When We Were Sisters

Last updated
When We Were Sisters
Author Fatimah Asghar
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Publisher One World

When We Were Sisters is a 2022 novel by American writer Fatimah Asghar. The novel follows the lives of three orphaned sisters sent to live with their uncle after their father's death.

Contents

Writing and publication

Asghar wrote the novel during a "period of extreme rejection". [1] Before the novel, Asghar had not written fiction, and described writing the book as "one of the hardest artistic endeavors I've ever done". [1] Krista Franklin encouraged Asghar to "write the book however it was coming" as she worked. [2]

Asghar was inspired by the novel We the Animals . [3]

Reception and accolades

Critical reception

According to the literary review aggregator Book Marks, the novel received mostly "Rave" and "Positive" reviews. [4]

In a positive review published by Chicago Review of Books , Mary Retta praised Asghar's writing as "lyric, gentle, and fierce". [5] Retta compared the book's content to Asghar's web series Brown Girls , writing that like it, "the novel is committed to an honest portrayal of the lives of queer women of color". [5] Writing for Booklist , Allison Cho also praised Asghar's prose, saying that the novel contains "that same lyricism from her poetry collection". [6] In a review for the New York Times , Nicole Flattery praised Asghar's writing as "distinctive", but wrote that it "serves to mask commonplace observations" and was occasionally unclear. [3]

Accolades

Asghar was nominated for the 2023 Young Lions Fiction Award for the novel, which was ultimately won by Zain Khalid's Brother Alive. [7] The book won the inaugural Carol Shields Prize for Fiction in 2023. [8]

Related Research Articles

Carol Ann Shields, was an American-born Canadian novelist and short story writer. She is best known for her 1993 novel The Stone Diaries, which won the U.S. Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as well as the Governor General's Award in Canada.

Amanda Craig is a British novelist, critic and journalist. She was a recipient of the Catherine Pakenham Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joyce Carol Oates</span> American author (born 1938)

Joyce Carol Oates is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and non-fiction. Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and Blonde (2000), and her short story collections The Wheel of Love (1970) and Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (2014) were each finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel them (1969), two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize (2019).

Susan Swan is a Canadian author, journalist, and professor. Susan Swan writes classic Canadian novels. Her fiction has been published in 20 countries and translated into 10 languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lan Samantha Chang</span> American fiction writer

Lan Samantha Chang is an American writer of novels and short stories. She is the author of The Family Chao and Hunger. For her fiction, which explores Chinese American experiences, she is a recipient of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Berlin Prize, the PEN/Open Book Award and the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Shields</span> American author and film director

David Shields is an American author who has published twenty-four books, including Reality Hunger, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead, Black Planet, and Other People: Takes & Mistakes. The Very Last Interview was published by New York Review Books in 2022.

Andrea Barrett is an American novelist and short story writer. Her collection Ship Fever won the 1996 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction, and she received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2001. Her book Servants of the Map was a finalist for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Archangel and Natural History were finalists for the Story Prize.

<i>Activities of Daily Living</i> 2022 novel by Lisa Hsiao Chen

Activities of Daily Living is a 2022 novel by Lisa Hsiao Chen. Publishers Weekly included it in their list of the top ten books of 2022, regardless of genre.

Carol Louise Edgarian is an American writer, editor, and publisher. A New York Times-bestselling author, her novels include Rise the Euphrates, Three Stages of Amazement, and Vera. She is co-founder and editor of the non-profit Narrative Magazine, a digital publisher of fiction, poetry, non-fiction, and art, and as founder of Narrative for Schools, whose programs provide free learning and teaching resources for students and educators.

<i>We the Animals</i> Book by Justin Torres

We the Animals (2011) is the debut novel by the American author Justin Torres. It is a bildungsroman about three wild brothers of white and Puerto Rican parentage who live a rough and tumble childhood in rural upstate New York during the 1980s. The youngest brother, who is the protagonist, eventually breaks away from the rest of the family.

