The Girl Who Fell to Earth: A Memoir

by Sophia Al-Maria

Award-winning filmmaker and writer Sophia Al-Maria’s The Girl Who Fell to Earth is a funny and wry coming-of-age memoir about growing up in between American and Gulf Arab cultures. With poignancy and humor, Al-Maria shares the struggles of being raised by an American mother and Bedouin father while shuttling between homes in the Pacific Northwest and the Middle East. Part family saga and part personal quest, The Girl Who Fell to Earth traces Al-Maria’s journey to make a place for herself in two different worlds.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Middle East, Biography, Coming Of Age, Biography Memoir, Adult

290 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 27, 2012

Reviews

[Zanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This memoir has a stranger-than-fiction appeal made all the more delectable by Al-Maria's matter-of-fact, breezy delivery. She deploys language with a spring in its step and whimsy in its heart. The glossary alone made me feel I was drinking coffee and catching up with a friend I loved the space/sci-fi theme, which dissolved alienating boundaries between urban and traditional Beduin, Cairene and rural USian lifestyles, but left their quirks and contrasts intact. I felt Al-Maria's relish and resentment in each setting, both longing for and recoiling from aspects of them all.

I was struck by Al-Maria's observations of her Bedu grandmother's lifestyle and the contrast between relaxed, communal, active and autonomous nomad living and the compressed, fractious, rigidly controlled and stultifying indoor life of the same people transferred to city apartments. I myself felt horribly trapped as she narrated her travails. I felt the weight, the intolerable weight of boredom, and the amused horror at garish, frilled and flounced ballgowns for the wedding, bought for the pleasure of self-adornment but also to display femme charms to potential mothers in law, since potential husbands are forbidden to see them. I would escape by any means necessary!

Yet this airless world was at least far less threatening than USian high school, high bastion of rape culture. I couldn't stand that either. And although I believe I have the mad courage and the battle-scar badges to survive against the grain of conformity in that cruel culture, I hate its junk food-rotted guts.


It amused me that Sophia's father upset his mother in law by slaughtering a lamb in her honour, but in the very next scene she is buying meat in the supermarket with him, making no connection between the unacceptable death of the cute lamb she'd loved and admired before it was killed and the less fresh pieces of flesh in her shopping basket.

As well as cracklingly contemporary vernacular, all splice and spice, that makes me love some new writing, the easy flowing prose has texture, sonority, chiaroscuro. The book is filmic, flowing from one carefully realised, richly visual scene to the next. Al-Maria painted images that sank into my memory, drawing life force from her tale's veracity.

The Cairene part of the story broke my heart, and the final section left me stranded, longing to know where Sophia would go now, what she would do, who would help her and love her. Yet she had gone, I felt, back into the pathless desert, where all directions are open and the gleam and glitter of the stars, silver and gold, adorn the future with magical light. Where next is the sweetest dilemma...

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

For much of my reading of The Girl Who Fell to Earth, I felt fairly confused about my feelings for the book, perhaps reflecting the author's feelings of confusion with her life and identity as an Arab-American girl and Muslim whose parents lived on different continents and lived quite separate lives. Sophia/Safya Al-Maria is the daughter of an American mother from Pallyup and a Bedouin father from Doha and other places. The couples' history is included in this memoir. Sophia's story is influenced by both sides of her family and her trips to Doha during her childhood.

Much of that childhood is confusing to the reader---as it must have been to Sophia. Childhood, pre-teen and teenage issues appear magnified by larger than normal questions of identity. This is when I found myself foundering a bit along with Sophia.

But then she begins to mature and have more adult experiences that all children eventually do. This child with no fixed identity begins to see that she can and will have her own and the writing becomes smoother, the story becomes more poetic.


"I'd already left the orbits of Ma and Baba before I
felt the effects of their gravity, of their influence.
In fact, neither of their worldviews made sense to me
at all; they were just a couple of grand delusions in a
universe of chaos and pure chance. Neither Ma's pragmatic
ideals of manifest destiny nor Baba's deep belief in the
precision pf Allah's intention offered any comfort as
I sat there quivering on the mount in the middle of my
identity crisis. I had been shaped by these opposing
polar forces, but I wasn't governed by them any more,
and it took climbing a holy mountain I'd never planned
to summit before I could understand that." (p 264)


This coming together of the book's strands raised its rating to 3.5 or 4 as I finished.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this as part of my focus on the Middle East this year. Sophia Al-Maria is a Qatari-American artist, filmmaker, and writer who moved back and forth between Doha and Puyallup as a child. Her father is actually Bedouin and within his generation his family had to pick a more permanent place to live and stop moving through the peninsula (which was not always a positive - she describes her aunts as watching a lot of television.) And then Sophia/Safiya strikes out on her own, which was exciting too.

