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Corona
Razia Mirza is a Pakistani woman from Corona, Queens, who grew up in a tight Muslim community surrounding the first Sunni masjid built in New York City. When a rebellious streak leads to her ex-communication, she decides to hit the road. Corona moves between Razia’s childhood and the comedic misadventures she encounters on her journey, from a Puritan Colony in Massachusetts to New York City’s Bhangra music scene. With each story, we learn more about the past she’s escaping, a past which leads her to constantly travel in a spiral, always coming closer to but never quite arriving home.
"These stories have the heft of a novel and the elliptical grace of poetry. Rehman’s hot-blooded, ferociously funny, and deeply sensitive protagonist travels from the Muslim community of Queens to roadside Florida to the fogged windows of San Francisco and the Lower East Side. Along the way she falls into and out of love, takes frightening, exhilarating risks, repeatedly saves her own life, and comes into sharp-focus like a shaken photograph. She is about to gleefully dynamite every narrow stereotype you might have about a young Pakistani woman from Corona. A stunning debut from a vital new writer." - Karen Russell, author of the novel Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove
"These stories have the heft of a novel and the elliptical grace of poetry. Rehman’s hot-blooded, ferociously funny, and deeply sensitive protagonist travels from the Muslim community of Queens to roadside Florida to the fogged windows of San Francisco and the Lower East Side. Along the way she falls into and out of love, takes frightening, exhilarating risks, repeatedly saves her own life, and comes into sharp-focus like a shaken photograph. She is about to gleefully dynamite every narrow stereotype you might have about a young Pakistani woman from Corona. A stunning debut from a vital new writer." - Karen Russell, author of the novel Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove
154 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 28, 2013
15 people are currently reading
868 people want to read
About the author
Bushra Rehman
24 books197 followers Bushra Rehman grew up in Corona, Queens but her mother says she was born in an ambulance flying through the streets of Brooklyn. This would explain a few things. Bushra was a vagabond poet who traveled for years with nothing more than a Greyhound ticket and a book bag full of poems.
Her first novel Corona, a poetic on-the-road adventure about being South-Asian in the United States, was chosen by the NY Public Library as one of its favorite novels about NYC. She’s co-editor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism and author of the collection of poetry Marianna’s Beauty Salon, described by Joseph O. Legaspi as “a love poem for Muslim girls, Queens, and immigrants making sense of their foreign home--and surviving.” Rehman’s next novel Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion which centers around the idea of friendship and queer desire is forthcoming from Flatiron Books.
Her first novel Corona, a poetic on-the-road adventure about being South-Asian in the United States, was chosen by the NY Public Library as one of its favorite novels about NYC. She’s co-editor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism and author of the collection of poetry Marianna’s Beauty Salon, described by Joseph O. Legaspi as “a love poem for Muslim girls, Queens, and immigrants making sense of their foreign home--and surviving.” Rehman’s next novel Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion which centers around the idea of friendship and queer desire is forthcoming from Flatiron Books.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews
April 29, 2024
Gorgeously written; very funny; poignant; a great sense of place, character, and emotion. Not so much a novel as it says on the cover, but a collection of interlaced short stories about the same woman at different times and places in her life. Actually, in style many of the stories feel like hybrid creative nonfiction / memoir / memories / stories. I'm very excited to see what Rehman writes next!
2024: Looking back at this review, wondering what connection this Razia has to the protagonist Razia in Rehman's more recent novel.
2024: Looking back at this review, wondering what connection this Razia has to the protagonist Razia in Rehman's more recent novel.
June 9, 2017
Razia is a Pakistani woman who grows up in Muslim community in Corona, New Jersey, and then breaks free to travel around the US. “Corona” switches back and forth between Razia’s childhood and her adventures on the road in short chapters that seem to stand alone as short stories and yet draw together past and present . I found it totally readable, but not very interesting. I was hoping for something with a little more depth, something a little more biting, or at least something more thought provoking. It started and finished, and I put it back on the shelf.
