December 16, 2005

Moorishgirl Goes On Break

That's it for me for this week. I will be taking a break from blogging to focus on my novel, which I'm hoping to finish (khamsa u khmis!) by the new year. I will be back in this space the week of January 9, 2006. See ya.

HODP in Paperback

Good news: Paperback rights to Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits have sold to Harcourt, with publication tentatively scheduled for fall 2006.

Orhan Pamuk Goes On Trial

Given the international attention that Orhan Pamuk's case had drawn, both in and out of Turkey, I had hoped that the suit would be dismissed before it went to trial. This has not been the case, unfortunately for him (and for freedom of speech in Turkey.) Pamuk, you'll recall, stands accused of "denigrating Turkish identity" because he dared to speak of the genocide of Armenians by the Turks, in an interview he gave to a Swiss magazine. If found guilty, Pamuk faces up to three years' imprisonment.

No word yet on the outcome of today's hearing, but, according to this article, it could still be postponed.

(Update: The BBC reports that the trial has indeed been postponed, due to a legal technicality. The prosecutor sent the case back to the Justice Ministry to decide whether Pamuk should be tried under the old penal code or the new. The next hearing is set for February 7, 2006.)

(Another update: The BBC article states that 60 other writers have been accused under the same law that Pamuk is being tried under. So perhaps a high-profile case like this will actually help get the law repealed.)

Pamuk has received wide support, from individual writers like Jose Saramago and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, from writers' organizations like PEN, and from government bodies as well (the EU has been pretty vocal). But that has not stopped the Turkish prosecutor from moving forward with the case.

Moorishgirl's stats file indicates that it has readers in Turkey. If you are one, I'd love to hear from you. What is the local press saying? What are the reactions among your friends?

Related posts:
Pamuk in Trouble.
Pamuk vs. Turkish Government
Pamuk vs. Turkish Government #2.
Pamuk Update.

"Islam & Democracy"

I can't count the number of times I've seen conferences, panels, symposia, and roundtables organized around the theme (announced in big, bold letters): "Islam and Democracy: Are They Compatible?" Here's a newsflash: Religion and State don't mix well. Just save yourself money and go home.

But I suspect that's not the question that is really being asked. I think the question that is being alluded to in those conferences is this: Can Muslims Have Democracy? Which is a bit a like asking: Can Brown People Have Democracy? Can Black People Have Democracy? Can Gays Have Democracy?

We live in strange times, when we constantly have to point out the obvious: that people are people, and that we're all the same. If Muslims want democracy, they'll get it for themselves; they don't need Bush for that.

I bring this up because I just read Reza Aslan's opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times yesterday, about an early form of democracy in 14th century Arabia.

Yet the selection of Abu Bakr was meaningless until the entire Muslim community pledged an oath of allegiance to him. In fact, Abu Bakr's appointment as caliph was delayed because partisans of Muhammad's nephew and son-in-law, Ali, refused to swear allegiance. It was only after this powerful faction, the Shi'atu Ali, or the Party of Ali (a.k.a. the Shiites), relented and took the oath that Abu Bakr was allowed to assume his leadership role.

Perhaps it seems wrong to call this a democratic process. After all, Abu Bakr was appointed rather than directly elected. But it required community approval nonetheless. The Greeks may have invented democracy, and the Romans may have transformed it into republicanism, but throughout the Middle East, from the Nile in Egypt to the Oxus in Afghanistan and beyond, no other experiment in popular sovereignty had even been imagined, let alone attempted.

Aslan is the author of the excellent No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, which you really should read.

Imagining Characters

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times (reprinted in the Star Tribune), E. Annie Proulx describes the kind of imaginative work she had to do to create the characters in "Brokeback Mountain."

"Put yourself in my place," the author says. "An elderly, white, straight female, trying to write about two 19-year-old gay kids in 1963. What kind of imaginative leap do you think was necessary? Profound, extreme, large. To get into those guys' heads and actions took a lot of 16-hour days, and never thinking about anything else and living a zombie life. That's what I had to do. I really needed an exorcist to get rid of those characters. And they roared back when I saw the film."(...)

It was 1995 and Proulx, who lives in Wyoming, visited a crowded bar near the Montana border. The place was rowdy and packed with attractive women, everyone was drinking, and the energy was high.

"There was the smell of sex in the air," remembers Proulx. "[B]ut here was this old shabby-looking guy. ... watching the guys playing pool. He had a raw hunger in his eyes that made me wonder if he were country gay. I wondered, 'What would've he been like when he was younger?' Then he disappeared, and in his place appeared Ennis. And then Jack. You can't have Ennis without Jack."

A year after the story was published, Proulx says, Matthew Shepard was killed in Wyoming and she was called to be on the jury.

Shepard's murder partly inspired Percival Everett for his new novel, Wounded. In it, a horse rancher hires a laborer who eventually becomes accused of a hate crime against a gay man. The book was released to generally positive reviews earlier this fall.

