Culture
Over the Border, Across the Ocean
Growing up in the Rio Grande Valley flipped the national compass on its head — I experienced trans-Atlanticism simply by crossing the border into Mexico, where I frequented discotheques that played the hottest music from Europe, transporting me into a galaxy of new ideas about sex, politics and cultural identity.
Award-winning novelist Mai Al-Nakib joins New Lines magazine’s Lydia Wilson to talk about how James Joyce’s vision of early 20th-century Ireland resonated during her youth in Kuwait.
Award-winning novelist Mai Al-Nakib joins New Lines magazine’s Lydia Wilson to talk about how James Joyce’s vision of early 20th-century Ireland resonated during her youth in Kuwait.
The Manosphere’s Latest Subject of Ire is ‘Barbie’ and ‘Mid’ Margot Robbie
Defending masculinity has made the manosphere followers so thin-skinned that a bubblegum aesthetic film and its lead actor is so triggering that it ignites another meaningless (not to mention ridiculous) culture war.
The Forgotten Middle East Legacy of ‘1,001 Nights’
Debates over “The 1,001 Nights,” including charges of Orientalism, sexism and translation blunders, ignore how the stories are read, enjoyed and performed in the Middle East and divert from the joy of storytelling.
How Andrew Tate and the Far Right Made Common Cause with Islamists
Western far-right personalities are carving out a new form of conservatism, characterized by an admiring attitude to Islam. Growing unity between conservative Muslims and Christians, and between disaffected young men in both the West and the Middle East, may yet have significant effects on U.S. electoral politics and foreign policy.
Telling Stories of a Distant Homeland — with Heather Raffo
“They're uniquely positioned to tell complex stories of both sides.” Iraq-American actress, playwright and filmmaker Heather Raffo joins New Lines magazine’s Rasha Al Aqeedi to discuss her film Nine Parts, and how diaspora artists have shaped American attitudes to the Middle East over the past twenty years.
Medieval Arabic Culinary Literature Offers Lessons for the Present
Excess was in vogue at the zenith of the Abbasid Empire. The wedding of its seventh caliph, al-Mamun, cost 50 million dirhams, according to the historian al-Tabari. It required 140 mules to make three trips a day for an entire year to transport wood for the stove. It then took two days and nights to burn through all the wood as the food cooked above it.