WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 57:09 — 32.7MB)
Host Michael Simmons interviews Mohja Kahf, the author of this year’s selection for the One Book, One Bloomington program, “The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf.” She is also an associate professor of comparative literature in the Middle East & Islamic Studies Program at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, and author of “Western Representations of the Muslim Woman” and a book of poetry, “Emails from Scheherazad.” The New York Times says of Mohja Kahf, “[She is] an Arab-American writer [who] draws sharp, funny, earthy portraits of the fault line separating Muslim women from their Western counterparts.” On this edition of Interchange, Mohja Kahf talks about how “The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf” came to be; playing with, and against, Muslim stereotypes; the surprising commonality of experience among religious minorities in the Midwest; and driving a race car as an act of spiritual surrender.
