Sunday, October 9, 3 pm at Book Beat: Author Barbara Henning (with some help from Peter Werbe) will read from Ferne, her memory-filled and history-blended novel on Detroit and family. We will also be hosting a presentation of Hadha Baladuna: Arab American Narratives of Boundary and Belonging, an exciting new anthology of Arab Detroit writing represented by editor Sally Howell. Stop by at 3 pm for an engaging afternoon of Detroit history at Book Beat, 26010 Greenfield, Oak Park, MI. Call 248.968.1190 for more details.
Barbara Henning is a poet and novelist, born in Detroit and currently living in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of five novels, seven collections of poetry, four chapbooks and a series of photo-poem pamphlets.
“Ferne is a time capsule of mid-century Detroit, a city poised to explode. Its sounds, scents, and sights spill forth, as vividly experienced by a vibrant young woman whose life would end too soon. Ferne joyously curates her own life; that’s the heart of this book. But we also encounter her through the fervent eyes of her daughter, poet and novelist Barbara Henning, who lyrically fills in and fleshes out the social contours and details of the ghostly presence that haunts these pages. Through her daughter’s skilled hands, Ferne comes to life again on these pages, bringing with her glimpses of the city she loved so deeply.”
-John Hartigan, Jr., Shaving the Beasts: Ritual and Wild Horses in Spain
“Barbara Henning has composed a Valentine to her mother, Ferne, whose tragic young life she recreates with loving detail and an eye for family romance. The resulting immediacy gives these American proletarian figures their due, whether in the shadow of war, death or everyday living. This memoir’s fundamental power lies in breaking open memory’s dam with a heart-language that makes space for what is, after all, our common lot.”
-Chris Tysh, Night Scales: A Fable for Klara K
Hadha Baladuna (“this is our country”) is the first work of creative nonfiction in the field of Arab American literature that focuses entirely on the Arab diaspora in Metro Detroit, an area with the highest concentration of Arab Americans in the US.
“I want to hug this book. Reading it is like walking into a home where onions are frying with cilantro while someone pounds garlic cloves with a mortar and pestle and someone else is pouring bubbling syrup over the kunafeh just out of the oven, and everyone’s talking at the same time, and one person is singing. Your mouth is watering for the meal to come, and you’re wishing you lived there even though you know if you did it might be too much some days, and so you’re happy to be visiting. This book is a multi-course meal; I want to eat up every bite. Aside from hugging or eating it, I will be using the rich contributions in this well-made book for teaching Arab American literature, gender studies, and Muslim devotional and aesthetic interaction with the Quran.
– Mohja Kahf, professor of comparative literature and Middle East studies, University of Arkansas