Him, me, Muhammad Ali
By: Randa Jarrar
Publisher: Sarabande Books
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 201
ISBN-13: 9781941411315
Subjects: Interpersonal relations; Fiction
Work titles: Short stories
Description: "In her first story collection, Jarrar employs a particular, rather than rhetorical approach to race and gender. Thus we have "How Can I Be of Use to You," with its complicated relationship between a distinguished Egyptian feminist and her young intern, demonstrating that gender politics are never straightforward, and both generations-old and new-take advantage of each other. There's also a healthy dose of magic surrealism, as in the wild and witty story "Zelda the Halfie" which follows a breed of half Ibexes/half humans and their various tribulations. The writing is peppered with gorgeous imagery: a moon reflected in an ice cream scoop, breath that runs ahead of its body, and two apartments in a high rise whose tenants precisely mirror each other. Randa Jarrar is the author of a highly successful novel, A Map of Home, which received an Arab-American Book Award and was named one of the best novels of 2008 by the Barnes & Noble Review. She grew up in Kuwait and Egypt, and moved to the United States after the first Gulf War. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Utne Reader, Salon.com, Guernica, the Rumpus, the Oxford American, Ploughshares, and more. She blogs for Salon, and lives in California"--
Table of contents: title: The lunatic's eclipse --; title: Building girls --; title: Lost in freakin' Yonkers --; title: How can I be of use to you? --; title: A sailor --; title: Grace --; title: Testimony of Malik, prisoner #287690 --; title: Accidental transients --; title: Asmahan --; title: Him, me, Muhammad Ali --; title: The story of my building --; title: A frame for the sky --; title: The life, loves, and adventures of Zelwa the Halfie.