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Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones

A Memoir

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Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones

Written by: Priyanka Mattoo
Narrated by: Priyanka Mattoo
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About this listen

From a wry, insightful, and very funny new voice, here is one woman’s search for home, from Kashmir to England to Saudi Arabia to Michigan to Rome and, finally, to Los Angeles—standalone essays that together form a sweeping portrait of a peripatetic life.

"I would follow Priyanka Mattoo to the ends of the earth, because she would know what to eat there, and how to make a friend, and then sit me down and tell me a story."—Emma Straub

Priyanka Mattoo was born into a wooden house in the Himalayas, as were most of her ancestors. In 1989, however, mounting violence in the region forced Mattoo’s community to flee. The home into which her family poured their dreams was reduced to a pile of rubble.

Mattoo never moved back to her beloved Kashmir—because it no longer existed. She and her family just kept packing and unpacking and moving on. In forty years, Mattoo accumulated thirty-two different addresses, and she chronicles her nomadic existence with wit, wisdom, and an inimitable eye for light within the darkest moments. She takes us from her grandparents’ sprawling home in Srinagar, where her boisterous aunties raced through the halls, to Saudi Arabia, where friendships were gained and lost behind the sandstone walls of a foreigners’ compound. We witness her courtship with a nice Jewish boy, now her husband, and her efforts to rep­licate her mother’s rogan josh recipe via Zoom. And we are with her as she settles into her unlikely new home­land, Los Angeles, where she sets off on what is perhaps her most meaningful journey: that of becoming a writer.

Through these astonishingly poignant and often laugh-out loud essays, Mattoo has given us an open­hearted, frank, revealing glimpse into a journey of almost constant motion, as well as a journey of self-discovery.

©2024 Priyanka Mattoo (P)2024 Random House Audio
Middle East Travel Writing & Commentary Women Funny Heartfelt
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What the critics say

“Enjoyably enlightening . . . Charming . . . The memoir’s title is a translation of a Kashmiri phrase that speaks to the preciousness of rare things easily lost. Mattoo admirably rectifies some of these very losses.”—Poornima Apte, Booklist

“Distinguished by its sharp wit and beating heart, this is a salve for wanderers of all stripes.”Publishers Weekly

“I was enchanted by Mattoo’s Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones, a remarkably vivid, moving epic of displacement and its aftermath. With brio, insight, and great warmth, this exceptional debut offers, as art can, a lasting home.”—R. O. Kwon, author of Exhibit

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