<i>The Hate U Give</i> 2017 young adult novel by Angie Thomas

The Hate U Give is a 2017 young adult novel by Angie Thomas. It is Thomas's debut novel, expanded from a short story she wrote in college in reaction to the police shooting of Oscar Grant. The book is narrated by Starr Carter, a 16-year-old African-American girl from a poor neighborhood who attends an elite private school in a predominantly white, affluent part of the city. Starr becomes entangled in a national news story after she witnesses a white police officer shoot and kill her childhood friend, Khalil. She speaks up about the shooting in increasingly public ways, and social tensions culminate in a riot after a grand jury decides not to indict the police officer for the shooting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fatimah Asghar</span> American poet

Fatimah Asghar is a South Asian American poet and screenwriter. Co-creator and writer for the Emmy-nominated webseries Brown Girls, their work has appeared in Poetry, Gulf Coast, BuzzFeed Reader, The Margins, The Offing, Academy of American Poets, and other publications.

<i>There There</i> (novel) 2018 novel by Tommy Orange

There There is the debut novel by Cheyenne and Arapaho author Tommy Orange. Published in 2018, the book follows a large cast of Native Americans living in the Oakland, California area and contains several essays on Native American history and identity. The characters struggle with a wide array of challenges, ranging from depression and alcoholism, to unemployment, fetal alcohol syndrome, and the challenges of living with an "ambiguously nonwhite" ethnic identity in the United States. All of the characters unite at a community powwow and its attempted robbery.

The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction is a North American literary award, created in 2020 to honour literature by women. The annual prize will award US$150,000 to the winning work and US$12,500 to each of the shortlisted finalists, making it one of the world's richest literary awards.

Sequoia Nagamatsu is an American novelist, short story writer, and professor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tsering Yangzom Lama</span> Tibetan novelist

Tsering Yangzom Lama is a Tibetan writer based in Vancouver, British Columbia, whose debut novel We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies was published in 2022.

<i>The Animals in That Country</i> (novel) 2020 novel by Laura Jean McKay

The Animals in That Country is a 2020 novel by Laura Jean McKay, published by Scribe. The novel won the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (2020), Arthur C. Clarke Award (2021), Victorian Prize for Literature (2021), and Victorian Premier's Prize for Fiction (2021).

Shaun David Hutchinson is an American author of young adult texts. His novels often "combine speculative elements with LGBT characters and themes."

<i>The Ogress and the Orphans</i> 2022 childrens book by Kelly Barnhill

The Ogress and the Orphans is a children's book written by Kelly Barnhill and published on March 8, 2022, by Algonquin Books. It counts the events of a small fictional town, where the library is burned down and an orphan goes missing, which leads to its citizen blaming an ogress who had just moved in.

Vera is the third novel by writer, editor, and publisher Carol Edgarian.

References

  1. 1 2 Bansinath, Bindu (18 October 2022). "Fatimah Asghar Redefines the Orphan Narrative". The Cut. Retrieved 20 April 2023.
  2. Sabir, Sultan (13 October 2022). "The PEN Ten: An Interview with Fatimah Asghar". PEN America. Retrieved 22 April 2023.
  3. 1 2 Flattery, Nicole (10 November 2022). "Which Is More Terrifying: Nature or Other People?". The New York Times. Retrieved 22 April 2023.
  4. "When We Were Sisters". Book Marks. Literary Hub. Retrieved 20 April 2023.
  5. 1 2 Retta, Mary (24 October 2022). "Sisterhood Beyond Womanhood in "When We Were Sisters"". Chicago Review of Books. Retrieved 21 April 2023.
  6. Cho, Allison. "When We Were Sisters, by Fatimah Asghar". Booklist. Retrieved 21 April 2023.
  7. Manley, Janet (19 April 2023). "Here are the finalists for the 2023 Young Lions Fiction Award". Literary Hub. Retrieved 20 April 2023.
  8. "Winner of the 2023 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction". carolshieldsprizeforfiction.com.