I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. This was a fabulous, thought-provoking read. Ayser Salman is a Muslim-American who writes her perspective on being on the "wrong side of the table." I found it eye-opening as well as hilarious! My only warning about this read is that there is a fair amount of coarse language and swearing in this book!

This was a quick and funny read with lots of crazy stories complete with footnotes. Imagine telling all your funny and embarrassing stories from when you were in preschool through adulthood?! It takes a certain amount of courage to tell those stories and Ayser Salman doesn't shy away from sharing how left out she felt--how she always felt like she was at the wrong end of the table. She shares instances where she felt like she was at the wrong end of the table for being "too Muslim", "too American", "too shy", or "too outgoing". She struggled with what many of us did as teens--wanting to be recognized while also wanting to remain invisible. After feeling like she stuck out in a crowd most her life, Salman loved going to college: "I loved my new anonymity. No one cared who I was or looked twice in my direction--and it was bliss." I enjoyed reading about the situations she had that were similar to mine and ones that were unique to her. I especially loved how she used these stories as an opportunity to tell us we should all accept ourselves: "It's okay even if my Muslim behavior is different from the Muslim behavior you expect--all I know is it's real and authentically mine. And I hope that if any of you question your authenticity or legitimacy, you'll give yourselves a break, too.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book (although the footnotes were distracting - not the content, just the format, just saying).

Ayser is a lady who was born in Iraq, came to the US when she was a toddler, went to Saudi Arabia when she was a pre-teen and then came back to the US, where she has lived ever since. She is a modern Muslim woman who has tried to make sense of her world, even though there were times when she didn't feel like she fitted in.

As a fellow first generation person, there were a lot of things in this book which I could relate to. Pickled turnips versus pickled herring....yep!! Both foods are an acquired taste (never tried pickled turnips but the thought of pickled herring makes my mouth water), but if that is a part of your culture, that is that. I found myself saying "me too" quite a bit actually, even though I live in Australia and am not Muslim - but there is something about being the new kid on the block, over and over again, and being SO different to others around you. To missing the subtle social cues that others take for granted, and so on. Trying to straddle two very different worlds and not really fitting in with either one all that well, but eventually not caring so much.

This was a great read and if you are a child of immigrants, no matter where your parents are from, I think you will be able to relate. I really liked Ayser, and thought she was very brave documenting so much of her life. The overall feel is that she became very comfortable in her own skin and I really liked that. The phone calls with her parents were hilarious and so relatable! The parts of the book which were set in Saudi Arabia were a real eye-opener to me and made me happy not to have to live under such strict rules.

Highly recommended.

4.5 stars from me :)

Thank you to NetGalley and Skyhorse.

Charming snippets of the life of an Iraqi American woman, and her experiences growing up in different parts of America (Kansas, CA, etc). While humorously written, I found parts of the memoir to be highly repetitive. .

Ayser’s story is the perfect juxtaposition between the immigrant trying to fit into American society as well as the Muslim Arab raised in America that no longer fits into Arabic society. Essentially, Ayser is in limbo between two worlds that she doesn’t quite fit into. No matter where she sits, she’s on the wrong end of the table.

Ayser’s journey reflected the journey that many people go through. I can relate to spending a major portion of your life trying to assimilate and working so hard to show that even though you have brown skin, you’re just like everyone one else around you. Then moving from that narrative to one of accepting your reality and finding peace with who you are and creating a balance between your lifestyle, your culture and your ethnicity.

I wanted to love this book. I enjoy reading memoirs that provide a different perspective of life in America, being an immigrant in America, being a woman in the world. I was so intrigued by the premise of this book; we need to hear more from Muslim and Arab Americans!

But this book fell flat for me. The chapters were too short to ever broaden Salman's lived experiences to any cultural critique. I didn't find the jokes funny (although I think the brand of humor is on par for Baby Boomers and Gen Xers). There's some homophobia and Harvey Weinstein apologizing. The chapter on intersectionality is very surface level (and ultimately is what lead me to putting the book down for good). I think if you're just beginning to step your foot into the world of memoirs with social commentary, this is a great fit.

I appreciate having the opportunity to review this book, and I'm happy to share my honest review.

The core of this collection are stories from the author's life that center around identity, otherness, and whether it's better to fit in/assimilate or go your own way. I appreciated the humorous slant to the collection, but some of the humor fell flat and overall the overuse of footnotes distracted from the story, rather than adding to it. I would love to read more from this author!