November 20, 2019
Had been wanting to read this for YEARS so it was a pretty magical moment when NC just reached into her desk over the summer and gave it to me. Very loosely structured as a “novel” but nonetheless, I loved every word (except for the cat incident, though it did feel quite real to me).
June 2, 2013
`Guna is a sin'
Critics are already recognizing Bushra Rehman as a writer with a `contemporary feminist/womanist discourse, and anyone else who wants to get down with the fierceness of fly, intellectual divas of color.' Words such as that give a jolt to the senses when reading these interconnected stories of CORONA: how many people think of South Asians as `people of color?' Perhaps it is just that most of us are colorblind now, but Bushra Rehman is from Pakistan and so she is referred to as a woman of color.
Not that that diversion has anything to do with this wild collection of tales, but in a way it does. Rehman is from Queens (Corona to be exact) and that is where she places her main character Razia Mirza, a Muslim from `a tight Muslim community surrounding the first Sunni masjid built in New York City.' She uses all of this background to enhance the manner in which Razia traipses through childhood to adulthood always seemingly on the run from her origins (or rather the restrictions her origins attempt to tattoo on her). And for a first novel, that series of conflicts creates a fine tie to bind the jumbled stories of travels to San Francisco, Florida, Massachusetts and New York City's Bhangra music scene (Note, in case you, too, don't know this reference, `Bhangra music was invented in the 1980s by Punjabi immigrants who took the folk sound of their home country and began experimenting by altering it using instruments from their host country. In a sense Bhangra music is one of the few immigrant music genres of the world in that it is absent in the home country.')
But enough mumbo jumbo trying to figure out what people are labeling this author, jump into these short tales, all spaced around disconnected years that reflect the journey of Razia from childhood to adulthood, and discover the voice of a powerful young writer. She gives a set of characters who wander through sex and drugs and religions and politics and confusion about affinity to home, aborted love affairs - all told with a cheeky sassy tone that is beguiling. In a prolonged section called `Bhangra Blowup' we are in the year of 2004 and it is election time: `I knew then Bush was going to steal the election. The war would continue, and eventually, with his help, the world as we know it would be destroyed. Then the trees would break through. They'd take back the land we labeled the United States. It would be okay. The world would become the world it had been again.'
Can't really put your finger on her style? Good. She is a unique writer and if this collection of stories cum novel is any indication, we are in for a jolly ride. And if part of the point of her success is that she is a woman writer of color, well...OK! Hop on for the ride.
Grady Harp
Critics are already recognizing Bushra Rehman as a writer with a `contemporary feminist/womanist discourse, and anyone else who wants to get down with the fierceness of fly, intellectual divas of color.' Words such as that give a jolt to the senses when reading these interconnected stories of CORONA: how many people think of South Asians as `people of color?' Perhaps it is just that most of us are colorblind now, but Bushra Rehman is from Pakistan and so she is referred to as a woman of color.
Not that that diversion has anything to do with this wild collection of tales, but in a way it does. Rehman is from Queens (Corona to be exact) and that is where she places her main character Razia Mirza, a Muslim from `a tight Muslim community surrounding the first Sunni masjid built in New York City.' She uses all of this background to enhance the manner in which Razia traipses through childhood to adulthood always seemingly on the run from her origins (or rather the restrictions her origins attempt to tattoo on her). And for a first novel, that series of conflicts creates a fine tie to bind the jumbled stories of travels to San Francisco, Florida, Massachusetts and New York City's Bhangra music scene (Note, in case you, too, don't know this reference, `Bhangra music was invented in the 1980s by Punjabi immigrants who took the folk sound of their home country and began experimenting by altering it using instruments from their host country. In a sense Bhangra music is one of the few immigrant music genres of the world in that it is absent in the home country.')
