Thriving in New Soil: French Pancakes in Parish
Note from Jody: Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina famously begins, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in
Perennial Blooms: on Love the Day after Valentine's Day
I was sitting here thinking about the kinds of love—how no matter what the movies try to sell us, nobody can make it on eros alone.
Tennis Matched: An Iranian Love Story
I told a version of these friends' love story for Valentine's Day two years ago. They are always the first people I think of when trouble boils over within Iran and between Iran and the U.S. It seems like a good time to retell their story...and to share Solmaz's world-famous walnut cookie recipe.
Waste Not, Want Not: Grandma Jessie's Secret Ingredient
Food and stories: in the case of my old Jewish relatives, it's impossible to separate the two.
Seeding the Story Vault
I think we're in danger of telling and hearing too few kinds of stories about ourselves...
Hidden Grace and Hot Soup
In our digitally intertwined, always-on lives, one of the more startling windows into another person's day is the
Far from Home: Amna's Story
Amna's warmth, humor, and hospitality have touched many people in the small southern town where she lives. She
Three Thanksgivings—and Cultural (Mis)appropriations
I share "Three Thanksgivings" in gratitude for my family. They truly deserve a Homs-at-Home sitcom, written just for them, starring them as themselves, except for me. I’d like Joan Chen to play a glamorous (finally!) version of me.
Bread from Ashes
I was born in Misrata, a city on the Mediterranean coast of Libya, but I took my first steps in Tripoli where I grew up and spent most of my life. From an early age I was bilingual, speaking Arabic and Tamasheq, the Tuareg language. The two languages embody vastly different ways of being...