HODP Reading: Portland

This week, I'll be reading with Jess Row (The Train to Lo Wu) at the very cozy Looking Glass Bookstore this Tuesday, December 20th at 7 pm. Details:

Looking Glass Bookstore
318 SW Taylor St.
Portland
503 227 4760

If you're in town, stop by and say hi to us.

December 15, 2005

Giveaway: The Every Boy

This week, I'd like to give away a copy of Dana Adam Shapiro's debut novel, The Every Boy, which is about the sudden death of a troubled teenager, and the father's attempt to discover what happened by poring over his son's diary. The Every Boy, which was released last summer, has been praised by Amy Sedaris, Tom Perrotta, and Matthew Sharpe.

The first person to correctly answer this question wins the book: Which movie did Dana Adam Shapiro direct? Please use the subject line "Every Boy" in your email, and please also include your mailing address. Previous winners excluded.

Update: The winner is Ilham E. from Decatur, Georgia.

December 14, 2005

Guest Review: Colleen Mondor

Ordinary Wolves
Seth Kantner
Milkweed Editions
330 pp.

Ordinary Wolves provides a clear portrayal of a subtle culture clash that continues to play itself out in the northernmost reaches of the U.S. It is the story of the complexities that make up the distant part of the American wilderness and at its heart, it is about a boy who does not know who he is, and the lengths that he will go to find out just where he belongs.

Seth Kantner won the Whiting Award in November for this debut effort and authors such as Louise Erdrich, Barbara Kingsolver and Alaskan Nick Jans have lauded the novel for its honest intensity. As someone who lived in Alaska for ten years, I was happy to see that the novel does not contribute to the long litany of titles trying to cash in on Alaska's poetic wildness - for example, you will find no images here of tourists suddenly finding religion when sighting a herd of caribou for the first time.

Kantner was born in the bush and lived there all of his life (in a relatively remote northwestern area of the state). He has lived the fabled frontier life, hunting, fishing, and running sled dogs, and knows every aspect of this world for what it is, and not as some romantic show performed for visiting journalists. More significantly, Kantner knows and writes about what it is like to be white and live in an environment dominated by Native Alaskans.

This is a subject that is rarely visited by Alaskan writers and is long overdue for the kind of treatment it receives in the novel. Kantner's main character, a young white boy named Cutuk, does not know if he fits in the larger world of Anchorage and Fairbanks or should find a way to be happy in the village near his family's homestead. His search for self and for a way to understand the many different ways that Alaskans live and thrive across the state is the crux of the story. Basically, because of the way in which he grew up, Cutuk does not know who he is, and in the world he lives in, knowing that sort of inner truth is critical to personal survival.

As a young boy Cutuk learns immediately what it is like to be different when his family visits the predominantly Native village. (Typically the only whites are the schoolteachers.) The other children immediately pick fights, and often refer to him in a derogatory Inupiaq term for "whites". Over the course of several years Cutuk and his family become friends with many of the Natives, come to know them on the most intimate of terms, but he is still sometimes held apart as a visitor who does not fully belong. Even though he lives the same way of life, in fact embraces it on every level, it is clear that he will never be permitted to completely own it.

Because of the way that he looks, it seems as if Cutuk should fit in more in the cities but after trying to live beyond the village, he learns that he does not belong there either. He has to find a way to come to terms with the life the Natives will allow him in the village, and understand that he can be accepted and still held as different at the same time. Ultimately, his acceptance of his own difference is critical to his final understanding of himself, and also of all the people both Native and white, he cares about.

There are many different books to read about Alaska and many different aspects of the state to explore. But Ordinary Wolves takes its readers to a place like no other and reveals more about Alaska and the people who live there than any other title on the Last Frontier.

Colleen Mondor writes for Bookslut and Eclectica Magazine. She grew up in Florida, spent ten years in Alaska and now lives in the Pacific Northwest. Her book on Alaska flying is making the agent rounds and she has an essay in Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans, forthcoming from Chin Music Press in February 2006.

December 13, 2005

Multiculturalism vs. Purity

Salman Rushdie's latest op-ed in the Times is about that hot topic of the moment: multiculturalism. In it, he argues that those who seek "purity" are deluding themselves:

The mélange of culture is in us all, with its irreconcilable contradictions. In our swollen, polyglot cities, we are all cultural mestizos. So it is important to make a distinction between multifaceted culture and multiculturalism. In the age of mass migration and the internet, cultural plurality is an irreversible fact; like it or dislike it, it's where we live, and the dream of a pure monoculture is at best an unattainable, nostalgic fantasy and at worst a life-threatening menace — when ideas of purity (racial purity, religious purity, cultural purity) turn into programmes of "ethnic cleansing" or when Hindu fanatics attack the "inauthenticity" of Indian Muslim experience, or when Islamic ideologues drive young people to die in the service of "pure" faith, unadulterated by compassion or doubt. "Purity" is a slogan that leads to segregations and explosions. Let us have no more of it. A little more impurity, please; a little less cleanliness; a little more dirt. We'll all sleep easier in our beds.

