Forbidden Love Research Articles

Wait for Me by Caroline Leech

Reviewed by: Wait for Me by Caroline Leech Kate Quealy-Gainer Leech, Caroline Wait for Me. HarperTeen/HarperCollins, 2017 [384p] Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-06-245988-6 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-245990-9 $9.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 7-10 Upkeep of the family farm in Scotland has become difficult for seventeen-year-old Lorna and her father since her two brothers are deployed in World War II. When the local POW camp assigns them a German as a farmhand, however, she’s repulsed by the thought of inviting the enemy to her home—and then she’s shaken when she sees the disfigured soldier who she’s meant to work beside. Paul Vogel, however, is both a hard worker and a gentle soul, and it becomes clear to Lorna that Paul is, like her brothers, longing for the war to be over so he can return home. It also becomes clear to Lorna that she’s falling in love with Paul, a thorny situation in a small town with plenty of anti-German sentiment. The forbidden love plot is a tried and true favorite with romance fans, and Paul and Lorna’s secret meetings and increasingly heated kisses and the rising probability that they will be found out work together like a finely tuned machine, producing delicious combinations of sighs, gasps, and swoons. Paul is refreshingly non-broody, and while he has plenty reason to be angsty—both his mother and sister were killed in the Dresden bombing—Leech instead casts him with a quiet sense of sadness and steely determination not for revenge but for a peaceful life. Lorna is wonderfully feisty without being too modern for her era, and she approaches her romance with Paul much like she approaches most things, with wit, honesty, and compassion. The ending is far too rosy to be realistic, but it’s a forgivable offense that brings Paul and Lorna a satisfying happy ending. Copyright © 2016 by The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Scythe by Neal Shusterman

Reviewed by: Scythe by Neal Shusterman April Spisak Shusterman, Neal Scythe. Simon, 2016 [448p] Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-4424-7242-6 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-4424-7244-0 $10.99 Reviewed from galleys R* Gr. 9-12 In this future world, no one dies naturally anymore, so Scythes are carefully chosen to serve as worldwide population control. Some follow historical trends, looking at things like underage drinking, genetics, etc. to decide who should be killed, and then carefully do their duty. Others just fill their quota right away, and still others seem to take much more pleasure in the process than is believed decent. Citra and Rowan are teens who want no part of Scythe training, which is mostly the reason that they are deemed perfect for it, and they begin as apprentices under the same quiet, respectable man—but only one one will eventually be chosen. When other Scythes change the rules so that the unsuccessful apprentice dies rather than just goes back to his or her own life, things escalate for Citra and Rowan, who aren’t sure if they are in love, enemies, competitors, or friends, or all of the above. Shusterman’s dystopian utopia is a chilling place where many of the passions recognized as human are gone—the drive for learning, creating, innovating, love, and even religion all take on less urgency when spread out over hundreds of years. The teens, on their first go round (adults can reset their bodies back to very early adulthood as many times as they’d like before a Scythe comes for them), are closest to our own conception of humanity, because even if they don’t know true pain, either physically or emotionally because of all sorts of medical levelers in their bodies, they are at least experiencing love and impending adulthood for the first time. This first volume in an anticipated trilogy offers forbidden love, mass murders, cool philosophical musings, and a well-developed futuristic society—plenty to guarantee interest in the planned two followups. Copyright © 2016 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Forbidden Love of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Fuzûlî’s Layla and Majnun

The aim of this comparative literature study is to discuss two major examples of stories based on the theme of forbidden love. The focus of this study is the love stories of Romeo and Juliet, and Layla and Majnun. While Romeo and Juliet is one of the greatest examples of this theme in Western Literature, the story of Layla and Majnun is one of the most significant expressions of this theme in Old Turkish Literature. Despite the fact that these literary works were created at different times and different places, they both address the same themes that we see throughout the literary traditions of world cultures. This study attempts to explore the reason for these similarities and to locate the origin of these ideas at the essence of human nature and culture. The archetypal essence of the forbidden love theme suggests that it is an ongoing aspect of human consciousness on which many writers have drawn throughout the ages. The role of the writer is to bring these ideas to the awareness of the reader to teach a moral lesson and to elevate the reader through the connection with universal ideas which define the nature of human experience and which are, the archetypes of the collective unconscious.

