Crooked Teeth: A Queer Syrian Refugee Memoir

FINALIST FOR THE GOVERNER GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD FOR NON-FICTION

A queer Syrian refugee reckons with a life spent out of place.

“Writing this memoir is a betrayal.” So begins this electrifying personal account from Danny Ramadan, a celebrated novelist who has long enjoyed the shield his fiction provides. Now, to tell the story of his life, he must revisit dark corners of his past he’d rather forget and unearth memories of a city he can no longer return to.

Starting with his family’s humble beginnings in Damascus, he takes readers on an epic, border-crossing journey: to the city’s underground network of queer safe homes; to a clandestine party at a secluded villa in Cairo; through Arab Spring uprisings across the Middle East, a reckless hoax that threatens the safety of Syria’s LGBTQ+ community, and a traumatic six-week imprisonment; to beaches and sunsets with friends in Beirut; to an arrival in Vancouver that’s not as smooth as it promised to be; and ultimately to a life of hard-won comfort and love.

What emerges is a powerful refutation of the oversimplified refugee narrative—a book that holds space for joy alongside sorrow, for nuance and complicated ambivalences. Written with fearless intimacy, Crooked Teeth is a singular achievement in which a master storyteller learns that his greatest story is his own.

DANNY RAMADAN (he/him) is a Syrian-Canadian author, public speaker, and advocate for LGBTQ+ refugees. His debut novel, The Clothesline Swing, was longlisted for Canada Reads and named a Best Book of the Year by The Globe and Mail and Toronto Star. His second novel, The Foghorn Echoes, won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction and was shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and the Vancouver Book Award. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC and currently lives in Vancouver with his husband.

ISBN: 9780735242210
Format: Paperback
Pages: 304
Publisher: Penguin Canada
Published: May 28, 2024

FINALIST FOR THE GOVERNER GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD FOR NON-FICTION

“I take my hat off to Danny Ramadan and his brilliant muses. This is a mesmerizing story of growing up gay in a Muslim Syrian family, of the challenges and joys of finding and creating loving communities, and the miracle not just of physical survival but of an effervescent celebration of the human heart. Once I began reading, I couldn’t stop until the final page. Countless others will be thankful for this raw, idiosyncratic, utterly compelling account of Danny’s long journey home.”

—Lawrence Hill, author of The Illegal

“In Crooked Teeth, the reader becomes not just a confidante but a trusted companion in Danny Ramadan’s story. Harrowing yet joyous, bawdy and kind and brilliant, this memoir sings, parties, and grieves in a way that will make you want to hug it and, yes, dance with it.”

—Ann-Marie MacDonald, author of Fayne