PRESS & Interviews
THE GUARDIAN
“These essays make remarkable connections, braiding surprising, disparate aspects of womanhood: homecooked food as a gentle way to present Arabness and disordered eating as the negation of need. The somatisation of worry and our fathers’ worry beads. The anger of “nasty” women. Conversion (even to feminism!) not as epiphany but as a gradual way of becoming “more authentic versions of who we were before […]
At once vulnerable and intellectually rigorous, here is an illuminating and trenchant exploration of Muslim feminism ... An essential read ”
the big issue
“Awonderfully inventive blend of personal insight and contemporary commentary with Islamic history, myth and culture…Nuseibeh uses her ancestor’s life as a thread that runs through an eclectic and subtle collection…smart and self-deprecating, astute and amusing, disturbing and vital.”
Middle east eye
“[Nuseibeh] centres what many refuse to acknowledge: an unobstructed right to exist and narrate. And here, this right is exercised with the urgency of a necessity. … Unlike writers of colour who are often made to write for a white audience to audition for their humanity, Nuseibeh writes for herself and those like her. She unapologetically considers her own life’s struggle as enmeshed in structural violence, rightly placing the individual within a political context.”
Ms Magazine
“This collection of personal and interwoven essays offers a unique look into the delicate entanglements of the past and the contemporary. Exploring themes of feminism, colonialism, Palestinian heritage and home, Nuseibeh has gifted readers the reflection on history that our present moment so desperately needs. “
BOOKlist
“Nuseibeh, a possible descendant who describes herself as a ‘worrier woman’ rather than a warrior, muses on her spiritual and familial connection to Nusayba and her reliance on her as a role model. In chapters focused on identity, motherhood, sexism, and superheroes, Nuseibeh wonders how her namesake would have reacted to twenty-first-century challenges. Nuseibeh considers the risky power of women's anger, coming to appreciate righteous fury as ‘not only liberating and rebellious, but also necessary.’ Then there is the ever present danger inherent in being Palestinian, ‘racialized as mad, aggressive, rageful and violent.’ Ultimately for Nuseibeh as a Palestinian woman, the roles of mother, warrior, and liberator blend. Beautifully and powerfully told.”
Library Journal
“In a series of linked essays (written before the start of the Israel-Palestine war that began in October 2023), many topics, including food, worry, motherhood, conversion, anger, feminism, language, violence, and common traditions, are covered. Nuseibeh dispels common stereotypes that many Westerners have about Palestinians, especially Palestinian women. She even includes fictionalized accounts of her namesake to illustrate how those same issues would have been relevant to her back then. A thoughtful, insightful, recommended collection of essays on Palestinian experiences that connects history with contemporary societies.”
Foreword
“N. S. Nuseibeh’s Namesake is a brilliant collection of essays threaded together by reflections on an early Muslim warrior. The prose is beautiful and evocative. Its lyrical imagery involves all of the senses: when recounting a dinner party, Nuseibeh describes the way the music sounded, the textures on the table, and the flavor of the food. Metaphors are frequent and stunning, connecting a Palestinian meal to home for instance, or every new religion to a seed that grows into a tree. Wordplay is also present: the essay on anxiety plays on the opposites established by Nusayba (warrior) and Nuseibeh (worrier). Namesake is a raw and dazzling essay collection about identity and how the personal is inseparable from the general.”