LANDING IN PLACE

An Egyptian American Muslim teen navigates the transition from adolescence to early adulthood amid competing personal, familial, and cultural expectations.

Anisa is a high school senior and aspiring artist from Long Island, caught between her creative ambitions and her immigrant parents’ expectation that she follow her older sister, Reem, into medicine. After a discouraging first semester at college, Anisa accompanies Reem, who’s completing a medical rotation, to Egypt, where she spends time with extended family and gains space to reflect and recalibrate. Immersed in a new environment, she deepens her relationship with Islam, experiments with wearing hijab, and begins to take her artistic ambitions more seriously. When a family health crisis draws her back to the U.S., Anisa must reconcile the growth she experienced abroad with the realities she left behind. Hamdy’s storytelling centers on interior conflict, using Anisa’s perspective to examine themes of diasporic identity, religious self-definition, and intergenerational tension. El Mir’s black-and-white art conveys fluid motion, and her inventive layouts keep the narrative visually engaging, alternating between structured panels and looser, sketchlike sequences that reflect Anisa’s point of view. A diverse supporting cast grounds the story in contemporary New York and Egypt, and Arabic text appears throughout the dialogue, contextualized through visuals, narration, and in the backmatter, reinforcing cultural specificity while remaining widely accessible. The result is a measured, thoughtful, and complex coming-of-age story.

An emotionally resonant portrait of a young woman learning that home may be less a place than a process.