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AAWW TV: Searching for Home

Dina Nayeri, Rami Karim, Alia Malek, and Roja Heydarpour discuss the complex nature of home: a place that elusively remains in flux through return and exile.

By AAWW

Through our YouTube channel, AAWW TV, you can relive the magic of live events at our space in Chelsea, check out in-depth interviews with writers, and more. Every Thursday we’ll be sharing a new segment from AAWW TV on The Margins.

If you’re Asian American or an immigrant, you’ve probably wondered: what does it mean to search for home? Well, you (and your post-colonial melancholia) are invited to this special event about Middle East politics, revolution, and the refugee experience, You may have read Iranian American novelist Dina Nayeri’s viral story in The Guardian (“The Ungrateful Refugee: We Have No Debt to Pay”). She’ll read her book Refuge (Riverhead, 2017), a powerful story of a daughter who leaves Iran but leaves her father behind. Syrian American journalist Alia Malek returned to Damascus to live in her grandfather’s home—just as the Syrian conflict starts. She writes about it in The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria (Nation Books, 2017). They’ll read with AAWW Margins Fellow Rami Karim, the author of lyric poems set against the Civil War in Lebanon. This mashup of poetry, fiction and memoir speaks to the complex nature of home: a place that elusively remains in flux through return and exile. Moderated by AAWW Muslim Community Fellow Roja Heydarpour.

 

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