pickSo 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."
#10BeforeTheEnd - 3 Weeks In
I am 3 in, working slowly on Far From The Tree
Silly me I picked a lot of chunky books for this!
pickA once in a generation mind. Coates is always a pick. In this Coates strings together ideas from his travels - the slave trade out of Senegal, current day book banning in S. Carolina, Palestine occupation, and he some how threads them into a coherent telling on oppression
His cadence always blows me away, and how he can take subjects and make them not only lyrical but impactful.
Such important insights here. Should be required reading
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
