The Language of Survival and Resistance: A Review of Shereen Malherbe’s Yassini Girls, by Zeynep Alp Book Reviews robvollmar@ou.edu 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 ]
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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In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle examines a famous phrase derived from Shakespeare The old line about Hamlet, that it’s ‘too full of quotations’, wittily sums up the play’s influence on not just English literature but on the everyday language we use. Many of us... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2020-05-29 14:00:47 UTC ]
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Guest Blogger: Prof Katy Shaw, University of Northumbria, Vice-Chair of BACLS – the British Association of Literary Studies – and executive committee member of University English, the national subject association. In recent years there has been a rapid rise in the teaching of English Literature... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2020-05-18 09:30:54 UTC ]
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Jeremy Trafford, who has died aged 85 after contracting Covid-19, was a publisher, teacher and writer. I met him in the late 1970s, while supply teaching at the London Oratory school, in west London, where he taught English literature in the sixth form. He was a brilliant teacher, who inspired... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-05-05 11:07:04 UTC ]
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When we think of poems, these days most people probably automatically think of lyric poems: usually quite short poems which describe the poet’s (or an imagined speaker’s) thoughts and feelings. But from the epic poems of Homer to the Border Ballads of the Middle Ages to notable contemporary... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2020-04-29 14:00:40 UTC ]
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The Covid-19 pandemic has seen a spike in reading among young adults, a survey from The Reading Agency has found. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-04-23 02:12:37 UTC ]
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Literary criticism (or even ‘literary theory’) goes back as far as ancient Greece, and Aristotle’s Poetics. But the rise of English Literature as a university subject, at the beginning of the twentieth century, led to literary criticism focusing on English literature – everything from... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2020-04-15 14:00:07 UTC ]
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The sestina form is thought to have been created by Provencal troubadours – and possibly by one specific troubadour, Arnaut Daniel – in around 1200. However, it didn’t arrive in English literature until the late 1570s, when both Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser, poets at the court of Queen... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2020-03-04 15:00:47 UTC ]
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Below is the text of the 2020 Clark Lecture in English Literature instituted by Trinity College, Cambridge. * Thank you for inviting me to deliver this, the Clark Lecture, now in its 152nd year. When I received the invitation, I scrolled down the list of previous speakers, the many “Sirs” and... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-02-12 09:49:50 UTC ]
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The novelist on William Blake, crying through Greta Gerwig’s Little Women and an insightful poem about teenage masturbationBorn in Bury, Greater Manchester, in 1978, Emma Jane Unsworth studied English literature at the University of Liverpool and received an MA from Manchester University’s... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-01-26 10:00:20 UTC ]
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Interviews Carolyne Larrington Audible’s new fiction podcast, Hag, launching August 29, features eight reimaginings of traditional British folktales by eight contemporary female writers, with folktales chosen from across the UK. The collection will be... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2019-08-30 14:21:50 UTC ]
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New fiction on China's bestseller lists captures the contemporary sensibilities of young adults in the country's largest cities. The post China Bestsellers for July: An Urban Online Gaming Culture Drives Sales appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2019-08-30 05:30:36 UTC ]
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Interviews Shelly Bhoil Tenzin Dickie is a Tibetan writer and translator and editor of The Treasury of Lives, a biographical encyclopedia of Tibet, Inner Asia, and the Himalayan region. Her edited anthology, Old Demons, New Deities: 21 Short Stories from... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2019-06-25 14:25:59 UTC ]
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Street Noise Books, a new independent publishing house specializing in graphic memoir and illustrated nonfiction for young adults, will publish its first list in January 2020. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2019-05-15 04:00:00 UTC ]
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As a recipient of the Arts Connects Us Grant I travelled to Ghana and Sierra Leone to meet with writers and publishing professionals working in the field of books for young readers to foster creative and collaborative exchanges between those contacts and publishing professionals and readers in... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2019-03-19 11:10:28 UTC ]
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Author Marjorie Weinman Sharmat, creator of more than 130 books for children and young adults, and known for her beloved series about boy detective Nate the Great, died on March 12; she was 90. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2019-03-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Betty Miles, the pioneering feminist author of more than 25 books for children and young adults, died on July 19 at the age of 90. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2018-07-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Prolific author Patricia Hermes, creator of more than 50 books for children and young adults, died on July 11 at her home in Phoenix; she was 82. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2018-07-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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You should not use the word love lightly. Love, about a person, means that every inch of them delights you, even the parts that also cause you pain or terror. It means you care about their flourishing; their way of seeing is dear to you; you want to stroke their hair and serve them cocoa; their... Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2017-10-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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