Category: personal

The paperback edition of my book, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, is due to be released by Harcourt a week from today, on October 2nd. But it has already started appearing at bookstores, as well as on Powells.com, Amazon.com, and BarnesandNoble.com. The vast majority of the books I own are soft covers, and it will be nice to finally place my book next to others like it on the shelf.

I will be doing several events in the fall for the promotion of the paperback release. Please check my events page for details, and come by and say hello.

I’m going to be doing a reading for our local library’s Banned Books Week, which is “an annual celebration of the freedom to read that highlights the importance of intellectual freedom and reminds us not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted.” Here are the details:

Saturday, September 23
2:30 – 4:00 PM
Café Banned – Celebrating the Freedom to Read
Central Library
Multnomah County Library
Portland, Oregon

Open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.

Audience: About 500.
Anxiety index: 3 (out of 10).
Surprise guest(s): A woman who patiently waited in line at the signing and then told me: “I’m very proud of you, but I’m also very angry with you. Why did you have to make the only covered girl in your book end up as a prostitute?”
No. of Moroccans who said hello: 0. (Where are you?)

Since the publication of Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, I’ve had many occasions to engage in conversations with readers: I’ve given three dozen readings, in more than fifteen cities, on two continents. One of the most touching, though, was this past week, when I spoke at the University of Tennessee for the Life of the Mind program. Hope was assigned to the entire freshman class, and it was an exhilarating and humbling experience to hear so many young people discuss my book. I enjoyed reading some of the papers they had written, watching as they agreed or disagreed on particular interpretations, and of course talking to various groups of students at different venues. The largest of these was the Cox Auditorium, which holds several hundred seats–it was my biggest reading yet–but I also liked smaller sit-downs with honors students or with creative writing majors. Oh, and everything you’ve heard about southern hospitality is true.

A reminder to readers in the Knoxville area: I will be reading tonight at the University of Tennessee. Here are the details:

Laila Lalami, author of this year’s Life of the Mind book Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, will speak on Wednesday evening, September 13, at 7:00 in Cox Auditorium, Alumni Memorial Building. Her presentation will be followed by a booksigning.

More here.

Last weekend, Martin Amis published a long essay in the Observer about the “Age of Horrorism.” I have a response of sorts up on the Guardian Comment Is Free. Here is an excerpt:

Radical Islam is wholly deserving of the contempt that Amis shows it, and yet I remain unconvinced by his assurances of respect for Islam. Indeed, most of his essay is couched in classic “clash of civilizations” rhetoric, using terms that have become so hackneyed in our global culture as to lose meaning. Amis argues that the world has entered “an age of terror,” where the West, a place “where there are no good excuses for religious belief,” is under threat from the east, a region where “almost every living citizen…is intimately defined by religious belief.” Furthermore, the specific culprit within the east is “Islam,” but within the west it is “30 years of multicultural relativism.”

You can read more here.

I’m in Knoxville, Tennessee, this week, to attend a couple of events for UT’s Life of the Mind program. The entire class of 2010 was assigned my book, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, to read over the summer and to discuss during fall welcome week. So many young minds, so little time.