Where the River Parts

Joann Sfar presents a rumination on both the life of the artist and the nature of sex in relation to the artistic creative processes. Throughout the work we see different perspectives on art, models, and sex from Pascin and his friends. Chaim Soutine prefers static objects, having issues with what can only be considered “performance anxiety ” with live models, a nervousness about their immediacy and nudity. In the segment entitled “The Austrian,” we’re shown a painter who both needs to possess and is possessed by his model, a life-sized doll— this doll, “The Silent Woman,” having a deleterious impact on his social interactions with living women. Pascin’s criminal friend, Monsieur Toussaint, attempts to learn how to draw, first through observation and then direct manipulation of the model. Toussaint tries to understand why Pascin would choose to draw a model, instead of just having sex with her, if he’s attracted to her. To explain his own relationship with art, sex, and the model, Pascin explains, “When I’ve drawn a girl, I don’t need to jump her anymore.” Once the subject has been committed to canvas, he can distance himself from immediate carnal desires. In a way, what unites these characters is the understanding that you can be a slave to your vices and passions, either being ruled completely by them or in fighting against them, or you can accept them for what they are and choose not to be driven by them. Pascin is presented as largely unapologetic of his vices, honest and frank in his conversations, and to a certain extent could be considered lewd. Like the Pascin presented in the work, Sfar’s artwork presents an immediacy, a “warts and all approach” that doesn’t shy away from depicting nudity and sexual acts. To a certain extent, the openness acts to distance the reader, with stark depictions of sexual acts. Yet the “bareness” and the “frankness” present in both Pascin and Sfar’s artwork are not gratuitous , exploitative, or even really erotic; the work just is. D. Emerson Eddy Hamilton, Ontario Radhika Swarup. Where the River Parts. Dingwall, UK. Sandstone Press. 2016. 307 pages. In 1947 India and Pakistan gained their independence from England and from each other. Millions fled from one side to the other to escape the violence; thousands more were murdered, abducted, or dismembered. Authors on both sides have written about the violence and continued tensions between the two countries to try to reconcile the bloodshed. Radhika Swarup’s novel fits within this body of literature, known as Partition literature, narrating the forbidden love between a Hindu woman and a Muslim man, the woman’s flight to India, and her attempt to rebuild her life. If you are an avid reader or scholar of Indian literature, this story will feel familiar with the predictable characters and themes that comprise Partition novels. Where the River Parts is told through the perspective of Asha, a Hindu woman born to a wealthy family. It begins before Partition , when Asha falls in love with Firoze, her Muslim neighbor and best friend’s brother. Despite their religious differences and the laws that forbid their relationship, the two plan to marry. However, Pakistan and India split before they wed, and Asha’s family flees as the violence grows and their home is attacked. Before they reach the border, her family is murdered. Asha witnesses their death and barely escapes being assaulted. She reaches Delhi, where she finds Om, a family acquaintance and former suitor, and marries him. Like other novels on the Partition, Swarup’s is filled with common tropes, from Asha’s miscarriage on the way to Pakistan to the stories of both violence and rescues by Hindus and Muslims alike. Swarup appears to be aware of this commonality and uses the shared sense of horror to try to connect characters. Sanam, a Muslim refugee hired to be Asha’s servant, becomes a key, albeit minor, figure for expanding the horrors beyond religious borders. Like Asha, Sanam witnesses her family’s murder and is raped. She gives birth to a girl, Priya, whom Asha adopts as her own to conceal her infertility. Sanam narrates a...

