Sing Me a Circle: Love, Loss, and a Home in Time

Najmi, a literature professor at California State University, Fresno, explores in this visceral and captivating essay collection her memories of growing up in Pakistan and England and eventually moving to the U.S. to study literature. Remarking on the cyclical nature of time (“All linearity is circularity in disguise”), she chronicles how, like her parents, she too left home and became an educator. She describes memoir writing as a sort of family inheritance; her grandmother and father both penned their family histories so future generations would know where they came from. Powerful stories abound: Najmi tells of a beloved cousin, the first girl in the family to win a scholarship to an American college, who died by suicide three months before leaving home; of a domestic worker, Abdul, who lived with her family and became family; and of her experience teaching American students as a Muslim professor after 9/11. Along the way, Najmi offers incisive reflections on motherhood, grief, and divorce: “The mind conspires to not see. It’s only now as my fingertip retraces the thread of time and fumbles its way back to the spool that I detect the silent, stealthy unraveling.” The result is a gut-wrenching and joyous meditation on the passage of time. (Oct.)