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bluejorts's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
A series of short stories surrounding a cast of characters that mostly hail from Morocco whose lives intersect, sometimes intimately, sometimes only tangentially. Maybe even spiritually.
It's a quick read but the stories reach so deep into the hearts of who they're telling you about, the pages feel like they fill more space than the words physically take.
All center, in some way, around Moroccan woman who have resorted, resigned, resented, and reveled in being sex workers; the thread weaved between all of them as women, as prostitutes, as Muslim, as sisters sharing the same spirit across the world.
The book deals heavily, but carefully (like a carving knife through a chunk of meat) with colonialism and how it creates chasms in a place, a people, for different forms of exploitation to run rampant. Including the desire to escape this by, in turn, exploiting others, becoming others you admire, those with power.
The juxtaposition between enslavement through sexism, racism, transphobia, classism (all combined under religious bigotry) and freedom through ambition and alignment and Islamic spirituality (beneath the umbrella of western exploitation). How confusing it is to hate and love at the same time because the only other option is death, so beauty has to be found somewhere.
Whether you want money, love, a new life in a new place, or something to bring you back home...all the desire and grief from it lies here in these pages.
It's a quick read but the stories reach so deep into the hearts of who they're telling you about, the pages feel like they fill more space than the words physically take.
All center, in some way, around Moroccan woman who have resorted, resigned, resented, and reveled in being sex workers; the thread weaved between all of them as women, as prostitutes, as Muslim, as sisters sharing the same spirit across the world.
The book deals heavily, but carefully (like a carving knife through a chunk of meat) with colonialism and how it creates chasms in a place, a people, for different forms of exploitation to run rampant. Including the desire to escape this by, in turn, exploiting others, becoming others you admire, those with power.
The juxtaposition between enslavement through sexism, racism, transphobia, classism (all combined under religious bigotry) and freedom through ambition and alignment and Islamic spirituality (beneath the umbrella of western exploitation). How confusing it is to hate and love at the same time because the only other option is death, so beauty has to be found somewhere.
Whether you want money, love, a new life in a new place, or something to bring you back home...all the desire and grief from it lies here in these pages.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
Moderate: Racism, Medical content, and Colonisation
Minor: Hate crime, Misogyny, Rape, Sexism, Transphobia, Violence, Xenophobia, Islamophobia, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Murder, War, and Classism