Blogs and Stories
Azar Nafisi's Nightstand
Unaccustomed Earth. By Jhumpa Lahiri. 352 Pages. Vintage. $15.
Unaccustomed Earth
by Jhumpa Lahiri
The stories are dazzling. ... We are drawn to the characters in these stories because of the universality of their experiences.
Jhumpa Lahiri’s collection of short stories is centered on the paradoxes and tensions shaping the lives of different generations of Bengali immigrants in America. The stories are dazzling not just in the way they portray the differences between the old and new cultures and generations, or the clashes of two different sets of traditions and norms, at times as vast as the geographical distance that separates America from India, but the fact that we find ourselves sharing so much with strangers from a different world, and coming to the sudden revelation that we are alike in essentials despite the differences created by our nationality, ethnicity, religion, race, or gender. We are drawn to the characters in these stories because of the universality of their experiences, evoking in us feelings of loss, grief, irony, and at times despair, reminding us of the inadequacy of terms such as home and identity.
10 Power Food Combos
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How Obama Wins in 2012
As vice chairman of Public Strategies and president of Maverick Media, Mark McKinnon has helped meet strategic challenges for candidates, corporations and causes, including George W. Bush, John McCain, Governor Ann Richards, Charlie Wilson, Lance Armstrong, and Bono.
Family Secrets in Tehran
Azar Nafisi is the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran and the new memoir Things I've Been Silent About. She is a visiting professor and the director of the SAIS Dialogue Project at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, where she is a professor of aesthetics, culture, and literature, and teaches courses on the relation between culture and politics.
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