The Language of Survival and Resistance: A Review of Shereen Malherbe’s Yassini Girls, by Zeynep Alp Book Reviews [email protected] Mon, 11/18/2024 - 15:22 Yassini Girls (Beacon Books, 2024), the new novel by Shereen Malherbe, invites readers into a rich and emotional narrative, weaving together the personal and the historical. Through the intertwined stories of Layla, Fatima, and the Girl, Malherbe explores what it means to live between worlds, hold onto tradition, and endure trauma. Her storytelling is both direct and nuanced, engaging with the intimate details of individual lives while reflecting the broader experiences of the Palestinian people. The novel begins with the scent of maqlouba, a traditional Palestinian dish dating back to Salahuddin al-Ayyubi’s time. This introduction emphasizes that heritage and continuity are central themes. Food, here, is not just sustenance—it is a way of asserting identity in the face of othering and displacement. The narrative flows between past and present, tracing characters who know where they belong and those still searching. At the heart of the novel is Layla, a young woman born in the diaspora to a Palestinian father and an English mother. After losing her father, she reconnects with her roots through a TV documentary. Layla’s story captures the tension of living between two worlds, as she struggles to reconcile what she has inherited with what she lives day-to-day. You feel her... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2024-11-18 21:22:51 UTC ]
The Lit in Colour Pioneers programme, which supports UK schools in diversifying their English Literature curriculum, will be working with 119 cohorts from across the country this year, reaching almost 12,000 students. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-09-06 10:31:02 UTC ]
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This week we’ve published the findings of research conducted by Lit in Colour, a campaign run by Penguin Random House and The Runnymede Trust to make the teaching of English Literature more inclusive and representative of the myriad of different voices and narratives that make up Britain’s past... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-06-29 23:09:45 UTC ]
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Less than one percent of authors studied at GCSE English Literature are from an ethnic minority background. Continue reading at BBC News
[ BBC News | 2021-06-29 18:52:35 UTC ]
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Research commissioned by Penguin Random House has revealed only 0.7% of English Literature GCSE students in England study a book by a writer of colour while only 7% study a book by a woman. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-06-28 22:57:04 UTC ]
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‘Frailty, thy name is woman’ is one of dozens of famous expressions that have entered common speech, but which originated in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The old quip about Hamlet, that it’s ‘too full of quotations’, wittily sums up the play’s influence on not just English literature but on the... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2021-06-24 17:00:06 UTC ]
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It turns out 12th-century British scholars (monks, really, we’re mainly talking monks, here) had absolutely no problem borrowing “long passages” from whatever manuscripts they could get their hands on, and would freely plagiarize the writings of continental scholars. Of course, plagiarism then... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-05-11 14:10:25 UTC ]
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When compared with the sonnet, ballad, or even the villanelle, the pantoum verse form could hardly be called ‘popular’, and examples of pantoums in English literature are not exactly plentiful. Nonetheless, there are some fine instances of the pantoum – a distinctive and strict form which has... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2021-03-25 15:00:19 UTC ]
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New issue, dedicated to work by current and former prisoners, provokes uproar after it emerges one poet has served time for child pornography offencesThe US’s prestigious Poetry magazine has doubled down on its decision to publish a poem by a convicted sex offender as part of a special edition... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-02-03 16:08:52 UTC ]
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My assignment was to offer a survey course on the history of English literature in northeast China. I was paired with a young American teacher sponsored by the United Nations who was to teach phonetics and oral expression. We taught six days a week, and every Wednesday afternoon our students... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-01-15 09:49:40 UTC ]
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Lit in Colour, the publisher’s partnership with the Runnymede Trust, hopes to redress imbalances in English literature coursesThe book publisher Penguin Random House has teamed up with the thinktank the Runnymede Trust to boost diversity in reading lists in schools.The partnership – Lit in... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-10-24 16:11:09 UTC ]
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Find fresh new graphic novels like Long Way Down: The Graphic Novel by Jason Reynolds and Danica Novgodoroff for yourself or the young reader in your life. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-10-22 10:37:00 UTC ]
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Selected by Dr Oliver Tearle English literature has a rich tradition of comic writing. From Chaucer’s ‘Miller’s Tale’ to Shakespeare’s Falstaff to the early comic novels of Smollett, Sterne, Fielding, and Swift, there are plenty of laughs to be had from the pages of the literary greats. But what... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2020-10-08 14:00:57 UTC ]
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BORN AND RAISED in Montenegro, Olja Knežević studied English literature at the University of Belgrade, Serbia, before completing her MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, University of London, in 2008. Now living in Croatia, she is one of those effortlessly international authors whose... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-10-02 12:30:19 UTC ]
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Interviews Randy Ribay was born in the Philippines and raised in the Midwest. He’s the author of After the Shot Drops and An Infinite Number of Parallel Universes. His latest book, Patron Saints of Nothing, is a powerful coming-of-age story about... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-09-29 13:14:12 UTC ]
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In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle enjoys the comic verse by one of the most ‘miserable’ poets in English literature ‘The Crocodile or, Public Decency’ is not one of the best-known poems of A. E. Housman (1859-1936), the classical scholar and poet who failed his […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2020-09-18 14:00:40 UTC ]
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The Jhalak Prize, which annually awards the Book of the Year by a Writer of Colour, has launched a new, second prize for books for children and young adults. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-09-15 07:13:10 UTC ]
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Veteran biographer A.N. Wilson takes on one of the most popular, prolific and puzzling writers in English literature in "The Mystery of Charles Dickens." Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2020-08-06 14:00:54 UTC ]
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After finding an anthology of English literature in the rubble of the Islamic University of Gaza during the 2014 Israeli bombing, Mosab Abu Toha had a dream: founding an English language library in one of the most confined, crowded, and isolated places in the world. According to the “We Are Not... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-07-22 08:47:29 UTC ]
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Traditionally, a ballad was a song that was designed to be danced to, as the etymology of the word, Provençal balada meaning ‘dance, song to dance to’, ultimately from late Latin ballare. The great British ballads – and we say ‘British’ because many of them were Scottish rather than English... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2020-06-14 14:00:45 UTC ]
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How many times have you heard someone say, ‘I don’t read poetry. I just don’t get it.’ Or perhaps, ‘Why can’t poets just come out and say what they want to say? Why say something in such a way?’ For many people, poetry is ‘difficult’. But whilst it’s true that […] The post 10 of the Most... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2020-05-30 14:00:36 UTC ]
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