Books
Nostalgia for a Lost Damascus Leads Native Son into Danger in New Thriller
Experience as Essence: A Review of "Al Wallaah" by Syrian Novelist Hanna Mina
New Book Examines Middle East ‘Post Americana’: Twilight of U.S. Cultural Influence
Prescient Book Calls Attention to Consequences of Sunni Diaspora
Book Offers Oral Histories of Five Diverse Egyptian Men
The Western Connection: How the Romanticism of Gibran & Rihani Hooked Up With Naimy’s Critical Realism to Engender a New Arab Literature
‘Egyptian-American’: The Hyphenated Experience
Looking Both Ways
By Pauline Kaldas
Cune Press, 2017
Something about Pauline Kaldas’ new memoir makes you feel both adrift and at home – sensations normally at war with each other. Yet, somehow, in her rounded phrases and softly imparted narratives, the elements of surprise and familiarity find balance in each other.
Composed of a string of personal essays, her history unfolds over many moments, rather than the narration of a single breath.
‘Traveling Scholar’ Ella Shohat: The Contradictions and Challenges of Being an Arab Jew
As a public intellectual, Ella Shohat has found that her personal history profoundly informs her scholarship. Born in Israel to Iraqi parents who had migrated to that country after 1948, Shohat grew up in an Israeli culture that discriminated against Mizrahi Jews. Living a life of contradictions and tension as an “Arab-Jew” – a person of the Jewish religion whose culture and primary language are Arabic, she has found herself on countless occasions having to explain an identity that seemed like an oxymoron, an impossibility, to academics and others.
Chronicling Syrians’ Personal Stories of Struggle to Reach Safe Refuge
Leaving Syria: Seeking Refuge in Greece
By Bill Dienst, MD and Madi Williamson
Cune Press, 2017