This was an absolute delight to read, but also very educational. I had no expectations for this memoir, and Ayser Salman did not disappoint. I loved the format, the combination of short / long chapters kept the pace going steady, the footnotes were both helpful and hysterical, and before I knew it, I was at the end of the book and was not ready to be done.

Ayser was born in Iraq, and her parents moved the family to Columbus, Ohio when she was three, where they stayed for two years before settling in Lexington, Kentucky. Her father then got a job in Saudi Arabia, where they would live full time other than the summer months, obvi, at which time they would come back to Lexington. She never really felt like she fit in anywhere until her family went to Saudi Arabia, where she attended an all girls school and was finally able to be herself / make friends.

Ayser explains the struggles she had in growing up with strict parents, acclimating to life in America as a child, her fear in moving to Saudi Arabia (she researched what went on there to her parents' horror), and then her reluctance to come back to Kentucky once she finally felt at home with others like her. Ayser is refreshing, hilarious, and honest about her experiences and thoughts. She explains her culture in a way that others can understand it, but also explains American culture from an outsider’s perspective in the same honest way, which I appreciated. Being a kid / teenager in America is hard for anyone, but being a foreigner can be even harder, and Ayser’s perspective is one that everyone should understand and keep in mind.

Thank you to NetGalley and GetRedPR for the advanced copy to review. All opinions above are my own. Release date is tomorrow, 3/5/19, and trust me, you need to read this one!!

Linda’s Book Obsession Reviews “The Wrong End of the Table A Mostly Comic Memoir of a Muslim American Woman Just Trying to Fit In” by Ayser Salman, Skyhorse Publishing, March 5, 2019

Ayser Salman, Author of “The Wrong End of the Table, A Mostly Comic Memoir of a Muslim Arab Woman Just Trying to Fit In” has written an entertaining and witty Memoir. Ayser Salman writes about her traditional and immigrant parents who left an oppressed life for freedom in America. As a little girl, Ayser had a difficult time adjusting to the environment and the other children in Columbus, Ohio. She always felt like an outcast. Her parents were very strict, and found it difficult to understand the modern ways of American life.

Ayser Salman writes honestly and shares how her parent’s cultural and traditional values differed in many ways from the expectations that Ayser felt in America. Ayser also writes how the politics in America, made her carefully rethink choices that she had. She candidly writes her dating experiences, and friendships. I found Asyer Salman’s experiences intriguing. I would recommend this for readers who enjoy memoirs. I received an ARC from NetGalley for my honest review.

I received an advanced reader copy of The Wrong Side of the Table by Ayser Salman from the publisher Skyhorse Publishing through Netgalley

This book was hilarious and just what I needed in a memoir. It is short essays about her childhood and adulthood all centered around experiences about growing up Muslim in the United States. This is a book you can jam through in a day or hold onto for awhile savoring each essay and getting to feel like you were hanging out with Ayser, I did the later.

Ayser will tell you stories of just trying to fit in in Kentucky, to meeting her first best friend in Saudi Arabia, to her mishaps with dating and managing her families expectations while living her American lives. There are stories that are relatable to everybody from not realizing how to handle interpersonal relationships when at college to balancing dating. Stories that are deeply thoughtful like reflecting on religion in a time when your religion is being scapegoated.

Like any good friend you will laugh with Ayser, cry with her and learn from her. Pick this book up now.

2.5/5
I recieved this as an ARC and was really excited to read it but....it was not for me. The author tells us her life with humor but I can't say I found it funny and I love to laugh. The writhing is ok, the story is ok but it could have been so much more! There is no denying that it must have been hard for her and maybe if she had put more depth to her story this would have been awesome but alas it is not so.

My thanks to Skyhorse Publishing, and Netgalley.
Ayser Salman is a freak of nature! I expected all.sort of Immigrant angst from her. Nope. Not a peep. She did experience a few weird things that most of us didnt. Sorry Ayser, the smacking of butts in preschool must be an Ohio thing. Heck, it's probably in their college chant song, but since the rest of us aren't Midwesterners then we don't understand it! It is after all Ohio! My favorite thing about Ayser? She's human! Yep! Who'd a thunk it? She leaves Iraq at.3. Comes.to Ohio, U.S.A., where.some really odd things happen in school! Yet, she still hasn't given up on us yet! Kentucky. Saudi Arabia. She meets some of her favorite people ever in S.A. Sorry, Saudi Arabia..Not South Africa.Then she's here, home again. My favorite thing about Ayser is just how very girl next door she is. Ayser would have been my friend, although I'd have stopped her.from.wearing all.those stupid, preppy clothes! Oh, she wouldn't have thanked me though, because I'd have put her in suede cowboy boots, with some tight levis, and legwarmers, and cowboys chasing her all over the place! Sorry, but there was no point to any of it if those cowboys weren't knock, knock, knocking!
I'm all.seriousness though Ayser is funny. Her family is one of whom most would envy. Annoying? At times, sure. But love always rings true. Fuck Trump and his xenophobia. I'm Scottish. Trumps Scottish! 😠😡 I'll take people looking to better themselves, over people who thing no one is better than themselves!

