Multicultural fiction has grown in popularity over the past several years. In fact, it’s almost as popular as love stories featuring handsome vampires, zombies invading classic literature, and S&M bodice rippers – almost. It’s not too hard to understand why: different cultures are mingling more and more in this age of globalization.
Continue Reading Eat Pluribus Unum- Expanding your Worldview
A lot of my friends ask me to describe, if possible, a common thread of popular French humor. Popular American humor tends to be slapstick and, oftentimes, plays on the trope of an immature character not able or willing to “grow up”. And while French humor can be slapstick (I’m thinking of movies here like OSS 117, featuring the wonderful Jean Dujardin), the French prefer a more witty and sarcastic humor that relies on wordplay and puns.
Continue Reading Culture Clash In Humor
For so many years after 9/11, authors were unable or unwilling to write about the tragedy. I understand why: writing about such a tragedy, so soon after the event, can ruffle feathers if too much is imagined or if certain details are not treated. Writers were scared about the backlash. Perhaps many writers were just getting their minds around the enormity of what happened that Tuesday morning.
Continue Reading Off-limits: Writing Fiction About 9/11
How many of you have heard of a man by the name of Ibn Battuta? Probably not many of you, if any of you at all. Now, what if I said that Ibn Battuta, a contemporary of Marco Polo, traveled three times the distance that Polo did and is considered the greatest explorer who ever [...]
Continue Reading The Voyages of Ibn Battuta
I spent some time in India this summer. It was the first time I traveled there and I could never have anticipated, before my departure, what I would experience on the subcontinent. It is a land of extremes: extreme heat, extreme poverty, extreme beauty, and extreme waste. Traveling to India is not a purely pleasurable vacation; it is an assault on the senses, it is a standing challenge to the way you live your live. It causes you to question the things you hold dear and the basic (western) structures of life.
Continue Reading Life, Death, and the Ganges
Due to school, I’ve been reading a lot of theory lately, and not so much literature, but I won’t bore you all with the details. Instead, I’m going to try to block out Foucault’s theory of governmentality (for a paper I’m writing for a class) long enough to tell you about one of my favorite authors: [...]
Continue Reading Marguerite Duras
I’m always on the lookout for affecting poetry. It’s not so easy to find – of all forms of literature, poets face the most risk of failure as they face an empty page. Each word, each comma, must fit and there is only a very limited amount of space to make a reader feel something. [...]
Continue Reading Iraq War Poetry, From Both Sides
I was reading an article this morning about the new monthly literary magazine The American Reader, when I was struck by something the founder, Uzoamaka Maduka, stated: “Literature, from women of any race and men of any race, besides white, would always be pigeonholed as, ‘Now I’m going to tell you my Nigerian story.’ And [...]
Continue Reading Multicultural Literature: Rising Popularity and Failures
I’ve been reading a lot about raising bilingual children and language acquisition in babies recently. This might not be completely on par with the subject of multi-cultural literature, but I should make a disclosure: my husband and I are expecting our first child, who should be making his appearance in the next weeks, and we [...]
Continue Reading Deciding to Go Bilingual
Lubna Azabal and Liron Levi in Strangers Bridging the Political: Israeli and Palestinian Film I’ve been watching a lot of Israeli and Palestinian movies lately, which is partly due to an increased dependence on Netflix nights during the frigid cold. If the film is well done – and many are – the observer is [...]
Continue Reading Bridging the Political: Israeli and Palestinian Film
I’ve already written about the problems inherent in writing about multiculturalism. In fact, many scholars find much to say against labeling something as multicultural, whether in regards to multicultural literature, multicultural feminism, or any other discipline. Why is this, you might ask? Well, to understand why multiculturalism could be viewed as a dirty word, we need to uncover some of the history behind the term.
Continue Reading Dirty Words: American Exceptionalism and Multliculturalism
