Malaka Gharib

It Won't Always Be Like This: A Graphic Memoir Malaka Gharib

An intimate graphic memoir about an American girl growing up with her Egyptian father's new family, forging unexpected bonds and navigating adolescence in an unfamiliar country--from the award-winning author of I Was Their American Dream.

It's hard enough to figure out boys, beauty, and being cool when you're young, but even harder when you're in a country where you don't understand the language, culture, or religion. Nine-year-old Malaka Gharib arrives in Egypt for her annual summer vacation abroad and assumes it'll be just like every other vacation she's spent at her dad's place in Cairo. But her father shares news that changes everything: He has remarried. Over the next fifteen years, as she visits her father's growing family summer after summer, Malaka must reevaluate her place in his life. All that on top of maintaining her coolness!

Malaka doesn't feel like she fits in when she visits her dad--she sticks out in Egypt and doesn't look anything like her fair-haired half siblings. She quickly learns not to speak English at the souk and spends stretches of time helping her stepmother, Hala, with the laundry, but she also smokes hookah for the first time, discovers that you can order sushi in Cairo, and sees in Hala a young woman who isn't so different from Malaka herself.

It Won't Always Be Like This is a touching time capsule of Gharib's childhood memories--each summer a fleeting moment in time--and a powerful reflection on identity, relationships, values, family, and what happens when it all collides.