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Summary and Reviews of The Girl Who Fell to Earth by Sophia Al-Maria

The Girl Who Fell to Earth by Sophia Al-Maria

The Girl Who Fell to Earth

A Memoir

by Sophia Al-Maria
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  • Paperback:
  • Nov 2012, 288 pages
  • Reviewed by BookBrowse Book Reviewed by:
    Jo Perry
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About This Book

Book Summary

The Girl Who Fell to Earth heralds the arrival of an electric new talent and takes us on the most personal of quests: the voyage home.

When Sophia Al-Maria's mother sends her away from rainy Washington State to stay with her husband's desert-dwelling Bedouin family in Qatar, she intends it to be a sort of teenage cultural boot camp. What her mother doesn't know is that there are some things about growing up that are universal. In Qatar, Sophia is faced with a new world she'd only imagined as a child. She sets out to find her freedom, even in the most unlikely of places.

Both family saga and coming-of-age story, The Girl Who Fell to Earth takes readers from the green valleys of the Pacific Northwest to the dunes of the Arabian Gulf and on to the sprawling chaos of Cairo. Struggling to adapt to her nomadic lifestyle, Sophia is haunted by the feeling that she is perpetually in exile: hovering somewhere between two families, two cultures, and two worlds. She must make a place for herself—a complex journey that includes finding young love in the Arabian Gulf, rebellion in Cairo, and, finally, self-discovery in the mountains of Sinai.

The Girl Who Fell to Earth heralds the arrival of an electric new talent and takes us on the most personal of quests: the voyage home.

Lambda Leonis • The Glance

Eighty miles out of Al-Hasa oasis in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, a Bedouin boy named Matar was flicking the knob of a portable General Electric television on and off. He was waiting with a crowd of other kids for Maghreb prayer, when the sun would set and the imam would finally turn the generator on. Only then could their night begin and with it, the TV! Or al-tel-ay-veez-yawn, as they affectionately called it. Like the watering well, the long-drop outhouse, and everything else in the tiny settlement of Kuzahmiah, the TV was for communal use. But unlike the other shared utilities of the town, it commanded pride of place in the courtyard of their one-room mosque, much to the disappointment of the devout young imam. The imam had moved from the big city to the Bedouin settlement hoping to find a pure Islam, untainted by modernity. But the spiritual authenticity he sought from the members of the Al-Dafira tribe was a fantasy made most obvious to ...

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Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

Time spent in the Gulf has changed Sophia Al-Maria. She is now an inhabitant of two distinct worlds, a member of two families, and keenly aware of her otherness. When her teenage rebellion is too much for her mother, Al-Maria is sent to live with the women of her family in Doha where, though she wears an abaya (long, "cloak-like dress") and a shala, (long, black head scarf) she discovers freedom...continued

Full Review (738 words)

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(Reviewed by Jo Perry).

Media Reviews

Kirkus Reviews
Starred Review. An Arab-American Woman's riveting coming-of-age story. What makes Al-Maria's story unique is not only its rare insider's glimpse of modern Bedouin life, but the outsider's sensibility that magnifies her exquisite observational gifts, Frank, funny and dauntless.

Publishers Weekly
A satisfying trek through a complex cross-cultural landscape toward a creative and satisfying life.

Reader Reviews

Mal

The Girl Who Fell to Earth
The Girl Who Fell to Earth delves into cultural complexities in an honest manner in which others towing the fine line between two cultures can relate and understand. A great coming of age story all will enjoy, especially those dealing with disparity ...   Read More

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Beyond the Book



Changing Bedouin Life as Exemplified by the Al-Maria Family

Bedouin life has been slowly changing from a traditional nomadic existence to a more settled permanent one. Al-Maria's family effectively illustrates this transition.

Al-Maria adjusts to her Bedouin family's ancient way of life precisely at the same time that its members must adjust to modernity. The family had been experiencing what Al-Maria describes as "a long, slow retreat into the concrete domesticity of modern sedentary life." Not all is bad: "Compared with the poverty they were used to on their travels, not having to carry your weight in water was positively luxuriant."

But convenience has a price, paid largely by the women. The style of dress changed, for one thing. Bedouin girls in the family used to wear bright calico ...

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Read-Alikes

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