But enough mumbo jumbo trying to figure out what people are labeling this author, jump into these short tales, all spaced around disconnected years that reflect the journey of Razia from childhood to adulthood, and discover the voice of a powerful young writer. She gives a set of characters who wander through sex and drugs and religions and politics and confusion about affinity to home, aborted love affairs - all told with a cheeky sassy tone that is beguiling. In a prolonged section called `Bhangra Blowup' we are in the year of 2004 and it is election time: `I knew then Bush was going to steal the election. The war would continue, and eventually, with his help, the world as we know it would be destroyed. Then the trees would break through. They'd take back the land we labeled the United States. It would be okay. The world would become the world it had been again.'
Can't really put your finger on her style? Good. She is a unique writer and if this collection of stories cum novel is any indication, we are in for a jolly ride. And if part of the point of her success is that she is a woman writer of color, well...OK! Hop on for the ride.
Grady Harp
September 3, 2014
Set up more like a series of short stories than a novel, Corona gives us snippets of the life of Razia. A Pakistani American raised in Corona, Queens, New York, Razia is excommunicated from her tight knit Muslim community and sets out to travel America before reuniting with her family.
The sequencing of the chapters doesnt make much sense. I often had to flip to prior chapters to understand where in the time line these events fell. that's seriously my only gripe with this book and even then I'm not completely bothered by it.
Rehman's writing is beautifully poetic and feels as free spirited as Razia. This book has just about everything- heartbreak (romantic and otherwise), self discovery, romance, and a melting pot of clashing cultures. I really look forward to seeing more from this author.
The sequencing of the chapters doesnt make much sense. I often had to flip to prior chapters to understand where in the time line these events fell. that's seriously my only gripe with this book and even then I'm not completely bothered by it.
Rehman's writing is beautifully poetic and feels as free spirited as Razia. This book has just about everything- heartbreak (romantic and otherwise), self discovery, romance, and a melting pot of clashing cultures. I really look forward to seeing more from this author.
November 18, 2015
"He carried his body like fire, matchstick, rope."
"My mother didn't let me wear skirts, especially the kind of short skirts the other girls wore with their hairless legs and fearless way of flicking their hips."
"In Pakistan, they had worn white lab coats. They had been scientists, but in Corona, they worked in stores...My father wore his lab coat as a butcher at his Gosht Dukan, Corona Halal meats. Whenever I visited him, it was covered with blood."
"Then I knew they were right. We were bad. We were as dirty as all the Old Italians said. We didn't know how to take care of life. We didn't know how to grow anything, and when we touched the world, it died."
"This place whose destruction had changed the city I loved into a minefield, changed the entire country into a war machine."
"My mother didn't let me wear skirts, especially the kind of short skirts the other girls wore with their hairless legs and fearless way of flicking their hips."
"In Pakistan, they had worn white lab coats. They had been scientists, but in Corona, they worked in stores...My father wore his lab coat as a butcher at his Gosht Dukan, Corona Halal meats. Whenever I visited him, it was covered with blood."
"Then I knew they were right. We were bad. We were as dirty as all the Old Italians said. We didn't know how to take care of life. We didn't know how to grow anything, and when we touched the world, it died."
"This place whose destruction had changed the city I loved into a minefield, changed the entire country into a war machine."
March 7, 2019
Corona is a memoir collection of essays that feels more like home than anything else I've ever read. The first essay, titled "Corona (and I'm not talking about the beer)" reminded me of all the times I've had to give the city to my home address and repeat the same line as some customer service operator from the other side of the country (or world) laughed.
I've heard stories from my uncles about how they used to get chased through the park and called "spick" by the Italians that used to run Corona. The essay "The Old Italian" uses one of Bushra's childhood memories to speak to a deeper level of racism and xenophobia when it comes to the diverse immigrant populations that took hold of Corona and sent a majority of the Italians packing their bags and relocating elsewhere.
It is not just Corona that Bushra captures with such vividness. The essays are fragmented memories of her time and semi-comedic adventures as a wandering poet in places like Massachusetts, San Francisco, and Florida.
