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A review by hopewilkins
Alligator and other stories by Dima Alzayat
4.0
I classically love reading short stories and this book was no different! The author, Dima Alzayat, seems super dynamic as her style changes with each story. I preferred some over others, with Alligator, Summer of the Shark, and Once We Were Syrians as my favorites. Alligator was particularly different from the others as Dima used mixed media to showcase different historical accounts of American injustices and violence over time.
This will likely be a reread for me in the future, for fun and also because there is so much to absorb within these stories that I'm sure I missed some things the first time around. Interested to read more from Dima Alzayat in the future!
Quotes of interest:
"After five, ten, fifteen years on your head, they become invisible when they reach the carpet beneath your feet. What else do you shed unaware?"
"I remember wishing that something big would happen, like a tornado or an earthquake, just so it would be bigger than what was happening then."
"... she looked out of the window and imagined someone like her, or actually her on a previous day ..."
"She yearned to reach into the memory of that room and pluck from it the young woman, to show her there were many ways to live a life, that many had not been taught to her, that she had been set down upon a path designed to ensnare her while keeping her reaching for an apex, a triumph of some kind, which would never come, and that this was by plan, not chance."
"Yes, I bear it, this burden, sometimes high above my head like the burlap sack of a traveler and at other times low in my lungs like a tumor, but it was born as east as I was."
"Hanging on to land that didn't hang on to you."
"... she repeats over and over, and something about how she says it, the way each word climbs over the one before, reaching for a peak, sounds like a sinister guarantee of a void on the other side."
"That is what I called her. I no longer had my name but I was Syrian and I was better. Do you understand? I did not draw the line but all my life I followed it."
"A lot of research has been done on what refugees can cost a country and how much they can also benefit a country. In my opinion, this research is strange because when a person is born, we don't add up what they cost or how much money they'll make later in life."
This will likely be a reread for me in the future, for fun and also because there is so much to absorb within these stories that I'm sure I missed some things the first time around. Interested to read more from Dima Alzayat in the future!
Quotes of interest:
"After five, ten, fifteen years on your head, they become invisible when they reach the carpet beneath your feet. What else do you shed unaware?"
"I remember wishing that something big would happen, like a tornado or an earthquake, just so it would be bigger than what was happening then."
"... she looked out of the window and imagined someone like her, or actually her on a previous day ..."
"She yearned to reach into the memory of that room and pluck from it the young woman, to show her there were many ways to live a life, that many had not been taught to her, that she had been set down upon a path designed to ensnare her while keeping her reaching for an apex, a triumph of some kind, which would never come, and that this was by plan, not chance."
"Yes, I bear it, this burden, sometimes high above my head like the burlap sack of a traveler and at other times low in my lungs like a tumor, but it was born as east as I was."
"Hanging on to land that didn't hang on to you."
"... she repeats over and over, and something about how she says it, the way each word climbs over the one before, reaching for a peak, sounds like a sinister guarantee of a void on the other side."
"That is what I called her. I no longer had my name but I was Syrian and I was better. Do you understand? I did not draw the line but all my life I followed it."
"A lot of research has been done on what refugees can cost a country and how much they can also benefit a country. In my opinion, this research is strange because when a person is born, we don't add up what they cost or how much money they'll make later in life."