But, he insists, multiculturalism cannot serve as justification for the oppression of people. The solution, he thinks, is for a society to make it clear what its boundaries are:

When we, as individuals, pick and mix cultural elements for ourselves, we do not do so indiscriminately, but according to our natures. Societies, too, must retain the ability to discriminate, to reject as well as to accept, to value some things above others, and to insist on the acceptance of those values by all their members. This is the question of our time: how does a fractured community of multiple cultures decide what values it must share in order to cohere, and how can it insist on those values even when they clash with some citizens' traditions and beliefs?

The beginnings of an answer may be found by asking the question the other way around: what does a society owe to its citizens? The French riots demonstrate a stark truth. If people do not feel included in the national idea, their alienation will turn to rage. Chouhan and others are right to insist that issues of social justice, racism and deprivation need urgently to be addressed. If we are to build a plural society on the foundation of what unites us, we must face up to what divides. But the questions of core freedoms and primary loyalties can't be ducked. No society, no matter how tolerant, can expect to thrive if its citizens don't prize what their citizenship means — if, when asked what they stand for as Frenchmen, as Indians, as Britons, they cannot give clear replies.

I agree with much of what Rushdie is saying here, particularly when he speaks of 'core freedoms,' but I must say that the 'primary loyalties' bit makes me uneasy. I assume that he's referring here to whether people see themselves as British first and Muslims second (or French first, and Muslim second, etc.), an idea that has always struck me as bizarre. It is a little like asking a child whether he prefers his mother or his father, isn't it? Why is it that that question of loyalty is never asked of the nationalist right: Are you British first or Christian first? Or, pushing it further: Are you British first or Black first? It is senseless, it seems to me, to divide those identities and ask which one an individual owes allegiance to. As a group, the picture is different, and one may ask that we all adhere to the same principles of behavior, to the same social and political codes, without having to force people to reject notions of personal identity.

Reading Material

In the latest issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, Jennifer Howard explores the state of literary theory. (This is a free-access link, thankfully.) In the Chronicle Review, editor Lindsay Waters (Harvard University Press) argues that the study of literature in academe is no longer connected to ...literature.

A Different Sort of Best Of

Jeff Bryant of the Syntax of Things and Trevor Jackson of Creekside Review asked a number of book bloggers which writers they thought were deserving of great attention. The results are compiled here, and include a brief paragraph from the nominator, along with relevant links for those of you who are curious to know more. Among the underrated writers selected, you'll find Jim Ruland, Kirby Gann, Salvador Placenscia, Blaise Cendrars (!!), Stephen Dixon, Tayari Jones, and Maureen McHugh.

Samantha Dunn Recommends

"As far as I'm concerned, everybody in America should read Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border by Luis Alberto Urrea. It strips the ugly political rhetoric around immigration and reveals the very human face of this issue. The book came out in 1993, but I think it's more relevant today than when it was published. More than sociopolitical analysis, though, Urrea has created a heartbreaking, tough and compelling narrative in this collection of essays. (Try to read the section titled "Father's Day" without crying. I dare you.) This work is a testament to survival, and to hope, but never becomes sentimental. Urrea is a storyteller to be envied and emulated."

Samantha Dunn is the author of Failing Paris, a finalist for the PEN West Fiction Award in 2000, and the memoir, Not By Accident: Reconstructing a Careless Life, a BookSense 76 pick. Her most recent memoir, Faith in Carlos Gomez: A Memoir of Salsa, Sex and Salvation, is published by Henry Holt & Co.

If you'd like to recommend an underappreciated book for this series, please send mail to llalami at yahoo dot com.

"Brokeback Mountain"

Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain," which originally appeared in the New Yorker in the fall of 1997, is reprinted this week, and you can read it at the NYer site. The film adaptation, directed by Ang Lee, has been getting major accolades over the last week.

Update: Read my review of Brokeback Mountain here.

Lost in Translation

The Los Angeles Times' Ashraf Khalil and Jailan Zayan explain why Al-Shamshoon, the Arabic-language version of The Simpsons, may not be the big hit its producers hoped it to be:

Omar doesn't drink beer. That is not a misprint.

Instead, he spends time with his buddies at a local coffee shop. At home, he pops open frosty cans of Duff brand juice.

Needless to say, Simpsons fans in the Middle-East are none too pleased:

"They managed to make one of the funniest shows ever into something that is terribly unfunny, and one of the smartest shows around into something incredibly dumb," ranted an Egyptian blogger who goes by the name Sandmonkey and who wants the show canceled. "Us Simpson lovers can't take this abomination any longer." (..) "What's Homer without beer?" Sandmonkey told The Times, preferring to be identified by his blogger name. "This is a fundamental issue!"

A couple quoted in the article have found a way to enjoy the show, however. They "dissect the translations, recall the originals and debate what jokes do or do not work in Arabic." D'oh!

