Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Michael Mohammed Ahmad

The Other Half of You by Michael Mohammed Ahmad

by
August 2021, no. 434

Bani Adam returns as the narrator–protagonist of Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s The Other Half of You, a sequel to his two previous books. The most recent one, The Lebs (2018), gave us the story of Bani’s teenage years at Punchbowl Boys’ High School: the trials of a Lebanese Muslim boy in a majority Lebanese Muslim community nestled inside the larger, diverse territories of Western Sydney, in post-‘War on Terror’ Australia. The Other Half of You is an account of Bani’s late teens and early twenties, and of an inner conflict between religious, cultural, and romantic pieties.

... (read more)

After Australia edited by Michael Mohammed Ahmad

by
September 2020, no. 424

Acknowledging the limits of Acknowledgments of Country, the Wiradjuri artist Jazz Money once wrote:

whitefellas try to acknowledge things
but they do it wrong
they say
           before we begin I’d like to pay my respects
not understanding
that there isn’t a time before it begins
it has all already begun

... (read more)

The Lebs by Michael Mohammed Ahmad

by
March 2018, no. 399

Bani Adam wants to be a ‘chivalrous poet’ or a great writer. These aspirations make the Lebanese-Australian teenager feel like an outsider at the testosterone-fuelled, anti-intellectual high school that he attends. Until he finishes school, Bani bides his time with a group of mostly Muslim and Lebanese young men. ‘The Lebs’ ...

... (read more)