To See Beyond
The brave, probing essays in Anna Badkhen’s To See Beyond address global issues including climate change, economic inequality, immigration, colonization, and genocide.
The twenty-three essays in this collection cover a vast physical and intellectual geography, from refugees fleeing ethnic violence in Mali to a light-filled vision at a tiny mosque in New Mexico. They combine piercing personal memories with poignant reflections on universal topics, as when Badkhen’s detailed reflections on her Soviet mother’s only pair of stiletto heels—worn, indented, and eggshell blue—prompt a contemplation of the heaps of shoes left by Jewish people killed at Auschwitz and a tiny pair of flip-flops cradled by an Afghan mother whose child was killed by an American bomb. A family hike in the Canary Islands across a “pathless plain of white volcanic foam” leads to a reflection on pilgrimage, displacement, the “microlove” of passing connections, and what it means to be home. Other passages consider the conflicts in Ukraine and Israel-Palestine, climate change, and the extraction of fossil fuels.
Badkhen describes storytelling as a transformative, imaginative act—the art of creating new landscapes and envisioning “how we can get from here to wherever we are going.” An essay on watching the solar eclipse from a crowded Philadelphia park becomes a meditation on prayer and the “shape-shifting” nature of grief; Badkhen cites Abraham’s biblical supplications for Sodom and the amazement of her neighbors watching the changing sky from beach blankets. Her dense, layered metaphors are both disorienting and reorienting. The essays consider tragic events across eras and cultures, capturing the “infinite ways in which we know how to be full of marvel.”
These deep, thoughtful, multi-faceted essays address timely issues of human suffering and environmental devastation from a unique, ultimately hopeful perspective.
Reviewed by
Kristen Rabe
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
