#rajia hassib

[cinnbar-bun]

hello dear! just read your Crocodile fic and i am in love

i wanted to ask you a favor… if it’s not too much trouble could you please share some arabic poems with us? i love how they express themselves and the way they talk is so full of life, thank you in advance!

Oh this is such a lovely ask! I’ll be the first to admit that to be honest, I probably couldn’t give you really good recommendations. Most of my studies and degree work in literature comes from Arabic authors who have written about their experiences in English rather than literature/poetry in the Arabic language.

Obviously there are the rather “known” ones like Mahmoud Darwish and possibly Rumi (although it’s more Persian but, ya know-). I do recommend Maram al-Rasmi, she was one I found on my own. I’ll list Abdallah Zrika, Nazik Al-Malaika, Khalil Mutran, Ibrahim Tuqan, and Fadwa Tuqan.

As for what I have read, and I highly recommend their works if you are looking to read more Arab-English authors/poets (please read up on the content warnings- you can dm me and I’ll do my best to list them). Also apologies for the summaries below:

Naomi Shihab Nye: a lovely poet. Scared, Scarred, Sacred is one I’ve read a lot during my university studies.

Salt Houses by Hala Alyan. This follows four generations of a Palestinian family after the Six-Day war. I really loved this one and the relationship between the family, both in their dysfunction and in their bonding. There are lots of heavy topics in this one, especially since it is directly dealing with war and the generational trauma associated with it.

I, the Divine by Rabih Alameddine. I will be the first to admit that the way it’s set up and jumps around chronologically can be confusing and drag in the beginning, but after piecing together the story as it goes along, it’s truly a beautiful and unique story. It stuck with me in a way that I couldn’t really explain. Trigger warning for this one too the content can get heavy and graphic. I’m not gonna summarize too much I think you should dive head first into it.

A Pure Heart by Rajia Hassib. This follows two sisters, Rose and Gameela, who have distinct personalities and views on politics and culture. After Gameela’s death, Rose goes back to Egypt and looks through Gameela’s items only to discover how much Gameela hid from her family.

As a lit major I love answering questions like this so thank you for giving me the opportunity!!! I really appreciate the question and am so happy you took the opportunity to read my work and ask this. Have a lovely day, darling!!

[readingaway]

Danielle Babbles About Books (Quick Review) - A Pure Heart by Rajia Hassib

It has been too long since I read this for me to give a real review. But I would be remiss if I didn't post something akin to a review, I think, because this book doesn't get enough attention or readers.

Lasting impressions: Empathy. While the context is different, I spend a lot of time these days thinking about deradicalization and this book provided a lot of food for those thoughts.

[elenajohansenreads]

Books I Read in 2022

#3 – In the Language of Miracles, by Rajia Hassib

Reading the World Mini Challenge: 1/12

Rating: 3/5 stars

The book attempts to be many things, and it accomplishes some much better than others.

As a narrative about a family with a coherent plot and a satisfying climax, I’m disappointed with it. I felt that it withheld the mystery of The Terrible Event that sparked the story for too long. Yes, I had put together clues and made assumptions, but when the central idea of the narrative is that this family is broken and suffering, ostracized by their community for the crime their eldest child committed, what sense does it make for everyone but the reader to know the details of that crime? And this is exacerbated by only addressing the hole that Hosaam’s crime and death have left in the family, but not much at all about his life. And with the time frame of the story being so focused on the week leading up to the anniversary memorial service, I expected something grand or wild or transformative to happen when we finally got there, and instead, it was a confusing jumble of oddly paced action and internal revelation, with no clear catharsis for (or utter rejection of) the family by the community. It felt like a non-ending.

The epilogue clears a little bit of that up, and provides a reasonable future for Khaled, the middle child, but it’s more important to the religious themes than the plot itself.

As an exploration of the immigrant experience in America, I think it’s more successful. We get the tension between three different generations of the family about how Egyptian or American to be, and the lack of understanding about how the two cultures will interact with each other, and the difference in family structure and expected levels of obedience and respect. (The family’s Muslim identity also contributes to this, and I don’t know enough about either Egyptian or Muslim traditions and practices to identify which bits come from which source. But my thoughts on religion are coming a bit later, I just want to acknowledge I’m probably conflating the two in some respects.) It’s not hard to see the children as the most Americanized, the most ready to react to the Islamophobia present in this time period–I thought it was a nice touch that Khaled was worried about his younger sister becoming outwardly more conservative by possibly starting to cover her hair, as attacks on young women with head scarves were on the rise at the time. But it was more interesting to see the parents, the direct immigrants, struggling with how they were perceived, and how they perceived each other, on a scale of Egyptian to American, because it fluctuated, and both at times were convinced the other was the one less adapted to their new home. And Grandma Ehsan was there to be the bastion of tradition and religion, while not at all being a stereotype but a complex character in her own right.

