S6 Ep. 12: The Legacy of ISIS: Dunya Mikhail on Yazidi Women Captives in Iraq

fiction/non/fiction

Poet, journalist, and novelist Dunya Mikhail joins hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to talk about the Yazidis, who are indigenous to Kurdistan and have been targeted by ISIS because of their religious beliefs. After ISIS slaughtered thousands of Yazidi men in northern Iraq in 2014—an event deemed an act of genocide by the U.N.—they kidnapped thousands of Yazidi women and children who were bought, sold, and traded as sexual slaves among ISIS fighters. Mikhail, who is Iraqi-American, previously wrote about the women in the National Book Award-nominated nonfiction book The Beekeeper. She discusses that book and its relationship to her new novel, The Bird Tattoo, which draws on some of the same histories.

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This podcast is produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Selected Readings:

Dunya Mikhail

• The Bird Tattoo
• In Her Feminine Sign
• The Beekeeper
• The Iraqi Nights
• Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea
• The War Works Hard

Others:

• The Security Is Better, Seriously (by Whitney Terrell, Slate, 2011)
• This poet put the Yazidi women’s suffering and strength into words (PBS NewsHour)
• ISIS Forced Them Into Sexual Slavery. Finally, They've Reunited With Their Children. (New York Times)
• Dunya Mikhail Finds Freedom in Fiction (Publishers Weekly)
• Dunya Mikhail: 'The War Works Hard' (NPR)
• UNESCO-Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture awarded to poet Dunya Mikhail and actress Helen Al-Janabi (UNESCO)
• Who are the Yazidis and why is Isis hunting them? (The Guardian)
• Iraqi doctor provides care and comfort to Yazidi survivors (UNCHR)

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