07 July 2008
Arab-American Writers Reveal Life’s Richness and Frustrations
More works of fiction and poetry are being published, writers’ panel says
Washington -- In one of the stories in Susan Muaddi Darraj's collection The Inheritance of Exile: Stories from South Philly, Hanan, an 8-year-old girl, doesn't want her Palestinian-born mother to come to her Philadelphia classroom on Parents' Day.
The girl, embarrassed by her mother's accent and flawed English, tells the teacher her mother is ill and then sits alone on the swing in the school playground. Her mother stays home feeling hurt and rejected.
The story had a ring of authenticity for the participants in a panel on Arab-American authors and literature at the annual conference of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, held June 13-15 in Washington. Much of the growing body of literature by Arab-American writers reflects the struggles of Middle Eastern immigrants, or their children, as they go down the bumpy and sometimes painful road to making America their new home.
In this respect, Arab-American literature shares much with the literatures of other immigrant communities -- such as the Irish, the Italians and the Jews -- who faced many challenges, including bigotry, as they navigated life in a foreign place.
It is a pattern that has repeated itself for much of the history of the United States, said Jeffrey Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, which studies immigration from Latin America. "We pride ourselves with being a nation of immigrants," he said. But in each new generation, there have been many who feel the most recent immigrants "are from an alien culture and won't be able to assimilate as our grandfathers did."
In their literatures, America's immigrant and ethnic groups share the richness -- and the burden -- of being "in between two cultures," said Nathalie Handal, a Palestinian-American poet who chaired the session. Sometimes they are not at home in either, she added.
Like the girl in Darraj's story, Evelyn Shakir used to cringe when she heard her Lebanese-born parents speak in front of neighbors. "I started out being embarrassed by my parents' accent," she said. That feeling ebbed after Shakir started her academic career and "was influenced by the whole ethnic revival of the 1970s," when ethnic communities began celebrating their distinct heritages.
At the time, she said, there was very little Arab-American literature. Shakir, a retired literature professor at Bentley College near Boston, started interviewing women from her community. "They didn't know me, but they told me rather intimate, painful memories," she said. One woman had enrolled in the 1960s at Radcliffe College, then an elite women's institution. One day her dormitory sisters all got up from the table and left after she revealed that her grandparents were immigrants from Lebanon.
Shakir said the willingness of the women she interviewed to share their stories "gave me courage." She wrote a book of nonfiction and then a collection of 10 short stories, Remember Me to Lebanon: Stories of Lebanese Women in America, about their experiences.
In the 1960s almost all of Radcliffe's students were white, Protestant and affluent, said Marlyn McGrath, who also studied there. (Radcliffe is now a research institution within Harvard University.) Harvard "is a much more diverse place today," said McGrath, the university’s director of admissions. Fully 40 percent of new students entering next fall are nonwhite, she said.
Few works by Arab Americans contain the collective trauma or provoke as much controversy as those by Palestinian Americans. Susan Abulhawa was born into a Palestinian family that became refugees as a result of the 1967 Six Day War. The Scar of David, her provocatively titled 2007 historical novel, tells the story of four generations of a Palestinian family who lost their land with the creation of the state of Israel, an event known to many Palestinians as "el Naqba" -- the Catastrophe. In the United States the book has provoked some controversy, and charges of anti-Semitism. It has sold better in several European translations.
Abulhawa told the panel, "I've heard from readers of my book who said, 'I finally understand why the Palestinians are so angry.' Nothing pleases me more than those e-mails."
A feeling of not being understood in America has weighed heavily on the work of other Arab-American writers. "The one thing that has really helped me is reading the work of African-American authors," Darraj said. From Langston Hughes and others she learned that characters can carry a writer's anger but still be richly constructed individuals.
"Even angry people have a love life," said Darraj.
The terrorist attacks of September 2001 were a turning point for Americans, including those of Middle Eastern origin. Some Arab Americans experienced increased hostility and suspicion. At the same time, Americans have become more interested in understanding the Arab world.
Yet, the panelists argued, even the desire to understand has been colored by preconceived ideas. "There's been a lot more interest in Arab-American literature," Darraj said. "But we need to be careful; it is not genuine interest. Editors want recycled stories about women and girls being liberated from wearing the veil."
Still, more and more Arab-American literature is being published -- and more is being reviewed in prestigious publications like the New York Times book review. If the work of an Arab-American writer is good, Darraj said, it will eventually find a publisher.
Lebanese-American poet Hayan Charara agreed. He is the editor of a new collection featuring the works of 39 poets, Inclined to Speak: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Poetry. "Not 10 years ago, I would have been hard-pressed to find half as many Arab-American fiction writers," he said.
See “Arab-American Writers Offer Universal Themes, Unique Perspective” and “Arab Americans Recount Experiences of Growing up in America.”
