Arab Voices in Diaspora: Critical Perspectives on Anglophone Arab Literature (Cross Cultures)

504 Pages·2009·3.68 MB·English

by  Layla Al Maleh

Arab Voices in Diaspora
C ro ss
Readings in the Post / Colonial
ultures
Literatures in English
115
Series Editors
Gordon Collier †Hena Maes–Jelinek Geoffrey Davis
(Giessen) (Liège) (Aachen)
Arab Voices in Diaspora
Critical Perspectives
on Anglophone Arab Literature
Edited by
Layla Al Maleh
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2009
Cover painting:
Leila Kubba, Distance (2007; acrylic and collage on canvas,
100 x 100 cm). Courtesy of the artist.
Cover design: Pier Post
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of
“ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for
documents - Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN: 978-90-420-2718-3
E-Book ISBN: 978-90-420-2719-0
© Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2009
Printed in The Netherlands
Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vii
Preface ix

Anglophone Arab Literature: An Overview
LAYLA AL MALEH 1
Gibran and Orientalism
WAÏL S. HASSAN 65
Strategic Genius, Disidentification, and the Burden
of The Prophet in Arab-American Poetry
RICHARD E. HISHMEH 93
The Dialectic of the Nature/Man/God Trilogy of Acceptance
and Tolerance in the Works of Amine F. Rihani
BOULOS SARRU 121
The Last Migration: The First Contemporary
Example of Lebanese Diasporic Literature
SYRINE HOUT 143
Transnational Diaspora and the Search for Home in Rabih
Alameddine’s I, the Divine: A Novel in First Chapters
CAROL FADDA–CONREY 163
The Dynamics of Intercultural Dislocation:
Hybridity in Rabih Alameddine’s I, The Divine
CRISTINA GARRIGÓS 187
The Semiosis of Food in Diana Abu Jaber’s Crescent
BRINDA J. MEHTA 203
vi ARAB VOICES IN DIASPORA (cid:94)
How to Be a Successful Double Agent: (Dis)placement
as Strategy in Fadia Faqir’s Pillars of Salt
DIYA M. ABDO 237
Women in Exile : The ‘Unhomely’ in Fadia Faqir’s Pillars of Salt
FADIA SUYOUFIE & LAMIA HAMMAD 271
Bodies Across: Ahdaf Soueif, Fadia Faqir, Diana Abu Jaber
MARTA CARIELLO 313
Searching for Room to Move: Producing and
Negotiating Space in Leila Aboulela’s Minaret
MARTA CARIELLO 339
From Harem to Harvard: Cross-Cultural Memoir
in Leila Ahmed’s A Border Passage
GEOFFREY P. NASH 351
(Trans)Planting Cedars: Seeking Identity, Nationality,
and Culture in the Lebanese Diaspora
VICTORIA M. ABBOUD 371
Tomorrow They Write their Story: Chaldeans in America
and the Transforming Narrative of Identities
YASMEEN HANOOSH 395
From Romantic Mystics to Hyphenated Ethnics:
Arab-American Writers Negotiating/Shifting Identity
LAYLA AL MALEH 423
Making It Survive Here and “Dreams of Return”:
Community and Identity in the Poetry of Mohja Kahf
SAMAA ABDURRAQIB 449
Meditations on Memory and Belonging:
Nada Awar Jarrar’s Somewhere, Home
DAWN MIRAPURI 463

Notes on Contributors 487
Acknowledgements

There are many I would like to thank for making this project possible.
My thanks go to Kuwait University for granting me a sabbatical leave
which procured me time and peace of mind to put this work together.
My thanks also go to the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Devel-
opment (Kuwait) for honouring me with its Distinguished Scholar Award
and funding my research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill.
For generous assistance during my stay at UNC, special thanks go to
Professor Edward Donald Kennedy of the English Department, who ran
the Comparative Literature Program at the time and who made my stay a
most rewarding and fruitful one.
Thanks go to RAWI (Radius of Arab American Writers) for giving me
the opportunity to attend their conferences, present papers at their podia,
and meet with creative writers and artists who constitute the subject of this
volume.
Thanks to all the contributors to this volume for their patience with and
faith in this project.
Special thanks go to Dr Gordon Collier, the Cross/Cultures Technical
Editor at Rodopi, for his generous assistance, unflinching perseverance,
and superb efficiency in getting this book into production. To him I
remain grateful.
For permission to include Brinda Mehta’s article on the “Semiosis of
Food in Diana Abu Jaber’s Crescent,” which had earlier appeared in
Mehta’s Rituals of Memory in Contemporary Arab Women’s Writing
(2007), I would like to extend special thanks to Mary Selden Evans, Exe-
cutive Editor of Syracuse University Press. Thanks also to Leila Kabba,
for kindly permitting the use of her painting “Distance” on the cover of
this book.
viii ARAB VOICES IN DIASPORA (cid:94)
A life-long debt goes to Professor Sadiq al-‘Azm for putting me on the
right track.
As always, it is to my brother Professor Ghassan Al Maleh that I owe
my greatest debt of gratitude. He has been my constant mentor and un-
failing guide.
To my sister, Afaf, no words of gratefulness are enough. Her love, care,
and constant giving have been my lighthouse and haven.
But above all, it is to my husband, Professor Hazem Sabouni, that I
owe my profound gratitude for being there for me, for better and for
worse, in sickness and in health, a life-time supporter and a living example
of giving and self-denial.
To Maya, Mazen, and Diana Sabouni I owe the deepest gratitude and
heaps of love for making my life richer, more meaningful, more beautiful.

LAYLA AL MALEH
JUNE 2009
Preface

A
RAB VOICES IN DIASPORA: Critical Perspectives on Anglo-
phone Arab Literature sheds light on an increasingly important
body of creative writing in English by Arab authors, or by
authors of Arab descent. It deals with a previously neglected corpus of
literary work that is now receiving increasing attention not only from
university departments with Middle Eastern concerns but also from intel-
lectuals everywhere who are interested in postcolonial studies, the New
Literatures, and indeed the larger domain of World Literature in English.
Although scores of books have looked at anglophone literature around
the globe, they tend to make scant reference to the contribution of Arab
writers. The literature of the Caribbean, the West Africans, the Indians,
for example, has been introduced to the world, investigated, and analyzed.
Names such as those of Chinua Achebe, Derek Walcott, Ngũgĩ wa
Thiong’o, Bharati Mukherjee, and Anita Desai, among others, now form
what we might call a ‘parallel canon’ indispensable to academic depart-
ments everywhere. However, anthologies and critical scholarship ap-
proaching anglophone Arab writing remained scanty, except for a doctoral
dissertation here and an M.A. thesis there. Edward Said, the Arab-
American godfather of postcolonial theory, wrote a brief article on Ahdaf
Soueif’s novel In the Eye of the Sun, but even Said overlooked Arab
literature of English expression.
The fact of the matter is that Arabs have been using English as a
medium of literary expression since the beginning of the past century. A
significant anglophone Arab literary revival has taken place in the last few
decades. Now, quite logically, it is awaiting full recognition. Hyphenated
Arab-American, Arab-British, and Arab-Australian authors have been
making their voices heard with originality and confidence. They aim to
carve a niche for themselves within other emerging literatures which use