Bushra writes with a strong sense of voice and diction. There is grace in how she builds all her scenes and stunning detail in her writing. I have never, in all the books I've read (and I've read a lot of books) seen my hometown captured with such raw and poignant truth. Her experiences as a queer, rebellious Pakistani woman from Corona, Queens will stay with me and serve as a reminder about why our stories matter. Representation is a hell of a thing. Thank you Bushra.
I've heard stories from my uncles about how they used to get chased through the park and called "spick" by the Italians that used to run Corona. The essay "The Old Italian" uses one of Bushra's childhood memories to speak to a deeper level of racism and xenophobia when it comes to the diverse immigrant populations that took hold of Corona and sent a majority of the Italians packing their bags and relocating elsewhere.
It is not just Corona that Bushra captures with such vividness. The essays are fragmented memories of her time and semi-comedic adventures as a wandering poet in places like Massachusetts, San Francisco, and Florida.
Bushra writes with a strong sense of voice and diction. There is grace in how she builds all her scenes and stunning detail in her writing. I have never, in all the books I've read (and I've read a lot of books) seen my hometown captured with such raw and poignant truth. Her experiences as a queer, rebellious Pakistani woman from Corona, Queens will stay with me and serve as a reminder about why our stories matter. Representation is a hell of a thing. Thank you Bushra.
April 14, 2018
Not exactly a novel; more like a series of vignettes held together by the same central character. Would have rated it higher, but I emotionally disengaged after the pointless cat violence.
September 10, 2016
Bright voice, shimmering slivers.
August 8, 2017
There is so much to admire about Corona, not least of which is its heroine - Razia, a rebellious South Asian American girl who eschews her culture's regressions in favour of making her own blundering errors which, however transgressive, are her mistakes to make and her life to live. Razia is a compelling narrator because she never picks a side that does not celebrate or further her own unique life, and there is something to be said about her lack of overbearing judgement.
However, and this is important, one wishes the book had a rooted sense of purpose. The novel reads like a collection of interconnected short stories, a la Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street. It begins in a manner, where young and adult Razia assume control alternatively, allowing us glimpses into her life as a young girl growing in the eponymous suburb of Corona in a conservative Pakistani family, and her vagabond writerly experiences as an adult. So far, so good. The crude smackness of her broke, hippie lifestyle countered with the wide-eyed consumability of her childhood allows the reader to fill in the gaps - to understand how young, religious Razia came to be the woman who was excommunicated from her family. While you're just getting into this structure, the novel becomes fascinated with dedicating story after story to Razia's relationship with Ravi, an affair she has in her 30s that leaves her with a broken heart. Clearly, Razia's story isn't for one book to cover, but one wishes there was congruency in the arrangement - something for the stories to lead to. We come to understand that these are snippets from Razia's life, and that is all we've been allowed to learn of, for now.
Having said that, Rehman, the poet, is stark in the pages of Corona. The writing is minimalist and flows with the easy course of a spoken word poem in motion. The stories about Basement Bhangra are beaming with the quixotic language suited to the South Asian narrative (however I wouldn't dare to call Raghav a desi George Michael, not close, not even). In fact that entire section reads straight out a Gurinder Chadha script, and that's always a good thing.
While Rehman has choice opinions about Razia's childhood and community, she also reserves a great deal of empathy for these people, perhaps borrowing from her own experience. These, she presents, with heart, candor and easy intimacy. Rehman leaves us with a book that is easy to finish in one sitting, but we seek more surely of Razia's life, and her rebellion.
However, and this is important, one wishes the book had a rooted sense of purpose. The novel reads like a collection of interconnected short stories, a la Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street. It begins in a manner, where young and adult Razia assume control alternatively, allowing us glimpses into her life as a young girl growing in the eponymous suburb of Corona in a conservative Pakistani family, and her vagabond writerly experiences as an adult. So far, so good. The crude smackness of her broke, hippie lifestyle countered with the wide-eyed consumability of her childhood allows the reader to fill in the gaps - to understand how young, religious Razia came to be the woman who was excommunicated from her family. While you're just getting into this structure, the novel becomes fascinated with dedicating story after story to Razia's relationship with Ravi, an affair she has in her 30s that leaves her with a broken heart. Clearly, Razia's story isn't for one book to cover, but one wishes there was congruency in the arrangement - something for the stories to lead to. We come to understand that these are snippets from Razia's life, and that is all we've been allowed to learn of, for now.
