Muddy People: A Muslim Coming of Age

In this sparkling debut, El Sayed delivers a heartfelt tribute to her family via the story of her experience living as an immigrant in Australia. When the political turmoil of 9/11 forced the author’s Muslim family to relocate from Alexandria, Egypt, to the suburbs of Brisbane in 2001, six-year-old El Sayed was met with a trove of cultural novelties—among them, the “square bread” that perfectly fit into toasters, and “playing God” via The Sims. But, as she reveals, there was also the strain of navigating a society at odds with her Islamic identity, one that was marked by casual racist cruelties from white classmates and her parents’ struggle to find work in their professional fields (“In Egypt, Baba was an engineer and an architect. In Australia, he was nothing”). While much of the book contends with El Sayed’s constant search for belonging, she resists giving in to the grave stories “about Islamophobia [and] the name-calling, the ostracising, the bullying.” What’s on offer instead is a vivid mosaic of the people who buoyed her through adulthood, from her endearing yet imperfect parents, “both good people,” she writes, “[who] were just not good together,” to her hilarious, spitfire Nana. Readers will be eager to see what El Sayed does next. (June)