[Hani Al-Kharaz · Rating 3 out of 5]

الرواية موجهة بالدرجة الرئيسية للقارئ الغربي كما أشارت الكاتبة في مقدمتها، وهي بالتالي لا تحمل جديداً للقارئ المحلي، إلا أنها جاءت سلسة وممتعة،
وإن كنت أتمنى لو تعمقت الكاتبة قليلاً في تحليلاتها لبعض القضايا التي طرحتها فيها، كصراع الهوية، العلاقات بين الجنسين، النظرة للقبائل البدوية، النظرة الأمريكية للعرب بعد أحداث ١١ سبتمبر، وغيرها، إذ بدا واضحاً أن الكاتبة تمتلك نظرة تحليلية للأمور ولكنها لم توظفها بشكل كبير في الرواية.

تستحق الكاتبة التحية والثناء على توثيق تجربتها بهذه الجرأة والشجاعة.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Towards the end of the book, there's a scene where Sofia al-Maria reviews the video tapes she made during a summer job filming Bedouin in the Sinai as part of an ethnographic research project, and realizes to her horror that much of the tapes consist not of revealing footage of her Bedouin subjects' lives, but of...her talking about herself!

The same could be said of this pleasant but ultimately disappointing book. Sofia moves between fascinatingly different worlds--American small town, resettled Bedouin in Doha, wealthy private school in Doha, the American University in Cairo, and mobile Sinai Bedouin, but all of her different environments feel fuzzily drawn, a little out of focus compared to what emerges as the book's main subject...her own teenage angst. When she lives with her resettled Bedouin relatives in Doha, for example, she spends as much time describing her struggle to access Nintendo games as she does the lives of the other women she lived with for years. When she attends a Bedouin wedding we get to experience some of the festivities with her, but the climax of the scene is her own mortification at having danced awkwardly. The briefly-mentioned struggles of other characters in the book seem like they'd be much more interesting than hers, if only she bothered to delve into them.

[♥ Sandi ❣ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars

I find it hard to review a memoir. I cannot confirm or refute what a person says their life has been. I can only remark on the mechanics of the book.

The story ~~ An Arabian teen aged girl is sent from her home with her mother in Seattle to her fathers desert dwelling family in Qatar. With this nomadic life style, Sophia feels exiled. This is story of how she makes a life for herself.

The mechanics of the novel ~~ Easy read. Likable characters. Readily expressed confusion between the two families and their life styles. Lots of pop culture references. Some confusing and not well articulated places within the writing, especially from the past, like she only knows parts of that past story. Would have been nice to learn more about the countries and life styles Sophia ended up living.

[Jaylia3 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part American and part Bedouin--growing up in at least two cultures

When Sophia Al-Maria’s father was a boy his family still lived a traditional Bedouin lifestyle, traveling around the deserts of Qatar and Saudi Arabia and sleeping in tents under skies dark enough to be filled with stars. After being forced by boundary-loving authorities to settle in a gender-segregated family compound her father’s wanderlust remained, which is how he ended up in Seattle unable to speak English but still managing to meet and marry an American girl, giving Al-Maria the dual or maybe triple or even quadruple cultural heritage that makes this memoir so mind expandingly and eye openingly interesting.

Al-Maria spent part of her childhood in her grandmother’s small, isolated house in rural Washington state, where the protective paranoia of her mother made Al-Maria feel more trapped than when she stayed in her father’s crowded multi-generational and now stationery home in Qatar. Even though while in Qatar there were substantial cultural and religious restrictions on her ability to move around freely and meet with whomever she wanted, being part of a larger family crowd felt liberating.

While she lived in Qatar Al-Maria spent her time getting to know her substantial Bedouin family, attending an international school mainly for foreigners, brawling with her male cousins in the wrong side of their gender divided home because she couldn’t stand that being older meant she was no longer able to play Mortal Kombat with them (well, this happened just once), assisting her uncle’s carefully choreographed subterfuge as he sneak-courted a non-Bedouin girl unacceptable to their family (which helped her figure out how to spend forbidden time with her boyfriend when she fell in love), and attending rowdy, sexually charged all female parties that seemed to be part of the insular culture of women. Al-Maria also got to experience a little of her traditional Bedouin heritage when the whole family would take off to camp in the desert.

