Ms. Erian, an author and an educator who taught for a time at Wellesley college, has penned, here, a perfectly disturbing and achingly believable tale of growing up foreign in a United States with a bad case of war fever. I'm not usually one for coming-of-age novels -- they always seem caught between either pointless nostalgia or self-indulgent regret --, but this piece, recommended to me by a friend, escapes all of that by challenging both our sensibilities and our prejudices.
The problematic product of an American mother and a Lebanese father, Jasira, an attractive and developed 13-year-old girl, is banished from her mother's home in New York and sent to live with her father in Texas after it's discovered that her mother's boyfriend is just a bit too interested in touching the younger kind. Jasira, who is blamed by her mother for this disturbance in her life, is forced to make a harsh transition from the American home she knows so well into the strict, middle-eastern home of her father for which she's not at all prepared. Episodes of harsh and sometimes abusive paternalism frighten and then alienate Jasira who passively enters into an inappropriate relationship with her father's neighbor. Backdropped against the 1991 Gulf War, Jasira's struggle to find her feet in an uncertain world is a poignant and perfect analogy for the broader conflict between America and Iraq which is also based on misapprehensions and a total lack of common, cultural ground.
There are so many layers to this novel and all of them work so well: The reflexive patriotism during wartime, the prejudice that is born out of ignorance, the vastly different behavioral norms that exist between cultures. But it's Jasira who carries the day. Ms. Erian could not have done a better job animating her protagonist. Jasira's girlish awkwardness juxtaposed by her womanly body is a poignant illustration of why we have laws against underaged sex. She's so clearly a child even though the men around her treat her like she's so much more. A novel has rarely ever made me root for characters, but Jasira and two of her father's neighbors won my blackened heart. This book should be added to English Lit classes the continent over. (4/5 Stars)
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