Daily Prompt Love <3 In Hiding
7 March 2017
Make about what you’re hiding, about what they’re hiding.
Posts tagged ‘Love Is What Matters’
Daily Prompt Love <3 We Are the Other
6 March 2017
Make art about the Other, about Otherness, about being the Other, about fearing the Other, about discovering the Other.
Monday Must Read: Laila Halaby, Once in a Promised Land, and a memoir in poems, My Name on His Tongue
One of my favorite writers, one of my favorite novels (a read we need now even more than ever), and a memoir in poems. Laila is one of the writers whose work draws me back again and again.
________________________________________
Once in a Promised Land: A Novel
and
my name on his tongue: memoir in poems
Laila Halaby was born in Beirut to a Jordanian father and an American mother. She grew up mostly in Arizona, has traveled a fair amount, and has lived for bits of time on the East and West Coasts, the Midwest, and in Jordan and Italy. Her education includes an undergraduate degree in Italian and Arabic, and two Masters degrees, in Arabic Literature and in Counseling. She currently works as an Outreach Counselor for the University of Arizona’s College of Public Health.
my name on his tongue, Laila’s most recent publication, is a memoir in poems. Her novels West of the Jordan (winner of a PEN/Beyond Margins Award) and Once in a Promised Land (a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Authors selection; also named by the Washington Post as one of the 100 best works of fiction for 2007) were both published by (the phenomenal) Beacon Press. Besides fiction and poetry, she write stories for children, including a (as yet unpublished) book entitled Tracks in the Sand. This is a collection of Palestinian folktales that she gathered from children during the year she was living in Jordan and studying folklore on a Fulbright scholarship.
Laila’s most recent project is a novel that has as one of its main characters an American soldier coming home to the United States after completing three tours in Iraq. The writing and researching of this novel has led to the formation of a creative writing class for veterans.
Visit Laila’s Website: http://lailahalaby.net/
Buy Laila’s beautiful beautiful books!
Once in a Promised Land: A Novel
Praise for Once in a Promised Land
‘Sometimes you run out of adjectives. Or the adjectives lose their luster. What if I say that “Once in a Promised Land” is brilliant, insightful, heartbreaking, enchanting — what does that even mean anymore? But this novel is brilliant because the prose glows, sends off heat. Insightful because it allows us to see into a place that most of us don’t know about. Heartbreaking because you can feel the situation that these characters are trapped in. And enchanting because it’s told in the form of a fairy tale that lets us believe that, somehow, these poor souls may be able to rescue themselves.”-Carolyn See, Washington Post
“Once in a Promised Land is the story of a couple, Jassim and Salwa, who left the deserts of their native Jordan for those of Arizona, each chasing their own dreams of opportunity and freedom. Although the two live far from Ground Zero, they cannot escape the nationwide fallout from 9/11. Jassim, a hydrologist, believes passionately in his mission to keep the water tables from dropping and make water accessible to all people, but his work is threatened by an FBI witch hunt for domestic terrorists. Salwa, a Palestinian now twice displaced, grappling to put down roots in an inhospitable climate, becomes pregnant against her husband’s wishes and then loses the baby. When Jassim kills a teenage boy in a terrible accident and Salwa becomes hopelessly entangled with a shady young American, their tenuous lives in exile and their fragile marriage begin to unravel . This intimate account of two parallel lives is an achingly honest look at what it means to straddle cultures, to be viewed with suspicion, and to struggle to find save haven.”-Book Sense (Notable Title 2007)
Praise for his name on my tongue
“In her debut poetry collection, best-selling novelist Halaby (West of Jordan) narrates the need of any Arab American to navigate new realities while giving voice to old ones. She writes about her inner feelings and daily experiences in a confessional mode reminiscent of works by Louise Glück. Using narrative style as she passionately interweaves insights about peace, war, family, nostalgia, exile, and sociopolitical conflicts among others, Halaby promotes poetry as both testimony and instrument of change: ‘one thousand /one hundred / one / it doesn’t matter the number / they came / and walked / for peace.’ The tireless search for a sense of belonging drums through most of the poems, as the poet tries to reconcile here with there, her new country with the ancestral homeland. She deploys sarcasm and irony to express her bitterness over the trend of cultural demonizing, and her heritage, with its strong narrative of historical grievances, gives the poems a melancholy tone. VERDICT Halaby transfers her life’s experiences into emotionally touching poems. Recommended for all readers, especially those interested in Arab American literature.”—Library Journal
“Laila Halaby is a necessary poet. The frank, appealing poems of my name on his tongue illuminate complexities and inequities with resonance and power. A wake-up call of a book.”—Naomi Shihab Nye, author of 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East
Read More from Laila Online
Hear Laila Read!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIiu0jFcEr4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHplbuS7DrI
Happy reading!