But strangely (for me, who’s about as un-religious as they come) I found the exploration of Islam and fate to be the most interesting part of the book. Each surviving member of the family who was given a POV was shouldering some guilt and feelings of blame for what Hosaam did, and each had a different relationship with their faith. The father was not particularly observant of his religious obligations, but capitalized on the power structure both to maintain his authority and to rationalize his guilt. The mother was deeply conflicted about the role of prayer and surrender to God in accepting what had happened, and wondering if she could have changed the outcome, all while her mother hovered nearby admonishing her for playing “what if.” And their remaining son was having typical teenage troubles buried under the extra weight of being labeled as a murder’s younger brother–he struggled to believe in miracles, the core theme and question of the book, and had a complicated relationship with both Islam and the Arabic language, which he never spoke to the standard that he felt others expected of him. His narrative thread is what connects the whole story, as the prologue his a story from his childhood and the epilogue a glimpse of his adulthood, and he is the one who spends the most time examining his life in the context of the tragedy that happened a year before.

I found in Khaled’s conflict about his own beliefs an echo of what I’ve experienced, as someone raised Christian who is no longer a part of the church, and who belongs to a family that still remains devout. I also suffered small pangs of envy, as I often do when seeing another religion in media, at the rituals of solace and comfort they provide that seem better to me than the ones I grew up with. (This happens to me a lot in anime, actually, because I know enough about Shinto to think that if that were my childhood religion, I might still be a believer.) I’m aware that this tendency of mine is tied up in a Western/white exotification of unfamiliar things; I can’t fully separate that part of myself, as it’s impossible not to think the grass is greener elsewhere when I’m so dissatisfied with my own ex-faith. But there are parts of Islam (as well as many other religions) that I find beautiful and welcoming, and this story brought out a lot of that and kept me engaged even when the plot was flat or frustrating.

Actually, now that I think about it, since the story doesn’t set out to prove or disprove the existence of God or miracles or the usefulness of prayer in averting an individual’s fate, I suppose the non-ending I’m so dissatisfied by is in keeping with the theme of the story. But that doesn’t make me like the ending better now that I’ve thought it through.

[maryannmackey]

She leans against the deck's railing, watching a pair of squirrels chase each other across the lawn. Now more than ever does she believe Mark's claim that belonging starts with an identification with the place, not the people. 'The natives may take you in, or they may refuse to do so, regardless of how long you've lived among them,' he had once told her as they strolled along the Nile. 'But places are always more welcoming. Places don't care where you were born or how long you've lived in them. If you like them and make the effort to know them, they make you feel like you belong there. It's their gift to you. Their way of liking you back.' Throughout his travels, Mark had made it a priority to know the place that was to become his home. In his first years in New York and, later, in Lebanon and Egypt, he had kept journals with folded-up maps nestled within their pages, had scribbled descriptions of the most random of spots - the corner of 36th and Broadway, where he tried honey-roasted nuts for the first time; the brick-paved stretch of Hamra Street in Beirut, where he often stood under the same palm tree and watched the stores light up at dusk; the row of shops bordering the Zamalek Sporting Club in Cairo; the first bench on the right-hand side as one walks off the Qasr El-Nil Bridge; the coffee shop a few steps below the sidewalk on El-Moez Street. The more of these random nooks he could claim an intimate knowledge of, the more he felt at home.

A Pure Heart, Rajia Hassib

[tragedies-and-dreams]

A Pure Heart: A Novel by Rajia Hassib — book review A Pure Heart’s portrayal of sisterhood is tepid at best. The needlessly expository narration, the clichéd character dynamics, and the meandering storyline didn't really grab me at all.

[bigtickhk]

A Pure Heart by Rajia Hassib https://amzn.to/2KCnTLA

[scvpubliclib]

In Rajia Hassib’s novel “A Pure Heart,” an Egyptologist excavates her own grief in the wake of the Arab Spring.

