RaveBarrelhouseWhen you couple the short words and sentences with the frequent alliteration, the poem sounds like a rallying call; it’s difficult to read Almontaser’s words without wanting to join her in arms against whatever weak-willed versions of ourselves hide in the bushes. Both the hunted and the huntress, Almontaser uses this power dynamic to embody the war the speaker wages against her younger self as well as the one that wages between Yemeni and American identities ... In her struggle to find words, Almontaser has created a new language ... Like the collection’s title animal, The Wild Fox of Yemen is a shapeshifter, a revolt against forced binaries, a refusal to be fed lies that cause so many others to starve.
Seth Anziska
RaveLos Angeles Review of BooksIn Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo, the American Anziska traces how diplomatic relations following the 1967 Arab-Israeli War set the stage for the current sidelining of Palestinian demands for statehood ... Preventing Palestine offers (a) vivid portraits of Palestine that transcend the fragmentary glimpses of poverty and violence that the region is often reduced to in Western media.
Marcello Di Cintio
RaveLos Angeles Review of BooksIn Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Life in Contemporary Palestine, the Canadian Di Cintio travels to Palestine to see how al-Nakba — or \'the catastrophe,\' the displacement of Palestinians after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War — has shaped Palestinians’ everyday lives ... Pay No Heed to the Rockets ends where it began, with a dedication to the people of Gaza. Despite poverty and war, Gaza is the only place where Palestinians live as Palestinians among Palestinians ... (Cintio) offers vivid portraits of Palestine that transcend the fragmentary glimpses of poverty and violence that the region is often reduced to in Western media.
