Oh my gosh, this book is so good. Full of emotion, the story of Nima and seeing the possibilities of what if things happened differently is so amazing. Nima is the daughter of an immigrant whose father died before she was born, but often she wishes and dreams she is Yasmeen, the daughter her mother may have had if her father hadn’t died. In her wishes she invited a jinn or spirit, and together they travel to photograph and witness history that lead to Nima being the daughter born.

This book is so lovely and wonderful and emotional. I love the exploration of choices and history and how we are shaped by the past but we have to be careful about being wholly defined by it. This was a quick read, but absolutely worth every tear it made me shed.

This book was received as an ARC from Random House Children's - Make Me a World in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own.

I have been reading a lot of poetry especially ones inspired by Black Lives Matter and in celebration of Black History Month and all of them have been very insightful, eye opening and just plain fantastic and I am so glad Home Is Not a Country is one of them. All of the poems you can easily interpret and feel the imagery coming to life and feel the pain of Nima. This book should be required in the High School Curriculum especially for the History and English classes especially in the highly populated areas to be aware and to appreciate the power of words.

We will consider adding this title to our YA collection at our library. That is why we give this book 5 stars.

Thanks to NetGalley, I got to read this early. I loved everything about it. The poetry is simply stunning--some of the imagery and turns of phrase will stop you dead. And the story itself is about the daughter of an immigrant in the US who feels lost--not fully at home here, but not familiar with the life her mother left behind either. The magical connection she discovers to the girl she might have been helps her come to understand all the love she didn't realize was right in front of her. Highly recommend!

Great selection of poems!

Notable lines:

“while I am a solid / b minus in every class / & barely scraping /
a passing grade in any social interaction /
muttering & burdened by the shadow of an accent”

“my mother is so often sad / so often tired & wants mostly
to sit quietly in front of the television . . .”

“ . . . i’m sorry you got this storm cloud
for a daughter instead of the flowers
you deserved . . . ”

4 stars.

I am a huge fan of novels in verse or poetry. I feel like they connect with all readers so well and they sweep you into another world. Home Is Not a Country is the feeling of wasting away searching for a home you will never truly belong in, until you make it your own. Too brown for america, and too white to connect fully with a home she's never been to.

This book even jumps fully into magical realism and the choices around that. Nima essentially goes back in to her parents time to fight for her existence. To me this twist nearly came out of nowhere and it really stuck me. I simply had to finish the rest of the book in one sitting. Lovely ending full of self and familiar love and blending of identities.

Find me on: <a href="http://www.instagram.com/yourlocalbookreader">instagram</a>

The ARC of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Home is Not a Country was uplifiting and Safia Elhillo is a stunning poet. This collection of poetry tells a great story through vivid language.

The first part tells the story of Mima, her immigrant mother, and their experience in their community. It touches on racism, xenophobia, poverty, bullying, and many other real topics. The second and third parts are full of magical realism that insight hope and strength.

I cannot recommend Home is Not a Country highly enough!

#HomeisNotaCountry #netgalley
What an amazing book. "Home is not a Country" by Safia Elhillo is marketed as a YA book but it is a book for all ages. It may be seen as not just a coming of age story but a story of finding one's true self which can happen at any age. How many times have we not wished to be someone else or felt we were living in the wrong body . In reality, we all could have been different people if a different choice had been made somewhere along our family tree or during our life. So many possibilities. The knowing that we could just as easily have been someone else in different circumstances with a different set of joys and sorrows might just be the basis of our empathy for others.What would it feel like to be those shoes instead of our current ones. It is written entirely in verse which is luminous and so befitting the magic of the story. The magic of finding our true self but also the magic of leaving a life and country behind to emigrate to a new life with all of its ups and downs.This is truly a story of immigrants too. People with the same needs and wants as everyone else. Individuals who are often shunned or denied those dreams because of different cultural practices , beliefs or accents. We are reminded to see each as a special and unique person worth knowing. I believe that everyone will gain empathy from its reading along with just pure enjoyment.It was so easy to fall in to the rhythm of the story and get lost in the tale. It has the potential to make either one person think or to make an entire class of book club stop , think and discuss. I highly recommend it to everyone. What a joy to read.

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I didn't realize that the book was verse when I downloaded an advanced copy that was being recommended from librarian friends of mine, so it was a pleasant surprise- in the hands of capable authors, the verse choice is magical (like Every Body Looking). And this is one of those books.

