Son of Elsewhere: A Memoir in Pieces

BuzzFeed culture writer Abdelmahmoud debuts with an enthralling meditation on the joys and challenges of coming-of-age as an immigrant. When his family emigrated from Khartoum, Sudan, to Kingston, Ontario, in the late ’90s, 12-year-old Abdelmahmoud was met with a rude awakening. As he writes in the title essay, “The friendly customs agent stamped my passport and said, ‘Welcome to Canada’... [but] left out the ‘also, you’re Black now, figure it out’ part.” In a series of essays run through with his charming wit, Abdelmahmoud articulates his life between worlds as something akin to “the hot, frothing outcome of two tectonic plates constantly crashing into each other.” He reflects on navigating his Blackness in a glaringly white city, being Muslim in a post 9/11 world, and generational conflicts with his parents, brought to a head by his dating in college. Gradually, Abdelmahmoud begins to fashion a makeshift identity all his own, finding his “softest, most vulnerable self” in music (the essay titled “The O.C.” finds its pathos in the eponymous show’s soundtrack) and “building a language of touch and laughter” with his partner, Emily. Readers will be rapt by Abdelmahmoud’s striking ability to forge a voice that’s both raw and tenacious. Hilarious and somber, introspective and rollicking, this search for self is breathtakingly original. (May)