As I mentioned in class, I would like you to consider this story's narrative point of view. It's told in the first person by a Palestinian refugee living in New York after the first Gulf War and the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Like "Lost in Freakin' Yonkers," this story is somewhat biographical in the sense that it corresponds roughly to the life of the author's father (she seems to have split herself into two characters--the daughter and the oldest son).

You might consider questioning this story as both pure fiction and (auto)biography. How does problematize the major crisis/resolution of the story? How does it change the story's thematic emphasis?