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"Today, critics note that sugar production in the US continues to reflect the system of exploitation that underpinned its founding. Prison labor is still used in Louisiana to grow sugarcane.
FBI reports documented forced labor in Louisiana sugar production. In the 1980s, there was a congressional investigation into exploitation of West Indian sugar workers." — Sep 19, 2026 08:37AM
"Today, critics note that sugar production in the US continues to reflect the system of exploitation that underpinned its founding. Prison labor is still used in Louisiana to grow sugarcane.
FBI reports documented forced labor in Louisiana sugar production. In the 1980s, there was a congressional investigation into exploitation of West Indian sugar workers." — Sep 19, 2026 08:37AM
“They think we’re bad people, Habibti, my father said, and always continued, but if they get to know us, they’ll see thats not true.
His eagerness to resist our poor reputation made sense to me. It hurt to imagine my gentle family so accused. But I internalized his words as an instruction to make my life an advertisement for our humanity.
It was an objective that seemed at odds with Palestinian resistance. In the pursuit of liberal empathy, merit was afforded to those who proved themselves civilized. Any act of Arab unruliness — and especially any act or armed struggle — instantly disqualified us from the esteem of our European and American arbiters. Thus excluded, we were declared unworthy — or at least incapable of handling — the privileges awarded the more enlightened nations: self-determination, freedom, and never, ironically, military force.”
― The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders
His eagerness to resist our poor reputation made sense to me. It hurt to imagine my gentle family so accused. But I internalized his words as an instruction to make my life an advertisement for our humanity.
It was an objective that seemed at odds with Palestinian resistance. In the pursuit of liberal empathy, merit was afforded to those who proved themselves civilized. Any act of Arab unruliness — and especially any act or armed struggle — instantly disqualified us from the esteem of our European and American arbiters. Thus excluded, we were declared unworthy — or at least incapable of handling — the privileges awarded the more enlightened nations: self-determination, freedom, and never, ironically, military force.”
― The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders
“In a mean house on Second Street in the smoky city of Fall River, five living creatures are sleeping in the still, warm early morning. They comprise two old men and three women. The first old man owns all the women by either marriage, birth, or contract”
― The Fall River Axe Murders
― The Fall River Axe Murders
“A press governed solely by the desire to avoid all critical news that might reflect negatively upon dominant class interests reveals itself as an obvious instrument of class domination, loses popular support, and generates disbelief and disaffection.”
― Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media
― Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media
“One way to tell the story of a life: list the order and number of ways you learned you were unsafe. For me, girl came first, then Palestinian. Woman and queer were tangled together, one overdetermined, the other gagged. Each one of these words a border, a frontier that told me: Lose yourself, or disappear.”
― The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders
― The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders
“And so it was White America my father spoke to, slicing his name to a single innocuous syllable. It was white America that he emulated, from the bill of his Cubs baseball cap down to ivory Reeboks. It was white America that he saluted as he stood in the front yard, waving a garden hose over his lawn, a palm raised to neighbors with an unironic ‘Howdy!’. And it was white American my devout father had in mind when he suggested, sotto voice, that I didn’t need to wear a hijab— because Americans might not understand.
What I heard: that American must exclude so much of us, that their approval is how we know who to be. A self, he seemed to say, could be reverse engineered. Belonging not inherent but achieved. And so my first grooves of self-rejection were carved by a hopeful blade. A few trims here. A chop, a prune. Eager, edging on disappearance, rest always-almost in sight.”
― The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders
What I heard: that American must exclude so much of us, that their approval is how we know who to be. A self, he seemed to say, could be reverse engineered. Belonging not inherent but achieved. And so my first grooves of self-rejection were carved by a hopeful blade. A few trims here. A chop, a prune. Eager, edging on disappearance, rest always-almost in sight.”
― The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders
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440 books
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