Welcome to Litsy!

A vital, difficult, confronting look at Western Liberalism, Muslim identity, the genocide in Gaza, and refugee identity, freedom, and gratitude. It is hard to find the words to properly review this, but it is well worth your time. El Akkad does a wonderful job with the narration, and I found listening in small chunks was the best way to digest and engage with this work.

#Bookspin December

1. Beyond Survival
2. Cobalt Red
3. The Underground Girls of Kabul
4. Flesh and Blood so Cheap
5. Waiting to be Arrested
6. Cesar Chavez
7. Trailblazer
8. The Deviants' War
9. Some People Need Killing
10. Four Shots
11. Small Acts of Courage
12. Necessary Trouble
13. Buses are a'Coming
14. Generation Revolution
15. Dorothy Day
16. Call Him Jack
17. Give Us The Ballot
18. Kids These Days
19. Salt Thief
20. American Midnight

I don‘t really know how to talk about this book. It‘s part memoir and part journalism. El Akkad takes the Western world to task for ignoring what is going on in Gaza, using lovely prose and horrific examples. It‘s a short book, but it took me a pretty long time to read because the topic is so difficult. It deserves its National Book Award win.

Today‘s “relaxing” reading.

So quick to read and so difficult to stomach. Another timely look at war on Gaza, this time a graphic novel.

"Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself, all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power. Otherwise, they, like all else, are expendable."

It was late, my father was done work for the night. Because he was technically part of the tourism industry, and the Egyptian economy has for a very long time depended on tourism to ward off complete collapse, he was afforded special dispensation to be out during curfew hours. The soldiers on the corner did not know this./1

I've explained, politely, to deeply well-meaning people that I don't have a problem shaking hands with women— maybe other Muslims do, I couldn't tell you; we don't all know each other.
I've sat through a wildly uncomfortable book interview once after I joked that I write all my novels in Arabic and then run them through Google Translate and the interviewer believed me.
I've smiled and nodded. I was nice about it.
Which is to say, I was a coward.

One day it will be considered unacceptable in the polite liberal circles of the West not to acknowledge all the innocent people killed in that long ago unpleasantness. The truth and reconciliation committees are coming. The land acknowledgements are coming. The very sorry descendants are coming After all, grief in arrears is grief just the same./1

I know now there are people, some of them once very dear to me, whom I will never speak to again, so long as I can help it. It‘s the people who said nothing. The people who knew full well what was happening and said nothing because there was a personal risk of a chance of getting yelled at or, God forbid, a chance of professional ramifications. It‘s the people who dug deeply into the paramount importance of their own safety, their own convenience.