Several of Al-Maria’s perspectives and insights on hot topics like burka wearing are not what I’ve encountered anywhere else, and she experienced class divides I knew nothing about. The book presents a fascinating almost disorienting set of interrelated worlds and Al-Maria’s vivid energetic writing sweeps the story along, allowing me the deep pleasure of being able to visualize that wide, star-rich desert sky but leaving me hanging a little at the end wondering what she did next. I’m hoping for a follow up book.

Thanks to Zanna for bringing the book to my attention. Her review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Jalilah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this book drew me in from the start, I was initially frustrated by the way Al -Maria skipped over many years omitting many details of her life. It left me with many unanswered questions. For instance I wondered if her father ever ended up studying, if her parents ever actually divorced, if her mother ever recovered from the shock of her father marrying a second wife or how her relationship to her sister was. However at a certain point it became clear that although The Girl Who Fell To Earth is a memoir, it really is a coming of age story. It does not matter if she leaves out details because it is about a person born of two very different cultures finding her own individual identity. This is what makes this book interesting as well as the fact that it reads like a novel.
There is a continuous outer space/alien theme running throughout the book starting with Sophia's Bedouin Grandmother "giving"a star to Matar, her father, to Sophia's adolescent obsession with David Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust" album, to the final chapter where she sees the Satellite (or UFO?) in the desert and "falls to Earth". Many parts could have been movie scenes like the magical description of her father and uncle as young boys watching TV in the desert (each one thinks that the singer on TV is winking at them) or the description of her parents first meeting ( in a bowling alley while Lou Reed's "Satellite of Love" is playing on the jukebox).
This book can be funny, sad, and infuriating! There were parts where I laughed out loud, but it was heartbreaking reading about her father marrying his cousin without telling her mother.
However, when Sophia is a teen back in Washington it was her mother I felt annoyed with for being so overly strict. It was interesting to read that teenage Sophia felt she had more freedom with her Bedouin family in Qatar. At times Sophia seemed very self absorbed, but after all, it's her story!
All in all, this was both an enjoyable and thought provoking read!

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

When there was no one to marry a Bedouin couple in the desert, they just circled a tree, commanding it three times with the words, "You! Tree! Marry us!" and then got down to business.

I once ran into a person who praised the fact that, when it came to publishing women of color in translation, publishing houses had a tendency to cluster around those works that were a mere 100-200 pages long. This was a surprise to me, as I had long chalked up that particular ongoing condition of things to the general lack of attention that Anglo markets are willing to pay, or willing to believe that their audiences will pay(, or perhaps refusing to give the audiences the opportunity to pay) to texts hailing from such a demographic. So, when it comes to this text, the fact that my biggest issue with it is the ever building squeeze, wherein the strong and confident beginning is given so much space compared to the successive stages of the classical bildungsroman, makes me think of more than just of individual flaws. For, let's be honest here, how much textual space is a Euro-Arab woman, even when she goes the extra mile of writing in English, given when she isn't penning an Islamophobic diatribe, an excessively exotifying tale of barely credible, or some other piece that can't be as easily used for safely distant entertainment or politically useful propaganda? No offense towards Marjane Satrapi, Azar Nafisi, or Malala Yousafzai, but the fact that they, as non-white women, show up so much more quickly in the 'middle east' GR tag than Al-Maria does says a lot.

