She and her mother (who is pregnant) move temporarily to Cincinnati to live with her uncle and his family. When Jude decides she's going to try out for the school play, Beauty and the Beast, her new friend Layla tells her she shouldn't do it: The stage isn't for girls like them.Young Jude is uprooted from her life in Syria in the midst of the civil unrest. Just when she thinks she's getting a handle on living in America, something happens that draws hatred up like blood welling from a deep scratch. Back in Syria she spoke English well by Cincinnati standards, not so much. Her cousin wants nothing to do with her Jude stands out, and in middle school, that's never a good thing.
Nobody's heard from her brother, who's gone to help in Aleppo, and she's not even sure he's okay. Skype sessions with her father are few and far between. Her best friend isn't returning her letters. Jude is a twelve-year-old girl from Syria who leaves behind her father and brother and friends in order to come with her mother to the United States - Cincinnati, middle America, the heartland - and live with her uncle's family. along comes Jasmine Warga with 'Other Words for Home,' and she gives us Jude's story, and it is everything I wanted.Īnd along comes Jasmine Warga with Other Words for Home, and she gives us Jude's story, and it is everything I wanted. Give me a story that will revel in a nuanced understanding of what is home a story that gives us permission to search for it even when the proverbial They tell us we should already know our place and that's it, you only get the one. Give me a story that tells us it's okay to be more than one thing, that two different places don't exist in competition that you can love them both and it isn't a betrayal of one. No, if I were the questing type and I had my chance to demand things from the sky, I might say: Give me a story about the ways in which people are kind to one another the ways in which a community leans into kindness even while some people within it are sharp and cruel and fearful.
Nor would I expect that book to be a deceptively easy-to-read middle grade novel, where reading just one more - maybe two more - okay, three, four, five - I guess I'm just reading now - sections is all too tempting. I wouldn't expect that book to be a verse novel of remarkable sensitivity. If I were the questing type, the type who might travel to the peak of a very high mountain and demand things of the sky, I might demand a certain kind of book. Your purchase helps support NPR programming.
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