Review of ‘Other words for home’

Hi readers

I’d like to talk about a beautiful book I recently read, it’s a collection of free verse poems, relating to us the journey of a 12 year-old Syrian girl that has to leave home due to violence, and how she has to adapt to a new life, new country, and new everything. I got to read it through my library service.

‘Other words for home‘ by Jasmine Warga: 4/5 stars

This was a great book. It tells us the story of Jude, a girl born in Syria, who grew up there when things were fine, and suddenly had to leave her country and her brother and father because things started getting dangerous. Her brother starts fighting for more justice and a free country, so the violence catches up with the family and it’s decided that June and her mom will go to live in America, with her uncle, while her brother and father stay behind.

So she tells her life story. How she used to have fun with her friend, and how they loved old American movies and dreamed of becoming movie stars, of her town by the sea, the tourists that came often and then stopped coming, of her house and her mom’s cooking habits, and then as violence starts erupting things take a turn for the worse, so Jude and her mother end up going to America to live with Jude’s uncle. We are told how she traveled, how the English she thought she was good at suddenly is not as good, how she feels strange, how she hates she can’t express her thoughts into words, but how her ESL classes help her see there’s others like her, how her cousin seems so American, how language can be so different in expressions and intentions. This middle part of the book we probably feel as confused as her while she struggles to fit in.

It takes her a while to adapt of course, to start getting braver, to dare do things without fear of feeling left out or alienated. She starts growing confident and realising that it’s ok to be who she is, to want what she wants, that her desires are as valid as anyone else’s. And that she doesn’t have to choose one or the other, that she can be a part of two countries and two cultures despite all the hatred around her. It’s a beautiful book on immigration, leaving home but learning to embrace new things a and discovering a new meaning for home along the way. Totally worth the reading, mostly for how we see her evolving.

Carol GF(c)
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