Download or read book Burqa of Skin writings written by Nelly Arcan and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literary Nonfiction. Women's Studies. Translated by Melissa Bull. BURQA OF SKIN is a dense collection of writings channelling harrowing disenchantment and indignation. From her very first novel, PUTAIN (Seuil, 2001), Nelly Arcan shook the literary landscape with her flamboyant lyricism and her preoccupations with such recurring themes as our culture's vertiginous obsession with youth, and its reverse: the draw of death. Now beyond the ripples of scandal Arcan's work has caused, here are the last echoes of her work, and it is as stunning as it is brief. BURQA OF SKIN, with its gruesome title, catapults her work into contemporary debates on culture and gender. The book collects three previously unpublished works: The Dress, The Child in the Mirror and Shame. The first two are written in the first person, in that turbulent, suffocating language that was Arcan's singular brand, that of a writer on the edge. In the third text, she analyses with inexhaustible ferocity her humiliating experience on the set of a TV talk show. Two lesser- known nonfiction pieces are also included in this collection: a reflection on speed dating and a column published in 2004 titled Suicide Can Be Harmful to Your Health. A masterpiece, a rare and poisonous plant whose posthumous publication makes [the work] all the more striking.--Juliette Einhorn, Le Figaro ... When Arcan's writing is at its sharpest--as it nearly always was, and as Melissa Bull's translation convincingly conveys--practically every sentence can serve as a jumping-off point for sustained contemplation and/or heated debate...--The Montreal Gazette ...the writing is genuine and lived, giving an almost real-time picture of the author's philosophical wrestlings... stylishly translated by Melissa Bull... Fantastically intelligent, always trying to second-guess how a woman should be, Arcan finds death the only answer to her predicament. In style and emotion--and honesty--her work is a much closer cousin to Edouard Leve's Suicide than to the archness of Belle de Jour or Catherine Millet. The best way to absorb Arcan's work is to read it in chronological order, and then to lament that the titles of her work--Whore, Hysteric, Breakneck, Exit--so succinctly and poignantly summarize the short life and hard-won philosophy of this exceptional writer.--The Times Literary Supplement

Download or read book Burqa of Skin written by Nelly Arcan and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Burqa of Skin is a dense collection of writings from Nelly Arcan, channelling harrowing disenchantment and indignation. From her very first novel, Putain (Seuil, 2001), Arcan shook the literary landscape with her flamboyant lyricism and her preoccupations with such recurring themes as our culture's vertiginous obsession with youth, and its reverse: the draw of death. Now beyond the ripples of scandal Arcan's work has caused, here are the last echoes of her work, and it is as stunning as it is brief. Burqa of Skin, with its gruesome title, catapults her work into contemporary debates on culture.

Download or read book It s Not about the Burqa written by Mariam Khan and published by Picador. This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seventeen Muslim women speaking frankly about the hijab and wavering faith, about love and divorce, about feminism, queer identity, sex, and the twin threats of a disapproving community and a racist country. With a mix of British and international women writers

Download or read book In the Land of Blue Burqas written by Kate McCord and published by Moody Publishers. This book was released on 2012-05-01 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “I lived in Afghanistan for five years. I learned the rules – I had to.” Riveting and fast paced, In the Land of Blue Burqas depicts sharing the love and truth of Christ with women living in Afghanistan, which has been called "the world's most dangerous country in which to be born a woman." These stories are honest and true. The harsh reality of their lives is not sugar-coated, and that adds to the impact of this book. Through storytelling, the author shows how people who don't know Christ come to see Him, His truth, and His beauty. The stories provide insight into how a Jesus-follower brought Jesus' teachings of the Kingdom of God to Afghanistan. They reveal the splendor of Christ, the desire of human hearts, and that precious instance where the two meet. All of the names ofthose involved—including Kate's—plus the locations have been changed to protect the participants.

Download or read book Writing Herself into Being written by Patricia Smart and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2017-11-10 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER - Prix du livre d’Ottawa 2016 WINNER - Prix Jean-Éthier-Blais 2015 WINNER - Prix Gabrielle-Roy 2014 FINALIST - Prix littéraire Trillium 2015 From the founding of New France to the present day, Quebec women have had to negotiate societal expectations placed on their gender. Tracing the evolution of life writing by Quebec women, Patricia Smart presents a feminist analysis of women’s struggles for autonomy and agency in a society that has continually emphasized the traditional roles of wife and mother. Writing Herself into Being examines published autobiographies and autobiographical fiction, as well as the annals of religious communities, letters, and a number of published and unpublished diaries by girls and women, to reveal a greater range of women’s experiences than proscribed, generalized roles. Through close readings of these texts Smart uncovers the authors’ perspectives on events such as the 1837 Rebellion, the Montreal cholera epidemic of 1848, convent school education, the struggle for women’s rights in the early twentieth century, and the Quiet Revolution. Drawing attention to the individuality of each writer while situating her within the social and ideological context of her era, this book further explores the ways women and girls reacted to, and often rebelled against, the constraints imposed on them by both Church and state. Written in a clear and compelling narrative style that brings women’s voices to life, Writing Herself into Being – the author’s own translation of her award-winning French-language book De Marie de l’Incarnation à Nelly Arcan: Se dire, se faire par l’écriture intime (Boréal, 2014) – offers a new and gendered view of various periods in Quebec history.

