Aliya Amjad has always felt left out of a secret. She doesn’t know why her mother left behind her Filipino American community for her father’s tight-knit Pakistani American neighborhood. She doesn’t know why a woman from her mother’s past has come to stay with them. And she can’t solve the puzzle of an art installation titled “Side Streams” that is currently taking up her mother’s work space. It’s dedicated to “E,” an unknown woman depicted in the façade: Who was this woman? Was she a muse or something more? When Aliya strikes up a friendship with a neighborhood boy named Samir, she finds she has her own secret to keep: Aliya likes girls, and Samir glances too long at the beautiful boys in the masjid. When they catch Samir’s father and Aliya’s new houseguest sharing a covert kiss, they choose to keep one more secret.
Decades later, Aliya reconnects with Samir, the mystery of the mural still unsolved and perhaps a key to untangling the secrets of their parents’ generation. As the younger generation digs further into the past, the older generation must ask themselves: was silence the best path forward, or just the easiest?
A polyphonic, achingly beautiful novel, Side Streams heralds a new literary talent and is a testament to the power of reaching across generational lines to build a family—whether it be by bond or by blood.
"Powerful and surprising, carrying us through the secrets and ruptures of childhood and the rebuilding of a family in a new light. Across decades and continents, love and loss, this story is both intimate and sweeping. It is at once a queer coming-of-age story, an exploration of art and friendship across decades, and a poignant consideration of diaspora, return, and what it might take to start again."
— Eliana Ramage, author of To the Moon and Back
"SIDE STREAMS knows the aftermath is where we live. It’s a gorgeously written novel about the families we inherit and the communities we build over time. Yasmin Adele Majeed weaves desire, art-making, and noticing itself into this Bay Area immigrant community in prose so tender I felt as though I’d known these characters for years. To borrow the language of one of the characters, I found myself greedy for their love—for the chance to witness how they would love one another."
— Nishanth Injam, author of The Best Possible Experience
"A radiant novel about the havoc time leaves on the human heart. I adored it. Yasmin Adele Majeed writes of friendship, parenthood, art, and identity with clear-eyed compassion for the ways we lose and find ourselves in one another. Only one book in and Majeed is already an essential voice."
— Anthony Marra, author of Mercury Pictures Presents
"A sweeping yet intimate debut novel that explores family secrets, the bonds of friendship, art’s power to impact communities, and more. In Side Streams, characters must reckon with their desire—known and unknown to themselves and others, desires deemed forbidden or improper. I was particularly drawn to the vibrant cast of young, queer characters reckoning with their understanding of self. Side Streams also boldly explores the Filipino and Pakistani diasporas, and the multicultural tapestry that is America. There were many passages of startling, quiet beauty.”
— Daphne Palasi Andreades, author of Brown Girls and Lucid Dreams