[homejourneydestination]

My next read is "In the language of miracles" by Rajia Hassib • One of the books I just picked up from library shelf and had no idea what is about. It is important to stay open-minded, otherwise we would read always the same books.(I am completely fine with reading anything but fantasy/YA.) . • "The graceful, elegiac voice of In the Language of Miracles paints tender portraits of a family’s struggle to move on in the wake of heartbreak, to stay true to its traditions, and above all else, to find acceptance and reconciliation." https://www.instagram.com/p/B9UKBZZAelr/?igshid=chpaddne9pi4

[abetheone]

'A Pure Heart,' By Rajia Hassib : NPR

‘A Pure Heart,’ By Rajia Hassib : NPR

[ad_1]

Of all the emotions that can arise following the loss of a sibling, one of the most painful is guilt. Once a brother or sister passes away, there’s frequently a string of intrusive thoughts that pummel the surviving sibling: I should have visited them more often; I should have told them how I felt while I had the chance. The feelings might be irrational, but there’s nothing…

[outsidetheknow]

A Suicide Bombing Shatters a Divided Family by NOOR BRARA

A Suicide Bombing Shatters a Divided Family by NOOR BRARA

By NOOR BRARA

In Rajia Hassib’s novel “A Pure Heart,” an Egyptologist excavates her own grief in the wake of the Arab Spring.

Published: August 6, 2019 at 12:00PM

from NYT Books https://ift.tt/2MLZLc5 via IFTTT

[graphicsforyou-blog1]

A Suicide Bombing Shatters a Divided Family https://fc.lc/2Nog In Rajia Hassib’s novel “A Pure Heart,” an Egyptologist excavates her own grief in the wake of the Arab Spring.. via NYT Books NOOR BRARA Books and Literature

[topnewsfromtheworld]

A Suicide Bombing Shatters a Divided Family

By NOOR BRARA In Rajia Hassib’s novel “A Pure Heart,” an Egyptologist excavates her own grief in the wake of the Arab Spring. Published: August 6, 2019 at 01:00AM from NYT Books https://ift.tt/2MLZLc5

[hulusan]

A Suicide Bombing Shatters a Divided Family

By NOOR BRARA In Rajia Hassib’s novel “A Pure Heart,” an Egyptologist excavates her own grief in the wake of the Arab Spring. Published: August 6, 2019 at 04:30AM from NYT Books https://ift.tt/2MLZLc5

[izayoi1242]

A Suicide Bombing Shatters a Divided Family

By NOOR BRARA In Rajia Hassib’s novel “A Pure Heart,” an Egyptologist excavates her own grief in the wake of the Arab Spring. Published: August 6, 2019 at 09:00AM from NYT Books https://ift.tt/2MLZLc5 via IFTTT

[safashaqsy]

Reviews of the Week with Rajia Hassib, Brandy Colbert, Benjamin Moser, and More! Every weekday we feature a different review on Booklist Online. These reviews are notable for different reasons—they may be starred, or in high demand, or especially relevant to the current issue’s spotlight. A step-by-step collection of projects for young makers; an Egyptologist's investigation https://www.booklistreader.com/2019/06/14/books-and-authors/reviews-of-the-week-with-rajia-hassib-brandy-colbert-benjamin-moser-and-more/ #bookgiveaway #freebooks #books #bookstagram #writing #comicbooks #writingcommunity #handwriting #bookstagrammer #bookshelf #instabooks #booksofinstagram #creativewriting #fiction #bookstore #authorsofinstagram #ilovebooks #bookstagramfeature #sciencefiction #bookshop #authors #yabooks #ebooks #novels #writingprompts #bookslover #booksbooksbooks #bookshelves #books📚 #booksarelife #newbooks https://www.instagram.com/p/ByvN7FYH_u4/?igshid=6f8l443cafcj

[joannmathews]

Women and Adversity: Rajia Hassib, Part II Novelist

Women and Adversity: Rajia Hassib, Part II Novelist

Part I of this blog appeared March 26. In it Rajia Hassib tells of returning to school and the stresses she experienced writing In the Language of Miracles.

JAM: What was the biggest obstacle you faced when you were writing [your second novel] A Pure Heart?

RH: A Pure Heart presented a different challenge. By then, I had finished my MA, was…