Having said that, Rehman, the poet, is stark in the pages of Corona. The writing is minimalist and flows with the easy course of a spoken word poem in motion. The stories about Basement Bhangra are beaming with the quixotic language suited to the South Asian narrative (however I wouldn't dare to call Raghav a desi George Michael, not close, not even). In fact that entire section reads straight out a Gurinder Chadha script, and that's always a good thing.
While Rehman has choice opinions about Razia's childhood and community, she also reserves a great deal of empathy for these people, perhaps borrowing from her own experience. These, she presents, with heart, candor and easy intimacy. Rehman leaves us with a book that is easy to finish in one sitting, but we seek more surely of Razia's life, and her rebellion.
April 14, 2018
Originally, I wasnt gonna make a review where i go into detail about the book but fuck it i got a lot to say.
This book I read for a LGBTQ bingo and I was genuinely interested in the book and such. Then I started reading. Honestly, this feels like i'm reading a bunch of short stories instead of a novel. You get some characterization of Razia but at the end, it still kind of feels like she's a stranger and you know almost nothing about her. You read all these characters she lives with, she grew up with, she surrounded herself with, she worked with and she dates. The characters are written very quickly so they dont leave much of a impact on you. The only thought i had on the characters was 'Every male guy Razia has known has been an asshole' and its true. all the male characters are either assholes and racist to other people or they treat Razia like shit.
This is a LGBTQ book, it mentions (more to towards the end) that she's had relationships with both men and women. But again, all rushed through.
The novel itself felt like you saw Razia growing up and seeing parts of her life but since she was written in a way where it still seemed like she was a stranger, it was odd.
All in all, the writing is okay and the story is okay my big complaint(s) are just how the characters are written (mainly Razia) and how it didn't feel like a novel at all, it felt like i was reading short stories that had been slightly rushed through so it left almost a messy kind of feel. I wasn't disappointed, it was just semi-odd cause for the first time, i read a book where the main character felt like a stranger to me at the end.
+ Also to add, I expected quite a bit of story about the kind of community she lived in, what it was like and etc but I felt like I didn't read much about her childhood. It was interesting but there were i think 3-4 chapters about her actual childhood which I found a bit saddening since I had been actually interested in that.
This book I read for a LGBTQ bingo and I was genuinely interested in the book and such. Then I started reading. Honestly, this feels like i'm reading a bunch of short stories instead of a novel. You get some characterization of Razia but at the end, it still kind of feels like she's a stranger and you know almost nothing about her. You read all these characters she lives with, she grew up with, she surrounded herself with, she worked with and she dates. The characters are written very quickly so they dont leave much of a impact on you. The only thought i had on the characters was 'Every male guy Razia has known has been an asshole' and its true. all the male characters are either assholes and racist to other people or they treat Razia like shit.
This is a LGBTQ book, it mentions (more to towards the end) that she's had relationships with both men and women. But again, all rushed through.
The novel itself felt like you saw Razia growing up and seeing parts of her life but since she was written in a way where it still seemed like she was a stranger, it was odd.
All in all, the writing is okay and the story is okay my big complaint(s) are just how the characters are written (mainly Razia) and how it didn't feel like a novel at all, it felt like i was reading short stories that had been slightly rushed through so it left almost a messy kind of feel. I wasn't disappointed, it was just semi-odd cause for the first time, i read a book where the main character felt like a stranger to me at the end.
+ Also to add, I expected quite a bit of story about the kind of community she lived in, what it was like and etc but I felt like I didn't read much about her childhood. It was interesting but there were i think 3-4 chapters about her actual childhood which I found a bit saddening since I had been actually interested in that.
