With immigration issues leading the headlines, author shares insights seldom considered on Muslim life in America

Join us at the Middletown Free Library as we hear local author Benedicte Grima talk about her new novel that has a timely theme. 

Author Benedicte Grima in her new novel, Talk Till the Minutes Run Out – An Immigrant’s Tale at 7-Eleven, gives readers not only a thoughtful, engaging read, but new insight on what it’s like to be a Muslim immigrant living in the United States.

Aging and homesick, Nur Ali is working at a local 7-Eleven and seeking asylum. Though exiled from his Pakistan, homeland and inaccurately labeled as a Taliban sympathizer by the US government, he’s determined to keep his position as family patriarch. So Nur Ali leads and provides for his beloved family clan back in Pakistan while living half a world away.

This book, while a novel, provides readers with seldom considered perspectives on the struggles many living in our midst face. Using prepaid phone cards and a landline in the inner-city 7-Eleven where he works as night shift manager, Nur Ali manages food, gifts, marriages, births, and deaths, all the events that glue a family together.

Author Benedicte Grima has deep roots in both US and Middle East culture. She grew up internationally, studied four Middle Eastern languages, became proficient in Farsi and Pashto, and conducted over 20 years of fieldwork throughout Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan – some as a Fulbright scholar - as well as among refugees and exiles from there in the US as a language and culture interpreter.

She has authored her research in The Performance of Emotion Among Paxtun Women (1992), and Secrets From the Field (2004). This historical and ethnographic novel is created from her in-depth knowledge of and personal experience with people from Swat, Pakistan.