Resonances of the Raj: India in the English Musical Imagination, 1897–1947 by Nalini Ghuman (review)

Reviewed by: Resonances of the Raj: India in the English Musical Imagination, 1897–1947 by Nalini Ghuman Laurie J. Sampsel Resonances of the Raj: India in the English Musical Imagination, 1897–1947. By Nalini Ghuman. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. [xv, 345 p. ISBN 9780199314898 (hardcover), $49.95; (e-book), various.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index, companion Web site: http://global.oup.com/us/companion.websites/9780199314898/. In Resonances of the Raj, Nalini Ghuman examines the role of English rule in India as it influenced musicians during its final fifty years. To that end, she includes six chapters spanning the period, which need not be read in order. She includes a broad range of musicians: Maud MacCarthy (1882–1967), Edward Elgar (1857–1934), Gustav Holst (1874–1934), Amy Woodforde-Finden (1860–1919), Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892–1988), and John Foulds (1880– 1939). Ghuman includes a short introduction, but no conclusion. She explains “I have chosen to focus on musical case studies involving six figures who, I believe, are both representative of the era and significant in their own right” (p. 3). Resonances of the Raj is a welcome addition to a growing body of literature on oriental influences on British music. Other recent books include Music and Orientalism in the British Empire, 1780s–1940s, edited by Martin Clayton and Bennett Zon (Aldershot, Hampshire, Eng.: Ashgate, 2007), and Bob van der Linden’s Music and Empire in Britain and India (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Each has a chapter about the musicians Ghuman includes in her book. Four of the six chapters are revisions of Ghuman’s 2003 dissertation from the University of California, Berkeley (Anna Nalini Gwynne, “India in the English Musical Imagination, 1890–1940” [Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2003]). The two new chapters on Maud MacCarthy and John Foulds, the first and last, respectively, are among the strongest of the book. Little has been written about MacCarthy as an individual or on her collaborations with her husband, Foulds. For example, there is no entry in Grove Music Online on MacCarthy, and she is only mentioned in the article about her husband. Ghuman’s contribution in the first chapter focuses on MacCarthy’s work as an ethnomusicologist [End Page 369] in India from 1907–9 (before she met Foulds) and her lecture recitals on Indian music presented in England and Paris from 1910 to 1930. In the last chapter of her book, Ghuman focuses on the final years of Foulds’s life (1935–39) when he lived in India and worked as Director of European Music at All India Radio in Delhi. The compositions considered include Gandharva-Music, Three Mantras, Essays in the Modes, and pieces written for his Indo–European Orchestra. Ghuman outlines Foulds’s struggles in getting his music published, performed, and broadcast; his motivation for moving to India; his untimely death from cholera in 1939; and his possible influence on later musician Ravi Shankar. Previous work on the couple includes a chapter in Bob van der Linden’s Music and Empire in Britain and India, which focuses on theosophy as an influence on MacCarthy and Foulds. Perhaps the strongest chapter of the book is dedicated to Amy Woodforde-Finden’s Four Indian Love Lyrics (London: Boosey & Hawkes, 1902). Here Ghuman studies both the music and the texts by Violet Nicolson (written under the pseudonym Laurence Hope). The Indian influence is in Nicolson’s texts and the illustrations on the early editions, more so than in the music itself. The Indian Love Lyrics were popular in 1902 and remain so today, especially “Kashmiri Song,” with its tale of forbidden love on the banks of the Shalimar. Ghuman also examines “The Temple Bells” and “Less than the Dust,” but not “Till I Wake.” Comparisons are drawn between the Eastern elements in Cyril Scott’s Lotus Land and Liza Lehmann’s “The Snake-Charmer” from the Golden Threshold, both of which were composed a few years later. As a scholar of Cyril Scott and his music, I must say I disagree that Scott’s Lotus Land was inspired by his impression of India. Hopefully, however, Ghuman’s chapter will encourage more scholarship devoted to Woodforde-Finden...

Charity & Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America by Rachel Hope Cleves (review)

