“Of all the mothers-in-law she could have had, why did she have to end up with one who was intent on pressuring her to walk the same path she had vowed her whole life to escape?”

This passage encapsulates Yara’s frustrations with her mother-in-law, Nadia. Nadia fails to see that Yara wants to set aside certain limitations of their shared culture without completely abandoning her identity. There is a certain irony, however, in Yara’s reference to “all the mothers-in-law she could have had” because members of Nadia’s generation are more likely than not to share Nadia’s views.

“I wanted to say that often, when influential artists are discussed, it’s always the usual suspects: Van Gogh, Monet, and so on. While we’ll study some familiar paintings this semester, I’m also going to show you paintings by artists of color, artists I suspect you’ve never heard of, but who’ve made an indelible mark on the world.”

Yara opens her class with a statement about inclusivity in her teaching, even though she was reprimanded in the past for failing to teach the canon. As an Arab American woman, Yara both experiences and witnesses countless small acts of racist prejudice, and exposing students to the beauty of diversity is one way that she seeks to counter them.

“It was Teta who shared the stories of Palestine with Yara. The flaming olive fields outside the home they were forced to leave behind, the harsh winters in the refugee camp, the glistening golden dome of the Aqsa mosque they could no longer visit freely or at all.”

This passage grounds the novel within the history of the Palestinian diaspora in the US. Yara’s family, like so many, were displaced by various waves of Israeli occupation and violence in Palestine and were forced to leave their homes and their country.