I couldn't get through this title. It ended up not being for me, but I hope it finds a hope with other readers.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I’m judging the L.A. Times 2020 and 2021 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got me to read on even though it was among 296 other books I’m charged to read.

"They were empty of things to say to each other. And Saba wondered how the camp took one's language too as if it was flesh attached to bones."

A delicately textured story set in an East African refugee camp, where teenage Saba is struggling to adjust to life plans cut short or at least put indefinitely on hold, to the physical intimacy with strangers that the camp forces, and struggling to find ways to retain agency over her own life. Recommended.

I'm having a difficult time writing this review. On the one hand, Sulaiman Addonia's Silence Is My Mother Tongue is an essential piece of writing documenting life in a refugee camp. On the other hand, it's a hard read. Reading it flat out hurts: the violence, the misogyny, the endless series of sexual assaults. I am usually good with dark titles when I see their underlying purpose. And I see the undelying purpose of this novel, but couldn't get past the darkness—which is as much about my personal weaknesses as it is about the book itself.