I’m currently preparing to move, writing, and reading: State of Grace, Joy Williams; Maggie the Mechanic, Jaime Hernandez; and One Writer’s Beginnings, Eudora Welty. It’s finally warm in Michigan! I’m also putting together my paperback tour for A Map of Home. Want me to visit your town? Drop me a line at randajarrar on the g to the mail.
Archive | May, 2009
No there, there
12 MayI am reading and enjoying I Live Here and My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness. The first chapters of both books examine the lived realities and consequences of militarily erased homelands. I Live Here begins with Chechnya, with stories of its 1944 Stalinist purge and its current day tragedy, articulated by the Internally Displaced Persons camps. My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness starts with the very first of poet Taha Muhammad Ali’s influences: his hometown Saffuriyya, which was erased by Israel.
Both books are stunning achievements; Joe Sacco’s comic in I Live Here is highly recommended for those who know nothing about the Chechens’ tragedy; Adina Hoffman’s biography is highly recommended for those who yearn for a well-written biography of a Palestinian writer, of which there are possibly none.
