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    Book Review: "The General's Son"
    Miko Peled sets the record straight on the dispossession of Palestine
    My review of "The General's Son," by Miko Peled, cannot be separated from what I've come to know about the author. After all, this book is about Peled's own life, and his journey to a new understanding of the conflict that has defined so many of our lives. It is a narrative of the author's transformation from an ardent Zionist, born into a revered military Israeli family, to a human rights activist and advocate of a single binational state. In addition to reading this book, I attended one of Peled's lectures and watched another online, and I've had a chance to speak with him in person and at some length. At each of these junctures, my reaction to his narrative changed to some degree.
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    A New Novel Captures Life in Los Angeles and Beirut
    This Angelic Land is a novel set in Los Angeles during the 1992 Rodney King riots— the largest, most destructive civil uprising in American history. Adam Derderian, the central protagonist, is a 27-year-old Lebanese Armenian bar owner. The narrative shifts back and forth from his perspective to that of his brother, a New York-based artist five years his senior. The backdrop is their youth during the Lebanese civil war in Beirut—the longest civil war in modern history.
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    "Jasmine and Fire: A Bittersweet Year in Beirut"
    a travel writer returns to Lebanon after a life in the United States
    The motif of home and more specifically "the Return" home (Al-Awda in Arabic) recurs throughout world literature. Home as a place (as opposed to a state of mind or of being) comprises the central conflict in Salma Abdelnour's memoir, "Jasmine and Fire." Abdelnour was born in the United States of Lebanese parents, but returned to Lebanon when she was two, the summer before the 15-year Lebanese civil war ignited. After six years of war, the family decided to move back to America. However, Abdelnour's conscious memories of childhood, her sense of home, remained in Beirut.
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    A New Cultural Arts Center for the Middle East/North Africa
    wanted: social impact investors to back the new Levantine Cultural Center coming in 2013
    Founded 11 years ago as a grassroots nonprofit organization that champions a greater understanding of the Middle East/North Africa and our communities in diaspora, we are building a new, more self-sustaining cultural arts center for the Middle East and North Africa in Los Angeles. Southern California is home to the largest community of people from the Middle East and North Africa in the United States. It is high time that we had a multidisciplinary arts center that will serve as a focal point and hub for our many cultures.
  • Khalid Hussein's new book brings a fresh perpective to the uprising...
    "The Tunisian Awakening" Sheds Light on Forgotten Figures
    new book transcends media coverage to provide telling detail
    In his debut work of literary non-fiction, The Tunisian Awakening, artist-author Khalid Hussein brings to life the first non-violent popular revolution in modern history of the Arab world. In this illustrated non-fiction narrative, Hussein recounts the numerous human rights violations of Ben Ali's oppressive regime, from his rise as the domineering dictator of Tunisia for almost 24 years, to his final moments in office.
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    "Winning the War on War" Reviewed
    The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide by Joshua S. Goldstein
    In his book "Winning the War on War," Dr. Goldstein analyzes decades of war and how peace keeping, peace building, and peacemakers have influenced wars positively and negatively. Dr. Goldstein also assesses the organizations that support and provide these forces, ranging from small NGOs to the UN, to various states' armed forces. He points out that the concept of war should be thought about as a continuum ranging from bad to worse, from small to large. Just as war has gradations, so does peace (p. 3), which can range from a fragile cease-fire to formal peace agreements, to disarmament and democracy. Dr. Goldstein lists several shocking statistics that are rarely reported and, for me, were initially hard to comprehend.
  • Rebels by Accident
    "Rebels by Accident" Chronicles Young American's Cairo Story
    the novel illustrates the hardships of Arab American identity
    Rebels by Accident is the story of what happens when a troubled teen is sent to Cairo right around the time of the uprising against the Mubarak regime. A fast read, the book serves as a guide for young Muslim Americans, urging them to take pride in one's heritage and culture.
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    Egyptian American author remembers a different Egypt
    During her recent talk at UCLA, Lucette Lagnado, an investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal, expressed nostalgia for a lost world as she discussed her memoirs about her family's life in Egypt and subsequent exile in America.
  • Five Poems from "The Forbidden"
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    "The Forbidden" Poets of Iran, New Anthology
    Despite the Islamic Republic Iran's use of any and all available methods to quell dissent—including propaganda poems, novels and films—in a country that even the uneducated bricklayers recite poems by heart, the voice of the poets cannot be silenced. Like rain it will seep into every crevice and feed the seedlings. In Iran's Green Movement we see signs of saplings that have broken through pavements and are growing fast in the streets and squares.
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