Honey, you do me wrong but still I'm crazy about you      Stay away too long and I can't do without you      Every chance you get, you seem to hurt me more and more      But each hurt makes my love stronger than before        I know flowers grow through rain      But how can love grow through pain        Ain't that peculiar.      - Marvin Gaye When I started to read Life’s Peculiarities , “charming” was a word that tended to engulf my sensibilities about this collection of short stories. And while there is a poignancy and dramatic nuances that permeate the stories in this collection, charming tended to be the end point for me. Now, I realize that some readers may feel that this descriptive reference is trite and overly simplistic. However, a central facet of that word and the literary work it characterizes is its sublime elegance; it...

  For far too long, we have relegated extraordinarily super powerful people to the mindset of comic book writers and illustrators. We then revel and exist in another person’s world of character portrayal created by the fantastical thoughts of others; such thoughts developed and manifested at draft boards with pen and ink on poster boards and more than likely finger strokes on a keyboard. For far too long, we have held that role-models is the provenance of children…pivotal elders presented to youngsters as people to look up to; to compel children to try to mirror the examples of others’ courage, bravery and willingness to tilt against windmills. However, adults also need role models. For far too long, issues regarding environmental challenges have been visualized by the faces of activists who eerily resemble the majority of people in the western world and their accepted ideologies that may not be necessarily inclusive of any other specific race or indigenous culture. How silly...

  In the fall 2016, the fiction pages of aaduna shared a flame of buoyant hope, compassionate wit and a genial creativity that was destined to continue to evolve.   “Prélude à l’après-midi d’un rhinoplastie : or, When the Rabbi Went for a Nose Job.” Daniel R. Goodman, Esq. penned an exquisite story, and that tale also illuminated a simple fact. It forecast more compelling work to come. In the summer 2020, the gift of words came to life, finally.   “A Single Life” was published.   Goodman manifested a work that was years in the making.   His first novel.   In Daniel’s words, “It's about a Jewish man of color whose romantic relationship with a white Christian woman forces him to grapple with his religious and racial identities. The novel intersects with BLM issues (there is a key scene in which he has a confrontation with a white police officer), as well as with a variety of social, philosophical, political, and even theological questions...