It Won't Always Be Like This

It Won't Always Be Like This is Malaka Gharib's second graphic memoir. The book follows last year's I Was Their American Dream. The storyline covers the author's relationship with her stepmother, which is mentioned in American Dream. 

The publisher's summary:

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.

I enjoyed this coming of age story. It is a realistic portrayal of a child who grows up with divorced parents who are from different cultures. Malaka's mother is Filipino while her father is Egyptian. Her parents met while in the U. S. but when they divorced, Malaka's father moved back to Egypt. Malaka dresses like an American youth, which shocks her father's Egyptian neighbors. The Islamic faith is a big part of the story as Malaka's father and her new stepmother are Muslim. The story solely takes place in Egypt over several summers which Malaka always spent with her father. As she got older, Malaka's dress became an issue. She was expected by both her father and the Egyptians to dress modestly as she she came of age. On one occasion Malaka was groped by a group of boys because they thought she would be easy, given her dress style.

Gharib is a natural storyteller. It seemed like she was speaking to me face to face about her summers in Egypt. She knew what angles of her story would keep me reading and exactly how to write it out. Because the storyline actually happened to her, the writing flowed naturally.

A fantastic read!  5 out of 5 stars.