Download or read book Wearing the Niqab written by Anna Piela and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-02-11 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores representations of the niqab in the UK and US as well as the wearing practices through which women find agency.

Download or read book Exit written by Nelly Arcan and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Somewhere in Montreal, in the not too distant future, an obscure company offers custom-designed suicides for its clients with one condition: their desire to die must be pure and absolute. Antoinette Beauchamp is a successful candidate but her suicide is not. Now a bedridden paraplegic, hooked up to machines that monitor all her bodily functions, she tells her story, taking the reader into the Kafkaesque world of the company and its bewildering cast of characters. 'Exit' is at once a profound examination of what it is that drives someone to want to end their life, as well as how that urge can be turned on its head against all odds. Written with her signature brio and acerbic wit, Nelly Arcan's last novel is a hymn to life."[The protagonist's] voice is thoroughly belligerent, as she mercilessly explains why she is bent on pursuing hopelessness, ugliness, all that is antithetical to life, and what it means to exist without 'that strength of will to desire, to discover, to love,to believe'... Ultimately, though, 'Exit' is a strangely hopeful novel..." - Canadian Literature"This book plucked the brain from my skull and punted it through the uprights of remembering what writing can be like when a true artist unleashes her talent, passion and fearlessness in a book. No false compromises here. No half-steps. Just a rigorous exercise in ethics and contemporary morals wrapped in humour, helplessness and the absurd. For a book about suicide the writing is tight, energetic, rigorous ... This book will be on my best of the year list." - Sean Cranbury, Books on the Radio"A powerful argument for suicide as a human right, 'Exit' is also strangely life-affirming. Ordinarily, these contradictory positions could suffice as the motor of a plot. Arcan's protagonist is the irascible, narcissistic Antoinette Beauchamp, who seeks strength and reason to live from within the depths of her own twisted psychology. Knowing that the young woman who wrote this outrageously beautiful, thoroughly original novel did not is, well, heartbreaking. Cruel, even. So 'Exit' and the late Nelly Arcan's life are a package. In the end, though, I only thought of Nelly Arcan. How could she have had this book inside her, let it out, and still leave us? Great beauty can be found in very dark places." -The Rover Govenor General's Award FinalistThe Globe 100: The very best of 2011

Download or read book Hysteric written by Nelly Arcan and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A young woman recounts her ill-fated love affair with a man who was all wrong for her from the beginning."--Publisher's description.

Download or read book Does My Head Look Big in This written by Randa Abdel-Fattah and published by Scholastic UK. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Don't panic - I'm Islamic! Amal is a 16-year-old Melbourne teen with all the usual obsessions about boys, chocolate and Cosmo magazine. She's also a Muslim, struggling to honour the Islamic faith in a society that doesn't understand it. The story of her decision to "shawl up" is funny, surprising and touching by turns.

Download or read book Afghanistan written by Paula Bronstein and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2016-08-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, International Photography Award, 1st Place, Professional: Book, Documentary, 2016 The Afghan people are standing at a crucial crossroads in history. Can their fragile democratic institutions survive the drawdown of US military support? Will Afghan women and girls be stripped of their modest gains in freedom and opportunity as the West loses interest in their plight? While the media have largely moved on from these stories, Paula Bronstein remains passionately committed to bearing witness to the lives of the Afghan people. In this powerful photo essay, she goes beyond war coverage to reveal the full complexity of daily life in what may be the world's most reported on yet least known country. Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear presents a photographic portrait of this war-torn country's people across more than a decade. With empathy born of the challenges of being an American female photojournalist working in a conservative Islamic country, Bronstein gives voice to those Afghans, particularly women and children, rendered silent during the violent Taliban regime. She documents everything from the grave trials facing the country—human rights abuses against women, poverty and the aftermath of war, and heroin addiction, among them—to the stirrings of new hope, including elections, girls' education, and work and recreation. Fellow award-winning journalist Christina Lamb describes the gains that Afghan women have made since the overthrow of the Taliban, as well as the daunting obstacles they still face. An eloquent portrait of everyday life, Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear is the most complete visual narrative history of the country currently in print.

