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Crooked Teeth
- A Queer Syrian Refugee Memoir
- Narrated by: Danny Ramadan
- Length: Not yet known
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Publisher's Summary
A queer Syrian refugee reckons with a life spent out of place.
“Writing this memoir is a betrayal.” So begins this electrifying personal account from Danny Ramadan, a celebrated novelist who has long enjoyed the shield his fiction provides. Now, to tell the story of his life, he must revisit dark corners of his past he’d rather forget and unearth memories of a city he can no longer return to.
Starting with his family’s humble beginnings in Damascus, he takes listeners on an epic border-crossing journey: to the city’s underground network of queer safe homes; to a clandestine party at a secluded villa in Cairo; through Arab Spring uprisings across the Middle East, a reckless hoax that threatens the safety of Syria’s LGBTQ+ community, and a traumatic six-week imprisonment; to beaches and sunsets with friends in Beirut; to an arrival in Vancouver that’s not as smooth as it promised to be; and ultimately to a life of hard-won comfort and love.
What emerges is a powerful refutation of the oversimplified refugee narrative—a book that holds space for joy alongside sorrow, for nuance and complicated ambivalences. Written with fearless intimacy, Crooked Teeth is a singular achievement in which a master storyteller learns that his greatest story is his own.
What the critics say
“I take my hat off to Danny Ramadan and his brilliant muses. This is a mesmerizing story of growing up gay in a Muslim Syrian family, of the challenges and joys of finding and creating loving communities, and the miracle not just of physical survival but of an effervescent celebration of the human heart. Once I began reading, I couldn’t stop until the final page. Countless others will be thankful for this raw, idiosyncratic, utterly compelling account of Danny’s long journey home.”
—Lawrence Hill, author of The Illegal
“In Crooked Teeth, the reader becomes not just a confidante but a trusted companion in Danny Ramadan’s story. Harrowing yet joyous, bawdy and kind and brilliant, this memoir sings, parties, and grieves in a way that will make you want to hug it and, yes, dance with it.” —Ann-Marie MacDonald, author of Fayne
“Danny Ramadan’s vigorous prose is poised in that enchanted place between master storytelling and testimonial. Written with the skill of a fiction writer, Crooked Teeth is sweeping and intimate, a memoir of bloody revolution and bear hugs. Danny Ramadan asks if he can trust us with his story. Discover what trust means. Read this book.” —Kim Echlin, author of Speak, Silence