I Was Their American Dream

Malaka Gharib's graphic memoir I Was Their American Dream tells the story of her experience as a first-generation American of Filipino and Egyptian descent. Gharib's red-white-and-blue graphic palette serves as the perfect frame for her journey as she navigates questions of belonging, loyalty, and identity with heartwarming humor and critical wit. -Kenyon Review A heartwarming tribute to immigrant families and their descendants trying to live the American dream. -Kirkus Reviews Malaka Gharib tells the origin story of a person, somebody with hopes and fears and dreams. . . . Malaka looks to the future, to the expansive family that she has built and inherited, across continents and cultures. This memoir is as much a tribute to them as is her own coming of age story. -Jeff Daughterty, BookTrib With a sincere approach, this graphic memoir will bring to mind Persepolis, but it is absolutely on its own quirky wavelength. -Henry Chamberlain, Comics Grinder I Was Their American Dream is a pure and utter delight. With both a deft lightness and a deep poignancy, Malaka Gharib perfectly captures the feeling of growing up-of being a child of immigrants, of being a woman of color, of being thrown in the mix between cultures, of love, of family-with nostalgia, humor, and heart. Her words and illustrations are wittily observed and emotional in equal measure, able to draw a laugh and a tear over the span of a single page. I Was Their American Dream is a portrait of growing up in America, and a portrait of family, that pulls off the feat of being both intimately specific and deeply universal at the same time. I adored this book. -Jonny Sun, author and illustrator of everyone's a aliebn when ur a aliebn too and New York Times best-selling illustrator of Gmorning, Gnight! by Lin-Manuel Miranda