Links to interviews listed on author's website:
http://www.zeynjoukhadar.com/interviews/
Library Journal
LJ Reviews 2018 April #1
After the death of her beloved father, imaginative 11-year-old Nour leaves New York City, where she was born, and returns home with her cartographer mother and two older sisters to the family's native Syria, where bombs released by Assad's forces soon destroy their home and send them on a desperate flight across North Africa. More than 800 years earlier, Rawiya, the daughter of an impoverished widow, disguises herself as a boy and leaves medieval Ceuta—modern Spain's foothold on the African coast—and apprentices herself to a mapmaker, traveling with him throughout the Levant. The stories are deftly interwoven, for Nour's father has told her about Rawiya's fabulous, sometimes mythic adventures. Parallels abound, from the spunky, triumphant heroines to mapmaking as a key to finding oneself to the special stone Nour hunts, once the eye of a terrifying winged creature battled by Rawiya. Debut novelist Joukhadar gracefully balances the gritty, often horrific truth of the refugee's plight with the lyrical near-fairy tale she has created (in both time periods), layered with burnished hope and occasionally overplayed sentiment. VERDICT A wise, vibrantly told story for a wide range of readers, particularly relevant now.—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
Copyright 2018 Library Journal.
Kirkus Reviews
Kirkus Reviews 2018 March #2
The story of a contemporary girl's flight into exile from the Syrian civil war is deepened by the parallel tale of a 12th-century girl whose journey of discovery covers the same geography in Syrian-American writer Joukhadar's ambitious debut. The poem in the shape of Syria that opens this novel—"O / beloved, you are / dying of a broken heart"—sets the tone of deep-rooted melancholy for the story that follows. Twelve-year-old Nour was born and raised in Manhattan by immigrant parents, her mother a cartographer and her father a bridge designer. Shortly after her father's death from cancer in 2011, her mother moves Nour and her two older sisters, Huda and Zahra, to Homs, Syria, where they have relatives to help out. But soon bombs are dropping in Homs. As the family takes flight, Nour comforts herself with a fairy tale-like story her father used to tell, and Joukhadar weaves it into the narrative. "Everybody knows the story of Rawiya," she writes. "They just don't know they know it." The heroine, 16-year-old Rawiya, left her home in Ceuta—a Spanish city in North Africa where Nour's parents once lived—to avoid starvation. Disguised as a boy, she apprenticed herself to al-Idrisi—an actual 12th-century mapmaker—as he traveled around charting trade routes. The route of Rawiya's story corresponds with Nour's as she finds and loses refuge in Jordan, Egypt, Libya, and Algeria. Passing as a boy for safety's sake, as Rawiya did, Nour endures cold, hunger, and red tape. Though she lives at the epicenter of world crises, what affects her day to day are more personal crises experienced in bus terminals, small groceries, and dusty streets. More dramatically, her sister Huda is injured by a bomb and sexually attacked by a gang of boys; a family friend drowns when a ferry to Egypt catches fire. While Rawiya had a romantic adventure, Nour experiences the terrors of being a refugee. Yet both are fatherless girls growing into young womanhood, and they share a similar search for the meaning of home, both physical and spiritual.
Joukhadar plunges the Western reader full force into the refugee world with sensual imagery that is immediate, intense, and at times overwhelming. Copyright Kirkus 2018 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.
BookPage Reviews
BookPage Reviews 2018 May
Two lives, a thousand years apart
Among the many things the violence of war obliterates, perhaps the most malicious is history. Now in its seventh year, the civil war that has turned Syria into the site of one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises has also corseted one of the oldest societies on earth into a kind of perpetual infancy. Syria, it sometimes seems, only began to exist seven years ago, as a place defined only by its current calamity.In many ways, The Map of Salt and Stars is at once a testament to the brutality of the current Syrian conflict and a reverent ode to ancient Arabian history. Syrian-American writer Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar has crafted an audacious debut, ambitious and sprawling in both time and space.
The book follows the story of Nour, a Syrian-American girl living in New York. In 2011, after Nour loses her father to cancer, her mother decides to move the family back to Homs to be close to their extended family. But Nour’s arrival coincides with Syria’s slide into civil war. Amid grotesque violence, Nour is made a refugee, a traveler through Syria’s neighboring lands.
Almost a thousand years earlier, another girl’s story unfolds. Rawiya, seeking a better life for her mother, disguises herself as a boy and joins a legendary cartographer on a quest to map the known world.
The two stories unfold side by side, split by time but joined by a common geography. Because the modern part of Joukhadar’s narrative carries the urgency of the present tense, but the ancient half reads like an old Arabian fairy tale, the dual story structure is at first jarring. But soon the book finds its pace, and the intertwining tales complement each other in ways a single narrative could not. A swooping bird of prey that threatens to devour the ancient story’s traveling companions finds its modern-day analogy in the form of Syrian fighter planes dropping bombs on besieged cities.
