It won’t always be like this: graphic memoir

My Thoughts:

Put this memoir on another beach, on an island in the middle of the Pacific, and this is my story and the awkward relationship between my own father and the step mom that I eventually grew to respect and share my hopes and plans with as a young adult. As both of us are parents and now grandparents, I think my relationship with my step mother is closer than my relationship with my father in some ways. For NPR editor Malaka Gharib, her awkward relationship with her father and his new wife is a surprise when she visits Egypt for her 9th summer and finds that he has remarried. When her father and mother got divorced, Malaka was used to spending summers in Egypt with just her dad, but over the next decade, Malaka just hated how much she did not fit in with their new growing family. She struggles with her identity, with her relationship with her family, and especially with her relationship with her step mother, Hala. 

Malaka, her father and Hala do an interview with NPR  that explains how although in her journal she started counting down until she could leave for California, in hindsight she realizes how much has changed and that "It wonʻt always be like this."

From the Publisher:

An intimate graphic memoir about an American girl growing up with her Egyptian father's new family, forging unexpected bonds and navigating adolescence in an unfamiliar country—from the award-winning author of I Was Their American Dream.
 
“What a joy it is to read Malaka Gharib’s It Won’t Always Be Like This, to have your heart expertly broken and put back together within the space of a few panels, to have your wonder in the world restored by her electric mind.”—Mira Jacob, author of Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations
 
It’s hard enough to figure out boys, beauty, and being cool when you’re young, but even harder when you’re in a country where you don’t understand the language, culture, or social norms.
 
Nine-year-old Malaka Gharib arrives in Egypt for her annual summer vacation abroad and assumes it'll be just like every other vacation she's spent at her dad's place in Cairo. But her father shares news that changes everything: He has remarried. Over the next fifteen years, as she visits her father's growing family summer after summer, Malaka must reevaluate her place in his life. All that on top of maintaining her coolness!

Malaka doesn't feel like she fits in when she visits her dad--she sticks out in Egypt and doesn't look anything like her fair-haired half siblings. But she adapts. She learns that Nirvana isn't as cool as Nancy Ajram, that there's nothing better than a Fanta and a melon-mint hookah, and that her new stepmother, Hala, isn't so different from Malaka herself.
 
It Won’t Always Be Like This is a touching time capsule of Gharib’s childhood memories—each summer a fleeting moment in time—and a powerful reflection on identity, relationships, values, family, and what happens when it all collides.

Publisher information:

Author: Malaka Gharib

Publisher: Ten Speed Press

Publication date: September 20, 2022