Culture

(Informed Comment) – In his childhood and youth in rural North Carolina John Coltrane absorbed the musical traditions of African-American worship. His parents were active in the local African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. John’s paternal grandfather was a minister in that church and John’s mother sang and played piano in the gospel choir. In 1943 […]

Dance

Dunked On’em: Nicki Minaj Pulls out of Saudi Concert over Women’s, LGBTQ, Free Speech Rights

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trinidadian-American rap superstar Onika Tanya Maraj, known as “Nicki Minaj” has pulled out of Jidda World Fest scheduled in Saudi Arabia for July 15. She issued a statement: “While I want nothing more than to bring my show to fans in Saudi Arabia, after better educating myself on the issues, […]

film

How the New ‘Aladdin’ stacks up against a Century of Orientalist Hollywood Stereotyping

The Conversation

By Evelyn Alsultany |- Though critically acclaimed and widely beloved, the 1992 animated “Aladdin” feature had some serious issues with stereotyping. In the live-action ‘Aladdin,’ Mena Massoud stars Aladdin, while Will Smith plays the Genie. Daniel Smith/Walt Disney Pictures Disney wanted to avoid repeating these same problems in the live action version of “Aladdin,” which […]

Featured

Not Trump’s America: On How the Oscars looked Like the Real America this Year

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump calls women he finds uppity “pigs,” he discriminated against African-American tenants, he slapped a visa ban on Muslims and Arabs, and he denigrates Mexican-Americans as rapists and drug dealers against whom he intends to build a wall. Trump’s America is a thin, diminished slice of the country, the barracuda […]

poetry

What the Witty, Irreverent, Sensual Poetry of Ghalib can Teach Americans

contributors

Foreword to Intimations of Ghalib (Orison Books, 2018) by M. Shahid Alam By Guy Rotella, Emeritus Professor of English Literature, Northeastern University, Boston. I first encountered Ghalib in the early 1970s. I was in graduate school, studying poetry. Then, as now, I had no Urdu. The medium of transmission—translation—was Aijaz Ahmad’s Ghazals of Ghalib, from […]

Omar Khayyam

Omar Khayyam on New Year

contributors

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Trans. Edward Fitzgerald I. Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight: And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught The Sultan’s Turret in a Noose of Light. II. Dreaming when Dawn’s Left Hand was in the Sky I […]

Books

Amos Oz, Renowned Israeli Novelist and Critic of Expansionist Right, Dies at 79

AFP

Jerusalem | AFP | – Amos Oz, who died of cancer Friday aged 79, was a celebrated Israeli novelist and passionate peace advocate whose stirring memoir “A Tale of Love and Darkness” became a worldwide bestseller. His daughter Fania Oz-Salzberger confirmed his death on Twitter, calling him “a wonderful family man, an author, a man […]

Music

How Muslim-Americans Helped Create Modern Jazz

Shalom Goldman

Jazz, the art form dubbed ‘ America’s Classical Music’ by pianist and composer Dr. Billy Taylor, has garnered a world-wide following in the century since its birth in New Orleans and other cities. Rooted in the African-American experience, jazz has attracted practitioners and listeners from all ethnic groups, religions and nationalities. And from a uniquely […]

Books

Why Kahlil Gibran is one of the Best-Selling Poets of All Time

The Conversation

By Antonia Pont | – (The Conversation) – Kahlil Gibran (original spelling at birth “Khalil”) is a strange phenomenon of 20th Century letters and publishing. After Shakespeare and the Chinese poet Laozi, Gibran’s work from 1923, The Prophet, has made him the third most-sold poet of all time. This slim volume of 26 prose poems […]