Book Reviews

This memoir is titled, “Two Callings.” Written by Dr. Aneesah Nadir, it chronicles not just her life, but the life of her ancestors, the political and social changes that occurred since the 1950’s, and the evolution and establishment of the Muslim Mental Health field in the US. She delves into her two callings, a calling to Islam, and a calling to Social Work. The book begins with a background and family tree of her origins. On one side, a seamstress and tailor from Barbados

Elif Shafak is a well renown Turkish author. Her works span from politics to history to fiction to drama and much more. This book, “The Bastard of Istanbul,” is one of her older books, and the second of hers to be written in the English language. In this book, Shafak introduces two families, an Armenian one living in diaspora in San Francisco, and a Turkish family based in Istanbul. They don’t know, but the two families are intimately intertwined through the marriage of a T

[The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Ann Fadiman ] The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down , by Ann Fadiman, is considered of the genre medical anthropology. I had never actually heard of this subfield of anthropology but it “examines the cultural, social, and biological factors that influence health, illness, and healthcare practices.” The author herself is not an anthropologist, she is a wri

This novel "Velvet" is the next in a series of books about Palestine I've read and would like to share with you. It takes place in a refugee camp in Jordan and is about "Hawaa" which translates to "Eve" in English. It is beautifully written with detailed descriptions so real you can feel, hear, smell the life in the camp, down to the dew drops on an early morning, and the sewage and foul odors. The book has a circular timeline, beginning as she buys a beautiful tea set for th

The Woman from Tantoura, is an amazing read. It reads like a memoir, the story of Ruqayyah, expelled from her village city in Palestine, as she witnesses the murder of her father and 2 brothers and numerous other men in the village. It follows the life of her and her children from Lebanon to Egypt, to Jordan, to Greece as they try to keep their identity and home alive. She is a witness to the horror of the Sabra and Shatila massacres. A great book for anyone trying to underst

So this is the second book in this series, Lost in Thyme by Lilas Taha - Author . The first book, Found In Thyme, was reviewed in a previous post . This book begins as Sami Amara is barricaded inside a bathroom in a Turkey airport and it is being attacked by terrorists. He protects a mother and two children, only to be arrested by the Turkish authorities. He disappears as Petra and Robert search for clues and anything about his whereabouts. Petra returns to Texas and takes c

Salt Houses is another book of #palestinianvoices and #booksaboutpalestine #booksaboutisrael . It is written by a psychologist Dr. @hala.n.alyan Hala Alyan. It follows the lives of the children, grand children, great grandchildren of Selma, who reads her daughter, Alia's, coffee cup, and sees the struggles of the years to come. Alia goes on to the Gulf, her kids go from Jordan to the US to France to Lebanon. Her husband struggles with feelings of guilt towards his best fr

This #bookaboutpalestine is probably one of my absolute favorites. It is fascinating, well written, engaging, and detailed. It begins with a Bedouin tribe in 1948 fleeing the war in Palestine, and the story of a gypsy girl, as she is faced with a horrible arranged marriage. her mother courageously secretly arranges for her to run away on the back of a visitor/ sheikh, who carries her to safety. She leaves behind her life, with nothing but a bracelet made of Liras. Each chap

So this is a book by #palestinianwriter Randa Jarrar. Daughter of an Egyptian mother and Palestinian father, the book is a memoir of her life in Kuwait as a child, to Egypt, and then to the US. If I would describe her character as anything it would be "defiant". She is strong, obnoxious, smart, smart mouthed, in spite of a physically abusive father, instability after the Gulf war and being forced to leave Kuwait, and as an immigrant to the US in her teens. She explores her t

This book is written by Omar ElAkkad, an Egyptian American journalist. The cover tells it all, really. It's a bluntly real book that alternates between scenes of destruction and disaster in Gaza, with surreal moments in the author's life, with commentary about politics and journalism in today's world. We travel with him back in time as a child in the Gulf and his views on the West back then, and how disillusioned he becomes after moving to Canada and the US. He talks about hi

Author Lilas Taha - Author is well known for her book, Bitter Almonds, but she also has other books that are wonderful. This book, Lost in Thyme, is a fictional story about 2 second generation Palestinian Americans whose lives cross unexpectedly in the aftermath of "Sami's" father's passing. "Petra" is given shares of his father's company. As they both search for the reasons why, they discover how interwined their fathers were in the struggle of Palestinian identity and ind