Diaspora

Over the course of the novel, the author uses her experimental approach to structure and form in order to enact her explorations regarding diaspora. By dividing the first two sections of the novel between Noor’s and the Shobrakheit boy’s points of view, she is formally conveying the ways in which separation from one’s homeland might insight an internal sense of divide within the individual. Although Minnie argues in Part Three that “you can’t be swapping voices that frequently and jumping around temporally,” the author’s structural decisions are all in service of her thematic considerations (164, Naga’s italics). Indeed, by allowing the boy’s first person point of view as much space on the page as Noor’s first person point of view, the author is capturing and conveying Noor’s distinct experience of the diaspora. In the 1980s, Noor’s parents...