I enjoyed reading of Ayser’s struggles to become an Arab Muslim in America. She approaches the subject with humor and candor.

When Ayser was only three years old her family moved from Baghdad, Iraq to Columbus, Ohio. So Ayser went along with them since as she said “legal emancipation from your parents isn’t an option in Iraq until the age of seventy-four, and even then only if you’re married.” At the age of three culture shock is not such a major event. Two years later they moved to Lexington, Kentucky where Ayser was frequently called “Ayser Eraser”. (Hey, a kid I knew was named “Horace Lanier” – Need I tell you what he was called?) Her family continued to move around for several years, with each locale providing further adaptation challenges.

Ayser writes of what it means to be an Arab and what it means to be an American. The transition from Iraqi Arab to American-Iraqi Arab often resulted in the feeling of being at the wrong end of the table. “You know that feeling of being at the wrong end of the table? Like you’re at a party but all the good stuff is happening out of earshot?” Always trying to fit in yet always feeling left out.

And if life wasn’t hard enough, along came 9/11. She now feels isolated in her own country, wondering why people can’t recognize the difference between a terrorist and a practicing believer of Islam.

The chapter titles should be enough to get you to take a look – “Land of the Free, Home of the McMuffin”, “Sibling Rivalry, or: How to Stop Your Sister from Getting the Western Name”, “Iraqis Take Forever to Say Goodbye”, and “You Can’t Blame Everything on Your Period; Sometimes You’re Going to Be a Crazy Bitch: and Other Advice from Mom”.

As an adult she asks herself what she would tell her younger self. I loved her comment that “I would also tell her not to discount her time spent at the wrong end of the table, because sometimes you have to spend time at the wrong end in order to appreciate being at the right end.’

Do be sure to read her footnotes as they provide much of the candor – and are quite funny.

Ayser Salman’s memoir The Wrong End of the Table is a story of awkward childhood-teen antics and trying to figure out who you are when you have so many different cultures pulling you in different directions. Salman arrives in the U.S. with her family after they leave fascist Iraq in the 1980s. Figuring out who you are is no easy task and figuring out who you are as a Muslim, an Arab, an American, a woman, and an immigrant just feels like a lot of extra stress if you ask me. Salman, however, never bemoans her fate and through every twist and turn she finds a way to love, live, and learn from her multifaceted upbringing.

Throughout Salman’s memoir you see the juxtaposition between her own experiences growing up as an immigrant child in the U.S. and her parents experiences who obviously came to America as adults. I don’t know which experience is harder, but suffice to say that immigration is just hard. My husband is Brazilian, I am Australian, and we live in Switzerland, so I can only attest to the struggles and frustrations you have when trying to figure out new lands, languages, and cultures. In some ways, I do wonder if immigrating as a kid has its positives as young children can adapt a bit easier to new things around them. As Salman points out, her parents still had a thick accent and probably struggled a lot more to align their Iraqi culture with American culture than she, as a child, did.

One of the themes throughout Salman’s memoir is her often hilarious struggles to find a balance between her different identities. She talks of a time before ‘intersectional’ feminism and what it was like to feel like you had to pick a side. She brings up white-passing, which is something that many Arabs can do, and the struggles of navigating life with other minorities.

The catalyst for her life and how she is perceived by the world is definitely the 11th of September 2001. This event changed the world and how we live and travel in it. Furthermore, as a Muslim Arab the rise of Islamophobia only seemed to exponentially increase after this date. Again, it is this navigating of inbetweenness that Salman struggles with throughout her life. Yet she does it with a lot of laughs and fun. Her relationship with her parents (see all of her footnotes) is just hilarious. The universality of her relationship with them reinforces that love and family transcend cultures. We are at the core, humans.

