For Those Who’ve Ever Felt Like an Outsider

There’s a certain kind of pain that comes from being seen but never really known. From standing in a room full of people and still feeling like a stranger. From being marked as “different” not for what you’ve done, but for who you are, for the color of your skin, your accent, your origin. It’s the loneliness of being present, yet perpetually out of place.
This is the quiet ache at the heart of Rituals of Belonging, Albert Hadi’s deeply moving novel that speaks to anyone who has ever felt the sting of separation, the unspoken divide between “us” and “you.” Hadi, an immigrant who has crossed borders, beliefs, and expectations, writes not from distance, but from experience. His words carry the weight of exile, of longing, and of the fragile hope to belong without erasing oneself.
In the novel, the struggle is not loud. It’s lived in silence. It comes in the raised eyebrow when you say your name, in the careful smile after someone asks where you're “really” from, in the persistent reminder that no matter how long you stay, or how much you give, you’re still the outsider. You can love the same land, pay the same taxes, laugh at the same jokes, yet you remain the one expected to justify your presence.
Through Hadi’s eyes, we see the toll of constantly reshaping yourself to fit in. The invisible labor of clipping your own voice, shortening your stories, softening your edges just to make others comfortable. The slow erosion of identity that comes not from force, but from exhaustion.
Yet, Rituals of Belonging refuses to surrender to sorrow. It is not a novel of bitterness, but of bravery. A reminder that belonging is not found in perfection or performance, but in being truly seen. Real acceptance doesn’t demand silence. It doesn’t ask you to shrink. It doesn’t wait for you to apologize for being who you are.
For anyone who has ever walked into a room and felt smaller, quieter, or somehow less, this story is for you. It shines a light on the strength it takes to hold onto yourself, your voice, and your truth, even in places that were never designed to make space for them.
Rituals of Belonging isn’t just fiction. It’s a mirror. One that reflects the lives of countless outsiders who’ve discovered that the hardest journey isn’t reaching a new country, it’s staying yourself in a world that keeps asking you to change.
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FQBZT5CQ