There are so many things to say about Sophia Al-Maria The Girl Who Fell To Earth. It is the first memoir I have read that felt like a novel. The way she tells her story lends this to be an easy read and quite the page turner. I particularly found the characterization of her parents and the use of pop cultural references to be intriguing.

Al-Maria starts off her memoir with her father’s childhood. This is very interesting to me because we meet her mother in adulthood and don’t get to see her as a child. This starts off the unevenness and favoritism I feel Al-Maria has for her father. The beginning chapters are beautifully written and I very much enjoy the pacing. It opened up avenues of thinking of what a memoir could be. Al-Maria seems really intent on people understanding where she comes from and she had to start out on where her father comes from to do that. I wondered how much of these early scenes are simply imagined and what she was told as a child or an adult. I really enjoyed how she presented the details of her father’s childhood and her parents first meeting as fact rather than speculation. Especially when she goes into what each of them where thinking at the time.

Al-Maria shifts from her parents story to hers when she is old enough to have her own memoirs, and I thought this was brilliant. I still felt that there was a favoritism between her relationships with her parents, and it showed up in the writing. The example I draw to express this comes when her father brings his second family to their home. She feels this need to protect her father from what other people think, “most people who hear the following part of the story think our father was being cruel. But in reality, he was just clueless,” (80).  That expiation of her father’s action and the interjection of the author on the narration shows her need to project her father. Later when she and her mother are having problems and her mother throws away all her things she doesn’t have that need to project her or show sympathy. This does two things for me. 1. It makes me wonder if this is a construct of patriarchal society she grew up in.2.It shows that the reactions to the events taking place are narrated as if the Al-Maria is experiencing them now. When she is less than five, of course she is willing to forgive her father. When she is a teenager, of course she is at odd with her mother. You tell me which one it is.

I want to comment on Al-Maria’s use of television in this work. It had such a heavy presence from the very beginning throughout the book. The mention of TV shows and movies served as a time line of events and a very subtle way of grounding the reader. From Mork and Mindy to friends, the reader can figure out where we are in time without her ever having to really say it. We are also instantly aware of what is happing socially at the time. It was a simple yet very effective device and I very much enjoyed it.

Al-Maria’s use of scenes really stood out to me in this book. She is excellent at capturing a moment and the reason this book moves so well is because she lets the scenes do the talking and doesn't reflect unless it is very necessary. Even then her reflections don’t hold me like her scenes do. For example when she is attacked on the bridge in Cario i was completely drawn in, but then she broke and kind of gave a summary of all the other things she had been through. It really disrupted the flow. Then she quickly went back into scene and I was hooked again. 

Best,

CF