December 12, 2005

The End of the Whitbread Award

The Whitbread Award, which has in the past honored the work of writers like Kazuo Ishiguro, Kate Atkinson, Seamus Heaney and Andrea Levy, has lost its sponsor. The reason:

One of the literary world's most prestigious prizes is looking for a sponsor after Whitbread pulled out of the awards it has funded since 1971. The company, once Britain’s best-known brewer, has decided literature does not fit with its status as a wide-ranging leisure conglomerate.(...) A spokeswoman for Whitbread said the decision would officially be announced this week.

"We no longer sell products or services that carry the Whitbread brand, so it is no longer appropriate to fund an award to promote the Whitbread name," she said.

Says the Lit Saloon: "This is the obvious problem with including a sponsor's name in a prize-name and not getting any sort of real commitment from the money-givers."

Burning Books

Survivors of the 7.6 magnitude earthquake that rocked Pakistan last October were burning books to stay warm. As many as 10,000 books were destroyed before the army intervened.

Related: Unicef distributes winter clothing to survivors. You can donate money here.

One Man's Folly

Did you read Geoffrey Wheatcroft's review of Robert Fisk's The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle-East? (The review requires registration. Use bugmenot.com for a free login.) Take a deep breath, let me walk you through it. Here's how it starts:

Even those of us who are not optimists by disposition have to admit that there are good reasons for being cheerful when we look around the world today.

Why, yes, we're governed by an idiot, our civil rights are going to hell, poverty is on the rise, we have global warming, we're in the process of rolling back women's rights, we've invaded a country we had no business invading, but other than that, everything looks just peachy. Moving on:

North America and Western Europe enjoy peace and prosperity unimaginable by historic standards, and if the picture is less rosy in Latin America, and often tragic in Africa, then one must admit that whatever happens in those places doesn't threaten global stability.

No matter that hundreds of thousands have died or are dying in conflicts in Congo, Angola, Namibia, or Somalia, never mind the continuing genocide in Darfur, forget the civil war in Colombia, set aside all the AIDS death in South Africa. As long as Wheatcroft and his people are OK, then the world is OK. But, wait, there's more:

And now Japan is being joined by China and India in an explosive economic development (with whatever untoward social and environmental consequences) that may yet make this the Asian century.

Because, really, who cares about those social and environmental consequences? Fuck the environment, fuck the journalists rotting in jail, fuck Tibet. As long as he has his cheap, Chinese-made toys, he's happy. Oh, wait, there's a problem:

There is, in fact, just one region on earth that gives grounds for the deepest gloom. We unhelpfully call it the Middle East, although what's really meant is Western Asia, the area between the Mediterranean and the Indus, bordered in the north by the Black Sea, the Caucasus and desert, in the south by the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. That region is in the throes of a historically immense, pathological crisis whose character we only partly understand, although we can perceive easily enough that what is already perilous may turn catastrophic, and could yet engulf us all.

See, I didn't realize that the earth revolves around the Middle-East and America. They left that part out of my geography classes in high school.

If you're curious what this provincial preamble has to do with Robert Fisk's book, well, you're not alone.

Rushdie Interview

Carl Fussman interviews Salman Rushdie for Esquire, using some sort of elicitation exercise. A sample:

I left college in 1968, and "Midnight's Children" was published twelve years later. In between, I was essentially floundering about. I worked in advertising two or three days a week in order to have the other four or five to stay home and write. Advertising was very tempting because they were constantly trying to bribe me to do it full-time. When you've had no success as a writer, the bribes start looking good. You start thinking, Who am I kidding? I think I want to be a novelist, but I'm not getting anywhere, and meanwhile here are these people offering me a comfortable living to do something that I actually can do. "Don't be an idiot!" a voice says. The thing that I think was very brave of my younger self was that he decided he would be an idiot. Just persevere. That feels brave to me: deciding that I'm going to damn well be this person that I've set my heart on being.

If you had to pick one book from the last sixty or seventy years, you'd probably pick "One Hundred Years of Solitude".

I'll tell you what divorce hasn't taught me. It didn't teach me not to get married again.

Did he have to recline on a couch? I want to know. More along those lines here.

Syriana

Few movies have the power to engage me beyond the two hours I spend in the theater, but Syriana was one of those. Stephen Gaghan managed to create a fictional world whose complexity, for once, comes somewhat close to the complexity of real life. It's hard to describe the plot of Syriana, perhaps because the movie doesn't have one, in the traditional sense of the term. Rather, it gives us several storylines that interweave together to create a story.