January 6, 2023
I really wish I could have run this book through Does The Dog Die, because that chapter about the kitten is going to haunt me for the rest of my life, but regardless, this was a really exemplary book of interconnected short stories, which has shamefully been languishing on my Kindle for over 2 years.
I particularly loved the chapters about Razia in her twenties and thirties, coming into herself as a queer person and understanding what this meant to her even as she entered into relationships which would be read as heteronormative.
If I had any criticism, it would be that the structure felt uneven in a way that didn't seem deliberate; the length of each of the stories ranged from about 5 pages to almost half the book, and there wasn't any obvious reason for it. At times, I found it difficult to see the different shades of Razia in each chapter; the Razia we see as a child doesn't seem consistent with Razia in her twenties, who also doesn't seem consistent with Razia in her thirties, which would be fine if this book was marketed specifically as a short story collection, but I felt that it lacked a cohesive structure or sense of development to make this work as a novel.
Rehman has a book due out shortly in which the protagonist is also a queer woman growing up in Queens, who is also named Razia, and where her relationship with other characters named in Corona seems to be very different, so I'm interested to see how much of Corona might appear in that one. Perhaps the theme of disconnected interconnectedness will seem much more deliberate with the introduction of this alternate Razia.
Still, I'm glad to finally have read it. A great start to 2023's reading!
I particularly loved the chapters about Razia in her twenties and thirties, coming into herself as a queer person and understanding what this meant to her even as she entered into relationships which would be read as heteronormative.
If I had any criticism, it would be that the structure felt uneven in a way that didn't seem deliberate; the length of each of the stories ranged from about 5 pages to almost half the book, and there wasn't any obvious reason for it. At times, I found it difficult to see the different shades of Razia in each chapter; the Razia we see as a child doesn't seem consistent with Razia in her twenties, who also doesn't seem consistent with Razia in her thirties, which would be fine if this book was marketed specifically as a short story collection, but I felt that it lacked a cohesive structure or sense of development to make this work as a novel.
Rehman has a book due out shortly in which the protagonist is also a queer woman growing up in Queens, who is also named Razia, and where her relationship with other characters named in Corona seems to be very different, so I'm interested to see how much of Corona might appear in that one. Perhaps the theme of disconnected interconnectedness will seem much more deliberate with the introduction of this alternate Razia.
Still, I'm glad to finally have read it. A great start to 2023's reading!
June 26, 2017
This was less a novel than a series of short vignettes, or snapshots of moments in the life of the narrator. While I enjoyed many of them individually, and was interested in the glimpses they offered into the experience of a particular community in a particular time and place, in the end I felt the whole was somewhat less than the sum of its parts. It may be just that I was expecting a traditional narrative, but I felt that there was very little sense of forward motion at all until near the end, and not much even then. I enjoyed the book well enough as I was reading it, but in the end nothing much seems to have changed for the narrator, and little of her story really lingered with me when it was done.
September 30, 2023
I read this only because of Rehman's 2022 novel, "Roses, In the Mouth of Lions", which now sits on my Ideal Bookshelf. Corona is series of short stories about the protagonist from "Roses,..." Razia. I am not a fan of short stories and even though Roses was told in snippets of Razia's life; those snippets were told in chronological order and flowed smoothly. Corona reads as though it's a first draft of "Roses,...". In some stories I could feel/remember Razia, but in most of the pages I forgot she was the girl I love. I hope Rehman writes another full-length novel soon. This one was satisfying.
June 2, 2023
If you are like me and reading this after Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion because you NEED more Razia then you should read this. It was written first so the details of how she left home are different, but it’s still the same Razia. It goes back and forth between her adult life and a couple of Corona stories we already know. It’s also super short, finished it in a couple of hours. I just love this author!!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 15, 2024
I love her writing, but I don’t recommend this book!! Read Roses in the mouth of a lion, that book was amazing, and this is like a half assed semi-sequel to it. There are at least 5 chapters literally copy and pasted from that book into this, so disappointing! The new chapters were great to read and I didn’t mind that they jumped around, but there was so much missing to Razia’s story!
