Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Dr Suja Sawafta
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An Unlasting Home
In her debut novel, An Unlasting Home, Mai Al-Nakib exposes the challenges that often come with state formation and national identity. The title, borrowed from Irish writer James Joyce’s novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, speaks to the impermanence of home “under the eaves of...
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Hocine Tandjaoui’s Clamor offers a poetic memoir of the Algerian Revolution
For the Algerian-born Parisian poet, Hocine Tandjaoui, the memory of the Algerian War of Independence, and the personal biography that shapes it, is best relayed through poetry. His genre-bending book, Clamor, uses the medium of poetry and the trigger of sound—specifically the discordant cacophony of war—to place readers in...
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George Abraham’s Birthright is a lexicon of resistance and return
George Abraham’s lyrical and poignant debut poetry collection, Birthright, was published at the height of global chaos in the midst of the uncertainty of the Covid-19 pandemic. Since then, it has stood out to many readers as an urgent and necessary lexicon in the wake of continued assaults on...
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Jordan’s official Oscar entry Farha grants the Palestinian Diaspora permission to narrate
On 1 December, Netflix began streaming Farha (2021) worldwide, despite immense pressure directed at the platform to prevent its debut. The film is director Darin J. Sallam’s first full-length feature and chronicles the coming-of-age story of its heroine, Farha, a 14-year-old Palestinian teenager who possesses a voracious appetite for...
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Orientalism, Ukraine and the social disease of selective solidarity
A couple of weeks ago, I stood in front of my most diverse group of students and the largest class I have had since I began teaching in 2020. It was my first face-to-face cultural content seminar since the start of the pandemic, and I hesitated for a second,...
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The comeback of rapper-poet Omar Offendum
For lovers of music which fuses together the sounds of Arab America with the legendary voices of Arabic music, Omar Offendum is old-school or, better still, a pioneer. As he often notes, the Syrian-American rapper was “born in the KSA , raised in the USA, and...
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A Woman is No Man
As voices continue to emerge within the tradition of Anglo-Arab fictions, one constant within these narratives is the conversation surrounding the negotiation of identities between one’s traditional culture vis-à-vis a Western one. Etaf Rum’s debut novel “A Woman is No Man” diverges from traditional representations of identity struggle by...
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From Munif to Khashoggi: The cost of dissent in the new Saudi age
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has had a history of tension with its intellectuals and dissidents since its inception. The modern kingdom, referred to by some as the Third Saudi State, is the result of a national unification project that took place between the years of 1902 and 1932...
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From the Balfour to the Balfron: 47 Soul proves there’s passion in the exodus
Last year, 2017, was the centennial anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, the public statement of support issued by the British government at the height of WWI promising Palestine to members of the Jewish diaspora. The Zionist movement, which was established in Europe in the late 19th century, served as...