The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: All Water Has Perfect Memory by Nada Samih-Rotondo

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor EMDASH, is an excerpt from All Water Has Perfect Memory by Nada Samih-Rotondo (Jaded Ibis Press 2023).

NEW WORLD

                               Johnston, Rhode Island 2001

    My full  name is Nada Tayser  Mohamed-Samih  Jaber, I
wanted to scream. How many white people have a name like
that?
    Later,  I attended that professor’s office  hours to  hand in
the final assignment.
    “Oh,  I wanted to tell you,” she said excitedly, “I teach this
same  class at   Providence College, and a  group  of  students
there said the same thing as you. They are from Egypt. I guess
you’re not white after all,” she concluded, beaming  with the
arrogance of discovering land long settled.

Nada (she/her) is a multi-genre Palestinian writer, educator, and mother deeply attuned to her adopted land’s stories. A refugee English language learner, Nada grew up deeply impacted by family separation and state violence both in Palestine and on Narragansett land or so called Rhode Island. As a working class caretaker, Nada aims to create innovative, anti-imperialist works of literature that play at the intersections of the more than human world, expands imaginations, illuminates connections between land and body, and inspires joyful resistance. Her writing has appeared in Masters Review, Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, and others. All Water Has Perfect Memory, a multigenerational hybrid memoir, is her first book.

EMDASH a.k.a Emily Lu Gao (高璐璐) (she/they) is a poet-who-also-writes-fiction, educator, and daughter of Chinese immigrants. She writes to heal, grow, and decolonize. They’ve received support from LAMBDA, McCormack Writing Center, Sundress Publications, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference, The Chinese American Museum of LA, Jersey City Arts Council and more. She has learned as much from community organizing and open mics as she did from her Rutgers-Newark MFA in Poetry. They’re published in Poetry Northwest, ANMLY, Alocasia, Underblong and elsewhere. She proudly hosted, produced, and curated The Word Bookstore Open Mic for two years.