press). This lively coming of age story ranges from childhood in Kuwait, adolescence in Egypt (after fleeing Iraq's 1990 invasion), ... (more)and then Texas, telling tales both humorous and harrowing along the way.

Author Randa Jarrar joins us at The Book Cellar to share her funny, charming, and heartbreaking book, A Map of Home.

SYNOPSIS: Nidali, the rebellious daughter of an Egyptian-Greek mother and a Palestinian father, narrates her story from her childhood in Kuwait, her early teenage years in Egypt ... (more)(to where she and her family fled the 1990 Iraqi invasion), to her family's last flight to Texas. Nidali mixes humor with a loving and vibrant celebration of an eccentric middle-class family in the Arab world, and this perspective keeps her buoyant through the hardships she encounters: the humiliation of going through a checkpoint on a visit to her father's home on the West Bank; the fights with her father, who wants her to become a famous professor and stay away from boys; the end of her childhood as Iraq invades Kuwait on her thirteenth birthday; and the scare she gives her family when she runs away from home.

Wieden + Kennedy Stage

SYNOPSIS: Jarrar's sparkling debut about an audacious Muslim girl growing up in Kuwait, Egypt and Texas is intimate, perceptive and very, very funny. Nidali Ammar is born in Boston to a Greek-Egyptian mother and a Palestinian father, and moves to Kuwait at a very young age, staying there until she's ... (more)13, when Iraq invades. A younger brother is born in Kuwait, rounding out a family of complex citizenships. During the occupation, the family flees to Alexandria in a wacky caravan, bribing soldiers along the way with whiskey and silk ties. But they don't stay long in Egypt, and after the war, Nidali's father finds work in Texas. At first, Nidali is disappointed to learn that feeling rootless doesn't make her an outsider in the States, and soon it turns out the precocious and endearing Arab chick isn't very different from other American girls, a reality that only her father may find difficult to acc...

A Map of Home

A Map of Home (Other Press)
An irreverent yet poignant tale about emigration, sexual awakening, and about Arab culture as we don’t know it.
Publishers Weekly: (Starred Review)

"Jarrar's sparkling debut about an audacious Muslim girl growing up in Kuwait, Egypt and Texas is intimate, perceptive ... (more)and very, very funny. ... Jarrar explores familiar adolescent ground—stifling parental expectations, precarious friendships, sensuality and first love—but her exhilarating voice and flawless timing make this a standout."
"Jazzy, and vastly intelligent and fun. Jarrar is a wonderworker with delectable details and sweet swerves of surprise."
--Naomi Shihab Nye
Jarrar is an award-winning writer and translator, and contributes to the feminist quarterly Make/Shift. She grew up in Kuwait and moved to the U.S. after the first Gulf War.

In this stunning debut novel, Randa Jarrar creates a mutli-cultural little girl whose voice shines throughout A Map of Home. Nidali is Egyptian, Greek and Palestinian, and her family keeps moving. First they leave Kuwait when Iraq invades on her thirteenth birthday. They arrive in Egypt, only to quickly ... (more)leave when her father finds work in Texas. Her unique and varied upbringing helps shape Nidali into a very funny, very charming young girl. Tonight at 7PM.