Abeer Y. Hoque - Olive Witch: A Memoir

Abeer Y. Hoque is a Nigerian born Bangladeshi American writer and photographer. She has published a book of travel photographs and poems called The Long Way Home (Ogro Dhaka 2013), and a book of linked stories, photographs and poems called The Lovers and the Leavers (Bengal Lights Books 2014, HarperCollins Publishers India 2015). She is a Fulbright Scholar and has received several other fellowships and grants. Her writing and photography have been published in Guernica, Outlook Traveller, Wasafiri, ZYZZYVA, India Today, and The Daily Star. She has degrees from the University of Pennsylvanias Wharton School of Business and an MFA in writing from the University of San Francisco.

For more information, visit olivewitch.com

In the 1970s, Nigeria is flush with oil money, building new universities and hanging on to old colonial habits. Abeer Hoque is a Bangladeshi girl growing up in a small sunlit town, where the red clay earth, corporal punishment and running games are facts of life. At thirteen she moves with her family to suburban Pittsburgh and finds herself surrounded by clouded skies and high schoolers who speak in movie quotes and pop culture slang. Finding her place as a young woman in America proves more difficult than she can imagine. Disassociated from her parents, and laid low by academic pressure and spiralling depression, she is committed to a psychiatric ward in Philadelphia. When she moves to Bangladesh on her own, it proves to be yet another beginning for someone who is only just getting used to being an outsider wherever she is.

Arresting and beautifully written, with poems and weather conditions framing each chapter, Olive Witch is an intimate memoir about taking the long way home.

Not since Michael Ondaatje have I read a writer who so seamlessly marries poetry with prose in their writing with such a deft, bittersweet touch.
Zafar Sobhan,
editor, Dhaka Tribune

An intelligent, riveting, startlingly honest voice. The writing is elegant and remains exhilarating even when the events are dark.
Chika Unigwe,
author of On Black Sisters Street

Excerpt from Kaiser Haqs Two Monsoon Poems, Published in the Streets of Dhaka: Collected Poems, UPL Dhaka, 2007.

Excerpt from Cecily Parkss Beast-Lover Variations, Field Folly Snow: Poems (The VQR Poetry Series), University of Georgia Press, 2008.

Excerpt from Uche Ndukas Whereas.

Thank you to the editors of the publications in which these excerpts appeared previously, sometimes in different forms.

The bow echo vignettes were performed as a one-act play at APAture, Fall 2002, and were published as one piece under the title Wiser than Evening in Switchback, Fall 2004.

Tyger Tyger was published under the title Ironed Blue Sky in ZYZZYVA, Fall 2004 and anthologized in Literature, the Human Experience, 9th edition, R. Abcarian and M. Klotz, editors, St. Martins Press, August 2005. It was also a finalist and was published in the Aesthetica Creative Writing Annual 2012.

Dhaka at Dusk was published under the title The Satisfaction of Tears in the Aurora Review, Winter/Spring 2005, and reprinted in the Daily Star, 7 January 2006. The poem in Dhaka at Dusk was published in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, 24 July 2004.

An excerpt from On Growing was published under the title One Two Three in the Daily Star, 10 September 2005, and another excerpt won the Wasifiri New Writing Prize 2011 for Life Writing. A 600-word excerpt was selected as a highly commended winner in the 2009 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.

Chameleon Girl was published in the Daily Star, 12 November 2005.

An excerpt of Inside History was published under the title Father Tongue in the Daily Star, 25 February 2006.

Judo Lessons was published in Swink, December 2008.

Green Green Is the Ground was published in Terrain.org, The Migration Issue, May 2012.

An excerpt of Enter the Living World was published in 580 Split, Issue 14: A Gathering of Voices, June 2012.

Standing in the Sun was published in Bengal Lights, Spring 2013.

Beatrice was published in Your Impossible Voice, Issue 1, Fall 2013.

Hieroglyphics was published in Wasafiris Special Issue on Writing from Bangladesh (#84), November 2015.

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Olive Witch was my first completed manuscript. Its perhaps my favourite because the past is an impossible place to visit, and my childhood has felt particularly lost to everything but my memory. This book has gone through so many iterations and has been under so many guiding lights, it may be impossible to thank everyone who had a hand in its making. Many of the following are in the book and others were generous thoughtful readers.

To my mother, whose tenderness belies the advent ure. To my father, nomad professor, his own peregrinations showing me that the world is wide. Both my parents honour writing as a noble profession and that made it all the easier to begin. To my sister Simi, whose story this is because we grew up so close in age and adoration. To my brother Maher, third culture kid, who somehow fits in everywhere. To the Ullahs: Nana (pbuh), Nanu, Kismet Mama, Snigdha Khala, Shopna Khala, and Nasr Mama, who drove 1000 kilometres to Nsukka to be there when I was born, and who have been with me since. And to Nanu, my maternal grandmother, for my first taste of feminism of the highest order.

To U, my best friend in Nsukka, generous and brilliant girl, you are remembered. And to Matu, whose letters were my link to Nigeria after I left.

To Eshadee, honorary Hoque sister, for teaching me how to dance. To Kelly, for those afternoons on Fifth Avenue. To Todd, for sitting beside me in the Elizabeth Forward High School cafeteria day after day and eventually getting me to speak. To Arshad, for giving me my first camera seventeen years into our friendship (I still love that swivel lens). And to Miss Ditter, for not cutting me from the high school swim team.

To Glenn, my same brain first love, for all the things we learnt together over seven years. And to your parents, Ann and Roger, who have kept me close to this day. To Sheba, who I never have to explain anything to, except the obvious. To my favourite JimChae, for solace and always making me laugh. To Tom, for your pop song whimsy and wisecracks. To my Wharton advisors, Jerry and Steve, for believing in me, no matter how hard I made it look. To Goose, for the Epsom salts. To Dave Toc, my first and favourite boy watching companion. To Rahim, for not having cab fare after Woodys. To Bonny, for your fierce and funny friendship. To Chris and Teresa, who helped me stop counting match castles. To Natalie, for knowing when to leave, something I still havent learnt. To Arati, for looking after my pew. To Stokes, who knew to head west before any of us. To Cynthia, for that night at Fluid which changed everything. To Ritu and Val, for the full moon letters. To Irene, for the romantic consults. To Rebecca, who I always imagine in motion. To Marko, for knowing what its like to be thirteen and in America for the first time. To Bleem, British Kentuckian travelling fool, Im vicarious with you. To Amanda W, for singing blood and fire at the castle. And to Paul, for saying it would happen.

To Ram, for the epiphany that led me to writing and for your confidence in my career. To Arif, for the poems that bind our lives. To Hardik, for knowing how to break it down. And to Amudha, for the laughter.

To Aaron, who made my poetic dreams come true by admitting me to MFA school. To Dean, most vibrant adventurer and writer, for all the rides across the Bay. To Mary, who teaches me something good every time I see her. To Jules, dark-hearted owl lover. To Cheryl, for sharing Christmas with me. To Kim-Pye, for that welcome dash of colour our first day of writing school. To Adrienne, for your careful and compassionate readings. To Bee, of the gorgeous gypsy heart. And to Stephen, best advisor ever at the University of San Francisco, who ushered the first version of