Shop your next book

All Water Has Perfect Memory by Nada Samih-Rotondo

๐Ÿ”— Order Now: Bookshop | Barnes and Noble | Thriftbooks

Synopsis:

Life changed forever for six-year-old Nada following Iraqโ€™s invasion of her birth country, Kuwait, and subsequent immigration to the United States with her maternal family. Just as she finally settles into her strange new life apart from her father in Rhode Island, learns English, and grasps the fact that she is not merely visiting but is here to stay, life throws other surprises her way to forever change her world.

A debut work from a Palestinian American author, All Water Has a Perfect Memory is a memoir that takes readers from the authorโ€™s ancestral origins- the coast of Yaffa, Palestine, to her birthplace of Kuwait, eventually landing on the shores of Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island. The narrative confronts generations of silence and, ultimately, revelation with an imaginative blend of folklore and history that explores the relationship between our bodies, ancestors, and the Earth. The work explores the way the author is intertwined with her maternal line while reuniting with her father after a 30-year separation.

Voices once hidden in the waters of our bodies are amplified and released to forever alter the landscape, breaking cycles and seeding an audacious hope interconnected to lands past and present.

Learn more about the author, Nada Samih-Rotondo.

Acquired by Jaded Ibis Press’ Acquisition Editor, Lisa Pegram.ย 

Critical Acclaim

Shortlisted for the Saroyan Prize.

Praise

“Nada Samih-Rotondoโ€™s memoir is a dazzling, necessary act of storytelling. Through generations of memory, myth, science, history, and her own coming-of-age, this lyrical work is an act of immense love and resistance. We become witnesses, not only to Palestineโ€™s complex, violent occupation and the cruel displacement of millions, but we learn the profound beauty of the land, the scents, water, and the everyday moments, imprinted forever on foremothers. Even in their struggle to be free of forces beyond their control, they can never forget all theyโ€™ve survived, and after reading this book, neither will we.”
โ€”ย  Tanaรฏs, author of In Sensorium: Notes for My People

“All Water has Perfect Memoryย is a coming-of-age memoir that takes the reader on a fast-paced journey from 1940s Palestine to 1980s Kuwait to present-day Rhode Island. In this engaging read, Samih-Rotondo tackles themes of generational trauma, perpetual displacement, and the struggleย of identity with grace, sensitivity, and thoughtful insight.”
โ€”ย  Layla AlAmmar, author of Silence is a Sense

“Deeply honest and intimate, Nada Samih-Rotundo’s memoir, ‘All Water Has Perfect Memory,’ is an enthralling and beautifully-crafted read, at turns poignant, humorous, and heartbreakingly resilient; Samih-Rotundo’s voice fuels a prose woven from memories and histories from all corners of her life, gorgeously capturing how her experience ‘lives on the borderlands of myth and dream’ from the desert of Kuwait to the shores of Rhode Island, and from the American suburbs to the American classroomโ€”Samih-Rotondo’s journey toward self-knowledge and deep connection is a marvel.”
โ€”ย  Tina Cane, Poet Laureate of Rhode Island and author of Year of the Murder Hornet

“In her stunning debut memoir, Nada Samih-Rotondo defiantlyย recounts her journey from Kuwait to America, her fraught coming-of-age in a household continuallyย on the brink of collapse, and her fight for self-possession in a society so eager to deny it. Samihโ€™s spare yet evocative words gift us with the power of her tenacity and resilience and demands that we, too, must do our part in the fight against injustice.”
โ€”ย  Ly Ky Tran, author of House of Sticks