Cross-cultural “Stuff”
What Makes a Mosque? Part One
Glazed tiles, soaring minarets and a central dome don’t make a mosque, any more than a steeple makes a church. In the early days of Islam, when Muslims numbered in the dozens, Mohammed’s followers prayed together in the open courtyard outside his house in Medina. Once the numbers of the faithful grew a little larger,…
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The Great Wall of China
When faced with a threat or simply with contact with what we learned in graduate school to call The Other, our natural instinct is to build a wall to keep Them out or to keep Us in. * The earliest cities that we know of, the tel culture in what is now Palestine, were built…
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Looking at the Atlantic Slave Trade From Another Perspective
I spent the eight weeks leading up to Christmas working on a short book on the trans-Atlantic slave trade for high school libraries. Quite frankly, it kicked my butt. I took the assignment because I wanted something to distract myself with while my agent took my proposal for Women Warriors out on submission.* I knew…
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