Communication Across Borders: Testimonial Memoir as Literary Journalism for Mobility Justice

That literary journalism has the potential to communicate across physical and political borders in the quest for social justice is demonstrated by two recent books of real-time memoir: Wang Fang's Wuhan Diary (2020) concerning lockdown at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and Behrouz Boochani's No Friend but the Mountains (2018) which describes the circumstances of the refugees and asylum seekers imprisoned by the Australian government on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. Their texts-written in circumstances where the opportunities for immersive reporting by journalists were unavailable-prompt consideration of the links between (im)mobility justice and literary journalism. They also raise questions about the line between fact and fiction in literary journalism, particularly under the threat of political censorship. And they provoke deliberation on the role literary journalism can play in reporting across closed borders on matters that are intensely local but at the same time of global concern. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

An Interview with Raja Shehadeh: Documenting the Ordinary in an Unordinary Place

This interview is part of an ongoing PhD research project on contemporary Anglophone Palestinian memoirs, autobiographies, and life narratives. The project examines the linguistic, aesthetic, and thematic elements of a number of texts that document daily life under occupation in Palestine within a settler-colonial theoretical framework. Interviews with authors have been conducted to foreground the textual analysis of the texts. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, this interview was conducted online via Zoom in February 2022, and was later edited by the interviewer and the interviewee. © 2023 Institute for Palestine Studies.

Art herstory and my interrupted bath

A visual conversation through art herstory and mothering, made during the first lockdown of 2020. Faced with a lack of private space, the author locks herself in the bath and discusses paintings from the past as she grapples to make art when her son wants her full attention. © 2023 Intellect Ltd Article. English language.

Art herstory and my interrupted bath

A visual conversation through art herstory and mothering, made during the first lockdown of 2020. Faced with a lack of private space, the author locks herself in the bath and discusses paintings from the past as she grapples to make art when her son wants her full attention. © 2023 Intellect Ltd Article. English language.

No Cure: Illness through a Lebanese Arab Queer Lens

Queer Arab life writing, especially in the context of the Coronavirus pandemic, is scarce. In my three-part auto-ethnographic essay, I explore the overarching relationship between illness and queerness, given that in many spaces the latter still falls under the umbrella of the former - especially in the Middle East where I reside. In the first part, set in 2018, I tackle the idea of wanting to have a terminal disease, cancer, and try to work out why exactly I feel that way. To do so, I revisit scenes that juxtapose this 'real' sickness with the 'perceived' sickness of being queer in Lebanon. The second part examines the relationship between queerness and a specific illness, COVID-19, as I experienced it in 2020. The third part elaborates on the prolonged, still roiling, impact of this illness, on queer life particularly, and possible positive aspects of the pandemic. While the essay starts with my point of view as someone who has recently come out as queer and moved to Beirut, the rest is written after living there two years as an openly LGBT person. I reflect on the evolution of my relationship with illness and queerness through this coming-out, and ultimately coming-of-age, transition.

Orientation and recognition in contemporary illness narratives

What does it mean to live with breast cancer, anorexia, chronic pain, dementia, or COVID-19? How does it feel to care for aging parents or to live with people with Alzheimer's? Contemporary illness memoirs foreground these experiences, offering readers insider accounts of lives marked by infirmity. This special issue of Prose Studies presents six critical readings of contemporary experiences of illness, highlighting both the aesthetic and personal experience of reading illness memoirs. These articles address pressing questions regarding how we understand illness and disability today, what popular perspectives get wrong about lived experiences of illness, as well as how reading illness memoirs might help correct widespread or less-thoughtful social and cultural perceptions of the experience of illness.