EVERYTHING SAD IS UNTRUE (A TRUE STORY) by Daniel Nayeri

 


Nayeri, D. (2020). EVERYTHING SAD IS UNTRUE (A TRUE STORY). Levine Querido.

 

He began life named Khosrou (after a Persian king), born in Iran to a prosperous family, his mother a doctor and his father a dentist. His mother Sima converted to Christianity, was caught helping the underground church in Iran, and was hunted by the “committee.”  She was forced to flee Iran with her two young children while her husband stayed behind.

The family fled first to Abu Dhabi, then a refugee camp in Italy before gaining asylum in the U.S. when an elderly couple in Oklahoma agreed to sponsor them. Unable to use her medical degree in the U.S., Sima worked at menial jobs and got married again to an abusive Iranian immigrant with his own terrible personal story. Along the way, she began calling her son Daniel since Americans found Khosrou impossible to pronounce.

Like Scheherazade, Daniel uses his storytelling in class as a way to survive, not the threat of death but the never-ending bullying at middle school, from physical abuse (spitballs shoved in his ear, paperclips shot at his neck) to racist slurs (being called a cockroach or a sand monkey) to subtler slights. His stories – actually an assignment from his teacher – are a platform for his classmates to see him in a different way. It is also how the reader learns about his history.

This book is a "memoir" told through a mix of fiction and nonfiction. It includes myths and legends as well as the author’s own experiences. Something interesting is that it's not divided into chapters. There are natural stopping places throughout the story. There is a lot of symbolism throughout the book. One big one is Daniel’s stuffed toy Sheep Sheep. I believe it is a symbol for his father.  He had to leave Sheep Sheep in the field on the night they fled Iran. He also left his father behind. When his father comes to Oklahoma 6 years later, he brings Sheep, Sheep back to Daniel.

 There are numerous themes within Daniel’s story, but it’s the exploration of what it means to be a refugee, an immigrant, and an outsider that seems central to everything. He states it on the first page: “If you listen, I’ll tell you a story. We can know and be known to each other, and then we’re not enemies anymore.”  Just about everything that follows explores that theme in one way or another, from scenes of violence and cruelty to several discussions about toilets: from perilous journeys to the familiar frustrations of middle school social dynamics. Through the story, you feel the pain of losing your home and family. You experience what it is like for refugees seeking asylum, just wanting a stable home in a safe place in the world.

There are cultural markers throughout the story. Daniel talks about Iranian food, their homes, and even how their toilet design is a bit different from ours. At school, he always brings food prepared by his mom. Nothing store-bought because his mom claims that all the preservatives “cause cancer.”  His classmates at school make fun of him and some are even violent and/or racist. My favorite part of the whole book is when Daniel talks about his mother converting and becoming a Christian. “I’ve told them about the house with the birds in the walls and all the villages my grandfather owned, all the gold, my mom’s own medical practice-all the amazing things she had that we don’t have anymore because she became a Christian.”  “How can you explain why you believe anything? So, I just say what my mom says when people ask her. She looks them in the eye with the begging hope that they’ll hear her, and she says, “Because it’s true.””

 

Michael L. Printz Award Winner

Christopher Award Winner

Middle East Book Award Winner

 

The New York Times: “For a novel chock-full of lessons, “Everything Sad” hardly feels didactic. Many of the book’s most moving moments are netted with humor, irreverence, all the lighthearted fun you’d expect from a 12-year-old boy. And Khosrou is self-aware. He acknowledges from the very first line that his tales are only as true as his (and history’s) memory. Myths and legends change over time. He’s achingly honest about that with his readers. Or is it his listeners? I can imagine young people begging to read these stories aloud to their friends, their parents.”

 

Kirkus: “ Not “beholden” to the linear conventions of Western storytelling, the story might come across as disjointed, but the various anecdotes are underscored by a painful coherence as they work to illuminate not only a larger story, but a life. And there is beauty amid the pain as well as laughter. The soul-sapping hopelessness of a refugee camp is treated with the same dramatic import as the struggle to eliminate on Western toilets. The language is evocative: simple yet precise, rife with the idiosyncratic and abjectly honest imagery characteristic of a child’s imagination.”

 

Other books about refugees:

THE UNWANTED by Don Brown ISBN 9781328810151

MY TWO BLANKETS by Irena Kobald ISBN 9780544432284

90 MILES TO HAVANA by Enrique Flores-Galbis ISBN 9781596431683


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