The Twenty-Ninth Year
by Hala Alyan
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Description
For Hala Alyan, twenty-nine is a year of transformation and upheaval, a year in which the past-- memories of family members, old friends and past lovers, the heat of another land, another language, a different faith-- winds itself around the present. Hala's ever-shifting, subversive verse sifts together and through different forms of forced displacement and the tolls they take on mind and body. Poems leap from war-torn cities in the Middle East, to an Oklahoma Olive Garden, a Brooklyn show more brownstone; from alcoholism to recovery; from a single woman to a wife. This collection summons breathtaking chaos, one that seeps into the bones of these odes, the shape of these elegies. A vivid catalog of heartache, loneliness, love and joy, The Twenty-Ninth Year is an education in looking for home and self in the space between disparate identities. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
This is an interesting case of liking the voice more than the poems. I think it's a good, cohesive collection, but some of the poems just didn't work for me. There were a few lines that really struck me, though. Read my full review here.
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Middle Eastern Literature & Non-Fiction
99 works; 3 members
Arab and Arab Diaspora Literature We Recommend
112 works; 53 members
Author Information
12+ Works 1,228 Members
Hala Alyan, first poetry collection, Atrium, was awarded the 2013 Arab American Book Award in Poetry. Her second book, Four Cities, was published in September 2015. She is a clinical psychologist in New York City.
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- Members
- 59
- Popularity
- 519,987
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.70)
- Languages
- English
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- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 3
- ASINs
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