We Wrote in Symbols, Love and Lust by Arab Women Writers  Edited by Selma Dabbagh  Literary anthology   Saqi Books, September 2021   We Wrote in Symbols offers a collection of poetry and prose that deciphers the signposts for the phases and stages of longing, lust, and love: anticipation, courtship, intoxication, commitment, adoration, in/fidelity, betrayal, complacency, danger and more. Women of Arabic heritage from around the world and across three millennia most often celebrate, sometimes ridicule, and all evaluate the nuances of sex and love and their power dynamics. The first prose selection, “A Free Girl's Tale" by Saeida Rouass*, examines agency and consequences. The protagonist realizes, “As I wondered in my naivety I had no inclination that my simple existence shook the very foundations of power…” Much later in this collection Hanan al-Shaykh's longer “Cupid Complaining to Venus" thematically overlaps and diverges from S.R.’s interpretation ...

  The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin Speculative Orbit, March 2020   Octavia Butler, Kafka, Men in Black , Inception …  It’s as if this author has consumed and absorbed every significant SciFi/fantasy/speculative innovation and synthesized them with musical refrains and sociopolitical riffs on otherness and identity. There’s humor and biting satire, irony and sarcasm. Dangerous existential and physical battles. Brilliant writing. Glorious reading.  A few memorable lines: What good does it do to be valuable, if nobody values you? [Prologue, pg. 9] “Not helping your case with the mansplaining, guy.” [Chapter 1, pg. 37] “… So, lesson one of New York: what people think about us isn’t what we really are.”   Ron-Coms Hana Khan Carries On by Uzma Jalaluddin Contemporary romance Berkley, April 2021 Examining the layers of Canada’s Golden Crescent: Hana broadcasts her thoughts, jockeys for position, contemplates romance, and unravels family ent...