For Anisa, wearing a hijab in Cairo is not simply a religious decision. It is also an opportunity to experiment with how she sees herself, away from the expectations that have followed her from home. In Landing in Place, her graphic novel with illustrator Myra El Mir, Sherine Hamdy follows an Egyptian American college student as she travels from Long Island to Cairo, searching for a version of herself that feels less prescribed.

Anisa has spent much of her life following a path laid out by her family. Like her older sister, Reem, she enrols in a pre-medical programme, despite wanting to study art. When her first semester at college goes badly and she fails organic chemistry, she persuades her parents to let her spend time in Egypt with her grandfather. There, she begins to question the expectations she has inherited. She experiments with wearing a headscarf, grows closer to her faith, and takes an internship with a cartoonist at an Egyptian newspaper, where she can develop her own artistic voice.

But Anisa’s journey is not simply about choosing between her family’s expectations and her personal ambitions. Her time in Cairo brings her closer to the histories and experiences that have shaped her family. Through conversations with relatives and encounters with the wider community, she begins to understand how questions of religion, identity, and belonging are connected to the political realities around her. The novel moves between the intimate tensions of family life and the larger histories that continue to shape Egyptian society, including the 1956 Suez Crisis and the 2011 Arab Spring.

Hamdy brings an unusual perspective to this story. A medical anthropologist and professor at the University of California, Irvine, she has spent much of her academic career examining the relationship between culture, society, and the body. Her earlier graphic novel, Lissa, co-created with Coleman Nye and illustrated by Sarula Bao and Caroline Brewer, explored medical anthropology through the lives of two women in Egypt and the United States. In an interview with Publishers Weekly, Hamdy discussed how comics allow artists to represent experiences that can be difficult to communicate through words alone, including memory, pain, and the psychological weight of family history. 

For Landing in Place, she collaborates with Lebanese illustrator Myra El Mir, whose black-and-white artwork moves between the everyday details of Anisa’s life and the larger political and cultural landscapes she encounters. Their collaboration gives the novel room to explore the relationship between the personal and the political without losing sight of Anisa’s individual coming-of-age story.

Landing in Place considers belonging not as something inherited automatically from family, religion, or nationality, but as something a person must learn to negotiate for herself. Anisa’s journey to Cairo does not give her all the answers, but it allows her to begin asking different questions about the life she wants to lead.

Here’s the synopsis:

A poignant coming-of-age graphic novel about an Egyptian American girl grappling with college, her family, and the political realities of her wider world.

Anisa is following in her sister Reem’s footsteps: she’s a freshman at her sister’s alma mater, she’s on the same premed track, and she’s inherited Reem’s old hotpot, mini-fridge, and textbooks. Even though Anisa would prefer to study art, her parents discount that as a valid career choice. The path laid out before her starts to crumble as Anisa feels she doesn’t belong—either in her organic chemistry class or among the other Muslim students on campus.

When Anisa fails her first semester, she begs her parents to let her take time off to visit Cairo and stay with her beloved grandfather. Finally free to have her own experiences, Anisa begins a journey of self-discovery, and, as she bumps up against familial, societal, and religious expectations, she starts to develop her own artistic voice. When Anisa returns to the United States, many of these expectations shift, but she learns to draw on the love of friends and family—including those she’s often at odds with—in order to stay true to herself.

 

Buy Landing in Place here.