Shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize Life changes forever for six-year-old Nada when Iraq's invasion of her birth country of Kuwait pushes her mother to immigrate with her to the United States. Just as she finally settles into her strange new existence apart from her father in Rhode Island, learns English, and grasps the fact that she is there to stay, Nada begins discovering revelation after revelation that changes her perspective on her world and family. With an imaginative blend of folklore and history that explores the relationship between our bodies, ancestors, and the lands that hold us, All Water Has Perfect Memory is a memoir that takes readers through the author's ancestral origins-the coast of Palestine, Kuwait, and the shores of Rhode Island- and explores generations of silence and eventually, connection.