Charity & Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America. By Rachel Hope Cleves. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. 296. Cloth, $29.95.)Revieiued by Jen ManionTo say that Charity & Sylvia fills a void in the history of early America is an understatement. Charity & Sylvia portrays irr great detail an relationship between two women in the early decades of the nineteenth century. They fell in love, worked together, set up a household and the rest-they say-is herstory. They chose each other over any (and every) man and never feigned otherwise. They bound themselves to each other for life and everyone recognized this, from family members and neighbors to church authorities and tax collectors. The abundance of surviving information about their lives, painstakingly pieced together by the author, leads to an absolutely unprecedented view of same-sex love and intimacy between women in the early republic. No longer can anyone pretend that such relationships were restricted to the other side of the Atlantic, as historians have been known to do.Early Americanists will love looking at familiar topics such as the frontier, work, religion, health, family, and education through this unique lens. While they may have charted an unusual path for their adult lives, Charity and Sylvia's childhoods were well-marked by the larger forces that made coming of age in the revolution's wake a trying and unstable time for many. Both women's families faced economic hardship, illness, and separation. Both pursued education while rejecting the company of men. Both became beloved, engaged aunts later in life while refusing motherhood. But their young adult lives also diverged dramatically before coming together in 1807.If language did not betray our ability to see a gender binary, we might characterize Charity as a lady's man. Charity had many female lovers and was adored by countless others. Of Charity, Cleves writes that women found independence and authority attractive^). Her masculine demeanor, combined with her penchant for intimacies with women, troubled onlookers (42). Charity had many lovers before meeting Sylvia. We know her relationship with Mercy was passionate, physically intimate (71). Charity loved another named Lydia whose heart she broke, plain and simple. They wrote of their forbidden love and longed for a reunion of their bosoms, which the author attributes to a sexual culture of breast play that was common at the time (78-80). Charity suffered devastating personal rejection early in life, when her father withdrew support from her because she was a different sort of woman (25). Later, she moved repeatedly to escape rumors that dogged her as she pursued connections with other that were beyond ordinary (38). Lew must have been surprised when she announced she would never marry.Sylvia's trajectory into romantic partnership with a seemed less of a foregone conclusion. She was the youngest in a family who lived in the poorest and most isolated part of town (10). She also showed little interest in men, and her pursuit of education became an acceptable excuse for delaying courtship. Sylvia was staying in the Vermont home of her brother Asaph Haward and his wife Polly when Charity arrived to visit her old friends in February 1807. Charity resumed her work as a tailor during this time and enjoyed the assistance of Sylvia, who served as her apprentice. While Sylvia herself was not shy about her aversion to marriage, the arrival of Charity introduced her to a new world of romance and companionship. The spring thaw brought news of their love to light. As Cleves writes, From the moment that Charity and Sylvia met to the moment Charity died, the women spent only one month apart: June 1807 (97).The idea that Sylvia and Charity were engaged in a marital relationship will surely be subject of critical scrutiny by some readers. The author marshals a convincing amount of evidence to support the claim that not only did Sylvia and Charity view each other as spouses, but that everyone else did as well. …

In the cloister of ambitions: The role of conventual love in the satirical poetry by Gregorio de Matos

This paper approaches the “conventual love” poems attributed to Gregório de Matos Guerra regarding the complex game of interests going on between nuns and their lovers – religious and secular. It will be addressed, more precisely, by focusing some aspects of the satiric genre presented in these poems and used to criticize some values from the 16th century society. Through the analysis, the rhetorical and poetical procedures which make satyr a moral correction's device will be discussed as well as the construction of metaphors as they function as metonyms for the forbidden love.

Kol Isha : Malka Zipora’s Lekhaim as the Voice of the Hasidic Woman in Quebec

Over the last quarter century, tensions in Quebec have run high between Hasids and their francophone Québécois neighbors over the question of “reasonable accommodation” of the nonmainstream ethnic group. There is much ignorance about the insular Hasidic communities, and fear by the modern, egalitarian province that Hasidic women are being oppressed. Several francophone writers have exploited this ignorance and fear for their fiction, and their stories of Hasids often appeal through sensationalism (e.g., tales of forbidden love). Malka Zipora, however, entered the fray in 2007 through the mundane: writing as a “Hasidic mom,” she suggests, in her short story collection, Lekhaim!: Chroniques de la vie hassidique à Montréal , that her life, and the lives of her peers, are little different from those of other women, moms, Canadians struggling with brutal winters. Through her universalizing literary bridge, Zipora persuades her readers to rethink positions on fraught issues like the legality of succahs, while also giving voice and agency to Hasidic women, altering their popular perception.

