Alex
From Here
In her coming-of-age memoir, refugee advocate Luma Mufleh writes of her tumultuous journey to reconcile her identity as a gay Muslim woman and a proud Arab-turned-American refugee.
This memoir started out as a read for my « Around the world in 195 countries » challenge and ended up with me sobbing (yes, again – what can I say, October was a mental health struggle). It was an excellent read.
Moby Dyke: An Obsessive Quest To Hunt Down The Last Remaining Lesbian Bars In America
A former Rookie contributor and creator of the popular blog Effing Dykes investigates the disappearance of America’s lesbian bars by visiting the last few in existence.
An excellent read in which Krista Burton tells us about her travels to 23 lesbian bars in the USA immediately after the pandemic lockdowns. She tells us about the importance of these places, their individual stories, different lesbian cultures across her country and much more, with a lot of thoughts about who belongs in lesbian…
When we were sisters
An orphan grapples with gender, siblinghood, family, and coming-of-age as a Muslim in America in this lyrical debut novel from the acclaimed author of If They Come For Us.
This novel follows three sisters who are orphaned at a young age and left in the « care » of a neglectful uncle. These three young Muslim girls grow up in the USA and have very different lives. The story is told from the point of view of the youngest, starting with what a small…
Les déracinés
Autriche, 1931. Lors d’une soirée où se réunissent artistes et intellectuels viennois, Wilhelm, jeune journaliste de 25 ans, a le coup de foudre pour Almah. Mais très vite la montée de l’antisémitisme vient assombrir leur histoire d’amour. Malgré un quotidien de plus en plus menaçant, le jeune couple attend 1939 pour se résoudre à l’exil. Un nouvel espoir avant la désillusion : ils seront arrêtés en Suisse. Consignés dans un camp de réfugiés, ils n’ont qu’un seul choix : faire partie des 100 000 Juifs attendus en République dominicaine après l’accord passé par le dictateur local Trujillo avec les autorités américaines. Loin des richesses de l’Autriche, la jungle sauvage et brûlante devient le décor de leur nouvelle vie. L’opportunité de se réinventer ?
Cet énorme pavé suivant une famille juive autrichienne dans les années 1930 puis 1940 et leur exil en République dominicaine me donne envie de poser plein de questions sur ce pan de l’histoire, et je suis ravi qu’un roman vienne faire connaître cette initiative et la période. J’ai beaucoup apprécié ma lecture.
September 2023 recap / Retour sur septembre 2023
October 2023
Simone Silvestroni (minutestomidnight.co.uk)Three years after I left Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, I might have found a space where to both agree and disagree in peace, while growing connections.
(…)
a remote part of my brain is still expecting a somewhat violent reaction to polite criticism. Supposedly, three years off the cesspits that are Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are not enough to completely shrug off this intentional behavioural manipulation.
Own physical books
Given all this, I think that owning physical copies of books is subversive and I encourage ownership of this thing that can’t be easily taken away from you. I encourage sharing banned books specifically because they’re banned.
Curtis replaced his PKM Weekly blog post with a note on owning physical books (if you can) in an environment where activists of hate will probably soon try to pressure Amazon to delete « banned books », which can be done retroactively on an e-reader. I’ll add to his post that we can and should…