In her memoir, "The Last Sandstorm", Jasmin Faulk-Dickerson tells the story of her first 25 years in Saudi Arabia, before her daring escape to the West. The author was born in the 1970's and grew up in the shadow of Riyadh, a city that was burgeoning into economic modernity, a sharp contrast with its archaic treatment of women. This memoir is both a coming of age story and an immigrant's saga, two overlapping narratives that are told with generosity, humor, and a pervasive sense of longing and loss. The narrative documents what it means to grow up with unanswered questions, strive to conform and belong, and finally, dare to leave behind a family, a country, and a way of life–the known world. In turn, Faulk-Dickerson invites us to take measure of our own potential and to participate fully in our own lives. While Jasmin experienced the privileges and privations of being female in a conservative Muslim regime, she survived and thrived by daring to imagine an entirely different kind of life. Jasmin shares the particulars of her daily life–school, Muslim customs, popular culture, family life, friends–that create a palpable sense of what it was like to be loved but also thwarted by circumstances. Out of sight of the censors, Jasmin became an aficionado of popular culture, drawing on music, dance, film, and TV icons from Europe and the United States. In the privacy of her bedroom/studio, she became an artist, performer, and feminist freedom fighter–a magnificent leap of faith that eventually translates into the courage to leave.
EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Middle East Meets West With Ambitious Woman’s Cross-Cultural Upbringing in Saudi Arabia
Jasmin Faulk-Dickerson spent much of her young life with a foot in two different worlds, belonging to one culture that restricted her individual freedoms and to another that promised more to its women than marriage, children and subservience to men, including their own sons. A strong-willed, sensitive and highly creative soul, she imagined a life beyond what Saudi Arabia could offer any woman, and her memoir through vignettes, The Last Sandstorm, explores her budding ambition from the age of six until she left the country for good at age 25.
In Part One: The Yearning, readers dive into Jasmin’s childhood. She struggled with intense anxiety that she would face separation from her Italian mother whose presence in her life, as an outsider in their Arab country, felt fragile. It is through this fear of losing her mother that readers, and the author herself, first come to understand the full effects of her bi-cultural experience. Immersed in a conservative country “where women didn’t drive until June of 2018” (Jasmin left the country nearly two decades prior, in 1999), the social lives of both Jasmin and her sister were limited by a set of customs and traditions that, by birth, did not belong to them completely.
Spending most summers in Italy visiting her mother’s family, there was a duality, a contradicting set of values, that comprised Jasmin’s experience of the world. She struggled to understand the prescribed familial “identity” that her Arabian father strived to maintain or the opinion of their social circles that he held in such high regard. To her, “There was a default standard by which one could measure and present their identity, achieved by conforming to social practices, dress code, and self-imposed boundaries.”
INQUISITIVE CHILDHOOD MOTIVATES REACH FOR FREEDOM
This first section comes to a close with a vignette entitled “Teacher,” which discusses an influential Western English teacher of Jasmin’s who encouraged her students to challenge mainstream social norms and cultural barriers. In Part Two: The Contrivance, readers witness how Jasmin’s early anxieties and questions surrounding her culture develop. As U.S. Military moves into Saudi Arabia, Jasmin’s exposure to Western media expands. In addition to a long-held fascination and appreciation of Michael Jackson, she’s introduced to Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and her role model Oprah Winfrey. “It was perhaps during this crucial and influential time,” she writes, “that my love affair with America began.”
After marrying a Saudi American man, Jasmin travels not just to western countries but to other Arab nations that she had never explored. The experience broadens and deepens her view of the world and the place she wants to take up within it. And as her values shift, the reader enters the memoir’s final section, Part Three: The Attainment, during which Jasmin takes the final steps toward her hard-won American dream.
A UNIQUE BI-CULTURAL VIEW OF THE MIDDLE EAST
The Last Sandstorm offers a unique perspective on life in the Middle East. As part of an Italian-Arabian family, Jasmin’s view of both cultures provides a certain level of nuance and complexity that stories written from the perspective of a single culture cannot. Her position as an outsider, to some degree, feels like a quintessential coming-of-age experience, and yet, her inquisitive nature within a culture that values her silence and obedience reveals bravery that readers will easily find captivating.
Jasmin’s examination of trauma and oppression is truly affecting. Readers will root for her throughout the memoir as she takes strides toward the future she desires and has created for herself. The Last Sandstorm is perfect for anyone interested in intersecting cultures, human rights, stories about strong women, or highly reflective and inspiring reads.
~Chelsea Ciccone (BookTrib)