Transnational Series: Iman Humaydan with Jess Rizkallah

The Transnational Series hosts Iman Humaydan to discuss and honor the release of Songs for Darkness with Jess Rizkallah.

Join the Transnational Literature Series at Brookline Booksmith for an in-store event with author Iman Humaydan to discuss and honor the release of Songs for Darkness. She will be in conversation with writer Jess Rizkallah.

Only songs are able to comfort the soul in its darkness—but can anyone hear them?

Iman Humaydan’s saga recalls the voices of four generations of women from one family in the imaginary village of Kasura, in Mount Lebanon. Its narrator, Asmahan, named after the beloved Syrian singer, has devoted her adult life to recovering the stories of her ancestors, who persisted in the shadows of male supremacy, war, military occupation, and impoverishment.

Her mother, Layla, disappeared when Asmahan was still a teenager. Her grandmother, Yasmine, died giving birth. And her great-grandmother, Shahira, struggled through two world wars, famine, and suffocating gender norms to win an education for her children and eke out a better life for her family. Asmahan is determined to protect her daughter and break out of the cycle of intergenerational violence and wounds that the women who came before her suffered. She packs up her daughter to emigrate after a divorce, when her husband takes their son away from her on his seventh birthday, during the darkest days of the 1982 Israeli invasion.

These women’s legacies span and echo the scarred history of an abused homeland, from the eve of the first World War to the 1982 Lebanon War. In honoring their unfulfilled lives, Iman Humaydan insistently preserves intimate stories of abundant tenacity, generosity, sacrifice—and songs, provisions sorely needed for dark times.

Iman Humaydan is a Lebanese novelist, creative writing teacher, editor, and freelance journalist. Her novels received wide international acclaim and were translated into English, French, Italian, Dutch, German, Armenian, Polish, and Georgian. She is the author of five novels, including B as in Beirut, Wild Mulberries, Other Lives, The Weight of Paradise, and Songs for Darkness. She is also the editor of the collection of short stories Beirut Noir. She is the president of the Lebanese chapter of PEN, and splits her time between Beirut and Paris.

Translated by Michelle Hartman, a literary translator and professor of Arabic literature at McGill University. She has translated more than a dozen novels from Arabic to English including three other novels by Iman Humaydan, The Weight of Paradise, Other Lives, and Wild Mulberries. Her latest translation is A Long Walk from Gaza. She has also written on Lebanese women and the Civil War in two co-authored volumes, with Malek Abisaab, Women’s War Stories: The Lebanese Civil War, Women’s Labor, and the Creative Arts and What the War Left Behind: Women’s Stories of Resistance and Struggle in Lebanon.

Moderator Jess Rizkallah is a Lebanese writer and visual artist. Her book the magic my body becomes won the inaugural Etel Adnan Poetry Prize, as awarded by the Radius of Arab American Writers. Her zines include if luv is a chemical so what who cares and ANYWAY.

The Transnational Literature Series at Brookline Booksmith

The Transnational Series focuses on stories of migration, the intersection of politics and literature, and works in translation and is supported by the independent bookstore Brookline Booksmith. Subscribe to the Transnational Series newsletter for information on upcoming events, book recommendations, and more.

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Event Accesibility

This event will take place at street level. If possible, the event will be livestreamed to YouTube. ASL interpretation may be provided (based on the availability of interpreters) but must be requested at least 2 weeks in advance of the event. Seats are limited. Please email ticketing@brooklinebooksmith.com as soon as possible if you require ASL interpretation, guaranteed seating, or other accommodations. We will do our best to serve your needs!

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