Sadifura’s Reviews > One World Two: A Second Global Anthology of Short Stories > Status Update

mansoura ez-eldin's "light rain", a surrealist, postmodern story both literally about a woman opening the door from attending an art museum to finding herself back in egypt, where there is a war (or not a war) going on, and figuratively about war, genocide, and refugee survivors and the ptsd that those who have faced it once, or more than once, experience. very relevant re: palestine

daniel alarcon's "absence" is something i have to read for class, but i felt...deeply impacted by it. the impact of language within stories is something that fascinates me; the death of language is practically the death of a culture, an identity, and wari is experiencing that very much in the story. he feels like he has two split selves, each dying; one that wants new york, and one that wants to be in peru.

THAT PLOT TWIST THIS IS WHAT GOOD LITERARY NETORARE IS. NETORARE CAN BE GOOD, AS A MEMBER OF MY DIAMOUR SYSTEM HAS SAID BEFORE. GOOD ON AYSE FOR GETTING WITH HAMZA WHILE MUSTAFA WAS AWAY. HE *DID* TREAT HER BETTER THAN MUSTAFA EVEN THOUGH SHE DOESN'T SPEAK SYRIAN ARABIC. OH MY GOD. I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVED THE ENDING. QUEEN SHIT, AYSE QUEEN SHIT

the shift of perspective to hamza, the survivor of the arab spring in syria, and ayse, the barren wife slowly discovering her sexuality and disidentification with the local women, lewd and orientalist about hamza's syrian heritage, added much more FASCINATING layers to this story. alice melike ulgezer's nuanced touch to the arab spring and syrian men in particular, a thing many people lack, is so amazing

alice knows locker room and "just boys" talk SOOOOOO well. she is SO accurate at characterizing what goes on in barbers shops and other implicit "men's only spaces/boy's clubs"; i've seen the conversations the men have at activision blizzard about their women, i KNOW this woman has heard some stuff from the men in her life. or at least suspected. god there are so many underrated writers in this collection

OH MY GOD MUSTAFA IS NOT ONLY A RACIST AND TERRIBLE TO CHILDREN BUT A CHEATER...I KNEW IT