A reading, an interview and an essay
Hi everyone! Just a reminder that I'll be reading from Finches today (Oct 9) at 6:30PM in Alley Cat Bookstore & Gallery, San Francisco. Please come on by if you can. Three signed copies of Finches will be given away!
This week, I was also interviewed by the lovely Paul Semel on his website. In that interview, I talk about Finches, the Tall Spouse and Food Inspector Cat. There is a bonus photo of Dorian being disappointed with my life choices. As we know, my cat runs my life and makes sure anything I eat is up to standard.
I also talk about one of the central ideas behind Finches in an essay for John Scalzi's The Big Idea. Finches is about a family haunted by evolution in the Darwinian and metaphorical sense. Muslim families, in real life, are haunted by an idea that has incredibly tragic consequences. Every Muslim woman marries with the same hope for a faithful, loving and respectful lifelong relationship. Yet they will always be aware that their husbands can choose to marry more wives later. The concept of faithfulness, only on the part of the husband, is not necessarily monogamous. In a day and age when families and long-term relationships come in all kinds of forms, we can argue that a heterosexual polygamous marriage is something to accept with a culturally open mind or we can admit it is patriarchal construct with damaging consequences to entire families. Consent between the partners here is a fraught concept.
This week, I was also interviewed by the lovely Paul Semel on his website. In that interview, I talk about Finches, the Tall Spouse and Food Inspector Cat. There is a bonus photo of Dorian being disappointed with my life choices. As we know, my cat runs my life and makes sure anything I eat is up to standard.
I also talk about one of the central ideas behind Finches in an essay for John Scalzi's The Big Idea. Finches is about a family haunted by evolution in the Darwinian and metaphorical sense. Muslim families, in real life, are haunted by an idea that has incredibly tragic consequences. Every Muslim woman marries with the same hope for a faithful, loving and respectful lifelong relationship. Yet they will always be aware that their husbands can choose to marry more wives later. The concept of faithfulness, only on the part of the husband, is not necessarily monogamous. In a day and age when families and long-term relationships come in all kinds of forms, we can argue that a heterosexual polygamous marriage is something to accept with a culturally open mind or we can admit it is patriarchal construct with damaging consequences to entire families. Consent between the partners here is a fraught concept.