Dear Europe: I Promise I’m Not Staying
Sure, I had the privilege of choosing to leave my homeland, but how much of that choice was really mine to begin with? Continue reading Dear Europe: I Promise I’m Not Staying
Category: books + writers
Decolonizing History & Reclaiming the Narrative: Leila Aboulela’s Latest Novel River Spirit
What is not to love about a postcolonial novel that complicates the concepts of “victory” and “heroism,” inviting questions about whose victory, whose hero, and whose version of events–whose (hi)story is being told? Continue reading Decolonizing History & Reclaiming the Narrative: Leila Aboulela’s Latest Novel River Spirit
“Ravens, Cream, solitude, sublimity”: Virginia Woolf on Literature & Inner Peace
How many of us, “congenial spirits” are left out there, as Woolf writes in The Voyage Out (1915), “feel[ing] intensely the delights of shutting oneself up in a little world of one’s own, with pictures and music and everything beautiful.” Continue reading “Ravens, Cream, solitude, sublimity”: Virginia Woolf on Literature & Inner Peace
In Search of Silence & a Life Worth Living: Etel Adnan’s Shifting the Silence
‘Shifting the Silence’ is raw and elusive, like the very reflection you’re reading here, but it will urge you to confront the incomprehensible. Continue reading In Search of Silence & a Life Worth Living: Etel Adnan’s Shifting the Silence
A Man without a Country: In Quest of a Homeland by Yousof Mamoor
The value of In Quest of a Homeland for me lies in its honesty and contribution to, in historian Juliet Gardiner’s terms (1988), history as an ongoing dialogue between the present and the past. Continue reading A Man without a Country: In Quest of a Homeland by Yousof Mamoor
Back at My Writing Desk & A Year of Soulful Books | 2021 in Review
It is March, I know, but it’s never too late to do anything, right? And this should include writing and posting late review posts. Continue reading Back at My Writing Desk & A Year of Soulful Books | 2021 in Review
Civilizational Collapse, Taylor Swift(s) of the World, and the Beauty of Connection
As I continued to read the emails Alice and Eileen exchange throughout the novel, I realized: as citizens of the world, we had more in common than I initially thought. Continue reading Civilizational Collapse, Taylor Swift(s) of the World, and the Beauty of Connection
Ece Temelkuran’s Together: Heart-Shaped Stones, Whitman & Us
Together is, indeed, a crucial text that is brutally, lovingly, and magically real. It is the ultimate celebration of our kind and what we can achieve to not only survive but to survive beautifully. Continue reading Ece Temelkuran’s Together: Heart-Shaped Stones, Whitman & Us
meditations on home, belonging & all things literary 
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