Samina Najmi

Poignant, whip smart, Samina Najmi’s memoir penetrates historical fact with a scholar’s precision, and considers the myriad, often jagged angles of circumstance with such heart that disparate family stories yield an unbroken line of meaning, a circle that sings itself into being. This circle, an echo perhaps—of the author’s grandmother, Amma, the ardent, essential chronicler of a family scattered due to multiple migrations—returns to her in her American toddler son’s doodles. In those “perfect circles” he draws on the walls of his grandfather’s home in Karachi, Najmi sees the shape of her own vantage point as the middle generation, a binding agent in the richly varied continuum between a past and future punctuated by migrations. A compelling addition to South Asia’s post-Partition literature, what is phenomenal about this book is the revelation of a recurring passion through the generations: education, especially among the family’s women. This story of uprootedness is ultimately a story of regenerating roots through learning and teaching, an achingly beautiful story of the “circle of light” that is cast far beyond its origins.