The memoir, first published in Arabic in 1983, narrates the years Ashour spent in the US during the early 1970s. It offers an intimate view of her experiences as a scholar, a political activist, and a young wife separated from her family and husband, the poet Mourid Barghouti. The book captures the spirit of the time, including anti-colonial movements and the deeply divided US society, and describes her journey to becoming the first PhD student to graduate from the W.E.B. Du Bois department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts in 197