SuitabookBelonging and displacement
Liyana moves with her family from St Louis to Jerusalem, near her father’s Palestinian birthplace.
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Book details
Naomi Shihab Nye - Author
A family move becomes a lens for exploring belonging, cultural identity and relationships across a divided setting. Liyana’s viewpoint connects private family change with wider tensions involving Jews and Palestinians.
When fourteen-year-old Liyanne Abboud, her younger brother, and her parents move from St. Louis to a new home between Jerusalem and the Palestinian village where her father was born, they face many changes and must deal with the tensions between Jews and Palestinians. Fourteen-year-old Liyana Abboud loves to hear her father call her habibi--Arabic for "darling". But she's not prepared for her family's decision to move from St. Louis to Jerusalem. This provocative first novel from the acclaimed poet builds a bridge to the Arab world, introduces a family readers won't soon forget, and offers a hope for peace.
Book Brief
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Sign in for personalised guidanceA family move becomes a lens for exploring belonging, cultural identity and relationships across a divided setting. Liyana’s viewpoint connects private family change with wider tensions involving Jews and Palestinians.
Liyana moves with her family from St Louis to Jerusalem, near her father’s Palestinian birthplace.
The family lives between Jerusalem and the Palestinian village where Liyana’s father was born, amid tensions between Jews and Palestinians.
Liyana values her father calling her “habibi”, meaning “darling”, while the family undertakes a difficult move.
Pay attention to how the book presents Jewish and Palestinian identities, and whether its hope for peace is explored through complexity or mainly expressed as an ideal.
This is a grounded book brief while Suitabook strengthens the analysis: the current material supports only a cautious reading; another book-specific source is still needed.
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