Uprooted

by KHETAM DAHI

This book is a collection of short stories that capture the voices and often painful experiences of immigrants and their children. Although the narrator and her family go through tough times and face culture shock, hardships, and sometimes homesickness, they manage to overcome all obstacles and try to make a life for themselves. The eleven stories are separated with plenty of extra activities but are still connected, and the events are narrated in chronological order.

155 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 23, 2014

About the author

Khetam Dahi is a Syrian author living in the United States.

Reviews

[Schaza Askar · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you sat down with Khetam Dahi and asked her about her life till the summer of 1986, 'Uprooted' would be the story she would tell. It is conversational in tone. I found some parts to be fascinating, and other parts only mildly interesting - especially the one about the transit the family made in Paris while heading to the US. I was very interested in the parts where she described her passion towards fashion design and how she took that after her mother, how she faced the cultural differences when starting high school in the United States not knowing a single word in English, and how she felt and reacted recommencing every aspect of her life, such as; her first shower in a real bath, first meal on a dining table, first work experience, first bike, first car, first pool...etc. I was impressed by her honesty in narrating some little incidents which she would have easily blacked out and ignored. She didn't feel embarrassed sharing her daily routine of a simple short life she led in Syria's countryside during the 1970s. Conversely, she depicted a life full of adventures and a big morally rich family that owns a farm within which every individual works extremely hard from dawn till nightfall, and most importantly, the freedom they had back home compared to the new country which has may rules.
I know Khetam as a distant cousin, and even if we weren't relatives I feel a kinship with her, and now I sense that I have known her long ago. What a warm, intelligent, and humble lady she is!

This book is simple in language due to the fact that it is addressing the ESL readers, her students, as she is now an associate professor of English at East Los Angeles College.

Some chosen quotes:

''I did not like going to church much because I could not understand anything the priest used to say. He spoke in Syriac, a middle Aramaic language, which was used by Syriac Christians and was spoken between the eighth and the eighteenth century.''

''I was thinking that when we come to America, we would finally have time with my parents... My parents would not have to work in the fields all day. I was thinking that we would finally have clean clothes, take baths when we wanted instead of once a week, and have some toys and maybe our own beds, which we never had.''

''In June of 1986, I went back to Syria with Baba, and we had a great first month as I was having the time of my life with my old friends... We held parties every day and we stayed up late and reminisced about old times. I had missed being a free bird on a farm. We did not have many rules there. ''Why do we have so many rules in America?'' I wondered. Even though they call it the land of the free, I felt I had more freedom on our farm. I could not understand that. I often wondered if we really came ''from farm to freedom,'' as people used to say about us.''