Sing Me a Circle

"All points on a circle are always the same distance from the center." These exquisite personal essays trace the orbit of author Samina Najmi as she reflects on events, people, and places that shape her vision of the world. Whether she finds herself in Pakistan, England, or the United States, she keeps her family and her love of stories firmly at the center of her life. As Najmi navigates the process of forging her identity as a professor and mother, her extended family inspires, haunts, and stirs her to action. Through sorrows and singing, questions and growth, she passes along a centering love of family and beauty to her children. And like the unsung writers in her family, Najmi seeks home in time and on the page.

Samina Najmi teaches multiethnic US literatures at California State University, Fresno. Besides her scholarship on race, gender, and war in US literatures, she has published creative nonfiction essays in over thirty literary magazines, including World Literature Today. Daughter of multigenerational displacements, Samina grew up in Pakistan and England, spent eighteen years in Massachusetts, and, since 2006, calls Fresno, California, home. Here she has watched with wonder her two children, her many students, and her citrus grow. Samina believes in Fresno's sunsets; in everyone's three feet of influence, and in the power of language and literature to extend our reach beyond.