Confessions of a Mullah Warrior

“History is full of great men,” Masood Farivar declares as a young man, about a third of the way into his memoir, Confessions of a Mullah Warrior. Luckily, Uncle Jaan Agha rhetorically slaps him on the back of the head, half a page later. The topic is dropped then, and for the remainder of the narrative.

Scrapbook of My Years as a Zealot

Previous portrayals of Mormonism in popular media have been widely negative, expressed primitively through cheap jokes about polygamy. Recently, with the emergence of the HBO show Big Love, a positive light has been shown on the teachings of Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saints movement.

Houston, We Have a Problema

It’s never a good sign when you have to begin a book review with, “I really wanted to like…” Gwendolyn Zepeda’s completely uninspired first novel Houston, We Have a Problema is disturbingly typical—which is perhaps the worst thing you can be as a writer. I really wanted to like her Latina protagonist Jessica Luna. I was hoping she’d be fiercely smart, funny, and unexpected. Sadly, she stopped being promising about four pages in.

Girls in Trucks

Not many books have been able to capture the social chasm between northern and southern women quite as well as Katie Crouch’s new novel, Girls in Trucks, has. Meet Sarah Walters, a southern debutante born and raised in South Carolina. Upon entering college, Sarah flees north, separating herself from all that she has ever known. Sarah soon discovers how different people, men in particular, in the north are; they are harder, flightier, and often times quick to forget about another person. Thus begins Sarah Walter’s descent into self-discovery.