AŞK-I MEMNU OPERASINDA ULUSALCIĞA İLİŞKİ

Selman Ada is an important name on behalf of modern art in Turkey as a composer bringing works in international opera repertory. The fact that Ada was trained in France gave him an opportunity to recognize international art better, and it may be asserted that knowing “traditional music” materials led him to form a synthesis by involving different colours into his music. In this context, the examination of Ada’s works is so important to define the point arrived at from the first years of Turkish Republic. So, the investigation of “nationalism” ideology of Selman Ada’s Ask-i Memnu (Forbidden Love) as to the effects on art as a contemporary work comes front as a significant must. As a result, it may be said that political efforts effective in cultural field and novelties reveal themselves clearly as “nationalism”, the dominant ideology of that period over the works of art, and when the works in this period assessed, the effect of this ideology can clearly be seen. So, the evaluation of the opera, Ask-i Memnu in terms of this ideology will also present an opportunity to understand the association between art and policy related to contemporary arts. By looking at the topic from this point, Selman Ada’s opera, Ask-i Memnu, has been tried to be assessed scientifically as to “nationalism”.

Generalization of Suppression in Norma Khouri’s Forbidden Love

The aim of this research is to critique the repercussions of over-generalization of a social issue as depicted in Norma Khouri’s Forbidden Love . The novel/memoir has been written against the 9/11 backdrop and as such serves as means of sensationalizing and exploiting a cultural event which unfortunately echoes in the East. The objective of this research is to highlight the responsibility of the writer in raising or negating awareness. Investigative journalism such as Anna Broinowski and Malcolm Knox’s helps to highlight the repercussions of such canonship. Michel Foucault’s theory of Discourse Analysis and E Ann Kaplan’s Imperial Gaze have been employed to exploit the core text. The research proves that writers can fictionalize and fabricate events to sensationalize a social practice/ cultural dimension to over generalize and market a given perception. Thereby, helping to develop a condescending attitude amongst (Western) audience and reader.

Scholar-practitioner collaboration in media-related interventions: A case study of Radio La Benevolencija in Rwanda

Abstract What methodological, ethical or other issues arise in ‘media development’ projects that are collaborations between practitioners and scholars? This article uses as a case study a project led by Radio La Benevolencija (RLB) that sought to address inter-ethnic conflict in Rwanda through a radio drama programme – a Romeo and Juliet story of a forbidden love between members of two conflicting tribes. The intervention was unique in its attention to theories of communication and psychology in its design and implementation, and in its efforts to bring in academics throughout the course of the project to aid in design and evaluation. The authors, commissioned to conduct an evaluation of RLB’s past ten years of work, analyse the intervention in the context of Rwanda’s history and the organization’s use of theory, research and evaluation in their programmes. The authors find that, based on the RLB experience as well as evidence provided by communication and media research, the RLB model for peacebuilding through the media can be usefully adapted to other contexts, given particular parameters. The article concludes by arguing that the collaboration provides evidence of the fruitful ground that can and should exist between practice, theory and research, while problematizing challenges involved in such collaborations.

Burden of the White Shawl: Clothes, Sexuality and Mimetic Desire in Halid Ziya's Aşk-ı Memnu (Forbidden Love)

This paper investigates the intricate connections between sexuality, desire and clothing in Halid Ziya Uşaklıgil's turn-of-the-century novel Aşk-ı Memnu (Forbidden Love, serialized in 1900), which is perceived to be one of the founding blocks of prose fiction in Turkish. More specifically, the paper focuses on the role of clothes and the shopping for clothes in shaping the relationships between the two female protagonists, with the help of the theoretical framework provided by René Girard in Deceit, Desire and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure. Through a reconsideration of the major dynamics of plot and character development, enabled by a new type of relationality between clothes and their wearers or commodities and their users, the paper seeks to position the century-old novel within its historically specific cultural and economic context, and hence responds to existent criticism that tends to see it as divorced from the social reality of its time.

The Strategies of Forbidden Love: Family across Racial Boundaries in Nineteenth-Century North Carolina

This article contends that although local beliefs and legal edicts attempted to discourage sexual and familial relationships between women of color and white men in North Carolina, free women of mixed ancestry and white men developed relationships that mimicked legally-sanctioned marriages. These unions often produced children who maintained frequent interaction with both parents. In nineteenth-century Hertford County, North Carolina, free women of mixed ancestry and their white partners developed creative strategies to deal with the legal limitations inherent in their situation. Women and men in these relationships found ways to secure property rights for women and children and developed methods to prevent legal scrutiny of their living arrangements.

