Poetry. Dramatic and intimate, the poems in DOES SHE HAVE A NAME? trace the journeys of two women--one middle aged, the other her infant granddaughter--through near-mortal encounters with medical crises. Both survive their trials, passing from life to death and back again; both face wrenching, unpredictable challenges; both emerge from years of therapy, made whole but alone, changed by experience in apparent and invisible ways. Moving from a neonatal intensive care unit's urgent ministrations to the patient work of neurologists and speech pathologists, told from the perspectives of parent, child, husband, and witness, and exploring questions of disability, difference, and the calculated value of human life, DOES SHE HAVE A NAME? is an affecting, provocative book of poems.

"I have to be honest with you. Islam is on very thin ice with me.... Through our screaming self-pity and our conspicuous silences, we Muslims are conspiring against ourselves. We're in crisis and we're dragging the rest of the world with us. If ever there was a moment for an Islamic reformation, it's now. For the love of God, what are we doing about it?"
In this open letter, Irshad Manji unearths the troubling cornerstones of mainstream Islam today: tribal insularity, deep-seated anti-Semitism, and an uncritical acceptance of the Koran as the final, and therefore superior, manifesto of God's will. But her message is ultimately positive. She offers a practical vision of how Islam can undergo a reformation that empowers women, promotes respect for religious minorities, and fosters a competition of ideas. Her vision revives "ijtihad," Islam's lost tradition of independent thinking. In that spirit, Irshad has a refreshing challenge for both Muslims and non-Muslims: Don't silence yourselves. Ask questions---out loud. "The Trouble with Islam Today" is a clarion call for a fatwa-free future.

Die Studie beschaftigt sich mit der "Erfindung des Kosmos" anhand der popularwissenschaftlichen Publizistik und sowjetischen Science Fiction der Tauwetterzeit. Sie zeigt, wie infolge des ersten Sputnikflugs in popularwissenschaftlichen Zeitschriften sich ein Diskurs entfaltete, der nicht nur Kosmonauten, Weltraumreisen oder die Frage nach intelligentem Leben im All umfasste, sondern auch Kybernetik, Telepathie und "ungeloeste Menschheitsratsel" auf der Erde (wie Atlantis oder den Schneemenschen). Die Wissenschaftliche Fantastik (Science Fiction) jener Jahre entwickelte zeitgleich an den Kosmos gebundene Imaginationen zu "Faszinationsgeschichten" weiter, die sie zu einer der popularsten Literaturgattungen der Sowjetunion machten.