Ammiel AlcalayAmmiel Alcalay is poet, translator, critic, scholar and activist; he teaches in the Department of Classical, Middle Eastern & Asian Languages & Cultures at Queens College and is a member of the faculties of American Studies, Comparative Literature, English, and Medieval Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center where is also Deputy Chair of the Ph.D. Program in English. He was the first holder of the Lannan Visiting Chair in Poetics at Georgetown University and has been a visiting professor at Stanford University.

Mother of the Believers: your purchase benefits in part LCC (click image to buy)Reviewed by Dina Abou Salem

"I will name her Aisha," Abu Bakr said.
A name that Talha knew in the old language meant "She Lives..."

There is more to the Muslim woman than meets the eye. Beneath her chiffon veil and wide eyes of kohl is a fighter waiting to be unleashed to lead, devise, and take charge. All intensify once passion dwells her heart.

In Aisha, the youngest wife of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad, lies a paragon of the Muslim woman, not just by virtue of being the Mother of the Believers, but by being a leading figure in shaping the history of Islam thanks to her multifaceted attributes.

Aisha caught the attention of Hollywood screenwriter Kamran Pasha who delivers here an idiosyncratic debut novel illustrating the birth of Islam through her eyes. Mother of the Believers: A Novel of the Birth of Islam (Washington Square Press. April 2009), is written in epic style-narrating the heroic deeds of legendary figures whose fervent faith and bounteous sacrifice rocketed a religion, an empire, a culture, and a language into time.

Reviewed by Mana Mostatabi

Between Two Worlds, My Life and Captivity in Iran details the arrest of Iranian-American journalist, Roxana Saberi, and her subsequent 100-day stay at Iran's notorious Evin prison in early 2009, where she undergoes intense interrogations, solitary confinement, while meeting some of Iran's most prominent political prisoners and activists.

Tapping into a reserve of her own experience, and supplemented by thoughtful analysis and the lessons she learned from the political prisoners she met in Evin, Saberi exposes the injustices, oppression, and blatant abuses suffered by journalists, minorities, students, and activists at the hands of "certain people in power... exploiting that power to suppress individuals who they feared were threatening it."

Reviewed by Arshia Haq

In his novel I, the Divine, Rabih Alameddine suggests that within each life is lived a thousand and one lives. He innovatively portrays the human impulse to forge these multiple fragments of experience into a single self. At the center of the book is Sarah Nour El-Din, born to an American mother and Lebanese father in pre-war Beirut. Sarah, named by her grandfather for the "divine" actress Sarah Bernhardt, is only two years old when her father unceremoniously ships his foreign bride back to the States in exchange for the familiar comforts of a traditional Lebanese woman. This early rupture of identity plagues Sarah in her childhood and adolescence, through two failed marriages and numerous thwarted love affairs, and pursues her across several seas when she emigrates to the U.S.

Reviewed by Jordann Saliba Sullivan

In a time when the Middle East is portrayed as a hotbed of religious and ethnic conflict, the label "Arab Jew" seems like an oxymoron. From the beginning of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict onward, Arabs and Jews have been painted as separate, warring peoples, fighting over religion, land and even their place in history. Moreover, Israel has sufficiently demonized Arab culture as to have virtually eliminated the classification of "Arab Jew" from its modern lexicon. However, perhaps the two aren't as disparate as we've been led to believe.

Author Rachel Shabi's first book, We Look Like the Enemy: The Hidden Story of Israel's Jews from Arab Lands, eloquently combats the notion that Arabs and Jews are cut from a different cloth. Shabi was born in Israel to Iraqi parents, and grew up in the UK. Her book explores the little-discussed fate of "Mizrahi" Jews from Egypt, Morocco, Iraq, Yemen, and other Arab/Muslim nations who immigrated to Israel. Shabi critically yet thoughtfully examines the vast socio-economic disparity that characterizes the Mizrahi and European "Ashkenazi" experiences in Israel.

Arabs Jews, a Critical PresentationVisiting Author Rachel Shabi Presents Her Book We Look Like the Enemy: the Hidden Story of Israel's Jews of Arab Lands

Jordan Elgrably introduces the evening with personal stories and a visual presentation.

American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein

Directed By: David Ridgen & Nicolas Rossier (Documentary | 2009 | USA | 88 minutes) In English with some Arabic language w/ English subtitles

AMERICAN RADICAL: THE TRIALS OF NORMAN FINKELSTEIN is a new feature-length documentary film from directors David Ridgen (MISSISSIPPI COLD CASE) and Nicolas Rossier (ARISTIDE AND THE ENDLESS REVOLUTION) that will have its theatrical premiere in Los Angeles at Laemmle Music Hall on Friday, March 12, 2010, where it will enjoy a week-long run.

The gala opening will feature Norman Finkelstein in person and a Q & A after the film, in an evening cosponsored by Levantine Cultural Center and L.A. Jews for Peace.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRESS CONTACT: Sarah Holswade or Tara Marie Good, 310.657.5511
Or David Elzer 818.508.1754

SALAM SHALOM
Enemies...Another Love Story
Written by Saleem
Directed by Ty Donaldson

Limited Engagement will open on Saturday, March 6
at the Greenway Court Theatre in West Hollywood!

"Salam Shalom pleads sympathetically for universal respect and understanding..."
  — The San Francisco Bay Guardian, San Francisco