10.5937/kultura1443086j = Ars Amatoria, the problem of love in La Mort le Roi Artus

The main subject of this paper is the problem of love as shown in the Old French Arthurian romance called the Vulgata Cycle, especially its last part - La Mort le Roi Artus. This thirteenth century romance is the basis for all other Arthurian tales as it represents a summary of all themes associated with the legends of King Arthur and courtly literature, such as the forbidden love between Lancelot and Guinevere, the quest for the Graal and other adventures of the Knights of the Round Table. The main theme however, woven through each of the presented tales throughout the whole work, is love. Whether it's the amor encompassed with the ideal of the chivalric code emphasizing its spiritual component or profane mortal love, this emotion is omnipresent in the plot. Based on the examples of many different forms of love, the paper will demonstrate the link between how the emotion of love and its manifestations were described in the romance and what the then leading philosophical theories had to say about amor and emotions. With this comparison an attempt will be made to find the connection between prevalences described in the romance and the philosophical truths.

La magia de la cocina : algunas características del estilo en Como agua para chocolate

La magia de la cocina : algunas características del estilo en Como agua para chocolate

Figures Pointing to an End: Operatic Analysis and Modern Sound Design

In a 2003 production of Jean Racine’s Phèdre, the director Patrice Chéreau introduces into the play a bevy of sound effects. The sounds range from solo cello accompaniment to electronically produced crackling noises. This use of sound bears a resemblance to the way music functions in operas of Jean-Philippe Rameau and Richard Wagner. By interpreting these sounds according to models in recent work in operatic analysis, this paper shows how Chéreau’s sound effects achieve new significance as leitmotifs and as commentary on the events of the play. The study of theatre semiotics also provides a pathway for interpreting these sounds as symbols of fate and indications of Hippolyte’s death at the climax of Phèdre. Chéreau highlights the relationships among the tragedy’s characters by surrounding certain words and phrases with specific sound effects, or by inserting sound effects at particular moments of turmoil and at the dramatic climax. In particular, Chéreau emphasizes the themes of forbidden love and deceit in connecting these moments throughout the play. This analysis provides a way for expanding research in sound design by incorporating methods traditionally used for analysing opera.

