#Man of steel and velvet hardcover free#

You taught me a long time ago to identify the species by the yellow patches around their eyes, their black whiskers, their white throats, and their ivory crowns. I clutch the wound, the meat of my thumb dark with my own blood. Migrating birds, you used to say, the cityвЂ™s light can kill.ДЄ sparrowвЂ™s beak strikes my hand and gashes my palm.

The eveningвЂ™s fog smears the city to blinding. They clap into cars and crash through skylights, thunk into steel trash cans with the lids off, slice through the branches of boxed-in gingkoes. This evening is its own witness, the birdsвЂ™ throats stars on the canvas of the night. Tonight, the sparrowsвЂ™ feathers are brushstrokes on the dark. When you died, Teta quoted Attar: The self has passed away in the beloved. I first learned to mix paint by matching the smooth turquoise of a heronвЂ™s egg: first aqua, then celadon, then cooling the warmth of cadmium yellow with phthalo blue. When you were alive, the warmth of each shell held the thrill of possibility. Each egg was its own shade of blue I slipped them into a shoebox under my bed. Five years ago, when your absence stitched her mouth shut for weeks, I hid your collection of feathers, hid the preserved shells of robinвЂ™s eggs, hid the specimens of bone. Downstairs in TetaвЂ™s apartment, IвЂ™ve drawn the curtains, tucked TetaвЂ™s glasses back into their drawer so that even if she wakes, she wonвЂ™t look down on this street dashed with dying birds. Nothing has stayed the way it was since you died, not even the way we grieve you. The sparrows thud onto the houses around me, old three- and four-story brownstones, generation homes with sculpted stoops, a handful recently bought from the families who have owned them for decades and gutted for resale. But for now, here on the roof of TetaвЂ™s apartment building, the sheen of evening rain on the tar paper slicks the soles of my sneakers, and velvet arrows drop one by one from the autumn migration sweeping over Boerum Hill.

Tomorrow, the papers will count and photograph them, arrange them on black garbage bags and speculate on the causes of the blight. TONIGHT, FIVE YEARS TO the day since I lost you, forty-eight white-throated sparrows fall from the sky. Following his motherвЂ™s ghost, he uncovers the silences kept in the name of survival by his own community, his own family, and within himself, and discovers the family that was there all along.ДЇeaturing Zeyn JoukhadarвЂ™s signature вЂњfolkloric, lyrical, and emotionally intense.gorgeous and aliveвЂќ ( Kirkus Reviews, starred review) storytelling, The Thirty Names of Night is a вЂњstunningвЂ¦vivid, visceral, and urgentвЂќ ( Booklist, starred review) exploration of loss, memory, migration, and identity. Realizing that he isnвЂ™t and has never been alone, he has the courage to claim a new name: Nadir, an Arabic name meaning rare.ДЄs unprecedented numbers of birds are mysteriously drawn to the New York City skies, Nadir enlists the help of his family and friends to unravel what happened to Laila Z and the rare bird his mother died trying to save. Even more surprising, Laila ZвЂ™s story reveals the histories of queer and transgender people within his own community that he never knew. In fact, Laila ZвЂ™s past is intimately tied to his motherвЂ™s in ways he never could have expected. She mysteriously disappeared more than sixty years before, but her journal contains proof that both his mother and Laila Z encountered the same rare bird before their deaths. One night, he enters the abandoned community house and finds the tattered journal of a Syrian American artist named Laila Z, who dedicated her career to painting birds.

#Man of steel and velvet hardcover free#

The only time he feels truly free is when he slips out at night to paint murals on buildings in the once-thriving Manhattan neighborhood known as Little Syria, but heвЂ™s been struggling ever since his motherвЂ™s ghost began visiting him each evening. As his grandmotherвЂ™s sole caretaker, he spends his days cooped up in their apartment, avoiding his neighborhood masjid, his estranged sister, and even his best friend (who also happens to be his longtime crush). Kwon, author of The Incendiaries ).ДЇive years after a suspicious fire killed his ornithologist mother, a closeted Syrian American trans boy sheds his birth name and searches for a new one. Often tender, always engrossing, The Thirty Names of Night is a featвЂќ (R.O. вЂ‹ вЂ‹ From the award-winning author of The Map of Salt and Stars, a new novel about three generations of Syrian Americans haunted by a mysterious species of bird and the truths they carry close to their hearts- a вЂњvivid exploration of loss, art, queer and trans communities, and the persistence of history.

Named Most Anticipated Book of the Year by The Millions, Electric Literature, and HuffPost Winner of the ALA Stonewall Book Award-Barbara Gittings Literature Award Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction