“Your voices matter, your dreams matter, your lives matter”: on BLM
As Angie Thomas asks, “What’s the point of having a voice if you’re gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn’t be?”
The Real and the Imaginary: The Baghdad Clock by Shahad Al Rawi
As a war narrative enveloped in magic, love, and hope, The Baghdad Clock adds depth to the burgeoning genre of postcolonial Iraqi novels.
Susan Sontag on Compassion
“Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question is what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. If one feels that there is nothing “we” can do—but who is that “we”?—and nothing “they” can do either—and who are “they”?—then one starts to get bored, cynical, apathetic.”
Most Anticipated Books of 2020 (May-September)
Without a doubt, 2020 has been a testing time for all of us across the globe. Fortunately for us book lovers, the new decade has been packed with compelling debuts […]
Hermann Hesse on Seeking & Finding
“Siddhartha said: ‘What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.'”
Author Spotlight: Carley Mercedes
“…But every once in a while, I’ll read a book that glorifies problematic relationship behaviors such as manipulation or even stalking. I don’t ever want to write a book that encourages women to seek out unhealthy, or even dangerous, relationships, so I focus on creating relationships that are healthy.”
The Year of the Middle Eastern Reading Challenge + Unapologetically Muslim Reading Challenge? Yes, please.
This may all seem too idealistic to some but nonetheless conveys a crucial message about the role of the artist and what cultural and literary representations can offer in the ongoing debates about the so-called “problem” of Muslims in the Anglophone North Atlantic.
George Eliot & Virginia Woolf on Happiness
“Happiness,” Woolf writes, “is in the quiet, ordinary things. A table, a chair, a book with a paper-knife stuck between the pages. And the petal falling from the rose, and the light flickering as we sit silent.”
