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Son of Elsewhere: A Memoir in Pieces
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About This Book
An enlightening and deliciously witty collection of essays on Blackness, faith, pop culture, and the challenges--and rewards--of finding one's way in the world, from a BuzzFeed editor and podcast host. "A memoir that is immense in its desire to give . . . a rich offering of image, of music, of place."--Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black PerformanceONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022--The Millions At twelve years old, Elamin Abdelmahmoud emigrates with his family from his native Sudan to Kingston, Ontario, arguably one of the most homogenous cities in North America. At the airport, he's handed his Blackness like a passport, and realizes that he needs to learn what this identity means in a new country. Like all teens, Abdelmahmoud spent his adolescence trying to figure out who he was, but he had to do it while learning to balance a new racial identity and all the false assumptions that came with it. Abdelmahmoud learned to fit in, and eventually became "every liberal white dad's favorite person in the room." But after many years spent trying on different personalities, he now must face the parts of himself he's kept suppressed all this time. He asks, "What happens when those identities stage a jailbreak?" In his debut collection of essays, Abdelmahmoud gives full voice to each and every one of these conflicting selves. Whether reflecting on how The O.C. taught him about falling in love, why watching wrestling allowed him to reinvent himself, or what it was like being a Muslim teen in the aftermath of 9/11, Abdelmahmoud explores how our experiences and our environments help us in the continuing task of defining who we truly are. With the perfect balance of relatable humor and intellectual ferocity, Son of Elsewhere confronts what we know about ourselves, and most important, what we're still learning.
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Reviews
"As a long-time fan of his thoughtful and charismatic voice, to see Abdelmahmoud go long, ostensibly making himself the focus of his lavish eye, is a joy...And yet, along with the ups come the doleful insights that are inseparable from a truly vulnerable memoir of this nature...To borrow a phrase from Twitter – on which Abdelmahmoud is a warm and reasonable presence – he is as open about his Ls as he is his Ws...'Elsewhere is not a land, but a sharp edge you inhabit,' he writes...Along that sharp edge, Abdelmahmoud hones his humour, his heart, his abiding love for the country he left behind, as well as the troubled nation in which he came of age...There is an art to being two people at once: seeing oneself through the eyes of the dominant social forces while also seeing through that fiction...Son of Elsewhere is about Elamin being born, over and over again, to awareness...It is where elsewhere has consistently delivered him, whether he wanted it or not."
"BuzzFeed culture writer Abdelmahmoud debuts with an enthralling meditation on the joys and challenges of coming-of-age as an immigrant...In a series of essays run through with his charming wit, Abdelmahmoud articulates his life between worlds as something akin to 'the hot, frothing outcome of two tectonic plates constantly crashing into each other'...Gradually, Abdelmahmoud begins to fashion a makeshift identity all his own, finding his 'softest, most vulnerable self' in music and 'building a language of touch and laughter' with his partner, Emily...Hilarious and somber, introspective and rollicking, this search for self is breathtakingly original."
"Too tight a tether can make you feel stifled, while the absence of one can leave you unmoored."
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