The Old Man's Love Story

Fiction Rudolfo Anaya. The Old Man’s Love Story. Norman. University of Oklahoma Press. 2013. isbn 9780806143576 Love, grief, and memory form the thematic triad in Rudolfo Anaya’s The Old Man’s Love Story, a novel that speaks to our shared humanity and to what shapes our lives in their truest dimensions. Anaya’s narrative craft appeared fully developed in Bless Me, Última (1972), his founding novel that closes with Antonio’s grief over Última’s looming death but also with a consoling revelation: spirits can be invoked in moments of sorrow (“if despair enters your heart, look for me in the evenings”). The Old Man’s Love Story is a dignified portrayal of the novel’s main character, who is in the process of facing despair and loneliness: his wife and soul mate is now an angel gone homeward. The writer’s resolve to transform the personal experience of mourning into an art form is an evident attempt to reach the reader’s heart and imagination. The dramatic impact, however, transcends sorrow and desolation; comedy enters in unexpected moments, producing a range of emotions that offer the possibility of reading the novel as cathartic and thus as a personally significant experience. In Anaya’s words (and with the poetry of Nezahualcóyotl in mind): “That’s all that lasts, beauty of flowers and songs.” At one point in the novel the old man’s wife appears and gently whispers: “I am here as long as you remember me.” Utter the word “love,” the old man tells himself, and the image of the beloved “jumps up.” Like a modern-day Pygmalion in love with an image, the old man encounters the essence of his wife first in a photograph, then inside himself , followed by a moment of truth: “love is two persons becoming one.” Ole Hyltoft’s Danish humanism. Fiction, page 64 David Shook’s Mexico City silences. Verse, page 74 Amit Chaudhuri’s Calcutta canvas. Miscellaneous, page 75 review world literature in 58 worldliteraturetoday.org November–December 2013 • 59 Alai Tibetan Soul Karen Gernant & Chen Zeping, tr. MerwinAsia Now a full-time writer after a long prelude as a farmer, a construction worker, a tractor driver, and a history teacher, Alai brings his myriad of experiences as a Tibetan to this collection of short stories. He combines elements of traditional folklore with modern life, giving a rich portrait of the varied culture in his homeland. Ai Mi Under the Hawthorn Tree Anna Holmwood, tr. House of Anansi Press Ai Mi’s bittersweet love story perfectly intertwines China’s politically volatile Cultural Revolution of the 1970s with the innocence of youth. Jingqiu wishes only to work hard and make her family proud. Through a series of political events, however, she meets Jianxin. The two fall into forbidden love, only to have it ripped apart by the cruel hands of fate in an unexpectedly heartwrenching ending. Nota Bene The novel consists of a preface and twenty-seven stories, combining to reach a number associated with lunar cycles, the “madness” of love beyond the grave (“I will always love you”), and the lunacy of a world that lacks a redemptive illumination, a darkening earth torn by wars abroad and by the political distortion of religious beliefs in the East and in the West (“my God is better than yours”). Anaya charts a journey of grief with moments of touching humor and critical stabs at our modern age, with its repression of the incantatory power of myth and an inclusive faith. I will not reveal the novel’s conclusion but will assert that it rivals the myth of Quetzalcoatl’s exile in the East, traditionally portrayed in a raft of serpents with the promise to return or leaving to immolate himself in a pyre, with birds of precious feathers rising from his ashes. Beyond the story of love, mourning, and dreams, the novel ignites the reader’s imagination through the symbolism of numbers and the alchemy of apparent opposites who become the eternal couple through death and transfiguration. In The Old Man’s Love Story, Anaya brings the power of magic and memory to a world of ashes and dust. Roberto Cantú California...

KIZIL DAMGA ve CENGİZ HAN'A KÜSEN BULUT'

In this article, the topic “forbidden child” in the novels The Scarlet Letter and Cengiz Han’a Kusen Bulut both of which belong to two different cultures will be handled. Forbidden child, who are considered as “proof of sin/crime”, constitude the starting point for the events in each of the two novels. Forbidden child born as a results of forbidden love where the rules of religion and society are violated are the fruits of sin/crime in The Scarlet Letter. Love is not forbidden in Cengiz Han’a Kusen Bulut. However, the child born in this novel have become forbidden as the laws imposed by the political authorities are violated. People’s behaviors show similarity towards love, which is a universal feeling. The subject matter in both of the two novels is violation of bans. Punishment is inevitable when bans are violated. As the proof of the crime is the child, mother/woman is the first one to put the blame on. Since such a crime cannot be committed alone, partners of the sin/crime are wondered. Women together with their children are exhibited to give a lesson to the society as well as to make the partners of such sin/crime reveal themselves.

Queer cuttings on YouTube: Re-editing soap operas as a form of fan-produced queer resistance

Despite the increasing efforts of representing gay main characters, popular soap operas still hinge on the discourse of heteronormativity. Queer theorists have uttered the necessity for exposing the oppressiveness of heteronormative practices and offering viable alternatives to the heteronormative way of living. This article argues that fan-produced re-edited videos of soap operas may embed the potential to expose and challenge the way that heteronormativity functions. By a textual analysis of Christian & Oliver, a fan-produced YouTube series based on the German soap Verbotene Liebe ( Forbidden Love), the article enquires how subversive practices of rearticulating narrative conventions of soap operas may function as strategies of resistance. Since texts only become resistant through reading practices, this article discusses the fragility of resistance by elaborating on the negotiated position of resistance within popular culture, discussing the role of fans as producers of new texts and differentiating the role of audiences as readers of resistance.

The Endless Journey of Hero in Ruh Adam Novel: Cycle of Forbidden Love

The Endless Journey of Hero in Ruh Adam Novel: Cycle of Forbidden Love