Photographs are a motif that develops the theme of Imagination as a Coping Mechanism. Looking at pictures of her parents at a party, Nima notes that they are “glamorous in black & white / photographed in sepia  frozen in a perfect time” (13). Photographs depict memories, but these are memories of a time before Nima’s birth, so she has no reality to frame her viewing of the images. Contrasting to her own life, these pictures are both glamorous and perfect to Nima. Envisioning these happy scenes allows her to cope with her loneliness. Because she was not actually there for any of the photos, they represent what she longs for and believes is missing in her life now: joy, love, and belonging.

The yearning for a sense of belonging evident in Nima’s attachment to the photographs also fuels the theme of The Struggle to Belong Within the Diaspora. Nima battles to fit in anywhere in America. However, when she visits her parent’s house in Sudan, she gazes at the faces in the photographs and thinks, “all of them my people    all of them unknown / i peer into each face & feel    for the first time / that i belong to other people    my face just a collage / of all their faces” (128).