June 30, 2025
Supporting intellectual feminist divas of color yet again!! After reading 'Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion' I was sad because I loved Razia so much and omg so fun to get her back and reread some familiar bits that made it into the next novel :') and all the new (to me) stuff slapped, too
December 25, 2018
What I really loved about reading this is that it felt like being with friends and telling stories about our lives. It feels so familiar and so unique at the same time.
December 3, 2022
The first three years of life would make her feel better because it's still possible that I could nothing wrong
March 25, 2023
Impressive young talent. Connected short stories, with the ones set in Queens more to my taste.
April 21, 2023
the sequel , sorta , to Roses in the Mouth of a Lion! I’d follow Razia anywhere. I wish this was a series
February 17, 2014
Bushra Rehman may help to define what our world is today. These stories move along quickly, and they never fail to surprise or delight you with absolutely sharp moments of writing. Handsome uncles, Bhangra and hints of terrorism are all part of the background of a story that is ultimately finding your place, which might be really no place at all, but a regular journey. My favorites in here are "The Summer of Young Uncles," "Bhangra Blow-Up," and the final piece will make you feel hope for us miserable creatures.
October 20, 2014
There's a liveliness to a lot of this book, but it just felt too much - and too consistently - like a First Novel for me to rate it higher. It's a little frustrating because sometimes the similes feel fresh and exciting and other times, worn and tired. There's also a fair amount of repetition throughout - being told details we were already told a couple pages earlier. And I didn't get to know Razia nearly enough - I get to know blips of her life over the course of 20 years, but I never really get to feel like I can sink into her, really understand where she's coming from.
January 9, 2024
The writing is energetic and compelling, so this is a pleasure to read. It's a collection of stories with the same protagonist. They skip around chronologically, but I couldn't figure out why. I was hoping for a little bit more of a sustained examination of Razia's complicated identity, but perhaps it is good that the author leaves it up to the readers to make our own inferences. Some of the secondary characters are fully fleshed out; others are one-dimensional. The last story (very short) is superb.
September 26, 2013
True to its name, this book of short stories by Bushra Rehman certainly tells the story of an era in Corona, Queens, as seen by the book's unique and fierce Pakistani American protagonist, Razia. Beyond the geographic terrain of the neighborhoods of Corona, the book covers far-reaching emotional terrain through honest, bittersweet stories about childhood, the complexity of family, and the forces that propel us into and beyond doomed relationships.
January 10, 2014
I loved this book! It is beautifully written, and gives insight into a culture that not many people know about. It's told from the inside of the pakistani-muslim culture, and shows the transformation of how that conflicts with American society. This book was a quick read, but very insightful, I'd probably read it again, and recommend it to everyone.
February 22, 2015
I would give the first half 5 stars, and the second half 3 stars. I was thoroughly enjoying the stories, and was disappointed that she decided to expand the least interesting one into a longer one. But that said, this was such a quick read that it was totally worth it just for some of those stories in the first half.
January 16, 2015
Beautiful writing, but I found the disjointed vignette story telling difficult to follow. I'd still recommend it, but I wish I had known what to expect more before I started reading it. I also wish it was a lot longer, I was sad that it finished.
July 10, 2015
Razia is a survivor, but each chapter/short story shows her in reaction, not action. Razia escapes; Razia fights back; Razia bears it. I would have liked to see more of the moments that happen in between each story, when she moves forward on her own volition.
Bought at Astoria Bookshop.
Bought at Astoria Bookshop.
November 26, 2015
Amazing story of a young woman's life; unusual insights and familiar emotions.
Sharp writing, a beautiful book that keeps the stories tight, mysterious and fascinating.
See the world through her eyes. You'll have new perspective.
Sharp writing, a beautiful book that keeps the stories tight, mysterious and fascinating.
See the world through her eyes. You'll have new perspective.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews