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The Coin

by Yasmin Zaher

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Reading for the 3rd time

read in June 2025

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Reader said: " The Coin
By Yasmin Zaher*
2024

Provocative, troubling, and insightful short novel, short chapters, like thoughts on any given day. Fast read. Funny and tragic at times in it’s acute capture of stereotypes and the habits they engender. Cleanliness, an at The Coin
By Yasmin Zaher*
2024

Provocative, troubling, and insightful short novel, short chapters, like thoughts on any given day. Fast read. Funny and tragic at times in it’s acute capture of stereotypes and the habits they engender. Cleanliness, an attention to fashion details, and/or, a literally sexless American man. It is underpinned with subplots showing the daily workings of class and culture(s). Brilliant and quirky.

She notices race and gender in all its performance, ensconced in culture and determined by history.

The whole book emanates from thoughts/experiences from inside the head of the main character, are they real happenings, or, just her perceptions? But isn’t that “real?” She is a teacher of poor boys in NYC, a Palestinian living in America. Her name escapes me, as does her immigration status, perhaps the writers intention. The boys are kind of Dickensian; a bunch of bright boys who she can trust, who often act together and mostly go unknown. She describes their individuality, human traits with names.

After hearing from a Syrian refuge that she brought to their classroom; she asked the boys to imagine themselves on a crowded boat in the sea for days. Her most trusted student, Jay, couldn’t write the essay, “War is bad, it kills people, to sad to write.” She ponders, “I was worried for Jay, he was to sensitive he had no shield. He was growing up in a culture that was over-legitimizing certain emotions, especially hurt, and encouraging vulnerability without discernment.”

Later, the teacher notices, “Well I thought that speaking would only make everything worse. Naming the thing makes it smaller. Pain can be a great field of suffering or pain can be just an object.”

Her thoughts are rarely spoken, but are downloaded on each page. I found myself thinking, yes, of course; and no, that’s not good. Practicing discernment and using what barometer? Like a boat drifting on the sea, unable to embrace either shore. There is me and I am thee. We are all vulnerable, but you have discernment; but no you don't.

This book unravels a unique form and content. I read it on a rainy, cool day; under a blanket and devoid of screens in 2025. It sticks beneath the skin, like The Coin she swallowed. It's content wills itself into your body and mind to be rediscovered in coming days.

*Zaher is a young (appears as 30 or less, on book jacket) Palestinian journalist writer, born in Jerusalem. The Coin, is her first novel. (Where she lives now is not shared.). ...more "

Jun 21, 2025 12:33PM · see review