I think this is an honest depiction of what it feels like to be tethered to someone that provides yet repels that promises the world, but delivers something quite different. The book is written in paragraphs that make each word count. It opens with the local aunties sobbing over them, calling them orphans and debating what to do with the. Their mother died years before the events of the novel, and the catalyst for this story is that their father has been murdered recently. It is tough to read.Īsghar is a poet and while I've never read her poetry, I imagine it must be powerful. When We Were Sisters is largely told from the perspective of the youngest of three sisters, Kausar. When We Were Sisters tenderly examines the bonds and fractures of sisterhood, names the perils of being three Muslim American girls alone against the world, and ultimately illustrates how those who've lost everything might still make homes in one another. The youngest, Kausar, grapples with the incomprehensible loss of her parents as she also charts out her own understanding of gender Aisha, the middle sister, spars with her crybaby younger sibling as she desperately tries to hold on to her sense of family in an impossible situation and Noreen, the eldest, does her best in the role of. He uses intimidation and fear to keep the girls quiet about their situation. What the girls find when they arrive in America is an aparment building filled with bird cages and rabbits and noise and scat.įausur offers a window into the lives of themself and their sisters. Fatimah Asghar is a Pakistani, Kashmiri, Muslim American writer. The uncle, never named, lures the narrator, Kausur, to accept his offer to take them in with the promise of a zoo. The girls live in Pakistan at the time of their father's death. This is the story of three sisters that suffer the loss of both parents and are taken in by an uncle living in America.

When we were sisters asghar