So, as I said, the beginning of this was the best section for me. It told a tale of a time that I had previously seen in Cities of Salt in terms of historical setting and the associated hyperdriven cultural shift, but also in An African in Greenland on the level of an individual receiving just enough tidbits of a foreign landscape to inspire an incongruous voyage, in this case one that was nearly 7,500 miles long one way and several centuries in the making. The booms in oil and digital are on their way to rumbling on the international stage, 9/11 is waiting in the wings, but for now, there's a guy, there's a gal, and whatever control the white settler state of the US has on its individual citizens was mitigated long enough for a family to be built in dual cultures, creeds, and continents. Al-Maria's early years in the US, for all their older tech and aged pop culture obsessions, were recognizable enough for me to meander along, leastwise until the usual mentality of obsessively entitled ownership and complete disregard of privacy and personal property that white parents are prone to in regards to their offspring to rear its ugly head and inspire the erstwhile student of white suburbia to live with the other half of their heritage. This is around the time things started speeding up, although it wasn't until the jarring transition between hoity toity Gulf Arab high schools and Egyptian universities that I felt that a lot more could have been said in regards to the author's personal coming to terms with her place in a world that, in most cases, finds her so harmful to its monetary and military enforced dichotomies that it refuses to acknowledge her existence. Much as I appreciated a view into a world that tends to be served up to my white gaze in a much more ethnically othered manner, topics such as rape culture, resisting the forces that continually seek to bisect one's intellectual development, and finally finding a place in life that allows the reconciliation of different parts of one identity deserve a lot more room than barely sixty pages. Also, that last, scrabbling attempt to reconcile everything in the space of one scene and one burst of holistic acceptance at the very conclusion? Ehhhh.

I see that Al-Maria has a recently published collection of writings that refer to this memoir as 'premature,' so perhaps that's the text that I need to pick up next. The work's summary also mentions 'Gulf Futurism,' a term I had come across while Wiking the author in hopes of supplementing this less than amazing reading experience with some more information about how a less than objective ethnographer made the jump to artist, writer, and filmmaker. If there's one thing I delight in when it comes to academic/creative constructs, it's anything that acts as firm antithesis to the whole 'woe-is-me' end of days white man spiel that plagues so much of what is considered 'critical' thought these days. So the people on top bought the world and now they're bored with it. Good thing that everyone who they thought was putting up with their myopic onanism was actually putting in the time and effort to float, then swim, then dive, to the point that these people on top turn around and realize that the global scene is not, and frankly never was, all about them. So, as I do invest quite a bit of time in the usual 'classics' scene, I read for what I consider to be quality, not for what everyone tells me to be quality. Keeping track of people such as Al-Maria in hopes of bigger and better things is just one part of the process.

I didn't give a fuck anymore about what Edward Said said—I just wanted to look at turn-of-last-century nude photographs of tattooed Ouled Nail tribeswomen.

[Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship · Rating 2 out of 5]

Anyone who reads memoirs knows that a successful one requires two distinct elements: an interesting life, and strong writing skills. By memoir standards, Sophia Al-Maria’s life is promising: her father is a Bedouin from Qatar, her mother an American from rural Washington; she grows up in the U.S. but moves to Doha as a teenager to live with her father’s family, then attends college in Cairo. That clash of cultures seen through the eyes of a modern teen, interested in sci-fi and video games, provides some potentially great material.

Unfortunately, Al-Maria does little with that material. Other reviewers have criticized the book as self-centered, which isn’t necessarily a problem for me; it is, after all, her memoir. The problem is that the one thing that makes Al-Maria’s life interesting is her having lived in such wildly different cultures; the activities that make up her life (attending school, experiencing pop culture, discovering boys) are mundane. And when the interesting thing about someone’s life is the other people in it, then a lack of interest and insight into those other people becomes a problem. A scene toward the end is representative of Al-Maria’s focus throughout the book: she goes on an anthropological expedition, but realizes afterwards that her tapes consist almost entirely of her talking to her subjects about herself. Despite that supposed epiphany, this book does the same thing.

On top of that, too often the story simply doesn’t make sense, raising more questions about events than it answers. Here’s a small example: “Ma checked us in [to a hotel] under a false name and, having no money, gave them our passports as collateral at the desk.” (That makes sense how?) And here’s a larger one: Al-Maria’s parents meet when her father travels to the U.S. as a foreign student, gets lost as soon as he arrives, encounters her mother in a bowling alley, and takes off with her. It sounds like the plot of a bad romantic comedy, and the author offers no more explanation than such a film would. How does he manage to get a scholarship, when he is long out of school, with no achievements or connections mentioned? When a student arrives from another country speaking virtually no English, wouldn’t someone meet him at the airport, or at least instruct him in advance on finding the school? Does no one realize he never arrives at the school, or try to check up on him? Isn’t ditching his academic plans a problem for his immigration status and/or stipend? When he’s later mentioned to be regularly “visiting” his girlfriend’s mother in rural Washington, where is he living, and how can he afford it? There are so many unanswered questions that it feels as if we’re only getting half the story.

