Life changed forever for six-year-old Nada following Iraq’s invasion of her birth country, Kuwait, and subsequent immigration to the United States with her maternal family. Just as she finally settles into her strange new life apart from her father in Rhode Island, learns English, and grasps the fact that she is not merely visiting, but is here to stay, life throws other surprises her way to forever change her world. A debut work from a Palestinian American author, All Water Has a Perfect Memory is a memoir that takes readers from the author’s ancestral origins—the coast of Yaffa, Palestine—to her birthplace of Kuwait, eventually landing on the shores of Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island. The narrative confronts generations of silence and, ultimately, revelation with an imaginative blend of folklore and history that explores the relationship between our bodies, ancestors, and the Earth. The work explores the way the author is intertwined with her maternal line while reuniting with her father after a 30-year separation. Voices once hidden in the waters of our bodies are amplified and released to forever alter the landscape, breaking cycles and seeding an audacious hope interconnected to lands past and present.
Nada Samih-Rotondo is a multi-genre Palestinian American writer, educator, and mother. A graduate of Rhode Island College, she earned degrees in English and education and an MFA in creative writing from Lesley University. When she is not befriending trees or attuning to hidden stories, she is leading transformational educational experiences and addressing the social-emotional needs of historically underserved and multilingual youth. Her writing has appeared in The Masters Review, Gulf Stream Magazine, and SQUAT Birth Journal. She lives in Providence with her husband and three children and works at Brown University’s Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice as the Public Education and Community Engagement Coordinator. All Water Has a Perfect Memory is her first book.
