In Alligator and Other Stories, Dima
Alzayat fuses factual events, from the lynching of a Syrian American man in
1920s Florida to the abduction of Etan Patz in 1970s New York, and the imagined
lives in between.
اضافة اعلان
Threads of belonging and displacement can be found throughout
the short story collection, as too can the subsequent intergenerational issues
of trauma, identity, and loss: of country, family, and self. Alligator and
Other Stories ends with the start of a young woman’s period. Looking at
her blood she thinks, “This can be anyone’s … not just mine or my mother’s.” It
is this recognition, how blood both unites and separates, that is at the heart
of these nine stories. Alzayat has won several awards for her writing,
and Alligator and Other Stories was recently long listed for the
Dylan Thomas Prize.
If, after turning over the book to read a
blurb, a reader categorized Alligator and Other Stories as a
collection of “Syrian Immigrant experiences”, they might be missing the point.
While several pieces focus on troubling facets of migrant identity and racism,
Alzayat’s writing puts under a microscope the innate urge to belong to
something and some place. In stories that are as familiar as they are shocking,
a woman navigates sexual harassment while trying to achieve professional
success, a religious man reckons with his sexuality, a sister thoughtfully
prepares her brother’s body for burial, and a classroom hamster is accidentally
smashed underfoot.
Alzayat artfully zooms in (the thoughts of a woman jumping
from a window, concerned her suicide might disgust or inconvenience) and zooms
out (observations of chipped toenail polish amid domestic violence), trusting
the reader to pay attention, to read between carefully constructed lines
unobstructed by italics or translation.
Daughters of Manāt and Alligator are
perhaps the most stylistically complex stories in the collection, with
Daughters of Manāt comprising three separate narrative strains and Alligator
collaging historical records, news articles, and letters. Daughters of Manāt is
a poetic piece that moves back and forth in time, as well as through it,
ultimately becoming inconsequential as a woman falling to her death observes
the shape of the earth.
Alligator is historically grounded in the enduring
history of American racism. It is a story that connects the hostility and
violence experienced by Seminole Indians and enslaved Black people to the
brutal murder of The Romeys, a Syrian American couple living in Florida. In
organizing factual documents alongside a fictional account of the
intergenerational trauma experienced by the Romey children, Alzayat swiftly
takes readers through decades of polarization and injustice arriving, tenderly,
at an all too recognizable present day.
Dima Alzayat’s debut is deliberate and
urgent. For all its sprawling historical and political analysis, Alligator
and Other Stories is always intimate in its portrayal, as seen in a
woman’s reflection of her grandmother.
“She had been married at 15, had borne
seven children before she was 24. With her hands she had sorted a
lifetime of rice and lentils, had gutted fish and deboned chicken. She knew how
to upholster furniture and help grapevine spread and climb, how to cover
bruises and scars so no one could see them, how to measure the value of her
life and still rise.”
Dima Alzayat was born in Damascus, Syria,
grew up in San Jose, California, and now lives in Manchester. She was the
winner of the 2019 ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award, a 2018 Northern Writers’ Award,
the 2017 Bristol Short Story Prize, and the 2015 Bernice Slote Award. She was
runner-up in the 2018 Deborah Rogers Award and the 2018 Zoetrope: All-Story
Competition and was Highly Commended in the 2013 Bridport Prize.
She is a Ph.D.
student and associate lecturer at Lancaster University
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