Description: "These exquisite personal essays trace the orbit of author Samina Najmi as she reflects on events, people, and places that shape her vision of the world."--Provided by publisher.
Brief description: Samina Najmi teaches multiethnic US literatures at California State University, Fresno. Besides her scholarship on race, gender, and war in US literatures, she has published creative nonfiction essays in over thirty literary magazines, including World Literature Today. Daughter of multigenerational displacements, Samina grew up in Pakistan and England, spent eighteen years in Massachusetts, and, since 2006, calls Fresno, California, home. Here she has watched with wonder her two children, her many students, and her citrus grow. Samina believes in Fresno's sunsets; in everyone's three feet of influence, and in the power of language and literature to extend our reach beyond.
Review Quotes:
"This book is a balm for our time, a reminder of the importance of storytelling in times of suffering, and a remarkable achievement."
-Janice Lee, author of Imagine a Death
"A compelling addition to South Asia's post-Partition literature, what is phenomenal about this book is the revelation of a recurring passion through the generations: education, especially among the family's women."
-Shadab Zeest Hashmi, author of Comb
"Sing Me a Circle walks us through the shadow valleys of empire, sieving for ethical life in the ruins."
-lawrence-minh bùi davis, co-founder of The Asian American Literary Review
"In a kaleidoscope of colors, smells, voices, experience, Najmi has written a loving ode to her grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, a love letter reaching across time and space, and we are so lucky to share in that dream."
-Angela Morales, author of The Girls in My Town
"Sing Me a Circle is filled with wit, keenly observed moments, riveting stories, and priceless wisdom."
-Theo Pauline Nestor, author of Writing Is My Drink
"Patient, thoughtful, but also nimble and surprising, Najmi's writing is epic in scope but attuned to finer details of a life of a multi-national intellectual who moves between cultures and communities in Pakistan, England, and the United States."
-Steven Church, author of I'm Just Getting to the Disturbing Part: on Work, Fear, and Fatherhood and five other books of nonfiction; founding editor of The Normal School