June 17, 2020
UW book notes: Physician Morhaf Al Achkar publishes memoir ‘Being Authentic’; Lambda Literary award for UW Tacoma’s Emily Thuma
Dr. Morhaf Al Achkar
had a compelling reason for writing his latest book, a memoir: “I don’t want to be forgotten,” he says.
A family physician with UW Medicine, Al Achkar was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer in 2016 and has since focused his research on the experience of fellow lung cancer patients. Raised in Syria, he came to the United States in 2006, when he was 23.
Dr. Morhaf Al Achkar
He is also a prolific writer. His new self-published memoir, “Being Authentic,” came out in May, just a year after his previous book, “Roads to Meaning and Resilience,” which is based on about 40 interviews he conducted with patients who, like him, live with incurable cancers. Both books are available on Amazon.
“Since my diagnosis, living with authenticity became an urgency,” Al Achkar wrote of the book. “Authenticity is a complex concept, and there is no better way to expound on it than by examining the person’s own stories. Our lives consist of the little stories and moments that formed us. Opening a space to reconstruct our narratives and share them with others can enrich our existence and theirs.”
The pandemic now sweeping the world is a reminder that human existence is fragile, he wrote: “Confronting our mortality awakens in us a desire to be our true selves. COVID-19 made this experience available to every person.” And while people continue to struggle with an oppressive regime in Syria, “Many of us, forgotten Syrians, want to claim a name, have a face, and tell a personal story.”
Of his own fate, Al Achkar wrote: “Death does not frighten me. But more than dying, I am scared of having no one remember me or, even worse, to be recognized differently from who I was.”
For more information, contact Al Achkar at alachkar@uw.edu.
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Lambda Literary Foundation lauds book by UW Tacoma’s Emily Thuma
A book by Emily Thuma of UW Tacoma has received an award from the Lambda Literary Foundation. “All Our Trials: Prisons, Policing, and the Feminist Fight to End Violence” was published in March 2019 by University of Illinois Press.
The book received a 2020 Lambda Award — called the Lammy for short — in the LGBTQ Studies category, among about about two dozen honors this year in categories including gay and lesbian fiction, nonfiction, poetry, mystery, drama, erotica and more.
Thuma is an assistant professor in the Politics, Philosophy and Public Affairs Division of the UW Tacoma School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences. The book, publishers’ notes say, traces the history of anticarceral feminism — a radical politics against gender violence and incarceration forged by grassroots women activists both in and outside of prisons in the 1970s.
Angela Davis, distinguished professor emerita of the University of California, Santa Cruz, praised the book, saying it “offers us a robust history of late 20th century radical feminist antiviolence organizing,” adding: “Thuma reminds us that the activism of the present is built upon an important legacy of work that traversed movements and prison walls.”
Due to the coronavirus, Lambda Literary’s in-person celebration of the awards this year became a series of online meetings. The 2020 Lambda Literary Awards were also listed in an article in Vanity Fair magazine.
Tag(s): Emily Thuma • Morhaf Al Achkar • UW Medicine • UW Tacoma
