Harare Review of Books

206 pages.

First published in 2020.

Finished reading on 21 Aug 2021.

Genre: Fiction anthology.

Blurb: The award-winning stories in Dima Alzayat’s collection are luminous and tender, whether dealing with a woman performing burial rites for her brother in “Ghusl,” or a great-aunt struggling to explain cultural identity to her niece in “Once We Were Syrians.”

Alzayat’s stories are rich and relatable, chronicling a sense of displacement through everyday scenarios. There is the intern in pre-#MeToo Hollywood of “Only Those Who Struggle Succeed,” the New York City children on the lookout for a place to play on the heels of Etan Patz’s kidnapping in “Disappearance,” and the “dangerous” women of “Daughters of Manāt” who struggle to assert their independence.

The title story, “Alligator,” is a masterpiece of historical reconstruction and intergenerational trauma, told in an epistolary format through social media posts, newspaper clippings, and testimonials, that starts with the true story of the lynching of a Syrian immigrant couple by law officers in small-town Florida. Placed in a wider context of U.S. racial violence, the extrajudicial deaths, and what happens to the couple’s children and their children’s children in the years after, challenges the demands of American assimilation and its limits.

Alligator and Other Stories is haunting, spellbinding, and unforgettable, while marking Dima Alzayat’s arrival as a tremendously gifted new talent.

Stories and mini reviews:

Ghusl

Incredibly hard read. A woman washes her dead brother. Was hard for me to stomach.

Daughters of Manāt

Cw Suicide.

Disappearance

A very moving story about a boy and his younger brother with special needs, set when Etan Patz disappeared. (I nearly cried.) A beautiful portrayal of the confusion and innocence of childhood.

Only Those Who Struggle Succeed

(Spoiler) A #MeToo story. Took a few minutes to gel for me, but I got so involved and so mad and then really truly incensed, and I’m so glad there was resolution.

But more than that, she longed to tell the young woman to carry fire, soon and often, to tell the others, and to set alight everything she saw, to waste no time burning all her bridges down.

In the Land of Kan’an

…

Alligator

I watched an interview with the author where she talked about the construction of Whiteness by Arab Americans, and also about the structure of this story (unusual in that it feels like collected archival material). That makes it interesting.

Summer of the Shark

(spoiler) … is about 9/11.

Once We Were Syrians

Had a hard time with this, which story was actually the reason I moved the book up my tbr list, as it was featured in Week 3 of the course I’m on. The course says this is dialogue, but it reads like a slightly confusing monologue (which is good writing, actually, because old ladies can seem confusing when they talk to their grandkids).

A Girl in Three Acts

is about a girl, is lonely, and is beautiful.

Rated: 7/10. Gut-churning start, bumpy in parts, but ends beautifully.