And then, the author’s writing itself can be clunky. The constant pop culture references from the author's childhood are both needless and distancing for those who don't share her reference points, and she never uses a common noun where a brand name will do. Here are several examples all taken from a single page: “The only snippet of incongruity in Joey’s look was the fact that he was wearing thick-as-Coke-bottle glasses. He rummaged through his worn-out leather-bottomed Jansport. . . . Tara was skinny with a shaved head like a Tank Girl. . . . [Joey] pulled a pack of Pall Malls out and lit one off a floppy clip of matches. . . . Joey was peeling up the edge of the ‘hum’ part of his Subhumans patch.”

In the end, neither the author’s writing nor her insight is crisp enough to bring anything but her own angst and pop cultural interests into focus, and the story trails off – not a moment too soon – with no real conclusion. Though I know a bit more about Qatar than before, I was glad to be finished with this book and would not recommend it to others.

[Malda Smadi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always wanted to read a book written by a young Arab author touching on existing normal Arab life. Something that was more profound than the stuff that came out earlier this year about life in Dubai. Something that spoke to a generation of girls who lost their identities living away from their home countries in the midst of so many different nationalities, cultures and religions. A book that dealt with issues around Islam and conservatism in the modern way we grew up in and struggled to find the appropriate balance that fed our greedy need for liberation and put an end to our guilt in not complying with the teachings of our religion. This book covers it all for me and just like Sophia fell to earth, the book fell to my hands ... and then fell out in a day. This is an early-peek review into one of the great upcoming books of 2012!

What caught my attention skimming through the book was the author’s background and I guess I was really intrigued from that moment to read her memoir. Sophia Al-Maria is half Bedouin and half American and it was just so shockingly unlikely how this marriage came together. I just wondered how the story of her parents meeting for the first time would have been like and if the Bedouin part was exaggerated, that the father might have just been an Arab. Thankfully, she gives us the story in detail of how her parents met and how her life came to be, and therefore this really amusing memoir. What I’m actually really thankful and respectful for was that she didn’t hold off any details about her life that I’m sure she must have thought would seem too intimate or private to tell knowing that she is an Arab and her identity is known. So if you’re reading this Sophia, slow clap to you, you have done great!

The memoir starts from the very beginning of her parents' childhoods and leads up all the way to a few years from present time all the while introducing and affirming her confused being. We’re mostly defined by our parents and families’ traditions but what happens when you’re the result of two complete opposite people who fell in love? What happens when even your name becomes an issue when it’s caught in the middle of two different languages, Sophia vs. Safya?

The Girl Who Fell To Earth is a great memoir for girls struggling with themselves in modern times. It might not help find you a solution but it will definitely make you feel like you are not alone.

[Rita · Rating 2 out of 5]

O início é bastante interessante, à medida que vamos avançando as coisas começam a ficar um pouco chatas e repetitivas, e terminamos com mais perguntas do que respostas.

Não consegui perceber:

a viagem inicial do pai para os EUA, para estudar (através de uma bolsa de estudo) e acaba a viver na zona rural de Washington;

o relacionamento entre os pais de Sophia;

o regresso do pai ao Catar;

de onde aparece o dinheiro que a família, de repente, passou a ter;

a paranoia da mãe com a possibilidade de rapto ou com os olhares de outros homens;

a ida de Sophia para uma universidade no Egipto – porque não escolheu outras opções?;

a passividade perante a forma como as mulheres (incluindo ela) são tratadas –ela vai dos EUA para o Catar, alguma coisa deveria ter aprendido enquanto esteve na América…;

a opção de ir viver com um pastor de cabras….

Enfim, não é o meu mundo e tenho grandes dificuldades de lidar com este tipo de cultura.

By the end of that summer, I was conviced that all the women in my family had forgotten what it was like to be fearless and what it had once meant to be free.



44/198 – Catar

[Clara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t mean to invalidate the author’s experience in any way with this review, but this book just didn’t do it for me, because of the way it’s executed. I went into this memoir with a lot of enthusiasm and curiosity, expecting a coming of age story of someone lost between two culturally-different worlds. As a young woman I related with many passages regarding finding one’s identity during adolescence and especially in relation to one’s own family. Having her mother and father in two different countries, the author finds herself a bit conflicted about feeling responsible for having to please both while exploring her own identity, coming of age, and sexuality. I think it took me some time to finish this one mainly because I found the writing to be a bit overwrought for the content and this made my thoughts stray and the text just repetitively lost me along the way. I was also expecting more cultural elements, and a deeper analysis of the cultural and religious differences regarding growing up in the United States and in Qatar, and in the end, I didn’t feel like I got that from the author. Would still recommend, it really is a unique story.

