Confrontations

We start the year confronting — and confronted by — the centripetal power of whiteness.

Youssef Rakha, a novelist who was born and lives in Egypt, recounts a lifelong journey to forge the “new, contemporary ore” of equal parts a creative and political project, Rakha twins his reflections on witnessing the war in Gaza with his memories of the humiliation his encounters with the West have wrought — and his growing realization that he cannot survive, artistically and literally, in its gaze. “Wherever I am,” he writes, “I live in a world wrought by the West. Life can’t be as meaningful if the West doesn’t give a shit about me. The West doesn’t give a shit about me.”