Speaking in Tongues

Raised in a Lebanese mountain village, Fedwa Malti-Douglas came to America at the age of 13. After a rich academic career, Prof. Malti-Douglas turned her attention to other muses, publishing a novel in 1998, and poetry (incl. a chapbook of visual poetry). Fedwa’s honors include the 1997 Kuwait Prize in Arts & Letters, & the Nat. Humanities Medal for 2014, presented by Pres. Barack Obama. This volume tells the story of a family torn apart by divorce, death, and exile, & reunited by an inherited form of muscular dystrophy. It has been praised as “a memoir of unpitying clarity,” “deeply moving & arresting,” which “crosses landscapes of sadness, of happiness, of pain & peace, of alienation & acceptance, toward a healing enlargement of the soul.” Color photos.