Here's the best I can do: An oil-rich Gulf state decides to sell its oil to the highest bidder, which in this case happens to be China. The deal is signed by the heir to the throne, Prince Nasir (played by Alexander Siddig). A Geneva-based analyst (Matt Damon) believes that the prince is right to apply principles of a free market economy and offers his services. But the American oil company who had hoped to land that deal isn't too pleased; its CEO (Chris Cooper) wants to complete a merger with another oil company, and having the prince around isn't so good for their business. The merger, however, is sure to ignite a Justice Department investigation, so a lawyer (Jeffrey Wright) is hired to do due diligence (the kind of diligence where you work out who's going to take the fall to preserve the merger.) The young men who work in some of those oil rigs are fired at the whim of the deals being made or unmade, and two of them, hoping for three square meals a day, join a madrasa led by a blue-eyed cleric (Amr Waked). The government, of course, has stakes in the lost deal as well, and needs to make sure that oil is cheap and abundant for American consumers, so a veteran CIA man (George Clooney) is sent to Beirut to take care of things. An informant changes sides and turns against one of his contacts. And on and on.

The characters in Syriana are neither good nor bad; they do things out of greed or idealism, out of fear or desperation, each of them only aware of the particulars of their own situation. But in fact everything is connected, everything has consequences beyond those they see. And so the result is the continuing chaos we find ourselves in. The movie is not without fault (in particular, I think it could have given even more depth to some of the storylines) but I really liked it.

BTW, I should say how amused I was to spot Morocco everywhere in this movie: There's Casablanca, substituting for Beirut; and, look, there it is, substituting for Teheran; and, oh, there's the refinery port substituting for a Gulf port. I also drove Alex crazy pointing out all the veteran Moroccan actors playing bit parts. You just can't take me to the movies.

December 09, 2005

Some HODP News

Dan Wickett selects Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits for his list of best books of 2005.

An excerpt from HODP appears at Chapter Log, a new site that features first chapters from several new releases, including Julian Barnes's Arthur and George, Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners.

An interview with me aired a couple of weeks ago on KPFA's Voices of the Middle East and North Africa. You can stream it online here.

Willesden Short Story Contest

The Willesden Herald, a group blog from the Willesden neighorhood in London, is holding a short story competition that will be judged by none other than local lit star Zadie Smith.

For more details, go here (scroll down to November 17 entry).

Devil Talk

In an essay contribution at Powell's Dan Olivas addresses the issue of documenting hate in fiction.

Gulag High School

A sixteen year old student has been suspended from a Kansas high school for speaking Spanish with a friend in the hallway.

"It was, like, totally not in the classroom," the high school junior said, recalling the infraction. "We were in the, like, hall or whatever, on restroom break. This kid I know, he's like, 'Me prestas un dolar?' ['Will you lend me a dollar?'] Well, he asked in Spanish; it just seemed natural to answer that way. So I'm like, 'No problema.' "

But that conversation turned out to be a big problem for the staff at the Endeavor Alternative School, a small public high school in an ethnically mixed blue-collar neighborhood. A teacher who overheard the two boys sent Zach to the office, where Principal Jennifer Watts ordered him to call his father and leave the school.

Since when is speaking your language in the hall against the law? asked the kid's father. The school district has rescinded the decision.

Late Start

After the reading last night at Gravy, I walked to my car to find one of the back windows smashed. The doors were still locked, nothing was missing, and the alarm, if it kicked off, was certainly not loud enough that we could have heard it across the street.

As I started to clean the glass shards out of my car, I thought about the senselessness of the exercise--destroying someone's window for the fun of it. It reminded me of Graham Greene's 'The Destructors,' which I read in my first or second year of college. In the story, a band of street urchins set about tearing a house down, for no reason but that they want to do something fun, something different.

"You hate him a lot?" Blackie asked.
"Of course I don't hate him," T. said. "There'd be no fun if I hated him." The last burning note illuminated his brooding face. "All this hate and love," he said, "it's soft, it's hooey. There's only things, Blackie," and he looked round the room crowded with the unfamiliar shadows of half things, broken things, former things.'

For the teenagers, destruction was "after all, a form of creation."

I suppose this is a long way of saying: I'm off to a late start this morning, so posting will be light.

December 08, 2005

Opposites Sell?

I just checked the Amazon page for Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, and nearly fell out of my chair. Apparently, readers who bought HODP also bought Nedjma's The Almond. WTF? Sure, both are set in Morocco, but, really, you couldn't pick two more different books if you tried. Bizarre.

Hate Speech

It's been clear for quite some time that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the hardliner who last June won the presidential elections in Iran on promises of turning the economy around, has failed miserably. Iran's economy has taken a turn from the bad to the catastrophic.

Given his failures, Ahmadinejad has turned to a centuries-old tradition: When all else fails, blame the Jews. Indeed, today, he's taken his hateful, anti-Jewish tirade to a whole new level, by questioning that the Holocaust ever happened. He's clearly looking for confrontation, in hopes of shifting attention away from domestic problems and strengthening his right-wing base. Given the neo-cons in power here, he just might get his wish.

On a related note, author Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran) suggests a good recipe for people like Ahmadinejad: Read a book! The best-selling academic is hoping to start a global book club, one in which people from all over the world can read the same books:

"If our new president in Iran could come to understand that people in Israel have the same thoughts and emotions as he," Nafisi says, "he would not be saying let's wipe them off the map (...) That is the one thing I have always dreamt of, to create this republic of imagination."