Salman’s memoir is an important addition to the cannon of Arab American literature in the way that it offers new insights into love, dating, and identity. Her writing is extremely honest and heartfelt and I would describe her style as Nora-Ephron-esque. In between the laughs there are some really hard truths about being a Muslim Arab American in the U.S. today and I think it is this balance of comedy and heartfelt truth that will win over any reader.

What books by Arab Americans have you read? Will you be picking up Salman’s memoir March 5th, 2019? As always, share the reading love.

NOTE: This novel was was accessed through Netgalley and Skyhorse Publishing for review purposes. Expected publication is 5th March 2019.

Though described as a "mostly comic memoir" it is also a very factual account of immigrant life and how someone will cope in modern America.

Considering the "Muslim" question post 9/11 Ayser had a tough time as it is to assimilate and be part of the crowd from the time she was a little girl. She was just different and she had a tough time beginning with her name. Her parents were highly educated, modern and forward thinking but they still carried with them different ideas re women and their behaviour and this carried out in their way of thinking towards their daughters. It did change by the end of the book, but it seemed hard and this seems to be quite the form and commonplace for most immigrant daughters Muslim or not!

Taking place across Iraq their place of origin which they got out in the nick of time, then crossing over to Kentucky and then back again to Saudi Arabia in which Ayser fit in surprisingly well and then back to the States where Ayser grew up and lived her adult life. Trying to find love, life and a balance between pleasing everyone else and then finally beginning to please herself.

This memoir, bit of travel guide and biography was tongue in cheek humor and factual as well.

Enjoyable read.

First up, thanks for allowing me to try out this book. I was very much excited to try it out, but after trying it for a few times, and being shocked by the first chapter which in the end I skipped (really, I don't need to read about little kids giving each other blow jobs or other crap), it just isn't working for me. The style of writing just doesn't work. It is supposed to be comical, but the best I am doing is giggle a bit at rare parts. I am now at almost 20% and I am just not having fun reading it.

Maybe it is the foot notes which are a nice addition but by the time the chapter is often over I have already forgotten what 1 or 5 in footnotes meant. Scrolling back, sure, but my Kindle isn't too amused if I do this more than once, plus it is really distracting to keep on having to scroll back to just find out about that footnote.

Sorry, but this book just isn't for me. :( I also wish I didn't have to rate it, but Netgalley wants a rating. So I am sorry for that as well.

The following review is my personal opinion and in thanks to Netgalley and Skyhorse Publishing for an advance readers’ ebook.

I laughed my way through this charming book of an Iraqi woman and her experience growing up in America as a child and into adulthood. I suppose I can relate being quite shy and insecure of myself growing up, but also knowing what it’s like living abroad. I had a good friend from a Turkish Muslim family and remember similar sentiments from them also. I won’t think of McDonald’s or money the same way.

The book also shows we have way more in common with immigrants than many realize and the book is being published at a very pertinent time in history.

I liked all the endnotes and especially learning the thoughts of her family. Kids are still jerks and my heart ached multiple times for Ayser Eraser. (Ok, could not resist adding that).

Only dislike is the use of swearing where it’s really not necessary.

Ayser Salman was born in Iraq, spent several years in the US, moved to Saudi Arabia with her family, and finally came back to the States. This memoir is a series of short stories knit together around the theme of feeling slightly out of place.

The chapters are very short; some were only a few pages long on the kindle. Salman also uses footnotes which I enjoy in a memoir. (I love a pithy aside.) But the format in an ebook was a little disjointed.

I very much enjoyed the chapters about her time in Saudi Arabia. I would probably read a whole book about that. (Ayser - if you’re listening!) I found her experience as a young, female child in a country that limits the rights of women very interesting.

Some of the other chapters left me wanting more. It almost felt like someone gave her a list of topics and said she dutifully marked them off. I wanted more but I felt like she barely brushed the surface. It’s hard to be satisfied with just a couple of pages sometimes.

I really enjoyed Ayser’s voice. Her perspective is rather unique in the memoir market. The only shortcoming is that I just wanted more!!!

I came to this book with few expectations beyond reading a few amusing anecdotes. I did get those, but this is actually a great mixture of humour, a heartfelt exploration of familial relationships, the description of a voyage of self discovery and a political commentary.

The vast majority of the book will make you laugh but there are touches of both sadness and anger; the open letter to Trump being a case in point.

I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this book and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The story of an Iraqi woman growing up in Kentucky. Lots of culture clashes and some political discussion. I love memoirs of women so this was perfect for me.