Dr. Hoda Z. M. Amer

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 who made their...

Today , I have the skies on my mind. The first plane I rode I was 2 months old. Since then I've been on over 200. Seriously, I've flown 2 - 4- 6 x a year/ for my lifetime. I nicknamed myself Mariposa, because I feel more at home in the skies than I do on the ground. It's a second home. I'm an expert traveler Alhamdllilh. I know just what to expect, how disgusted I will be by the bathrooms, and what I will want to eat when the airport stores are closed bc it's 2 am in whichever country I've...

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 Turk- “Reza,” to...