Crooked Teeth: A Queer Syrian Refugee Memoir
Written by Danny Ramadan
Published by Viking Canada
BOOK SYNOPSIS
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
Danny Ramadan is a Syrian-Canadian author and LGBTQ-refugees advocate. His memoir, Crooked Teeth, came out in May 2024 to raving reviews, and is nominated to a Governor General Award for best non-fiction. His latest novel, The Foghorn Echoes won the Lambda Award for Gay Fiction, and was nominated for the BC & Yukon Book awards, and the city of Vancouver Book Award. The Clothesline Swing won the Independent Publisher Book Award, longlisted for Canada Reads, and is translated to multiple languages. His award-winning children’s books The Salma Series received the Nautilus Book Award, The Publishing Triangle Award, the Middle East Book Award, amongst dozens of other nominations and honours. Since his arrival to Canada, Ramadan has raised over $300,000 for LGBTQ+ identifying refugees ensuring safe passage to more than two dozen queer and trans refugees. Ramadan graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC, and received an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from Adler University. He lives in Vancouver with his husband and two dogs. When he is not writing, he is probably playing video games.
CONTACT INFORMATION
WEBSITE: www.dannyramadan.com
SOCIAL MEDIA:
Instagram: @TheDannyRamadan
EMAIL: hello@dannyramadan.com
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Clothesline Swing
The Foghorn Echoes
Salma The Syrian Chef
Salma Makes a Home
Salma Writes a Book
Salma Joins the Team
