All Water Has Perfect Memory

by Nada Samih-Rotondo

Life changes forever for six-year-old Nada when Iraq's invasion of her birth country of Kuwait pushes her mother to immigrate with her to the United States. Just as she finally settles into her strange new existence apart from her father in Rhode Island, learns English, and grasps the fact that she is there to stay, Nada begins discovering revelations that changes her perspective on her world and family. With an imaginative blend of folklore and history that explores the relationship between our bodies, ancestors, and the lands that hold us, All Water Has Perfect Memory is a memoir that takes readers through the author's ancestral origins-the coast of Palestine, Kuwait, and the shores of Rhode Island- and explores generations of silence and eventually, connection.

Genres: Memoir, Middle East

240 pages, Paperback

Published September 27, 2023

About the author

Nada Samih-Rotondo is a multi-genre Palestinian American writer, educator, and mother. A graduate of Rhode Island College, she earned degrees in English and Education and an MFA in creative writing from Lesley University. When she is not befriending trees or attuning to hidden stories, she is leading transformational educational experiences and addressing the social-emotional needs of historically underserved and multilingual youth. Her writing has appeared in Masters Review, Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, and Squat Birth Journal. She lives in Providence with her husband and three children and works as the manager of education at Brown University’s Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery & Justice. All Water Has Perfect Memory, her first book, is set to debut September 2023

Reviews

[Luisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written with lots of analogy. I feel like I was brought to the landscape of Kuwait and Palestine and Providence all the time. The feelings of lost and love and respect are all perfectly felt throughout the story. While many books explain Nakba in more of a technical and data approach, one must read for anyone who wants to understand the situation in point of view of the hardness of heart.

[MacKenzie Abernethy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is absolutely FOR EVERYONE!
Can’t wait to reread

[alexis from Paramore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Memory is fickle; it gives all its language to water, which is best understood through the heart. It follows the same route from the womb of the grandmother to that of the mother and passes through to the daughter, on and on for all of time. […] This knowing is deeper than time and transcends space. It embeds itself into blood and tissue and sinew and muscle and pulses anew in every heartbeat. It infuses itself into thoughts, guides footsteps, alters the electromagnetic field of a body. The memory of water is perfect; it so clearly remembers even when our minds no longer know where we come from, who we came through.

Maybe I'm showing my age a little bit here, but as soon as I finished reading this book, my first thought was, "This book is goated." This is a memoir that follows a young Palestinian girl as she immigrates to Rhode Island from Kuwait to escape the political turmoil. Throughout this novel, we touch on topics such as trauma, domestic violence, motherhood, and girlhood/womanhood.

I found myself, whilst reading this book, remembering Robin Wall Kimmerer's memoir, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, with both having nonlinear ways of telling their story and their experiences with their homeland, it is no surprise to me when I checked Nada's read books and saw she rated Braiding Sweetgrass 5 stars.

I absolutely adored this book and I think that everyone should give it a chance.

[j.louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is rare that a memoir catches my attention, and rarer that a memoir holds my attention. I’m living my own linear-feeling life and dealing with similar harsh realities to the ones in most memoirs, and that can be exhausting for my brain to read. This memoir, however, is truly its own, and in being what it is, works to upend what we know of as “memoir.” The narrative is interwoven with folklore and land lore, expressed in non-linear, prismatic glimpses that capture the fleeting and butterfly-like nature of memories. It reads more closely, in my view, to creative non-fiction, and feels authentic to how memory flows in the mind. It is fresh and raw, and terribly moving. If more memoirs take cues from this one, I might end up a fan of the larger genre.

[Allison Damico · Rating 4 out of 5]

The way Nada describes things is so well done I feel like I can envision exactly what she describes.

Nada narrates the story of her family’s history in Palestine and Kuwait as her grandmother Teta told her. Her mother fills in missing pieces as they go along, of things Teta did not want to share with her granddaughter. Then Nada really becomes the main narrator of her life experiences. Nada and her mother immigrate to Rhode Island which she said was not very diverse had its challenges while also grappling with the struggles of being a woman, her mother dating and so much more. You read through her experience in college, having a son and her divorce. You watch her go through so many ups and downs especially when her half siblings from her dad’s side reach out and she is able to reconnect with her father.

I did feel that sometimes the paragraphs jumped around in thoughts and got a little confusing to me. The chapters were broken out into places and years which kept the timeline clean and clear even though I would have preferred a more chronological timeline personally. I thought it could flow a little better that way.

Nada speaks of Palestines history which I feel is so important for people to understand right now with the current state of the world. I enjoyed getting a glimpse of Nada’s experiences as told by her. It was a window into an experience unlike mine. #goodreadsgiveaway

[Cordelicacy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think about this book every time I park my car in a grocery store parking lot. One of the chapters describes a time that the author parked her car and left her daughter in it for a few minutes. When she returned to her car, there was an aggressive woman shouting epithets at her for leaving her daughter in the car. This woman called the police, hurled a torrent of swear words at the author, and made a huge scene. The author describes her own emotional reactions; on one hand trying to stay calm, but on the other feeling intense rage of her own bubbling up. She describes having a calm conversation with the police who soon showed (even while the woman continued with her never-ending rant of hateful language in the background) and later having a visit from Child Protection Services.

Maybe every parent will have a particularly bad day like this at some point, but this event took on a whole other nightmarish layer given the author's own history. As we learn in the other chapters, she had been essentially kidnapped by her mother and brought to the US from Kuwait during the Iraq War. Her family heritage was Palestinian, and her larger family had had to flee Palestine to avoid violence in the aftermath of the creation of the Israeli state. So, she had come with a history of forced separations from her family.

[Ddnreads · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't expect to find a new favourite memoir this late in December. I read this for Read Palestine Week and it was the rightest choice. I love how this book written since the very first few chapter 🥺✨

All Water has Perfect Memory is about three generations of Palestinian family through its maternal line. It showed the struggle of the first Nakba, being a refugee, and a woman at the same time. It dwells deep into how generational trauma never really leave, and how it shaped a person building a family.

This memoir written in the exact amount of poetic phrase. It was sooo soooo beautiful. I love how the author put trivias and analogy at the start of every chapter. Be it etymology of certain words and fun factors on a certain place or wonders.

This book took a darker turn for the later half. The life Nada going through is not easy. It revolved around family issues and turning upside down for a long lost familial line.

If you're into carefully crafted, beautifully written memoir, would love to understand more and amplify Palestinian voice, this is the perfect choice. Give it a go!!!

[Ilana Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vulnerable and transporting. Nada's language balances real and descriptive making her memoir easy to read while being in the richness of culture and experience she tells. Thank you for sharing your story. Looking forward to your next work!

[a.rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

as always memoirs are difficult to rate, but the flow of the book didn’t fully work for me. still, it was an interesting read. 3.5/5

[Rachel Teferet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful and rich memoir 💕

[Nadasea · Rating 5 out of 5]

<3

[Nicole Zelniker · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stunning debut filled with lyrical prose, All Water Has Perfect Memory is an important memoir imbued with speculative elements by an author with something important to say. Plus, we're small press twins!

Check CWs before reading, as always.