The Map of Salt and Stars by Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar

THE MAP OF SALT AND STARS by Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar has a beautiful cover and contains a rich blending of two stories.  One is set in the twelfth century and relates the adventures of Rawiya, a young girl who runs away from home and pretends to be a boy as she travels through the Middle East and Northern Africa with a famous medieval mapmaker. The other action concerns a preteen named Nour who is a present day refugee from Syria fleeing that war torn country with her family, covering much of the same geographical territory.  Joukhadar’s debut novel is extremely ambitious in that it relates two coming of age adventures, tackles contemporary issues and even explores the idea of synesthesia, or seeing and thinking in colors. 

Some favorite quotes include:

Every place you go becomes a part of you. But none more so than home.

… stories ease the pain of living, not dying. People always think dying is going to hurt. But it does not. It’s living that hurts us.

You are the stories you tell yourself.

A red hard knot glues itself to my ribs like indigestion, the tangled-up knot of all the things I’ve loved that will be buried one day, all the things I know I am bound to forget.

THE MAP OF SALT AND STARS by Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar received starred reviews from both Booklist and Kirkus. I certainly appreciate the skill exhibited in playing these two stories off of each other and frankly, I liked Rawiya’s mythical tale and eagerly read those portions, but found it surprisingly difficult to develop a deep empathy for the contemporary characters, including young Nour. Coincidentally, I have just been talking with other teachers about looking for an updated version of books like Enrique’s Journey. Exposing our students to the plight of today’s refugees and the crises they face is critical; perhaps exploring those events separately would have resulted in a shorter novel and one that could have been used with classes? I have found suggestions to make for Senior classes like the essays in The Displaced or a more challenging novel like Go, Went, Gone, but welcome more ideas, especially for our younger students.  

Fractured Lands

FRACTURED LANDS by war correspondent Scott Anderson employs six narratives following a Kurdish physician and an activist from Iraq, a dissident from Egypt, student from Syria, an ISIS fighter and Libyan Air Force cadet. In explaining “how the Arab world came apart,” Anderson traces the history of the region and its’ dictators from the early 1970’s, noting in particular the instability states with artificially drawn boundaries and America’s role in Iraqi politics, particularly the invasion, which he says led to the Arab Spring revolts. 

In the last third of the book, Scott also discusses the rise of ISIS and subsequent migration of people and terrorism to Europe and beyond. He argues, “it is fitting that the turmoil in the Arab world has its roots in the First World War, for like that war, it is a regional crisis that has come quickly and widely … to influence events at every corner of the globe.” What is unique is how he has chosen to tell this troubled history through the life stories of six individuals and their families.  Certainly heart-wrenching at times and a much needed perspective to humanize a complex and difficult situation. 

Erik Love, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, also attempts to bring greater understanding in ISLAMOPHOBIA AND RACISM IN AMERICA (from New York University Press). He writes about hate crimes in America and how “many South Asian Americans are Muslim, but many others are Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Buddhist …. [and] many Arab Americans are Christian, Jewish or agnostic, but race exposes them to Islamophobia all the same.”  Much of his work focuses on defining what he calls “the Middle Eastern racial category” and use of terms like “Muslim American” to replace “Arab American.”

As part of his research, Love has travelled and met/spoken with leaders of advocacy organizations in the United States, conducted content analysis on documents like brochures and websites, and also built a large database with information on “Arab, Muslim, Sikh, and South Asian American advocacy organizations.” He writes about whether Islamophobia should be described as racism, noting a long history and parallels with other forms of racism. Several sections describe the work and past strategies employed by these civil rights advocacy groups, as well as a look towards the future and possibility for change.