There is a heartfelt quality to the story, evident in the meticulous historical research that must have gone into the creation of the ancient part of the book. The Map of Salt and Stars presents an Arab world in full possession of its immense historical and cultural biography, marred by its modern tragedies but not exclusively defined by them.
===============
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/books/review/jennifer-zeynab-joukhadar-map-of-salt-and-stars.html
The ancient, sometimes
mystical connection between maps, people and knowledge is central to Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar’s “The Map of Salt and Stars,” a double tale of voyage and exile that moves between contemporary war-torn Syria and the caravansaries and khans of its lost past. Maps are mentioned on almost every page: not just making them but the decisions that making them involves, what lands they cover and what lands they leave out…….
Nour’s story of displacement is interwoven with the fantastical, speculative tale of another young woman, Rawiya, who runs away from her Syrian village centuries earlier. Seeking out a legendary mapmaker, Al-Idrisi, she joins him as his apprentice on a long voyage. The two stories unfold gracefully, mirroring and overlapping…..
Grief is a constant echo, particularly the loss of Nour’s father. Without him the family members become increasingly unmoored; we feel Nour’s homesickness intensely, along with her sense of not belonging in her mother’s country. “What kind of Syrian are you?” her sister snaps. “You don’t even speak Arabic.”....
Same stars, different story. “The Map of Salt and Stars” is important and timely because it shows how interconnected two supposedly opposing worlds can be. Our many stories are part of the same larger tale, part of the same larger map.
==============
https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/btb/index.cfm/book_number/3772/the-map-of-salt-and-stars#btb
============
https://www.synesthesiatest.org
========
Reading Guide Questions
Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
What can you surmise from the novel about Baba's connection to each of his daughters and how the girls come to depend on those bonds after the bombing in Syria?
How do the two different timelines influence the plot? Was this an effective way to tell the story? What demands does it place upon you, and what are its pleasures? Did it help you to feel closer to the characters? Why or why not?
What effect does Baba's death have on Noor's mother and her relationship with her daughters?
What affect does Abu Sayeed's arrival have on Nour and her family? Compare and contrast Abu Sayeed's relationship with Mama, Zahra, and Nour. Discuss the role of family and community in the lives of the characters. Provide examples of the different ways the author defines family in the novel.
How is The Map of Salt and Stars like others novels you have read about refugees, and how is it different? How much did you know about the Syrian refuge crisis before reading the novel? How does the novel challenge your perception of the Syrian refugee crisis?
How do the characters rely on their religion throughout the novel?
What meaning does the title of the novel hold for the characters? Why do you think the author chose this and what does it mean to you?
Child narrators in adult fiction are often used to question things that adults might take for granted. Did having Nour as the narrator for The Map of Salt and Stars change the way you viewed the events of the novel? Compare and contrast the benefits and disadvantages of having a young narrator.
Evaluate the importance of the constellations and how the stars help to advance the story in both timelines. Discuss the symbolism of birds.
What is the significance of the stone and why does Nour discard it?
Khaldun says, "the words of others can overwhelm and drown out your own. So, you see, you must keep careful track of the borders of your stories, where your voice ends and another's begins" (page 133). Discuss the power of stories and the importance of the stories to the characters. Provide examples of the characters protecting their voices. How do you stay true to yourself?
Nour says to Yusuf, "I thought you were like the other bad men" (page 223). Discuss the significance of Yusuf. Where you expecting a different outcome for his character? Explain your answers.
How do the characters react to the trauma of sexual violence? What are its lasting effects? Analyze the reasons why Nour tells Yusuf and no one else about Huda's attack, and why Huda chooses not to choose to disclose the attack immediately. What was your reaction to that scene?
Huda, Zahra, and Nour are very different? What makes them alike as sisters, and what sets them apart? How do they evolve over the course of the novel?
Compare and contrast the storylines of Rawiya and Nour. Discuss how Nour's superpower and Rawiya's being the roc slayer helped to save their families.
What is al-Idrisi's role in the story? Does knowing that this character is based on a real person affect the way you read the novel? What are some of the pleasures and drawbacks of reading historical novels? Discuss what might have happened to the planisphere "guarded forever, safe from selfish hands" (page 307).
Enhance Your Book Club
Are you a synesthete? Go to this website https://www.synesthesiatest.org/ to find out.
Create a map depicting places you traveled that had a major impact on your life when you were Nour's age. What did you learn from that time? How did you change after that experience?
Name your top five favorite books with a child narrator. What are the advantages and disadvantages of having a young narrator?
The Map of Salt and Stars for the most part is a very realistic coming-of-age story of a Syrian refugee, but there are several instances when the story reveals magical elements. Provide examples from the novel of magical realism. How do these moments enhance the plot?