[Moses Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir is the story of a girl stuck between two worlds- the strict, Muslim environment that her father grew up in, and the alien, lonely American life of her mother. Sophia grows as a person through trial and error, trying to figure out where she belongs. She finally discovers that she is one of a kind, and that neither world will really fit her. She accepts this, and finds contentment in it.
This book, simply put, was incredible. It's a coming-of-age story of sorts, and really focuses on discovering your identity, which is why I enjoyed it so much, as it is so relatable. The author also talks about David Bowie a lot, which I enjoyed as Bowie was also a part of my experience growing up. The writing was excellent, and grabbed my attention from the first page.
This book is extremely explicit sometimes, which works for it, but I don't recommend it for younger audiences. It also ended at a point that left me wanting more of her story, so my only real complaint is that I didn't want it to end.
This book is full of the twists and turns of Sophia's life, and kept me riveted throughout the memoir. The writing was funny and well done, while keeping a serious tone when necessary. I recommend this to anyone, but especially to young people, in their early teens.

[Becky · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is the story of a woman with a Qatari father and an American mother and her life growing up in Qatar, the US, and Egypt. I felt like the author skimmed over the things that were really interesting, and gave too much information about the less interesting parts of her life. I wanted to hear more about her parents and their relationship. Her mother and father met with very little language in common and in a short period of time they were married and she converted to Islam, and not much more detail was given than that. How interesting would that have been? What was her mother like? What was their relationship like? Also, her father married a second wife not long into their marriage. And again, no information about that. The September 11 attacks happened while she was studying at American University in Cairo. Very little written about that. She wrote a lot about what happened in her life, but nothing about her thoughts and feelings about things, or about her relationship with the very interesting people in her life. I think this book had a lot of potential, but just fell a little short for me.

[Israa · Rating 3 out of 5]

What an interesting read.

Honestly, this was something different. I’ve never read a book that referenced things I grew up with or knew so well! Mentions of “Zeitoonah” from Popeye, ordering drinks from a local cafeteria (Hot n’ Cool) with names like “Combyuter and Rolex,” the word “Habarbish,” or a local salon like Al-Rehab Ladies Salon. These were all such familiar and nostalgic details.

We’re so used to reading books or watching shows filled with pop culture references from places we’ve never seen or experienced, so seeing something so close to home was joyful. I never imagined I’d come across a book with such localized references.

As for the book itself.. it was fine. Not a masterpiece, but definitely engaging.

The story is full of thorny, complicated situations. Perhaps that is why it seems like it was targeting English readers? Whether we like it or not, where the author comes from can really affect how much readers are willing to accept or reject such a personal narrative.

That said, I personally wanted to know what happened next in her life. It was quite the roller coaster, if you ask me. It seemed like the author struggled with a lot of identity issues.

[Ariana Sanders · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, really enjoyed this book thanks to my recent trip to Qatar and understanding of their history and lifestyle. Note for future use: 3/4 of the book is great for YA...pretty much up to Cairo chapters.

[Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Around the World Reading Challenge: QATAR
===
Very interesting and readable memoir, told so fluidly I frequently forgot I was reading a memoir and not a novel I was particularly drawn to this one as I'm fairly familiar with the PNW/American place the author grew up. She wonderfully captures that tumultuous teenage period of trying to find one's place and identity, exacerbated here by the differing cultures of her American mom and Bedouin dad. I really enjoyed the writing and thought this was a compelling read, though it really does stick t0 the coming-of-age themes, ending soon after her first year in college, and I did find myself wishing we'd gotten a bit more.

[Debra Anne]

Part Seattle-an, part Bedouin, part starseed, Sophia Al-Maria gently rattles stereotypes by simply telling her experience as a child of "Other" ethnicity.

The first stereotype she rattles is that of fierce Muslim taboos about sexuality. Nowhere does she say it isn't true that girls are punished harshly for pressing sexual boundaries, but her own story suggests that perhaps this isn't as universal as Americans have been given to believe. She is technically a bastard since Matar and Gale weren't married when she was conceived, but contrary to stereotype, her Baba marries her yellow-haired mother while Sophia is a babe in arms, and takes his family home to meet the Tribe.

