Book of the Month
April Pick
Jen’s Review
WHEN WE WERE SISTERS, by Fatimah Asghar, is a lyrical coming of age story. Three Muslim sisters are orphaned at a young age and the world tosses them around as they search for who they are, who might love them, and what the world might have to offer them.
Asghar approaches her fiction with poetic flair. Mixed mediums of poems, prose, and disruptive format aim to give the reader a unique perspective.
The three sisters endure a tremendous amount of loss, but they also display heroic abilities to overcome and find hope despite their circumstances.
Sisterhood is complicated. There is love, competition, distance, intimacy, fear, comfort, and a sense of home that is undeniable even in the bad times. Asghar expertly explores all of the corners of sisterhood as Kauser, the youngest, searches for a sense of self.
Even though WWWS takes on a story of three orphans, I found myself relating to how deeply outside Kauser feels. We all have moments of not belonging or feeling removed from the environment that we are in, and this novel details that experience with a beautiful specificity that feels relatable and universal.
Grief haunts these girls throughout their childhood, and then continues to draw shapes in their lives as they become adults. Ultimately, the novel takes the reader on a journey of decisions made one at a time as Kauser seeks to process and shed their grief.
My grief calls to me, and it’s loud. (Pg. 249)
Just as grief is the engine of the novel, loneliness stalks these young women like a sly predator. I finished the novel wishing I could wrap my arms around the sisters and give them some much needed love and support.
By Jennifer Morrison / April 2023
About The Author
Fatimah Asghar
Photo By: Mercedes Zapata
Fatimah Asghar is an artist who spans across different genres and themes. A poet, a fiction writer, and a filmmaker, Fatimah cares less about genre and instead prioritizes the story that needs to be told and finds the best vehicle to tell it. Play is critical in the development of their work, as is intentionally building relationship and authentic collaboration. Their first book of poems If They Come For Us explored themes of orphaning, family, Partition, borders, shifting identity, and violence. Along with Safia Elhillo, they co-edited Halal If You Hear Me, an anthology for Muslim people who are also women, trans, gender non-conforming, and/ or queer. The anthology was built around the radical idea that there are as many ways of being Muslim as there are Muslim people in the world. They also wrote and co-created Brown Girls, an Emmy-nominated web series that highlights friendship among women of color. Their debut lyrical novel, When We Were Sisters, explores sisterhood, orphaning, and alternate family building, and is forthcoming October 2022. While these projects approach storytelling through various mediums and tones, at the heart of all of them is Fatimah’s unique voice, insistence on creating alternate possibilities of identity, relationships and humanity then the ones that society would box us into, and a deep play and joy embedded in the craft.
Bio from: fatimahasghar.com
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