My Body Can House Two Hearts

MY BODY CAN HOUSE TWO HEARTS skips across the fragile boundaries of history, culture, relationships, and language. It explores the transitory balance of belonging by tying threads between different places and ideas not often compared. Traverse the poet's perception of her Welsh and Iraqi heritage, her positioning as a woman of colour, and the nuances of feminist action. My Body Can House Two Hearts is a celebration of women's redemptive interdependency and the rejection of patriarchal power.

Some of the most exciting writers in and from Wales consider the future of Wales and the UK and their place in it. What does it mean to imagine Wales and ‘The Welsh’ as something both distinct and inclusive? In Welsh (Plural), some of the foremost Welsh writers consider the future of Wales and their place in it. For many people, Wales brings to mind the same old collection of images – if it’s not rugby, sheep and leeks, it’s the 3 Cs: castles, coal, and choirs. Heritage, mining and the church are indeed integral parts of Welsh culture. But what of the other stories that point us toward a Welsh future? In this anthology of essays, authors offer imaginative, radical perspectives on the future of Wales as they take us beyond the clichés and binaries that so often shape thinking about Wales and Welshness. Includes essays from Charlotte Williams (A Tolerant Nation?), Joe Dunthorne (Submarine, The Adulterants), Niall Griffiths (Sheepshagger, Broken Ghost), Rabab Ghazoul (Gentle / Radical Turner Prize Nominee), Mike Parker (On the Red Hill), Martin Johnes (Wales Since 1939, Wales: England’s Colony?), Kandace Siobhan Walker (2019 Guardian 4th Estate Prize Winner), Gary Raymond (Golden Orphans, Wales Arts Review, BBC Wales), Darren Chetty (The Good Immigrant), Andy Welch (The Guardian), Marvin Thompson (Winner 2021 UK Poetry Prize), Durre Shahwar (Where I’m Coming From), Hanan Issa (My Body Can House Two Hearts), Dan Evans (Desolation Radio), Shaheen Sutton, Morgan Owen, Iestyn Tyne, Grug Muse and Cerys Hafana.

“A bold, sweeping bird’s eye view of thousands of years of history that provides a truly global perspective of the past. A fantastic achievement.”—Peter Frankopan, internationally bestselling author of The Silk Roads Prize-winning historian Naoíse Mac Sweeney delivers a captivating exploration of how “Western Civilization”—the concept of a single cultural inheritance extending from ancient Greece to modern times—is a powerful figment of our collective imagination. An urgently needed emergent voice in big history, she offers a bold new account of Western history, real and imagined, through the lives of fourteen remarkable individuals. In this groundbreaking, story-driven retelling of Western history, Naoíse Mac Sweeney debunks the myths and origin stories that underpin the history we thought we knew. Told through fourteen figures who each played a role in the creation of the Western idea—from Herodotus, a mixed-race migrant, to Phylis Wheatley, an enslaved African American who became a literary sensation; and from Gladstone, with a private passion for epic poetry, to the medieval Arab scholar Al-Kindi—the subjects are a mind-expanding blend of unsung heroes and familiar faces viewed afresh. These characters span the millennia and the continents, representing different religions, varying levels of wealth and education, diverse traditions and nationalities. Each life tells us something unexpected about the age in which it was lived and offers us a piece of the puzzle of how the modern idea of the West developed—and why we've misunderstood it for too long. The concept of “the West” is present in every daily interaction you have, from entertainment and politics to world markets and world history. This engagingly intimate history will reshape the way you see the world around you. At this moment of civilizational redefinition, if we are to chart a future for the West, we must properly understand its past.

‘These stories make the wall between worlds thrillingly thin. Their enchantment calls to us ever from the other side of the door’ Michael Sheen, from the foreword If you think you’ve heard all the fairy tales out there, think again. Inside this book you will find eleven epic Welsh tales from long ago, but not so far away, that are bound to enchant you. The Mab is a collection full to the brim with brand new versions of really, really old stories from the Mabinogi – maybe the oldest written-down stories in the history of Britain. But as well as being really, really old, the stories in The Mab are strange and funny and thrilling. Alive with mystery and magic, they speak of a time when the gates between the Real World and the Otherworld were occasionally left open. And sometimes, just sometimes, it was possible to step through. The stories in this illustrated edition have been reimagined by an extraordinary team of writers, and each appears alongside a Welsh-language translation.

Novelist Rittik Chandra's “Two Hearts” presents the relation between two souls who, in various ages and incarnations, have approached each other and perhaps crept near to happiness, and for whom perfect union and consummation are now clearly foreshadowed. In this world they are to remain apart, as body from body, but their souls grow near and, before leaving the body, are at peace in the certainty of a union upon some other plane.

The Writings/Poems in this beautiful book are life challenges and personal experiences I had the opportunity to experience or some else that was closed to me experienced. Also, during my journey, I've witnessed, observed and internalized a lot of hardships, as well as exciting things that relates to our society and God has given me the ability to create and write from my heart to the hearts of others. People need hope, faith, healing, peace & security to survive in the world today. It's God's desires as well as mine to see love, harmony, strength, wholeness, wellness, oneness as well as prosperity, in every area of my brothers and sisters lives. No matter what color you are, in God's eyes we are ONE! Please allow, the words from my heart to penetrate to your heart to may be bring a change in your life and you can be the one to touch somebody else's heart and bring about a change to their hearts.

In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart", the narrator tries to prove his sanity after murdering an elderly man because of his "vulture eye". His growing guilt leads him to hear the old man's heart beating under the floorboards, which drives him to confess the crime to the police.