For more on Nafisi's plans, read the full Globe & Mail article. (Globe link from the Lit Saloon.)

Giveaway: A Word A Day

The book I gave away earlier this morning went so fast I thought I'd give you guys on the West Coast a fair chance. I'd like to give away a copy of Anu Garg's fantastic A Word A Day. Back when I was in graduate school, lo these many years ago, I used to subscribe to Anu's mailing list, to which he sent out, well, a word a day, along with its definition, pronunciation, etymology, usage, quotation, and other tidbits. Anu put together some of these words into this book, which is a treat for language nuts.
I have one copy to give away, so if you want it, please send me an email with the subject line AWAD, and be sure to include your mailing address. Previous winners excluded.

Update: The winner is Adnan K. from Portland, Oregon.

Reading @ Gravy

I'll be doing a reading tonight at Gravy, as part of the Loggernaut Reading Series. The prompt for the reading is the word "Bare." Details below:

Thursday, December 8, 2005
7:30pm
at GRAVY
3957 N. Mississippi Avenue
in Portland
{$2}

I will be reading together with the uber-cool Joyelle McSweeney and Justin Tussing. See you then.

Giveaway: A Left-Hand Turn Around The World

This week's giveaway is David Wolman's A Left-Hand Turn Around The World: Chasing the Mystery and Meaning of All Things Southpaw, an exploration of the mystery and culture of left-handedness. I should have saved it for my own lefty brother, but what the heck, it's more fun to give it away to readers. So: The first person to email me (subject line: Left Hand) gets the book. Please include your mailing address. Previous winners excluded.

Update: The winner is Tom N. from Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. Congrats.

Story Prize 2005

Finalists for the 2005 Story Prize have been announced. They are Jim Harrison (The Summer He Didn't Die), Maureen F. McHugh (Mothers and Other Monsters), and Patrick O'Keeffe (The Hill Road). The award will be judged by Andrea Barrett, Nancy Pearl, and James Wood; the ceremony will take place on January 25, in New York. Last year's prize went to Edwidge Danticat for The Dew Breaker.

December 07, 2005

Guest Column: Nasrin Alavi

I became aware of Nasrin Alavi last summer, when I came across notices of her book, We Are Iran, a portrait of contemporary Iran through its (very dynamic) blog culture. The book was among a handful to be recommended by English PEN, and was also selected by Pankaj Mishra for the New Stateman Best Books of the Year list. We Are Iran was published this month in the United States by Soft Skull Press. Nasrin Alavi contributes a guest column on Moorishgirl today; she will also guest-blog on TEV this Thursday, December 8, so look for her there as well.

Iran: Then and Now
by
Nasrin Alavi

As Western leaders consider Iran's referral to the UN Security Council over its nuclear activities, there is another, furtive Iran simmering behind the headlines.

Those who lived through the Iranian Revolution of 1979 are now a minority. Iran has one of the most youthful and educated populations in the Middle East. Her younger generation has been completely transformed through the Islamic Republic's education policies of free education and national literacy campaigns. Seventy per cent are under thirty, with literacy rates of well over 90%, even in rural areas. Notably, last year, more than 65% of those entering university were women.

It is the voice of this educated youth that comes through loud and clear in the phenomenon that is the Iranian blogosphere. The internet has opened a new, virtual space for free speech in Iran, a country dubbed the "the biggest prison for journalists in the Middle East", by Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF). With an estimated 75,000 blogs, Farsi is now the fourth most popular language for keeping online journals. A blogger asks: "Has everyone noticed the spooky absence of graffiti in our public toilets since the arrival of weblogs?" Unlike the graffiti, Iran's blogs are boundless and global. Only time will tell if Iranian blogs are merely a place for the beleaguered to blow off steam or a modern day Gutenberg press that would usher in the age of Democracy. But for now they offer a unique glimpse of the changing consciousness of Iran's younger generation.

It is no secret that most of the rulers in the Middle East are out of sync with their youth, and Iran is no exception. Except that while Arab leaders have tried to crush the militants, in Iran's case you have had a militant regime. Tahkim Vahdat, Iran's largest national student union, was formed after a decree by Ayatollah Khomeini to reinforce his rule; yet nearly a quarter of a century later it became one of the most vocal critics of the regime.

In November 1979, at the dawn of the revolution, Khomeini had stated that "a country with 20 million youth must have 20 million riflemen or a military... such a country will never be destroyed,". The intention was to create soldiers of the state, but now groups of young people who aspire to a more Western lifestyle have even turned events like St Valentine's Day into a local festival. The regime's attempt to shield Iranians from the West's 'cultural invasion' has backfired magnificently. The country's youth is now almost obsessed with the Western culture they have been deprived of for so long. Last year Iran's former deputy-President Ali Abtahi, a mid-ranking Shia cleric, greeted the new cause for celebration for young lovers in Islamic Iran in his blog webneveshteha.com by writing that although there are many irritated by all this, "We cannot deny the reality. And anyway the Islam that I know encourages life and love."