If the tribe have issues with the foreign devil, it is not mentioned. Perhaps this is because Sophia's Bedouin relatives have been affected by reruns of a mixture of Star Trek and Little House on the Prairie and bollywood films. They live a surreal existence in Doha, escaping periodically on "camping trips" to their former life on the desert, where women were free and strong legged rather than cramped into a room, gone fat from watching too much TV in seclusion.

Whether in the States or in the Arabian desert, the stars figure largely in Sophia's awareness. Her chapters are named for stars. In the desert where the stars are so bright that she feels as though she might fall into them, Sophia is taught their names by her namesake, her grandmother Sayfe. Sophia's writing is so subtle that there is no need to make the point that it was the people of Arabia who gave us the names of stars. Instead she speaks of her Bedouin grandmother's keen grasp of astronomy and how it is counter-balanced by her incomprehension of the distance to New York. Overhead in Doha, we see through her eyes the lights from satellites competing with starlight in the same eerie contrast as that of television antennaes strung on minarets.

Even in the glossary, Sophia's humor and keen powers of observation never fails to please: "Abaya--A long cloak-like dress worn by women in the Arabian Gulf. Sartorial cousins to the floor-skimming garments of Batman, Darth Vader and Neo."

This book is an easy read, and it illuminates as gently as starshine difficult subjects that are usually approached with grim seriousness. If you want to connect with the humanity and humor of a people who are increasingly presented to the American public as foreign devils, if you have ever felt like an alien upon this world, this is the book for you.

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book began nicely with Al-Maria outlining her father’s Bedouin boyhood and cultural background--although awkwardly written because it wasn’t clear who she was referring to until many pages in--and how he ended up in Puyallup, Washington and met the author’s mother. Their unlikely meeting and love story was interesting and entertaining.

As the story moves into Al-Maria’s childhood and teenage years bouncing back and forth between the Middle East and Washington, it loses a lot of steam and just becomes another unoriginal story of teenage angst. Sadly, because it was such a good premise for a good memoir, it really petered out by the last third of the book.

[gulru · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 -
one of my favourite genres of book is: people with improbable lives, usually involving some movement across borders, and where i also learn a lot about a niche history of a different part of the world.

anyway this lady's life is insanely interesting. one in a million chance of any of those odds coming together. i also learned much about bedouins & gulf history, and my interest is piqued to learn more!!

i liked her writing too. it's kind of a shame that so much of the most interesting stuff happened when she was a self-obsessed teenager. i wish the author was more curious about the people around her, because -i- wanted to know more about them and all their inner worlds. her grandma, aunts, her dad, her sister! they were all so fascinating but we really only got her assumptions about them and how they were in relation to her. maybe she struggled to really connect to any one of these people and learn who they really are because of the language barrier. i was left wanting to hear more about everyone else, and less about the authors internal crises.

i love that she felt her freest and most alive in egypt, but also that cairo chapter was so depressing & scary that it was probably not the best thing for me to read before a trip to egypt lol

[Courtney · Rating 3 out of 5]

I will admit -- I bought this book for its cover. Pretty stars, another "girl" title. Then the subject on the back grabbed me. Given all that's going on in the world right now I was intrigued about the journey of an American/Arab (Bedouin) young woman. The fact she came from my home state of Washington was also enticing.

I related to her rebellious nature that drives her distraught single mom to send her to her father and his tribe half way across the world. My daughter is 17 and sometimes I have that urge. I would have liked to have known more about the Mom and sister she leaves behind to eventually go live and study abroad. Instead it's a compelling and confusing journey story about author Sophia Al-Maria trying to figure out where she fits in between two worlds and bloodlines.

I loved learning about the tribal culture, her hidden first love, and tenderness with her Arab family. I got annoyed at times with her selfishness but again, teenage angst is universal.

Compelling read and memoir. You'll learn a lot!

[Rodaina Mousa · Rating 5 out of 5]

A mellow memoir about the struggle of finding a home between the Pacific Northwest and the Middle East. Part family saga and part personal quest, The Girl Who Fell to Earth traces Sophia Al-Maria’s journey to make a place for herself in two different worlds. This book was recommended for me more than 2 years ago, but only now did I get the chance to sit down and read it. I'm glad I did though, particularly at this time in my life.

