Happy Love Day: Reading Events Near & Far

Available on Amazon & local bookstores like RiffRaff, Books on the Square, & Heartleaf Books! It has been a busy almost 6 months since my first book baby, All Water Has Perfect Memory has been released to the world! If you're local to Rhode Island, check out the next couple of reading events I have …

Pre-Order for All Water Has Perfect Memory! Available Now!

Are you ready to dive in to 4 generations of my family's (hidden) history? Fun fact: It took a global pandemic for me to finally get up the courage to heal generations of trauma through therapy & my creative writing practice. That & A LOT of public crying😬 it was absolutely worth it! Now im …

Eid Mubarak Cover Reveal! All Water Has Perfect Memory: A Memoir

The time has finally come to showoff my debut book's beautiful cover! Shout out to The Chicago Review of Books for featuring it ( the article is just the best!)... and of course huge shout out to my bestie Jewel for creating this masterpiece! My book will be available in September 2023 but pre-order link …

Rooted in Palestine: Oral History Project

This fall I had the opportunity to take part in an important oral history project called Rooted in Palestine, a project that seeks to educate the public on the experience and uniqueness of the Palestinian diaspora. Teta & Sido's wedding in Kuwait This opportunity came at the perfect time as I was about to publicly …

Gains and Losses

As an ESL teacher, I think a lot about the stages of language acquisition, my immigrant and refugee students and their families, and what we often lose along the way. I remember my mother remarking how relieved she felt when she was able to pull some strings at the education office and placed me in …

Exhale 2020

My childhood had a clear delineation between before and after: pre-trauma and post ( or continued smaller) traumas. I cant help it but sometimes it takes me by surprise tinged with wonder that my children's lives have not mirrored my experiences and that to me is evolution... These past four years with Trump triggered so …

Mercy: Bilingual Writing Prompt

I thought it was about time to shout out my fellow bilingual peeps out there. This creative writing prompt is for you: choose a word in your first language (or any language if you acquired more than one language around the same age) and look up the etymology (the history)… write your thoughts on the …

Headlines Be Clunky: Finding Words Amidst Chaos

This time last year, we took our first family trip out west. My husband, a community organizer, got the opportunity to attend a conference in Olympia, Washington, a place he called home for four years as a college student at the Evergreen State College. I had never been out west before and my eagerness to …

Long Distance Love Before WIFI: a true story

Ive kept a journal most my life. I remember my first journal was a gift from my aunt when I was in the second grade. It was one of those themed journals, in this case it was from The Secret Garden. It was fully illustrated and included short quotes from the book alongside broad blank …

The Kids Are Alright: Unplanned Summers & What That Has To Do With Racism

These days I feel triggered by these targeted ads and headlines showing up in my social media feeds about surviving the summer with the kids, and the difficulty of parenting this summer during the pandemic.   First of all, when is it not hard to constantly be the one doing all the childcare? It takes …