Arabian jazz Book

I read this book for class and I had to do a presentation where I read the work and tie it up with the theme of displacement, hybridity, dispossession...etc. To be honest, I was not really expecting to like this book because, you know, it's a "university read"; I was forced into reading it. However, I enjoyed it immensely! It has some hilarious parts that I didn't take it seriously at times, yet I felt it got darker as I kept reading and it tackled morbid issues, such as abortion, femicide, rape, incest and many more. It was quite appalling to read about these issues in a book that I deemed light and sparse.

The character that interested me most was Jemorah. Unlike her sister, Melvina, she experiences too much pressure to identify herself. Anyone comes from a different cultural background wants to identify with that particular ethnic group. Thus producing an equally detrimental effect on the individual's sense of identity. Jemorah perpetually feels under pressure to conform to traditional Arab customs that she does not quite comprehend. Melvina, on the other hand, couldn't care less. She does not share her sister's discomfort and constantly defies all conventions.

By the end of the book, Jemorah tells her sister that she feels lost; she doesn't know where is her place in the world and her need to find her self intensifies:
"I'm tired of fighting it out here. I don't have much idea of what it is to be Arab, but that's what the family is always saying we are. I want to know what part of me is Arab. I haven't figured out what part is our mother, either. It's like she abandoned us, left us alone to work it all out."