It won't always be like this A graphic memoir

In this graphic memoir by the author of I Was Their American Dream (2019), Malaka travels from the U.S. to Egypt every summer to be with her father and his new family, and as she grows up, she adapts to the different culture and family circumstances. When she's nine, she discovers her dad has remarried a woman named Hala, and she's to spend the summer with them at the hotel where her dad works. As Malaka grows up and returns to Egypt each summer, she feels cultural distance from her dad's family. As a teenager, she's especially resistant to fitting into her dad's family life in Egypt. When he moves to Qatar, the family changes even more, and Malaka bonds with her sisters. Over the many visits, Malaka learns to accept being a part of this blended family and embrace her two cultures. Her identity is constantly in flux, whether she's in Egypt, Qatar, or Los Angeles. She explores the boundaries of adolescence during her summers in Egypt as well as wanting to be older while simultaneously holding on to her youth. This sophomore offering cements Gharib as one of the great graphic memoirists, gifted with an engaging and relatable writing style and art adept at representing the swirling identity of a teenager.

Gharib's empathetic second graphic memoir, a follow-up to I Was Their American Dream, covers culture clashes, family clashes, and identity mash-ups, set in the late '90s to the early 2000s. In her tween years, Malaka--who normally lives with her Filipina mother in Los Angeles--spends summers in Egypt with her father and stepmother, Hala. She and Hala, who is initially "more like a big sister," enjoy each other's company, but Malaka misses her dad when he works long hours and feels like a third wheel once her stepsiblings are born. She doesn't speak much Arabic, which makes it hard to bond with the relatives in her extended family. As she finds her American identity in ska music, she resents Hala's growing religiosity and her father's notions of what a "young lady" should be. "Dad, I don't know if you noticed, but I'm into subculture," Malaka scolds. But as Malaka grows, so too does her grace toward her father and for Hala, who has more going on beneath her abaya than she lets on, as Gharib disrupts and complicates cultural stereotypes. Gharib's drawings are freehanded and energetic, with brightly detailed marketplaces, beach scenes, and cityscapes, peppered with excerpts from Gharib's actual adolescent diaries. This work will resonate with any comics memoir fan who felt like a fish out of water growing up, and promises teen crossover appeal. (Sept.)