Today we were joined by the journalist, novelist, and memoirist Omar El Akkad, the author of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, which we’ve been reading this month with The Ink Book Club. The book is a reflection on the devastation of Gaza, a memoir of the immigrant experience in North America, and a kind of breakup letter to the West from someone disillusioned not just with its worst hypocrisies and blind spots, but also with his own sense of complicity in an illusion.
“What’s changed in the last 20 months,” El Akkad told us, “is that my ability to remain oblivious to the price tag” of the West is gone.
We had a moving and soulful and difficult conversation about what the war in Gaza revealed to El Akkad, whether the ideals that Western countries profess are merely imperfectly enacted or are in fact outright lies, and the possibility of solidarity and courage in the face of cruelty and silence.
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More Live conversations this week!
Join us tomorrow for discussions with two people very much in the news this week, Thursday, June 19, at 10:30 a.m. Eastern, when we’ll be speaking with New York City Comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander. Then at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, we’ll talk to journalist, former ABC News anchor, and new Substacker Terry Moran. You won’t want to miss either of these conversations!
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