Download or read book The Promise of Beauty written by Mimi Thi Nguyen and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2024-09-20 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Promise of Beauty, Mimi Thi Nguyen explores the relationship between the concept of beauty and narratives of crisis and catastrophe. Nguyen conceptualizes beauty, which, she observes, we turn to in emergencies and times of destruction, as a tool to identify and bridge the discrepancy between the world as it is and what it ought to be. Drawing widely from aesthetic and critical theories, Nguyen outlines how beauty—or its lack—points to the conditions that must exist for it to flourish. She notes that an absence of beauty becomes both a political observation and a call to action to transform the conditions of the situation so as to replicate, preserve, or repair beauty. The promise of beauty can then engender a critique of social arrangements and political structures that would set the foundations for its possibility and presence. In this way, Nguyen highlights the role of beauty in inspiring action toward a more just world.

Download or read book Behind the Veil in Arabia written by Unni Wikan and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1991-05 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author examines the role of women in Oman culture

Download or read book Left Untold written by Vydehi Paravada and published by Notion Press. This book was released on 2018-10-30 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The word “girl” still sends negative vibes across the mindsets. Why should the so called developed society still have gender discrimination? What if a girl is born and brought up with zeal to live her dreams? Why can’t a girl have a sensible love story, emotions, dreams and a fruitful career? How would a determined girl succeed in her life? Yes, every girl does have an untold story in her life. This is a sensible journey of a girl from the womb to the tomb. Every girl expects a soul mate who can fade away her untold story and sinks her life in the ocean of happiness and freedom of thoughts. Clearing all the diplomatic confusions, this story sails you through the realistic thoughts.

Download or read book Thinner than Skin written by Uzma Aslam Khan and published by Interlink Publishing. This book was released on 2012-12-28 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thinner than Skin is a riveting novel about identity and belonging. It’s also a love story: between a young Pakistani man trying to make his way as photographer in America, and the daughter of a Pakistani father and German mother brought up in the US, who wants to return to a country she’s never seen. Together they make the trip to Pakistan, where a chance meeting with a young nomad changes their lives, and the lives of those around them, forever. The novel is also a love letter to the wilds of Northern Pakistan, to glaciers, to the old Silk Road, and to the nomadic life of the indigenous people in the Northern territories, where China encroaches and Pakistanis, Uzbeks, Russians, Chinese, and Afghans all come together to trade.

Download or read book Travels in the Land of Hunger written by Domenico Italo Composto-Hart and published by Dragon Bone Books. This book was released on 2019-11-21 with total page 539 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spring of 2004 - after living in Tokyo, Japan, for over three years pursuing a career as a freelance musician - science fiction and fantasy author Domenico Italo Composto-Hart set off on a half-year backpacking journey through the lands of East and Southeast Asia, Siberia, Central Russia, the Baltic states, the Nordic countries, and Eastern and Western Europe. Traveling by foot, bus, train, and boat - and seeing the world through the analytical lens of anthropology, archaeology, and economics - Domenico documents, researches, and deciphers the developing nations he encounters as they rise through the turbulence of unregulated Western capitalism and globalization. Travels in the Land of Hunger is the author's reflective account of the dark, long-lasting impact of Western colonialism and imperialism, the Vietnam War, the Khmer Rouge regime, the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and the sex tourism and sex trafficking industries in Southeast and East Asia. It is also a narrative of finding exotic beauty, inspiration, inner strength, and unexpected love.

Download or read book Modern Honor written by Anthony Cunningham and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-08-21 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the notion of honor with an eye to dissecting its intellectual demise and with the aim of making a case for honor’s rehabilitation. Western intellectuals acknowledge honor’s influence, but they lament its authority. For Western democratic societies to embrace honor, it must be compatible with social ideals like liberty, equality, and fraternity. Cunningham details a conception of honor that can do justice to these ideals. This vision revolves around three elements—character (being), relationships (relating), and activities and accomplishment (doing). Taken together, these elements articulate a shared aspiration for excellence. We can turn the tables on traditional ills of honor—serious problems of gender, race, and class—by forging a vision of honor that rejects lives predicated on power and oppression.

Download or read book These Impossible Things written by Salma El-Wardany and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2022-06-07 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Read With Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick! Three best friends navigate love, sex, faith—and the one night that changes it all—in this novel that reveals “searing and poignant truths about the female experience” (Ashley Audrain, NYT bestselling author of The Push) Whatever happened to the way we were? It’s always been Malak, Kees, and Jenna against the world. Since childhood, under the watchful eyes of their family and community, these three best friends have had to navigate love, sex, faith, and womanhood alongside the expectations of being good Muslim women. But they’ve always done it together. Malak wants the dream: for her partner, community, and faith to coexist happily, and she’ll even break her own heart to get it. Kees is in love with Harry, a white Catholic man who her parents can never know about. Jenna is always the life of the party, even though she’s plagued by an unshakable loneliness. But when their college years come to a close, one night changes everything. As their lives take different paths, in the wake of heartbreaks, marriages, new careers and new beginnings, Malak, Kees, and Jenna need each other more than ever. Can they forgive and find a way back to each other in time? These Impossible Things is a moving paean to youth and female friendship—and to all the joy and messiness love holds.