Iran has also endured a 20th century that is incomparable to the experiences of her immediate neighbours in the region. President George Bush has recently hailed the groundbreaking progress towards democracy by countries like Qatar and Bahrain in setting up constitutional governments, while more than a century ago colonial powers brought an end to Iran's constitutional government of 1906. In the 1950s, the democratically elected government of Mossadegh was finished off in a coup backed by the United States and Britain. Iranians have lived through a recent violent revolution and war; bleak years that they logically do not want to encounter again. They are clearly still haunted by the futility of an eight-year long war with Iraq that only ended in 1998.

Blogger baba.eparizi writes, "When the most ruthless are the victors and not the wise...the story is truly of a bloody vicious struggle... The ruthless killings at the dawn of the Revolution...the assassinations...eight years of devastation and war...the bombing of towns...the dastardly killings of prisoners en masse in the 1980s... These are all the bloody roots of our story... Yet today these blood feuds are fading from the minds of a new generation...a generation that was created to fight for God...a generation that was created for martyrdom is suddenly aware of its predicament and the world around...and no longer believes in the endless wars of its forefathers... A new generation is pressing forward to destroy the old formula."

The roads, streets and narrow alleyways of Iran have been renamed after the hundreds and thousands of martyrs that the locals of these neighbourhoods still vividly and fondly remember as young boys. As one blogger puts it, "Our youth were either in Evin [prison] or at war. The best of that generation ended up in our cemeteries. There was no one left to fight the regime...until now and this new generation." While another laments that, "The Americans fight and go to war to prove to the world that they are cheerful, beautiful and sophisticated humanitarians. The Palestinians fight, as this is all they can do to defend their homes. We fought so that men who represent God...will have more chance of racketeering. We fought against another Muslim country to defend this Islam". Blogger 'Shargi' perhaps sums up the views of many when she says, 'I hate war. I hate the liberating soldiers that trample your soil, home, young and old under their boots. Believe me I love freedom. But I believe that you have to make yourself free. No one else can free you.' In a jibe against an American threat one blogger writes that, "God invented war so that Americans can learn geography".

On Sunday (November 27) a group of Iran/Iraq war veterans protested outside the Presidential office against the lack of healthcare and support for injured and disabled veterans. One banner read "Blessed were the martyrs who departed as they did not [live to] see these days". On the same day there was a student protest at Tehran University during the inauguration ceremony of Ayatollah Ameed-Zanjani (the first ever cleric) appointed as the chancellor of Iran's oldest University. Mohammad Mehdi Zahedi, the Minister of Science, was forced to leave through the University library's back door so as not to come face to face with the student protestors. During the confrontation Ayatollah Ameed-Zanjani's turban was knocked off his head.

Yet what is happening in Iran is more significant than the toppling of turbans. It is also more sustainable in the long run than the mere overthrow of dictators; that, as we are witnessing in Iraq, is the easy part. As blogger 'Even Now' puts it, no one can expel the extremists from Iran. "To reach democracy perhaps there is no other way but to tame this tribe". Today, for more reasons than are obvious, the worst thing that could possibly happen to Iran would be a US attack.

Nasrin Alavi is a British Iranian who gave up her career in the City of London to work for an NGO in Tehran. She spent her formative years in Iran. After attending university in the UK and working in the city of London and academia she returned to her birthplace working for an NGO for a number of years. Today she lives in the UK and in Tehran. This is her first book.

December 06, 2005

Lisa Teasley Recommends

"I spent a gray February morning in bed reading Darcey Steinke's Milk. After the last page, I sobbed so long and hard my partner thought it had something to do with him. He pulled me out of bed, took me to the Sunday farmers' market to feel the harvest of the world. Still I was changed, in whatever small way a really good read does. Steinke's language is so gorgeously sensual and succinct. She illuminates the struggle of reconciling the sexual with the spiritual, as well as how they pull from the very same places."

Lisa Teasley is the author of the award-winning story collection Glow in the Dark and the critically acclaimed novel Dive. Forthcoming spring 2006 is a story in Black Clock, and in the summer, her new novel Heat Signature. She lives in Los Angeles.

If you'd like to recommend an underappreciated book for this series, please send mail to llalami at yahoo dot com.

Save Me, I'm A Muslim Woman!

A few years ago, when I was in grad school, I'd forcefully disagreed with someone during a seminar on linguistics. After the class, this woman walked up to me and said, "You're so articulate!" I was about to say, "Thanks," and move on, when she blurted out, "..for a Middle-Eastern woman."

"Funny," I thought. "You're so ignorant...for a grad student. How did you get into the program?" But of course I didn't say anything. I didn't even point out that I'm not from the Middle-East. Gosh. Esprit d'escalier.

