Though Warga initially published YA fiction, Other Words for Home is her first middle-grade novel, inspired by her first job out of college as a sixth grade science teacher, the growing refugee crisis in Syria, and her own experience as the child of immigrants. Jasmine Warga is the first generation daughter of immigrants from Jordan and has published three books, Other Words for Home, My Heart and Other Black Holes, and Here We are Now. Upon opening the book, I was greeted by poetry and I knew that no matter what story this book told, it would feel like home. Eventually, I landed on Jasmine Warga’s Other Words for Home, which featured a beautiful cover with a young woman in hijab. I spent an hour or so walking through the library, picking up anything that looked interesting, even flipping through Harry Potter again, just for old time’s sake. So, in an exhausted haze, I walked past the “moving, new stories of hardship” that line the shelves of the adult fiction section of my library and wandered through the familiar warmth of children’s books.

Plus, while traveling around town to my different and multitudinous obligations, my car radio played snippets of the ongoing impeachment hearings, a sure-fire way to confirm that the world is not only ending, but has already ended. My November this year was full of 13, 14, 15 hour days. I always found that “kid’s books” told me more interesting stories about adventure and overcoming obstacles, things that I felt like I was actually experiencing, especially when my family started to actively fall to pieces during my high school years.Īs an adult, I still find myself drawn to the middle-grade section of bookstores and libraries, particularly when life seems complicated and hopeless. I was known as the girl who didn’t date anyone and I would tell everyone who would listen that I was leaving for college-and I mean LEAVING-so there was no point in getting attached anyways.īut, for those times when I just couldn’t stand to pick up a difficult, classic novel, I would skip the YA section and go all the way back to middle-grade fiction. The back-and-forth tension building always struck me as too much work, particularly when I was trying to Hermione my way through high school and nail down college scholarships.

Whenever I did pick up a YA novel, I would often only make it as far as the first love triangle before turning the book back in to the library. The closest I ever got to romance was reading Jane Eyre when I was 16, a novel I would later reject due to the problematic, abusive relationship between Jane and Rochester. Whenever my friends in high school were reading Sarah Dessen novels, I was reading Dickens. For whatever reason, I seem to have missed the boat on romance stories.

Other words for home novel