A Year in Reading: Zak Salih
I clung to books this year for consolation, for escape, for solace, for comfort in a way I haven’t clung to them since I was an equally anxious and uncertain teenager.
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My Adventures in Hell
On one particular drive, I interrupted my father and told him, apropos of nothing other than to see how he would react, that I didn’t think Hell was real.
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Indulging in the Sweet Sorrow of Melancholy
This is melancholy’s truth. It is both blessing and curse, boon and bane: an ever-persistent struggle between sweet and sour, joy and sorrow.
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In Which a Susan Sontag Fan Learns to Love Her Fiction
To say I love Susan Sontag’s writing means I must come to terms with the fact that much of her fiction just isn’t that good.
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Returning to My People: Reading Tayeb Salih in the Suburbs
Season of Migration to the North is a 169-page umbilical cord connecting me not just to my Sudanese side but, in a more direct manner, to my 74-year-old father who has managed to survive—and thrive—suspended between two worlds. It’s his suspension, this thrilling existential high-wire act, which inspires my own.
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