Visit the author's website (http://www.jenniferjoukhadar.com/books/) to learn more and to read her collection of short stories and essays.
==========
https://www.shelf-awareness.com/max-issue.html?issue=277#m590
Did you make up Rawiya's story?
Yes and no. Rawiya herself is a fictional character. The specifics of her journey with al-Idrisi (a real cartographer) are fictionalized; no one knows exactly how much of the knowledge al-Idrisi gained for his map and book was gathered firsthand; much of it was obtained through talking to the merchants and other travelers who passed through Palermo while he was living and working in King Roger II's court. This fictionalized account is also permeated by fable and magic. But I tried to ground the journey in fact, for example in the conflicts between various groups taking place at the time--such as the Second Crusade--and the territories controlled by different Amazigh dynasties across North Africa.
Is using two parallel stories a typical Arab storytelling technique?
Telling two parallel stories was both very difficult and very addicting, and it's something I'm doing again (though in a slightly different way) in my second novel. I did draw many maps, and I did have to keep track of the names of places in the 12th and 21st centuries, and I drank a lot of chai!
Weaving two or more stories together is a traditional Arab storytelling technique, one that is done extremely well in Rabih Alameddine's The Hakawati, one of my favorite novels. I find that with multiple stories, each one can illuminate aspects of the others without being too heavy handed, so the reader comes away with a layered and intuitive understanding of what the writer is trying to say. It is difficult to keep the various stories balanced, though, and to make the parallels between them visible enough to be noticed but not so obvious as to feel moralizing. Timing is everything.
Nour finds salt everywhere after her father dies, beginning with her mother's tears. Salt is a theme throughout the book. What is the significance?
For me, salt is a symbol not only of grief and of trauma, but of the struggle to make something beautiful of life in spite of those things. For example, salt is not only present in tears and in the sea, but also as a naturally occurring imperfection in precious stones. This does not mean suffering and trauma are good or necessary at all; I don't believe that. But if trauma does happen to us--particularly the violence inherent in war, displacement, and human cruelty--I wanted to ask: How can one make something beautiful of a life that has been irrevocably changed? What can we take with us after loss that can sustain us through, and beyond, that darkness?
Zahra criticizes Nour because she doesn't speak Arabic, thus doesn't know what it means to be Syrian. Was that your experience growing up?
Growing up, it was sometimes difficult to be an Arab who did not speak Arabic. Arab peoples have historically been defined and united, for better and sometimes for worse, by language. But there are plenty of Muslims who don't speak Arabic, or only know a little through the language of prayer. So I think there are other ways of looking at one's identity as an Arab and/or as a Muslim that don't hinge on speaking Arabic. Learning Arabic was something I needed to do to connect more deeply with my heritage, my relationships with my family, and also myself.
I was born and live in diaspora, and this gives me a unique perspective, one that I've learned over the years to accept and value for what it is. For me, it can often mean having a sense of belonging to more than one place and also belonging nowhere, and this creates its own struggles and questions. I tried to let these questions breathe in the text without forcing answers.
The Map of Salt and Stars brings attention to the plight of today's Syrians, and other refugees.
I would very much like for this book to start a discussion about and increase empathy for Syrians, for refugees, and for displaced people in general. I cannot stand by and watch racism, Islamophobia and xenophobia in my own home country lead to things like the Muslim ban without doing what little I can to fight against that. I am connected to Syria. This is the land of my father's birth, the land of my family and my ancestors, the home of people I love. When Westerners present uninformed, fear-driven or racist views on Syrians and on Syrian refugees, they are, in a very real way, talking about people like my family. They could very easily be talking about me. I hope that this book makes them reconsider those views.
With that said, I don't want readers to come away from this book thinking they know everything about Syrian refugees or that they know what it is to be one. I think this happens all too often with underrepresented voices in literature--a single story can be taken as the only one that is necessary for understanding, and that's never true. I want readers to understand that, if they haven't read anything by Syrians or refugees in their own words, this book is only a starting point.
I also hope that this book will be a comfort to people of Syrian descent living in diaspora. I hope it will remind them, in some small way, of our rich heritage, our storytelling traditions, our imagination, our discoveries, our history. It's especially rare for Syrian Americans to see themselves represented in literature. I hope it will be a reminder that we, too, can be the protagonists of our own stories, that there is an alternative to the stories that so often get told in the West about Syrians these days, about Arabs, about Muslims.
One of the most moving things that happened to me recently was that another Syrian American person saw the Arabic on the cover of The Map of Salt and Starsand began to cry. It was something they had never seen on the cover of a novel growing up. That's also what I hope for this book--that it makes other diasporic Syrians and Arabs feel seen, because to feel seen is also to feel hope, and hope in particular is a gift I want to give to my communities these days. --Marilyn Dahl
No comments:
Post a Comment