08 May 2009
Arab-American Writer Cites U.S. Freedom of Expression
Halim Barakat describes his personal experience living in “exile”
Washington — Arab writers long have immigrated to the United States seeking freedom of expression in their writings and relief from censorship, says Arab novelist and sociologist Halim Barakat.
Barakat made that point April 13 in a Library of Congress lecture, “Exploration into Exile and Creativity: the Case of Arab-American Writers.”
The author spoke to an audience of mostly Arab-American writers, and elaborated on two of his well-known books: the novel The Crane and the nonfiction work The Arab World: Society, Culture and State, both of which have been translated into English and published in the United States.
Barakat was born in 1933 into a Greek-Orthodox Arab family in Kafroun, Syria, and raised in Beirut, Lebanon. He attended the American University of Beirut, receiving a bachelor of arts degree in 1955 and his master’s degree in sociology in 1960. He immigrated to the United States in the early 1960s and received a doctoral degree in social psychology in 1966 from the University of Michigan.
He explored his experiences living in exile and his ability to express his personal freedom and his rebellion against tradition through literature. He explained that Arab-American writers’ creativity and writing style have been affected by life in the United States.
Barakat offered examples of authors, such as Gibran Khalil Gibran and Edward Said, who have contributed greatly to both Arabic and American literature.
Barakat was asked why Arab writers choose to come to the United States. “Because they heard about the democracy and freedom of expression that writers of all backgrounds and ethnicity practice in the USA,” he said. He added that they heard this information from their fellow Arab writers who immigrated earlier and established the New York Pen League (Al-Rabita al-Qalamiyah), known more familiarly as Al-Mahjar.
This became an Arab-American literary movement of the 1920s and 1930s that included such important authors as Elia Abu Madi and Gibran, who became the best known of the “Mahjar poets” or immigrant Arabic writers. Gibran was called a reformer and received widespread recognition in the Arabic world for his books and poems, especially Spirits Rebellious (1908) and Broken Wings (1912).
Barakat said he believes the cause for immigration of some Arab Americans to the United States is “the repressive social institutions, political or religious” in the Arab world. But he also argued that their novels were becoming more popular partly because so many Arab writers had been displaced or exiled from their native homes — thereby not only enmeshing them in disjointed, complicated, multiple identities, but also allowing them to “see things more objectively from a distance.”
He concluded with words from a poem by Gibran: “and hence an exile am I and an exile I shall remain until death lifts me up and bears me even unto my country.”
The Library of Congress lecture was part of a series on topics related to Arab societies. The library’s Near East Section, part of the African and Middle Eastern Division, has hosted a series of similar events.
More information on upcoming and past events at the Libray of Congress' African and Middle Eastern Division is available on the Library of Congress Web site.
