Tag: book review

The Secret Life of Saeed, the Pessoptimist, a 1974 novel by Emile Habiby, tackles the Israel-Palestine conflict with nuance, poignancy, and hilarity all at once. Through the story of a gullible Palestinian everyman who becomes an informant for the Zionist state, Habiby critiques the cruelty of the Israeli occupation and the failures of the Arab […]

My Shadow is my Skin Book Review: The Hyphenated Identity of Iranian Diaspora “I have taken my shadow—my Iranian heritage—and inverted it. My shadow is my skin. I advertise it” (p. 25).  In three declarative sentences, Iranian-American author Cyrus Copeland 1 pledges his embrace to the one constant antagonist in his innate battle. He integrates […]