We have full spoilers for the April 2018 Boxwalla Book Box!
This April, in time for Mother’s Day, we showcase two contemporary female writers, writing about women: a Brazilian novelist and an Iraqi-American journalist and poet.
The second writer we feature is Iraqi-American writer, Dunya Mikhail with her just released book ‘The Beekeeper: Rescuing the stolen women of Iraq’.. Interspersed with her poetry, this is a magnificent journalistic work that captures the stories of the Yazidi women of Iraq who were rescued from the clutches of the Daesh terrorist group. A true story that reads like great fiction.
Here’s an excerpt:
“Leaving Lalish, I looked out the car window at a tree, its branches so colorful with all the pieces of cloth tied around it as wishes. How many of those wishes will come true? And how many of the missing will return?
When we came out of the spring, some men and women were sweeping the floor. “There are always volunteers here cleaning the temple,” he said as I glanced at a broom on the wall. I was embarrassed to leave like that, so I volunteered to sweep a little bit.
Every so often I would stop to contemplate those symbols carved onto the walls of Lalish. I was in awe of the fact that they were so similar to the Sumerian symbols that I’m so obsessed with—these symbols were the first form of communication in history. I don’t know what they mean; like any great words, we can’t know exactly what they mean. Poetry came first, through metaphors and images that referred to their meanings and their shadows. Among those symbols is the eight-pointed star, which represents the goddess Ishtar (Inanna), the circle inside the circle, the ornamental square, the sun disk, the palm tree, the sparkling pot with water flowing from both sides, and also the wings drawn not only on birds but on humans as well. The special bird for the Yazidis is the peacock, because, according to the Yazidis, “it’s the head of the seven angels.” They say the peacock was sent by God to alight on Lalish and brush its seven colors over the valley.”
First spoiler:
April Book Box Spoiler #1
This April, in time for Mother’s Day, we showcase two contemporary female writers, writing about women: a Brazilian novelist and an Iraqi-American journalist and poet.
The first writer we feature is Brazilian writer Maria José Silveira with her prize-winning novel ‘Her Mother’s Mother’s Mother and her Daughters’, published in Portuguese in 2002 and translated and published in English just this past December. This beautiful book spans many generations of women beginning with Inaia in the 1500s, at the cusp of the colonization of the indigenous people of (what is now) Brazil, by the Kingdom of Portugal, all the way till 2001.
Here’s an excerpt:
But one day he opened the little girl’s tiny hand to look at the lines crossing her palm. He’d done it without thinking, almost joking, something the old man never did because he never read the palms of children and never read the palms of those he considered family, and Rosa’s family was his family. But you tell me why people suddenly decide to do things they’ve never done before! It’ll take you a lifetime to figure it out.
The fact is, the old man opened up Lígia’s tiny hand and almost instantly closed it again, the small white hand between his fat fingers, and the smile that had begun to dance in his eyes, as it always had at the girl’s side, departed for some faraway place.
Lígia asked him: “So, what do you see? What’s my future?” “Nothing, girl, I’m getting too old for that stuff! I can’t see a thing anymore. I think I need to get me some glasses.
What is certain, though, is that after that he never, ever read anyone’s palm again.
This had been before the family’s move to Brasília. Until the old man died at somewhere around the age of 100 (no one knew his age for certain), Lígia always returned to spend school vacations in the old house, with the old man, his old guitar, and his stories.
What do you think of this month’s Boxwalla Book Box spoilers?
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