[Sandra The Old Woman in a Van · Rating 4 out of 5]

Based on the average rating this book receives I thought I wouldn’t like it much. But I wanted to read a book by a female Qatari author — this was it. But I quite enjoyed it. I’m interested in what it is really like in a culture like this for a girl and young woman. That means all the teen angst and naval gazing. I enjoyed hearing how boys and girls communicate. It was a fun read I completed in one day.

[Laila Taji · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amazing life/perspective of Bedouin life as well as being split between two cultures. Loved the Arabic references as well as 80’s/90’s references. An easy and enjoyable (even through the angst) read.

(Note to self: not sure it would work for a high school reading list due to mild sex, some derogatory references)

[Nicole Bergen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating memoir about a girl growing up between two completely different worlds. The only Qatar I hear about is the ultra-rich one on the news and soccer stadiums with abusive working conditions so it was great to put some ordinary human faces to the area.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This sat unread on my shelf for far too long. I'd be curious to see how the author would write her life now, as she's described this memoir as "premature." A multiethnic life is by nature fragmented and maybe hard to find your place. Her long time interest in science fiction and futurism is relatable and stereotype breaking. Loved this one!

[Tove R. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sophia's mother is sending her away from Washington State to Qatar, to stay with her father's Bedouin family, when Sophia was a teenager. This is a coming-of-age story, as well as a story about living between two very different families, struggling between two cultures, literally and figuratively miles apart. What I did not like about this book is that so many of my questions were not answered.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really loved the first part of this memoir but towards the end it all fizzled out. I got the impression that Sophia/Safya had absolutely no idea how to end the book. That's a problem with memoirs written by young people, especially as young as she is (born in 1983). You are still living your life and so once you get beyond writing about your childhood, you are confronted with writing about your adult life - which you are currently living and thus it is hard to get perspective. She probably should have ended the memoir with her graduation from high school.

I never understood her parents relationship, which made it difficult for me as the reader to sympathize with either of her parents situations. Just why did they get together? What did they talk about? What were their hopes and desires for their marriage? And her father's journey from a Bedouin childhood in the desert to living in rural Washington state was just nuts. How on earth did he get from A to Z? The author was so vague about so many details. Maybe because she doesn't know them? He was in the Qatar army but then wasn't anymore??? He got a scholarship to study in the USA but never did and there was no follow through??? Where did he get his money? How did he get a job when he returned to Qatar? Why did he really return to Qatar? Why did he marry again? What is going on?! And her mother - there is one vague comment about her being about 10 years older than Sophia's dad. What was her story? Why get with this guy? Why her obsession with kidnapping and child molestation? Why get a degree in computer science and then take a job in a dentist's office? I don't believe Sophia's explanation that her mom wanted to make sure they got braces. Uh, if she took the job at Boeing then she would have had insurance and more money and the kids could still get braces. Just one of the many weird details that made no sense.

Her story of her first year in college in Cairo was weird too. Where was she getting her money? Just one throwaway sentence about a mysterious benefactor. Huh? And why didn't she apply to more colleges? Cairo sounds like an absolute pit of hell. Why go there? Her brief mentions about the rampant misogyny she encountered was nuts. But why just brief mentions? I mean, if I were dragged out of a car and groped by a group of men, I'd write more than one sentence about it. And her affair with the American Si? Again, I had no idea what was going on or why she was acting the way she did. And the final chapter about going and living with the goat herder in the countryside - wtf is that all about?

This memoir is interesting but ultimately brings up more questions than it answers.

[Caren · Rating 3 out of 5]

I stayed up way too late two nights in a row, reading this book obsessively. The author has had a very unusual life and provides an intimate look inside two very different cultures. Her Bedouin father met her American mother when he went to Tacoma, Washington to study. She was the result of their love affair and marriage. After the family moves to Qatar, however, things begin to fall apart as her father is away from home three weeks out of four, working on an oil rig. When he marries a second wife (his cousin) her mother leaves him, returning to the States, to the family farm, with the author and her younger sister in tow. After spending her elementary school years in the USA, Ms. Al-Maria hits her rebellious adolescent years. Unable to cope with her, her mother ships her off to Qatar, hoping she'll settle down in the more confined world of her Qatari family's home in Doha. This book provides insights not usually available to an American audience. Fascinating!