The Wrong End of the Table: A Mostly Comic Memoir of a Muslim Arab American Woman Just Trying to Fit in Audiobook (Free)

An Immigrant Love-Hate Tale of What this means to become American

You understand that feeling to be at the incorrect end of the table? Like you’re at a celebration but all of the good stuff is happening out of earshot (#FOMO)? That’s life—especially for an immigrant.

What happens whenever a shy, awkward Arab lady having a strange name and an unfortunate propensity toward undesired facial hair is uprooted from her comfortable (albeit fascist-regimed) homeland of Iraq and thrust into the cold, alien town of Columbus, Ohio—using its about THE INCORRECT End from the Table: A Mostly Comic Memoir of a Muslim Arab American Girl Just Trying to squeeze in Egg McMuffins, Barbie dolls, and children taking part in doctor everywhere you turned?

This is Ayser Salman’s story. Initial comes Emigration, then Naturalization, and finally Assimilation—trying to fit in among her blonde-haired, blue-eyed counterparts, and generally feeling left out. On her trip to Americanhood, Ayser witnesses a blowjob at pre-kindergarten daycare, breaks one of her parents’ guidelines (“Thou shalt not really participate as an acting professional in the institution musical in which a man cast member rests his head in thy lap”), and other activities great Muslim Arab girls are not supposed to do. And, after the 9/11 attacks, she encounters the isolation of being a Muslim in her own country. It takes hours of therapy, fifty-five rounds of electrolysis, plus some ill-advised passionate dalliances for Ayser to develop into a contemporary Arab American girl who embraces her social differences.

Part memoir and component how-not-to guide, The Wrong End of the Table is all you wanted to find out about Arabs but were afraid to ask, with chapters such as for example “Tattoos and Additional National Security Dangers,” “You May’t Blame Everything on Your Period; Sometimes You’re Likely to Be a Crazy Bitch: and Various other Advice from Mom,” as well as an open notice to Trump. This is the story of every American outsider on a path to find themselves in a nation of beautiful variety.