A Place for Us

This novel, although not personally understandable, was culturally understandable to some degree - as it was about a Indian Muslim American family, the parents and three kids, their community and friends, and the complicated relationship across generations.

There’s a lot of time jumping, and its annoying. If you can look past that, the story is really centered around both universal problems between parents and children and even immigrant parents and their children; but specifically, it dives into the muslim conservative parents, their culture, and their children. I think it’s important because it shows how universally a lot is similar between Muslim families and other families - I would hope this paints a path for some empathy.

Among the three children (Hadia, Huda and Amar) it was Amar who stood out, who was the least understood, and the one who struggled to find his place. I saw a lot of friends in Amar’s shoes growing up, and Fatima must have also, because she captures things very well here. Its no surprise, because as mentioned above, its a story we’ve all seen, but with the cultural and religious twist intertwined here, we get this perspective on how Amar’s parents’ love doesn’t translate well to him.

All the little scruples in this book the parents have with their kids are things I have witnessed or seen first hand in Muslim communities, and Fatima surfaces them so accurately in this book: about ‘mixed gender’ weddings, a Shia Muslim marrying a Sunni Muslim, being scared your 23 year old daughter is too old to get married, taking hijab/veil off, post 9/11 impact, pushing and ingraining responsibility of caring for elders at a super young age, strictness with daughters and leniency with sons, etc…

Read this if your the parents of a Muslim child, or any child for that matter, or plan on having kids. Also its worth reading if you’re not Muslim and want to understand some of the nuances your Muslim colleagues may have gone through growing up. Regardless of those reasons, its a great novel, with the third part being a narrative that comes as a surprise and full of deep emotion.