WHEN WE WERE SISTERS

An orphan grapples with gender, siblinghood, family, and coming-of-age as a Muslim in America in this lyrical debut novel from the acclaimed author of If They Come For Us.

In this heartrending fiction debut, Fatimah Asghar traces the intense bond of three orphaned siblings who, after their parents die, are left to raise one another. The youngest, Kausar, grapples with the incomprehensible loss of her parents as she also charts out her own understanding of gender; Aisha, the middle sister, spars with her "crybaby" younger sibling as she desperately tries to hold on to her sense of family in what feels is a truly impossible situation; and Noreen, the eldest, does her best in the role of sister-mother while also trying to create a life for herself, on her own terms.

As Kausar grows up, she must contend with the collision of her private and public worlds, and choose whether to remain in the life of love, sorrow, and codependency she's known or carve out a new path for herself.

WHEN WE WERE SISTERS tenderly examines the bonds and fractures of sisterhood, explores perils of being three Muslim American girls alone against the world, and ultimately illustrates how those who've lost everything might still be able to be homes within each other.

The novel's inspiration is taken from the author's own experience of being orphaned, along with her two sisters, before the age of five. Themes include constant loss, the coming and going of people throughout her life, and her experience of navigating issues such as gender, sexuality, identity, and relationships without the guidance of a parent.

Fatimah Asghar has been awarded the Ruth Lily and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and was featured on Forbes' 30 Under 30 List. She is also a Kundiman Fellow and member of the Dark Noise Collective. Along with Safia Elhillo, she is the editor of Halal If You Hear Me, an anthology that celebrates Muslim writers who are also women, queer, gender-nonconforming, and/or trans. Asghar is the creater and writer of the webseries, Brown Girls, the intimate story of a friendship between two women of color as they navigate the messiness of their 20s, which drew an astounding 200K viewers and earned an Emmy nomination. Since the premiere of Brown Girls, Fatimah has been featured in Slate, The Atlantic, ColorLines, W Magazine, The Fader, ESPN, BET and more. She has performed her poetry at TED X (https://goo.gl/ekySQo). And of course her stunning poetry collection IF THEY COME FOR US, made a big wave in the world of poetry.