Son of Elsewhere

A Memoir in Pieces

By: Elamin Abdelmahmoud

Narrated by: Elamin Abdelmahmoud

Length: 6 hrs and 31 mins

Publisher's summary

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • A “funny and frank” (The New York Times) collection of essays on Blackness, faith, pop culture, and the challenges—and rewards—of finding one’s way in the world, from a BuzzFeed editor and podcast host.

“A memoir that is immense in its desire to give . . . a rich offering of image, of music, of place.”—Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance

At twelve years old, Elamin Abdelmahmoud emigrates with his family from his native Sudan to Kingston, Ontario, arguably one of the most homogenous cities in North America. At the airport, he’s handed his Blackness like a passport, and realizes that he needs to learn what this identity means in a new country.

Like all teens, Abdelmahmoud spent his adolescence trying to figure out who he was, but he had to do it while learning to balance a new racial identity and all the false assumptions that came with it. Abdelmahmoud learned to fit in, and eventually became “every liberal white dad’s favorite person in the room.” But after many years spent trying on different personalities, he now must face the parts of himself he’s kept suppressed all this time. He asks, “What happens when those identities stage a jailbreak?”

In his debut collection of essays, Abdelmahmoud gives full voice to each and every one of these conflicting selves. Whether reflecting on how The O.C. taught him about falling in love, why watching wrestling allowed him to reinvent himself, or what it was like being a Muslim teen in the aftermath of 9/11, Abdelmahmoud explores how our experiences and our environments help us in the continuing task of defining who we truly are.

With the perfect balance of relatable humor and intellectual ferocity, Son of Elsewhere confronts what we know about ourselves, and most important, what we’re still learning.

©2022 Elamin Abdelmahmoud (P)2022 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Funny and frank, delivered in such a generous spirit that almost any reader is bound to be won over.”—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times

“I remember the day Elamin Abdelmahmoud told me he was writing a book called Son of Elsewhere; just the title broke my heart and somehow still drew me in. Abdelmahmoud is one of our generation’s most gifted and emotional writers. He takes us on a fascinating journey of self-discovery, from an awkward adolescent immigrant boy trying to fit in to a courageous young man struggling to carve out an identity of his own without severing his roots. Abdelmahmoud reminds us that, while his story is uniquely his own, we can all learn something about ourselves in ‘The Elsewhere.’”—Brandi Carlile, Grammy Award-winning artist and New York Times bestselling author of Broken Horses

“Son of Elsewhere is a profound, tender collection of stories that speaks to those who exist in and out of liminal spaces. It’s a narrative that forces readers to interrogate Blackness beyond American borders, American exceptionalism at the expense of Black and Brown people, and identity between separate languages. Abdelmahmoud is a skillful cartographer of place, architecture, and human emotion, blending them together so effortlessly that one will walk away from this debut seeing the symphony—and collision—in the mundane and the extraordinary. With this book, Abdelmahmoud announces that he is here and we should be so thankful for that.”—Morgan Jerkins, New York Times bestselling author of This Will Be My Undoing, Wandering in Strange Lands, and Caul Baby

Funny and heart warming

Funny and heartwarming story. At first I was concerned it would be a little too woke for me and I was going to get a lecture on colonialism and capitalism but it turned out to be funny and entertaining.

Elamin is a master storyteller, thinker, and narrator!

Wildly good. Especially w Elamin telling his own story. Honestly got to the end and wanted MORE, but luckily he hosts the Pop Chat podcast from the CBC, so there IS more!

Beautiful!

Beautifully written and skillfully read. As a first generation Canadian I appreciated all the references to uniquely Canadian things, and his honest portrayal of his experience as a person of color in Kingston.