Nima is in the United States, living a mundane existence with her overworked mom and being friends with a boy who is from the same culture and whose moms are friends because then she doesn't have to try too hard to be friends with anyone else. She's getting by and that's about it. And things begin to change when several instances of prejudice take shape including one that lands her friend in the hospital. But it takes on a magical shape-- the girl, Yasmeen, that she could have been had her dad not died and her mom chose the other name. What would that path look like? And the two girls interact and she sees some of these options take shape. (Having come off of The Midnight Library, I was feeling all the vibes while it also hearkens lovingly to Pashmina and Anya's Ghost).

The story is unique and dark in my favorite kind of way while also practically discussing the realitites of her life with the niggling feeling of "what if things were different?" Elhillo's writing is on point in getting readers close to Nima and feeling each choice and thought.

This was a new author for me, and I’m glad that I found her. I read this book from cover to cover in a little under two hours. This is the story of a young girl named Nima who is trying to find her place, and who she is. Because she is of Arab decent, she is often bullied. She doesn’t feel like she fits in with her mother and the country she came from. She doesn’t feel like she fits in to her new country. She can deal with all of this as long as she has her best friend Haitham. But words have power and cost her the best friend she has.
This is a wonderful book. It shows the depth of pain not only the main character goes through, but the pain of her mother and friends. When you don’t fit into your parent’s culture and you don’t fit into the culture of your own country things can be rough. The author didn’t sugar coat this subject. It is a raw and honest look of what people of Arab decent went through right after 9/11. The prejudice, hate and how when it comes down to bullying adults will often be just as bad. I loved watching how she struggled to find her identity only to realize deep down she already knew who she was. This book comes out in March but it is one I will recommend to teachers and students alike.

4 stars

This is a satisfying and aesthetically pleasing verse novel centered on Nima, who spends much of her time looking at dichotomous relationships: one country and home versus another, one identity versus another, one version of her parents versus another, and so on.

While I enjoyed the novel very much overall, I did find the Nima/Yasmeen thread a bit drawn out toward the end. This is a thematically pleasing element, but I wanted to see more plot development and less expansion in that specific case.

The cultural elements, character building, and one-to-one relationships are all highlights here. Recommended -

This was a beautifully written, and powerful story about finding your identity. I would definitely recommend giving it a read!

How to describe this book? We follow Nima who is striving to find home. She wants to know more about her dead father and where her family comes from. Her journey is told in free verse and contains plenty of magical realism and some fantasy.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with a free copy of this book to review.

This book in verse is heartbreaking, beautiful, and affirming. In the beginning, I wasn’t quite sure where it was leading. But about a quarter of the way in, I was engrossed and finished in one sitting. I loved the (genre-bending?) twist in the middle. This is a novel in verse that I will recommend to my students. It also is a great book to provide better representation to a underrepresented group.

This book made me cry, but ultimately it's incredibly uplifting, for all of the horrors it details. I would say it's split roughly in half: the first half is (mostly) realist story of Nima, her immigrant mother, and her fraught relationship with her community. The second half goes full-on magical realism--or even fantasy for a bit--and it's phenomenal. Many things that seems hopeless and despair-inducing in the first half (racism, xenophobia, poverty, hate crimes, police and state terror, bullying, the threat of sexual assault) are modified through the second half, and those terrible things that persist are still tempered with hope and resilience. This might be a slight spoiler, but I did feel like the first half was so much misery that I was tempted to stop reading, and I'm so glad I didn't.

Nima straddles two worlds: the Muslim country she and her mom immigrated from, and the post-9/11 world they are trying to call home.

The free verse first-person narration of this novel is masterful. Readers are fully immersed in Nima’s sense of otherness, and in the prejudice and derision she and her mother receive from Americans who see all Muslims as terrorists.

The transition from the mundane but poignant day-to-day events to a space of magical realism in which Nima literally confront her family’s past is a bit abrupt, but it ultimately works.

Thanks to NetGalley and Make Me A World for advance readers copy.

Nima reveals her story in verse, a story of longing, regrets, jealousy, and fear. She has always wanted to know more about her past and struggles to understand why her mother brought them to America instead of staying in their home country. Nima loves the old photographs of her absent father and tapes filled with Arabic songs, and she longs to be different. Her name was almost Yasmeen, and she wishes that she was more graceful, beautiful, and popular. When Nima's life begins to unravel and she hurts those closest to her, she will have to take a supernatural journey to learn what life is really all about.

This heartbreaking novel in verse is a poignant commentary on family, identity, relationships, and belonging. The lyrical descriptions and unique verse enhanced the story and painted a picture of the prejudices and judgmental attitudes people have towards one another. I was personally impacted by a couple of the lessons that Nima learned about gratefulness and self acceptance. Though some of the plot was not realistic at all, I believe it was instrumental in getting the point across to Nima and the reader. This short, important read is great for teens and adults alike and I highly recommend it.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. A positive review was not required, and all opinions expressed are entirely my own.