Book 42 for 2026: “Paradiso 17”, Hannah Lilith Assadi

October 26, 2026 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

I decided to try reading some of the finalist books for The National Book Award. This is the first one on my list. I could not stop reading; it’s touching, lyrically written, and timely. Although this is a novel, it is based on the life of Assadi’s father. Like her father, Sufien, the central character, a Palestinian, was driven from his home in the 1948 Nakba. One day the soldiers just show up and tell the whole family they must leave, abandoning the property that has been in their family for hundreds of years and their house with the blue door. This is the story of the rest of his life, first at a tent camp in Syria until his father finds a good job in Kuwait. As the oldest child in the family he and his father decide he should study abroad–he is brilliant at math. He gets a Visa and goes to Italy to study, runs out of money because father loses his job, starts running a rug shop, meets the person who becomes his best friend for life, Bernardo, a very wealthy Jewish guy trying to escape his mandated life in NYC.

Eventually, Bernardo has to go back to NYC and convinces Sufien to do the same. At times homeless, other times living off money Bernardo gives him, and finally finding that his love for driving can help him make a living, he becomes a taxi driver. Then at a club–he tends to drink alcohol too much–he meets the woman who will become his wife, a Jewish woman whose father owns a factory in Brooklyn. Finally, he feels called to the West, to the Arizona desert, where he lives the rest of his life. The two stay together and have a daughter who attends Columbia University, the place Sufien dreamed of attending but could only go there and wander around and visit the library.

This is the story of a man’s life, a man who, driven from his original home, keeps looking for “home”, a place he feels he belongs. It raises the question of what is home, what does home mean, where and what is it. And to quote Dante, the book begins, “You shall leave behind all you most dearly love, and that shall be the arrow first loosened from exile’s bow. You shall learn how salt is the taste of another man’s bread and how hard is the way, going down and then up another man’s stairs.”–Paradiso canto 17.

Book 41 for 2026: “What Strange Paradise”, Omar El Akkad

October 24, 2026 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Refugee bodies wash up on the shore of an island in the Mediterranean–from just another ill equipped, overfilled boat. People of all ages from places like Syria, Ethiopia, Palestine. While on the boat they argue, debate, help each other–all the variations of human behavior when people are crammed together in a dangerous situation. Only one survives, nine year old Amir from Syria. He sees soldiers coming and runs. Rescued by Vanna, a local teenage girl whose feeling of alienation comes from dysfunctional parents, angry at their lack of success and struggles, Amir hides from the military personnel searching for him.

In alternating chapters the reader learns about Amir’s life before being washed up on shore and about the friendship between him and Vanna. They do not speak the same language, yet they establish an indelible bond as they attempt to escape the military colonel who is obsessed with finding Amir.

I found this novel and the story of these two children touching and inspiring. Although it details a lot of the worst of human behavior, it also inspires the reader with the kindness and empathy that many people can express even in dangerous and hostile situations.

Book 40 for 2026: “Homegoing”, Yaa Gyasi

October 9, 2026 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

The history of Ghana from the 18th century through the slave trade and the into what occurs to the descendants of two sisters.

Effia and Eli are two half sisters who never met. Effia is married off to a prominent Englishman in what later became Ghana during the time of the slave trade. She lives in comparative luxury at Cape Coast Castle. Meanwhile her sister, Esi, has been captured and is in the dungeon under the castle waiting to be transported. She is shipped off to the United States where her children and grandchildren will endure slavery, later work in the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, and eventually make it to Harlem.

The son of Effia and the Englishman is sent off to England for his education. Later, he and his descendants will endure the warfare between the Asante and the Fante tribes as they battle each other for power in the slave trade and resist colonization. Eventually, the Asante fight the English and lose. One of Effia’s descendants becomes a school teacher in what is now Ghana and eventually makes it to the United States where he is a professor at a community college.

This novel presents details of events in the slave trade and what happens to families through the centuries that follow. Without reading a detailed history book, this novel enables the reader to learn a lot of history through the lives of these two half sisters.

Evil

September 28, 2026September 28, 2026 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Today I participated in something called Black Out Poetry. I had never heard this term before. In this case, everyone picked a magazine, opened it up, found an article, and were told to black out whatever did not speak to you or you thought unimportant, etc. and create a poem from what was left. The magazine I picked up was published in early 2002; all the articles focused on 9/11 and its ongoing aftermath. Articles about evil, its nature, who is and who is not, and how to react to evil dominated. This is the poem I created after blacking out almost all of one article.

The human capacity to create hell haunts our dreams.

We knew the Holocaust, Pol Pot, Middle Passage, Trail of Tears,

horrors.

Wakeup-evil deeds touch our lives. Terror spreads.

Evil is the assertion of self–

treating people like things,

forgetfulness of our better selves, of sacred creation,

of life as an ultimate value.

We live in a tragic world; But

there are creative, healing forces:

the power of Love,

the power to seek Justice,

the power to celebrate Beauty.

Rainy Morning Walking

September 8, 2026 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

a conference of crows

downtown LA looms above clouds

mountains in the mist

I Live in Beauty on the Rim

August 29, 2026 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

A number of years ago I lived on a canyon rim in the Panhandle of Texas, a side canyon to Palo Duro Canyon, the second largest canyon in the country. I wrote this poem when I lived there.

The canyon edge looms out my bedroom windows,

pale adobe, stark.

Fall to death or serious injury.

I will not fall; I love living on the edge.

Rain brings a one hundred foot deluge,

roar of water, red adobe, cascading, screaming.

Someone said my house is pink; it is not pink.

Color of canyon, worldwide color,

Moroccan, Pueblo, Saudi, Mali, Navaho, Timbuktu,

desert alive and lovely.

Everywhere.

Three bucks watch me through my bedroom windows.

They see me move; they stare.

Isabella stands, rigid, watching…what?

I kneel to her level, follow her eyes.

Bobcat casually climbs the canyon wall, impervious.

He marks the juniper tree, walks a deer path,

disappears, secretive, rarely seen.

The huge hoot owl’s voice echoes down the canyon,

drifting into my dreams.

A young roadrunner calls, scratchy voice,

running across the patio–on the edge.

In spring the mocking bird sings all night,

“This is my territory.”

I sing all year, full of joy!

Recent Adventures in Santa Barbara County

July 23, 2026 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

After dropping my grandson off at his apartment in Goleta, I went in search of a trail about which I had read. Well, GPS did not take me there but to another trail. Here is where I began.

It’s summer and the wetlands are not very wet but this goes between two wetlands. This whole area is apparently for wetland preservation. Lower after looping around, I came to a woods.

I tried to figure out a way to take a photo that would encompass the entirety of these large, tall trees but gave up.

The trail sort of loops back and near here I saw a picnic table covered in graffiti. And then after walking to the other side of the wooded area, I saw this old barn.

Once upon a time, it appears to have been quite fancy.

I walked back to my car and drove to Carpenteria, a smaller beach town south of Santa Barbara toward Ventura. Carpenteria is not fancy like some other beach towns. It is friendly, laid back. I was hungry so went to the Dart Coffee place which was closed the last time I stopped there.

The empanada was yummy and served with their own chimichurri. This is a Frida book I have never seen before; it was on a shelf with other books for anyone to read.

This coffee shop sells cards with paintings similar to this one on the wall in a hallway that goes to other shops.