Elamin Abdelmahmoud - Son of Elsewhere: A Memoir in Pieces

Son of Elsewhere is a memoir that is immense in its desire to give, and not just of its writers life and history. But it is also a rich offering of image, of music, of place. I am thankful for the touchable nature of this story, the movements within the book, and how visual this journey is.

Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance

It is astounding how accurately and honestly Elamin Abdelmahmoud manages to map the strange territory between cultures that so many migrants call home. The interlinked essays in this collection, which filter the immigrant experience through everything from country music to professional-wrestling fan fiction, manage to pull off a rare trickat once sincere, ironic, hilarious, and profound. Son of Elsewhere is the sort of book that can only come from a writer both incisive and open-hearted. Abdelmahmoud, to our great fortune, is both.

Omar El Akkad, Scotiabank Giller Prizewinning author of What Strange Paradise and American War

Son of Elsewhere is a profound, tender collection of stories that speaks to those who exist in and out of liminal spaces. Its a narrative that forces readers to interrogate Blackness beyond American borders, American exceptionalism at the expense of Black and Brown people, and identity between separate languages. Elamin Abdelmahmoud is a skillful cartographer of place, architecture, and human emotion, blending them together so effortlessly that one will walk away from this debut seeing the symphonyand collisionin the mundane and the extraordinary. With this book, Abdelmahmoud announces that he is here, and we should be so thankful for that.

Morgan Jerkins, New York Times bestselling author of This Will Be My Undoing,Wandering in Strange Lands, and Caul Baby

Son of Elsewhere is marvelous and wise and fascinating. An introspective rumination on identity, belonging, and otherness that is breezily told but deeply felt. Like a conversation with one of your smartest friends, Elamin Abdelmahmouds book offers a unique perspective that feels both familiar and challenging. Its a privilege to read.

R. Eric Thomas, national bestselling author of Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America

Elamin Abdelmahmouds Son of Elsewhere achieves what all nonfiction work should: a unique type of universality. His writing feels like a magic trickevery page is charming, funny, and yet painfula collection that presses on your most tender feelings, like a bruise yet to heal. Son of Elsewhere is a salve.

Scaachi Koul, author of One Day Well All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter

Elamin Abdelmahmoud is full of light and wisdom; his book is no different. With humor and vulnerability, he writes about the struggle to find himself in Canada while maintaining a connection to his roots in Sudan. I laughed out loud even as my heart ached for him, and I dog-eared dozens of pages where his sentences were so perfect that I will return to them again and again. Son of Elsewhere is witty and tender and the story of a lovely writer discovering himself, a person I am so glad to call a friend.

Rosemary Barton, host of CBCs Rosemary Barton Live

Readers will be rapt by Abdelmahmouds striking ability to forge a voice thats both raw and tenacious. Hilarious and somber, introspective and rollicking, this search for self is breathtakingly original.

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

I am a student of migration stories. I am pulled toward accounts of lives rearranged by the journey from one place to another. If you tell me you are an immigrant or a child of immigrants, we are going to spend some time together because I will want to hear of the ways youve had to stretch yourself to find your footing.

Your story might include yearning for a home you havent seen in some time (if ever); it might also feature the hard work of adjusting to new expectations. But neither the yearning nor the adjusting are the point. Instead, I am interested in the constant calculus of how much of yourself to allot to each homeland, and how you navigate the anguish that comes with giving one of them less. This is Elsewhere.

Elsewhere is the sharp contrast between the here and the there. Elsewhere is when you are compelled to note the differences in weather and temperament and attitude and air between a once-home and a now-home, just because you walked past burning incense that reminded you of another world.

Elsewhere is not a vast land, but rather a sharp edge you inhabit. Its identity as a volcano: Elsewhere is the hot, frothing outcome of two tectonic plates constantly crashing into each other. There is violence in thistwo lands trying to outdo one another. But in the fissure there is also order: yes, there are earthquakes and tremors, but frequently there is a brief truce. Fragile compromise. When neither is raging for attention, you might find yourself teetering but steady, perhaps even recognizing the patterns of your sway.

Perhaps you pitch a tent in the dislocation. Perhaps you begin to recognize, then eventually categorize, what triggers feelings of insufficiency. Perhaps you take Hindi classes at night, or have a tattoo of a word you cant say in a language you dont speak. Elsewhere is an orientation, an emotional frequency, a chaotic compass that waits until you take a step in one direction, then immediately points in the direction behind you.