May Book Chat: Vivek Bald
More Featured Authors
The Artist as Mystic is a set of lyric conversations between aphorists Yahia Lababidi and Alex Stein. These conversations constitute what Australians call a ‘Songline’—a set of sacred songs that allow the reader/listener to navigate through an unknown terrain.
Keshni Kashyap’s compulsively readable graphic novel, Tina's Mouth, packs in existential high school drama while answering the pressing question: Can an English honors assignment be one fifteen-year-old girl’s path to enlightenment?
BUY THIS MONTH'S BOOK!
These stories of early working-class migrants vividly contrast with our typical understanding of immigration. Vivek Bald’s meticulous reconstruction reveals a lost history of South Asian sojourning and life-making in the United States. At a time when Asian immigrants were vilified and criminalized, Bengali Muslims quietly became part of some of America’s most iconic neighborhoods of color, from Tremé in New Orleans to Detroit’s Black Bottom, from West Baltimore to Harlem. Many started families with Creole, Puerto Rican, and African American women. As steel and auto workers in the Midwest, as traders in the South, and as halal hot dog vendors on 125th Street, these immigrants created lives as remarkable as they are unknown. Their stories of ingenuity and intermixture challenge assumptions about assimilation and reveal cross-racial affinities beneath the surface of early twentieth-century America.
Watch now!
In his groundbreaking book, Green Deen: What Islam Teaches about Protecting the Planet, Ibrahim Abdul-Matin draws on research, scripture, and interviews with Muslim Americans to trace Islam’s preoccupation with humankind’s collective role as stewards of the Earth.
In Sacred Ground, Eboo Patel shares his vision of a better America—a robustly pluralistic country in which our commonalities are more important than our differences, and in which difference enriches, rather than threatens, our religious traditions.
Literature about the Middle East
Read On: Five Books to Watch Out for in 2013
- Published on Tuesday, 29 January 2013 00:00
- Category: Literature
From hard-hitting political commentary to deeply resonating fiction, there is something for everyone in 2013. Middle Eastern and South Asian writers and historians are tackling everything from politics to romance this year, and we’re taking note. Here are our top five books to watch out for in 2013:
The Triumph of Israel’s Radical Right: A Book Review
- Published on Thursday, 20 December 2012 00:00
- Category: Literature
We live in dangerous times. A troika of storms threatens to sink modern civilization: the failing economy, the war on terror and climate change all hang over us like a thick black fog. Politics have become more extreme; the specter of the radical right clouds the illumination of reason. It is into this political maelstrom that Ami Pedahzur sets his excellent new book, The Triumph of Israel’s Radical Right (Oxford University Press, 2012).
Pedahzur’s book fits perfectly into a new wave of scholarship about Israel, Jews and the Middle East. It is well-timed in its attempt to explain and account for the critical and precipitous place that Israel occupies in international relations.
Jews and Words: A Book About The Power of Language
- Published on Wednesday, 21 November 2012 04:32
- Category: Literature
What has connected Jews through the centuries? Amos Oz and his daughter, Fania Oz-Salzberger, consider this question in their lovely new book, Jews and Words (Yale University Press, 2012).
Oz is a celebrated Israeli intellectual, writer and novelist. Born in Jerusalem in 1939, he is a longtime advocate for a 
two-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Oz was educated at Hebrew University and is the author of many books, such as Fima (1991), Israel, Palestine and Peace: Essays (1994), A Tale of Love and Darkness (2003), and How to Cure a Fanatic (2006). He is the recipient of numerous international literary awards, such as the Legion of Honour (1997), the Goethe Prize (2005), and the Primo Levi Prize (2008). Oz is a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University.
Pomegranates and Roses: A Persian Cookbook Review
- Published on Thursday, 08 November 2012 06:15
- Category: Literature
I was a bit nervous when I was asked to write a review of Ariana Bundy’s cookbook, Pomegranates and Roses. After all, I figured, what could a person whose somehow managed to survive for nearly 35 years without really learning how to cook have to say about another person’s cookbook? A lot actually -- it turns out that Pomegranates and Roses is not just a cookbook, it’s a glimpse into the intimate memoirs of a renowned chef who was trained in the finest French culinary schools. This was a book that would take me on a delicious journey where I would unlock my own “food memories.”
Ariana writes that it “was not until I began writing this book that I felt as though I was finally home.” Her book is a wonderful tapestry, weaving her family’s recipes from Iran with colorful tales of her childhood and passion for cooking.
Interested in writing a book review? Want to suggest a book or author for interview?
