Muddy People
A Muslim Coming of Age
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“By turns heartfelt, bitingly funny, and emotionally devastating, Muddy People is not your average coming-of-age tale. I loved this memoir of a young Egyptian-Australian girl growing up Muslim. It's a clear-eyed, fierce debut; every word rings true.”—Nadine Jolie Courtney, author of All-American Muslim Girl
A quick, clever debut that is “like the best kind of cake: warm, sweet, a bit nutty—and made with so much love.”—Alice Pung, author of Unpolished Gem
Sara is growing up in a family with a lot of rules. Her mother tells her she’s not allowed to wear a bikini, her father tells her she’s not allowed to drink alcohol, and her grandmother tells her to never trust a man with her money.
After leaving Egypt when Sara was only six years old, her family slowly learns how to navigate the social dynamics of their new home. Sara feels out of place in her new school. Her father refuses to buy his coworkers a ginger beer, thinking it contains alcohol. Her mother refuses to wear a hijab, even if it would help them connect with other local Muslims. And Sara learns what it feels like to have a crush on a boy, that some classmates are better friends than others, and that her parents are loving, but flawed people who don't always know what's best for her, despite being her strongest defenders.
For readers of Patricia Lockwood’s Priestdaddy and Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart, this heartwarming book about family and identity introduces a compelling new voice, with a coming-of-age story that will speak to everyone who’s ever struggled to figure out where they belong.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Coming of age as a Muslim in Australia is complicated enough without feeling like your parents are painfully weird. Sara El Sayed’s touching memoir charts all the prejudice she and her parents faced as Egyptian immigrants living in Queensland, but her story also brims with compassion and humour. She shifts between the present, in which she deals with her parents’ divorce and her father’s illness, and the past, where she bumps up against her parents’ rules about everything from dating white boys to wearing a bikini. The anecdotes feel unsparingly honest, as young Soos (El Sayed’s adorable childhood nickname) struggles through cringey experiences while also basking in her warm bonds with her parents, siblings, and grandmother. Muddy People will have no trouble finding its way into your heart.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this sparkling debut, El Sayed delivers a heartfelt tribute to her family via the story of her experience living as an immigrant in Australia. When the political turmoil of 9/11 forced the author's Muslim family to relocate from Alexandria, Egypt, to the suburbs of Brisbane in 2001, six-year-old El Sayed was met with a trove of cultural novelties—among them, the "square bread" that perfectly fit into toasters, and "playing God" via The Sims. But, as she reveals, there was also the strain of navigating a society at odds with her Islamic identity, one that was marked by casual racist cruelties from white classmates and her parents' struggle to find work in their professional fields ("In Egypt, Baba was an engineer and an architect. In Australia, he was nothing"). While much of the book contends with El Sayed's constant search for belonging, she resists giving in to the grave stories "about Islamophobia the name-calling, the ostracising, the bullying." What's on offer instead is a vivid mosaic of the people who buoyed her through adulthood, from her endearing yet imperfect parents, "both good people," she writes, " were just not good together," to her hilarious, spitfire Nana. Readers will be eager to see what El Sayed does next.