this book was exactly what i wanted to read!! essentially we are following two girls who are hunting after zheng yi sao's lost and hidden treasure. the story takes its sweet time to set up the exposition and introduce us to 19th century china. it's rather slow paced but i enjoyed it through and through so that didn't bother me. i loved reading about canton and changping and following the cast of characters on sea. it's definitely a coming of age story and there's found family in the form of a pirate crew which means bonus points!!!

the writing is very descriptive, at times the author sends us on page-long journeys where she meticulously describes the surroundings and cities, clothing, food, the people, languages and more. i really appreciated that and was able to just take everything in. i also quite liked the dialogue, i underlined endless lines of writing!!

i reallyyyyy loved the cast of characters, the story is told from one perspective only, that would be 16yo xiang, but she encounters a lot of different people and i especially liked the pirate crew! xiang goes trough a lot of learning and character development and creates some really sweet bonds with different characters. the side characters are definitely not as fleshed out as xiang but they were still really cute.

This is such a lovely anthology of bilingual poetry!! It's a collection of 40 female arab poets and i bookmarked more than half of them, that should probably already tell you enough. Reading translated poetry is always a little hit or miss because you don't read the original work, and while i can't read or understand arabic and therefore can't comment on the quality of the translation, these poems did really speak to me and make me feel so many different things. It's wonderful honestly to see just how many people have contributed to this anthology. It's a wonderful blend of themes, tones, messages and more where I really could take away something from almost all poems so I constantly found myself highlighting passages. Some of my favorite poems were these: Salvation by Nesrin Ekram Khoury, The Waves and I by Elham Nasser Al-Zabedy, Eve's Cry by Suzannah Hani al-Hajjar, Details of my Passing Days by Khawla Jasim Alnahi and I Did not give Birth to it by Huda Aldaghfag.

Excerpt from "I Stab Silence" by Jackleen Hanna Salam from Syria, translated by Amir Al-Azraki and Jennifer Jean

We speak so the galaxy does not stone us with remaining stones rotating and grinding meanings. No one dies from the desires of stored words. My heart soars passionately toward the dome of the heart, as if I didn't carry rivers in my mouth and the exile's bags on my head Days are our books, scattered in the universe. Words are fruits of the mind's garden from which one's soul flows like ink.