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THE RUMI PRESCRIPTION

Name: THE RUMI PRESCRIPTION
Author: Melody Moezzi
ISBN: 978-0-525-53776-2

HOW AN ANCIENT MYSTIC POET CHANGED MY MODERN MANIC LIFE

by Melody Moezzi ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 3, 2020

A heartening narrative of family, transformation, and courage.

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In a book that is more memoir than how-to manual, Moezzi (Haldol and Hyacinths: A Bipolar Life, 2014, etc.) chronicles her effort to apply Rumi’s 13th-century poetry to her 21st-century life.

Some readers may be surprised that the bestselling poet in the United States is a Muslim mystic who died nearly 750 years ago. Moezzi, however, isn’t the least bit stunned that Rumi’s words resonate with contemporary Western readers; it just took her a while to embrace them herself. She grew up in Ohio “dodging dead Persian poets” because her father “is a tried-and-true Rumi addict, and like most children of addicts, I grew up resenting the object of my father’s addiction.” But as an adult, the author decided to mine the Sufi mystic’s poetry to seek remedies for some of her own modern maladies—e.g. anxiety, fear, etc.—and found his words life-changing. Each of the chapters begins with a diagnosis and ends with a prescription, featuring stanzas of Rumi’s work that Moezzi translated and studied with her father. Though Rumi's poetry and its impact on her life are noteworthy, there are two narrative elements that stand out more. First, the author’s prose offers an intimate, endearing look at her relationship with her father. Second, Moezzi weaves throughout the narrative discussions of her interminable efforts to destigmatize both Islam and mental illness—not in a self-promoting way but as an advocate for herself and others; the book could shatter a variety of prejudices and stereotypes. Furthermore, the author’s translation of Rumi’s poetry will appeal to many readers because it’s well distilled and reads much like a series of aphorisms. Moezzi doesn’t claim to fully understand or precisely apply Rumi’s ancient wisdom; she’s simply telling the story of how his body of work has influenced her life.

A heartening narrative of family, transformation, and courage.

Pub Date: March 3, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-525-53776-2

Page Count: 272

Publisher: TarcherPerigee

Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | SELF-HELP | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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ON LIGHTHOUSES

by Jazmina Barrera ; translated by Christina MacSweeney ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 12, 2020

These subtle, reflective observations offer delightful insights into the lighthouse mystique.

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A writer muses on what lighthouses mean to her.

Barrera, a Mexican journalist and editor and co-founder of the Mexico City–based publisher Ediciones Antilope, confesses early on that she’s a collector. “Collecting is a form of escapism,” she writes. After visiting Yaquina Head Lighthouse on the Oregon coast, she wanted “to articulate my feelings about that panorama—the moment and the lighthouse.” There was “something in the lighthouse itself that intrigued me.” Following that trip, she visited a few others and conducted research into their histories and the stories surrounding them: “It was like falling in love; I wanted to know the lighthouse to its very core.” Each story includes a wide array of topics in lighthouse culture, including literature, history, science, art, music, and the daily, brutal lives of the isolated keepers and their families. “From afar, a lighthouse is a ghost, or rather a myth, a symbol,” writes the author. “At close quarters, it is a beautiful building.” Barrera gives close attention to Robert Louis Stevenson’s family: his father, Thomas, instrumental in developing the revolutionary lens that replaced kerosene lamps, and his grandfather, Robert, the first to “construct a lighthouse on a marine rock, far from the coast.” The author is also intrigued that Edgar Allan Poe’s last, unfinished story was about a lighthouse keeper. Barrera chronicles her visit to the Ghoury Lighthouse, built in 1823 after a boat shipwrecked off the Normandy coast, and she comments on the many lighthouses in Edward Hopper’s paintings; he “said that the lighthouse is a solitary individual who stoically confronts the onrush of industrial society.” The author bemoans the fact that GPS and computers may one day make them obsolete. After reading Yukio Mishima’s The Decay of the Angel, about an orphaned boy who works in a signal station, Barrera stopped writing. “There are collections that will always be incomplete, and sometimes it’s better not to continue them.”

These subtle, reflective observations offer delightful insights into the lighthouse mystique.

Pub Date: May 12, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-949641-01-1

Page Count: 174

Publisher: Two Lines Press

Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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CROSS-STITCH
by Jazmina Barrera ; translated by Christina MacSweeney

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LINEA NIGRA
by Jazmina Barrera ; translated by Christina MacSweeney

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GREEN HILLS OF AFRICA

by Ernest Hemingway ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1935

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The Hemingway name will carry this beyond what the usual casual interest in reminiscences of hunting in Africa would ordinarily achieve. It contains some of the best writing Ernest Hemingway has done — and is a delightful human document, natural, humorous, graphic in the swift characterizations and the original sidelights on his companions. Game hunting in Africa — with a double urge, to get, first and last, a Kudu — and to beat Karl. Sell both as travel and sport — as well as good Heminway. Appearing in Scribners Magazine.