Mary
Daily Prompt Love Catch-Up <3 Uncles & Curiosity
4 March 2017
In many cultures, the teaching of heritage and cultural practices is carried out by members of the extended family, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. In certain cultures, this relationship and teaching is formally recognized, and in cultures with matrilineal descent is referred to as the avunculate, sometimes called avunculism or avuncularism, a social institution where a special relationship exists between an uncle and his sisters’ children. Several Native American tribes practice a form of this, where the uncle is responsible for teaching the children social values and proper behavior while inheritance and ancestry is reckoned through the mother’s family alone. Modern day influences have somewhat but not completely erased this tradition.
Thinking on this especially today, as I watch my sons interact with their sister’s baby son, my GrandPerson Max <3. Thinking on it too, as it’s the weekend of my lovely daughter’s birthday, and my own brother, Bill, now gone on to the next life, was present and there for her literally from the moment she first drew breath. He remained a constant source of Love and education for all of my kids until he left us. My daughter Lia couldn’t say ‘Uncle Bill’ when she was small; it came out ‘Opie Gill.’ So now her brothers are not just ‘Uncles’ to her son, but ‘Opies.” Important job they have ❤ And I have no doubt they’ll honor it well.
Make art about extended family, about aunts, or uncles, about those elders from whom we learn our culture.
5 March 2017
Spent the day with my sons, two wise and funny young men. The two things that impress me about both of them are: 1) their shared sense of honor, and 2) their shared insatiable curiosity. They are both always–always–learning something new, or seeking to learn something new, or thinking about how they can learn something new.
Make art about learning, about loving to learn, about the magic and mystery of curiosity.
Daily Prompt Love <3 On Miracles Being Born
3 March 2017
“The moment a child is born, the mother is also born.”-Osho
Thirty years ago today, the first of the three greatest miracles of my life occurred: I met my daughter Lia. Now she’s a mama herself ❤ The miracle of Endless Love ❤
Make art about daughters, or about being born.
Friday Call for Submissions Love <3 Light Journal Seeks Poetry & Photography
Light: A Journal of Photography & Poetry
Summer Issue – Solitude
Deadline: March 31, 2017
Give it some thought. Solitude is a common topos of art. Loneliness and estrangement are familiar subjects. Being content by oneself, mindful in the present moment, is another recognizable theme. We welcome works that appeal to recognition of popular contexts, but Light encourages rethinking what’s familiar. Ask yourself, “What makes this different?” Perhaps solitude isn’t simple. Maybe, in some contexts, it is. Send us your finest work that explores the truth and the little white lies we tell ourselves about solitude. Send anything, but guide us to see it anew.
Website: www.light-journal.com
Full Guidelines Here: http://www.light-journal.com/submit
Daily Prompt Love <3 Fixing What's Broken
So in the last few months, I’ve experienced a broken pipe, a broken arm, and broken car.
Make art about fixing what’s broken.
Daily Prompt Love <3 What Mama Said About Courage
1 Marc h 2017
My mama had all kinds of sayings, repeated enough that we called them Mamalisms. Thinking on those today, especially what she had to say about courage.
“You have to have the courage of your convictions.”
“Courage doesn’t mean you’re not afraid. Courage means being afraid, and doing it anyway.”
“Sometimes you’re gonna find, when it’s what’s right, you have to be strong enough to stand even if it means people won’t like you.”
‘People tend to think of courage being loud, but more often than not, real courage is quiet, and goes unnoticed, just people doing the right thing, the thing their conscience tells them is what needs to be done.”
“Sometimes, you have to not only be brave for yourself, but brave for others. To whom much is given, much is expected. If you have the resources to fight on someone else’s behalf, someone weaker or less equipped than you, then you have a responsibility to do that.”
I think of how often she fed people, took people in, or how she took care of her patients in her job as a nurse, especially quietly explaining to our young parish priest, why he was not only wrong, but defying God, when he admonished her, saying that she should not be caring for AIDS patients back in the 80s.
When I write those final lines, I don’t want to think I wish I’d had more courage.
Make art about daily acts of courage, about being willing to defy expectations or criticism to do what you think is right.
Daily Prompt Love <3 Monsters and Magic
26 February 2017
Make art about monsters of our own making
27 February 2017
Make art about everyday magic.
Monday Must Read: Rereading a Needed Classic
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of others he treated later in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. Frankl’s theory—known as logotherapy, from the Greek word logos (“meaning“)—holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful.
At the time of Frankl’s death in 1997, Man’s Search for Meaning had sold more than 10 million copies in twenty-four languages. A 1991 reader survey for the Library of Congress that asked readers to name a “book that made a difference in your life” found Man’s Search for Meaning among the ten most influential books in America.
Beacon Press, the original English-language publisher of Man’s Search for Meaning, is issuing this new paperback edition with a new Foreword, biographical Afterword, jacket, price, and classroom materials to reach new generations of readers.
Buy Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning (and support an indie press) here:
http://www.beacon.org/Mans-Search-for-Meaning-P607.aspx
Mary Carroll-Hackett: Poetry and Prose 
Recent Comments