When We Were Sisters

August 22, 2022
Asghar follows the poetry collection If They Come for Us with her elegant debut novel, which follows three Pakistani American sisters scrabbling to get by after their father dies. Nine-year-old Noreen, the oldest and de facto caretaker; Aisha, the quarrelsome middle child; and Kausar, the sensitive youngest, are taken in by an estranged relative, referred to only as “Uncle,” who promises them a home with a zoo. It soon becomes apparent that he has taken custody only to cash the checks that the government pays him to care for the sisters (the “zoo” turns out to be a hallway of mistreated pets), and he rules the sisters’ lives with authoritarian neglect, demanding they follow a strict schedule even while he leaves them unsupervised for long stretches of time. The sisters must learn to grapple with their grief while caring for each other and establishing their own identities. Asghar’s poetic sensibilities are on full display in the lyrical and oblique prose (“Brown fingers cradle porcelain, the news spreading fast and careless as a common cold”), and the frequent formal experimentation enlivens the text (for example, one page reads in its entirety: “A bunk bed in exchange for a father./ What idiots. He was our father. We should have asked for more”). The result is a creative telling of a tender coming-of-age tale.

September 1, 2022
When their father is brutally murdered in Pennsylvania, three Muslim American sisters are left with nothing but a new title: orphans. Taken in by a peculiar uncle with harsh rules, the young girls are confined to a tiny bedroom in an apartment filled with birds, turtles, and other animals. Under the watchful eye of the moon, they learn to depend on each other in an ever-changing landscape of caretakers, abuse, and grief. But as they enter their teen years, their diverging paths--alongside their uncle's growing control and society's harsh gender roles--begin to test the bonds of their sisterhood. Author Asghar brings that same lyricism from her poetry collection, If They Come for Us (2018), crafting vignettes with dark but tender prose that form a striking picture of the sisters' daily lives. With minimal dialogue, these brief windows are told through the first-person observations of the youngest, Kausar, with occasional interludes from their uncle or father. A debut in fiction perfect for poetry readers, this poignant coming-of-age tale examines a girlhood torn apart by loss.

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Starred review from August 15, 2022
Sisterhood is the power that gets three young Muslim American girls through a neglected childhood in this debut novel. Their mother died years ago; when their beloved father is murdered, young sisters Noreen, Aisha, and Kausar are orphaned. Their parents were immigrants from Pakistan, so they are "familyless in America" except for one uncle, their mother's brother, whom they don't know. Noreen, the oldest sister, is smart, pretty, and responsible; Aisha is assertive and angry. Kausar, the book's narrator, is the youngest. She's frightened and confused, but she worships her sisters fiercely. The girls are taken in by the man Kausar calls Uncle, the term always followed by a black bar, as if his name were redacted in an official document. He picks them up in Philadelphia and takes them to a city a "five-hour car ride" away. He promises them a new home with plenty of room and a zoo; what they get is a cramped apartment with a hallway full of caged birds and three bedrooms, to one of which all of them are confined. Uncle gives them strict rules of behavior and isolates them from everything but school. He's dealing with his own problems--he's separated from his American wife (who wants nothing to do with his nieces) and two sons, whom he maintains in suburban splendor. He lives in his own apartment near the girls, where his hoarding is out of control. So he often neglects his nieces, leaving them without food or money. He rents out the other bedrooms in their apartment to immigrants in transit, and sometimes the sisters get lucky, as with a kindly couple who parent them for a while. But much of the time they are on their own. Caught between American culture and their family's Pakistani background with little guidance, the girls turn to each other for support. But as they grow up and become teenagers, cracks develop in their bonds of love. Kausar's compelling voice, sometimes lyrical, sometimes heartbreaking, is skillfully crafted, changing subtly as she grows. The book's ending, a jump forward in time, seems tacked on and less convincing than what went before, but the sisters' story is a moving journey. An assured first novel explores the bonds and divides among three orphaned sisters.

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