![]() Extremely religious, he destroys her collection of Wonder Woman stickers, outraged at the lack of clothing she wears and calling her a prostitute. When she is slightly older, her cousin Essam stays with the family. At the age of seven, she wants to ask her father about the “people of Ibrahim” he asks God to bless in prayer, and her friend Zainab tells her that they are a family that has large barbecue parties during the holiday of Eid. Nidali’s birth name is symbolic of her present conditions: the feminine variant of the word “Nidal,” it translates to “struggle.” Nidali spends her early years of life in Kuwait, remembering not much of the time other than confusions with the meaning of different religious traditions. The book begins just as Nidali receives her American passport and moves to Boston with her father and mother, who she refers to as Baba and Mama. At the same time, the family processes problems of ethnic division, turmoil, and war in their homelands, reconceiving what it means to have a home. Aware of her mixed background and jarred by the move between starkly different cultural contexts, Nidali battles with her father and his strict expectations for his daughter, which are informed by a background she does not relate to. ![]() It follows the first-person account of a girl named Nidali, born to a Palestinian father and Egyptian mother, who moves from various temporary homes in the Middle East to Boston, Massachusetts. A Map of Home is a 2008 coming-of-age novel by Randa Jarrar. ![]()
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