In “The Sukiyaki Book Club,” Maryam is the unnamed writer’s young daughter. She lives with her mother and brother, Markie, in a cramped apartment next to the train station. She’s been having nightmares about “a fire-breathing dragon” that appears outside her window every morning, but it’s really just a Metro train. This contributes to the unnamed writer’s guilt over the ways her family’s unideal living conditions are harming her children. At the end of the story, the unnamed writer looks on from down the hallway as her children sing and dance along to Duke Ellington’s “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing),” and she feels happy to see “their small brown bodies” looking so carefree as they “go unashamedly ragtime.”
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Maryam Character Timeline in Foreign Soil
The timeline below shows where the character Maryam appears in Foreign Soil. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
The Sukiyaki Book Club
...climbs on top of the quilt. They look out the window at the Melbourne skyline. Maryam, the narrator’s daughter, asked the narrator if they could take the window with them when...
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...runs in, interrupting the writer’s thoughts. She follows Markie out to the living room, where Maryam is watching Giggle and Hoot. Markie tries to make his sister change the channel, but...
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Meanwhile, the unnamed writer ushers Markie and Maryam toward the apartment’s miniscule bathroom for shower time, promising that the first one in gets...
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