Everywhere one looks these days, there's a book or an article about that subject du jour: Women and Islam. Newsweek's Lorraine Ali offers a different view:

Muslim women are feeling like pawns in a political game: jihadists portray them as ignorant lambs who need to be protected from outside forces, while the United States considers them helpless victims of a backward society to be saved through military intervention. "Our empowerment is being exploited by men," says Palestinian Muslim Rima Barakat. "It's a policy of hiding behind the skirts of women. It's dishonorable no matter who's doing it." Scholars such as Khaled Abou El Fadl, an expert on Islamic law and author of "The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam From the Extremists," says this is an age-old problem. "Historically the West has used the women's issue as a spear against Islam," he says. "It was raised in the time of the Crusades, used consistently in colonialism and is being used now. Muslim women have grown very, very sensitive about how they're depicted on either side."

By the by, Khaled Abou El Fadl's The Great Theft just came out in October with HarperCollins.

Dangerous Pursuits

Yesterday's L.A. Times had a piece about the plight of North African and sub-Saharan immigrants trying to get to Europe via the Spanish enclaves in Morocco. It's interesting enough, but not terribly precise.

The location of Melilla, and Spain's similar North African enclave, Ceuta, makes it the gateway between a continent gutted by war, famine and disease, and the promises of an affluent Europe. Jumping a fence on dry land seems easier than braving the Mediterranean Sea in rickety boats.

Spain's traditional leniency toward immigrants has meant that those who make it this far have a very good chance of reaching continental Europe and a new life. But here and elsewhere, tensions have flared as Europe staggers under the weight of new arrivals who have changed the complexion of the continent.

Leniency toward immigrants? They shot at people trying to cross the fence, for crying out loud. How's that lenient?

Shmarnia

Not having read any of the Narnia books, I really had no interest in the movie. Still, for the sake of marital harmony in the Moorishgirl household, I might have agreed to go. That is, until I saw this:

Over the years, others have had uneasy doubts about the Narnian brand of Christianity. Christ should surely be no lion (let alone with the orotund voice of Liam Neeson). He was the lamb, representing the meek of the earth, weak, poor and refusing to fight. Philip Pullman - he of the marvellously secular trilogy His Dark Materials - has called Narnia "one of the most ugly, poisonous things I have ever read".

Why? Because here in Narnia is the perfect Republican, muscular Christianity for America - that warped, distorted neo-fascist strain that thinks might is proof of right. I once heard the famous preacher Norman Vincent Peel in New York expound a sermon that reassured his wealthy congregation that they were made rich by God because they deserved it. The godly will reap earthly reward because God is on the side of the strong. This appears to be CS Lewis's view, too. In the battle at the end of the film, visually a great epic treat, the child crusaders are crowned kings and queens for no particular reason. Intellectually, the poor do not inherit Lewis's earth.

It sounds pretty awful, but I'll have to reserve judgment until I'm dragged to it this weekend.

Link from Jessa at Bookslut.

December 05, 2005

HODP in USA Today/USA Weekend

A Q&A with me appears in USA Today's magazine supplement, USA Weekend. You can read it here.

HODP in Review

Reviews of Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits appear in this weekend's Sun-Sentinel and Charlotte Observer.

Kenya's Book Mobiles

The Observer's David Smith reports on Kenya's use of camels as book mobiles to reach out to remote villages.

There was excitement when the library camels appeared on the horizon, refusing to be hurried from their patient progress. The animals set down their cargo, and the staff from the Garissa Provincial Library assembled the tent, laid down mats and unpacked the books.

For the children who have no television, music or computer, the sight of a book offers the promise of escape and self-improvement. Soon they were scrambling over each other to get the latest delivery of titles ranging from How Pig Got His Snout, The Orange Thieves and Shaka Zulu to the more prosaic Practical Primary English, Comprehensive Mathematics and Improve Your Science and Agriculture

You can help the program by donating through the Observer's Book Aid page.

Related: You can also read about Africa's tradition of camel book mobiles in an MG post last year.

(Observer link cribbed from the Lit Saloon.)

Soueif on Egyptian Elections

Novelist Ahdaf Soueif has a long piece in the Guardian about the latest round of parliamentary elections in Egypt, which have been marked by such democractic practices as the beating of voters, closing down poll stations, and molesting of opposition figures. The situation there sounds rather catastrophic, judging from the diary Soueif kept. Here's a snippet:

Earlier today Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's president for the last 24 years, was sworn in for a further six. Cairo traffic came to a standstill for two hours as all routes to the People's Assembly were closed off to the people. Now the protesters are gathering with their banners and a pair of kettledrums: "Dumdu-du-dumdum, Batel, Dum du-du-dum-dum, Batel, Hosni M'barak, Batel ..." Batel means not valid, without legitimacy. Fortuitously, it rhymes with atel, unemployed, and so serves the protesters' preferencefor chanting in rhyme: "In the name of 12 million atel, Hosni Mubarak's rule is batel." A new pos