Book Review: When We Were Sisters by Fatimah Asghar
By Sherri Puzey
Longlisted for both the National Book Award for Fiction and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, When We Were Sisters explores the bonds between three Muslim American sisters who are left to raise one another after the deaths of their parents. Sent to live with an uncle they barely know, the girls rely on one another as they navigate their grief, American culture, and a life with little family or support. Through Kausar, the third daughter and narrator of the novel, we experience the acute grief of this young girl. She bargains: “I know I can be good. I won’t ask for more toys. I won’t be a crybaby anymore.” She gets angry and lashes out at her sister Aisha, who’s also struggling with her own anger. Kausar wrestles with her identity and understanding of gender over the course of the book, while her oldest sister, Noreen, takes on the mothering role of the trio. Despite their arguments and frustrations with one another—normal occurrences in any sibling relationship—the sisters are fiercely loyal to one another, loving and depending on each other over the years. In doing so, they fulfill their dying mother’s wish: “Keep them close. Make them love each other.”
Many tales of orphaned children spin off similarly: the orphan makes a fool of the wicked family member charged to care for the child, or the downtrodden youngster sets out on an epic adventure, discovering a hidden talent or treasure or great love. In this story, however, the girls experience no miraculous transformation. They go to school, make friends, manage their grief, learn to love one another, and grow up. Despite their orphaned status and the tragic events they’ve experienced, their lives continue on without great fanfare. Even the girls recognize their average status: “How terrible—to be an ordinary orphan. Not a superhero. Not a wizard in waiting. Not a prophet who goes to a cave. Just—ordinary. All that grief, wasted.”
Unique structural and formatting choices interspersed throughout the book break up the narrative with a poetic quality, which is no surprise given Fatimah Asghar’s first work is a poetry collection. One page in the novel includes a list of “reasons why people go,” and two different pages simply repeat the word “sister” close to a hundred times. The latter seems to emphasize the way the sisters are almost obsessed with the meaning of the word: “We’re not girls, we’re brothers or sisters or mothers, or somewhere in between.” And, “Is a sister still a sister when a mother dies?” At the very end of the novel, the story jumps forward in time, almost distractingly so, but the sisters come together to weather yet another loss. Kausar’s simple declaration, “I’m with you,” tells us all we need to know about the language of sisterhood in this lyrical coming-of-age debut.
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Sherri Puzey is a Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude graduate of Virginia Tech with a BA in international relations. She is a contributing editor at Zibby Mag and a senior marketing manager at Zibby Books. She currently lives in Seattle with her husband and daughters. Find her book reviews and recommendations on Instagram @whatsherrireads