Arab-American Identity Research Articles

Unveiling Avant-Garde: A Study of Fady Joudah's Textu Poetry

The study examines how Japanese haiku poetry, which has been popular in American poetry since the turn of the 20th century, was revisited by Fady Joudah. The paper argues that current Arab-American poetry's avant-gardism is best shown by Joudah's appropriation of this poetic form in his poetry collection, Textu. Joudah’s new poetic genre tackles topics pertaining to the Arab-American identity in the digital era by utilizing avant-garde approaches. The suggestiveness of Haiku, which emphasizes the visual picture, word accuracy, and clear diction, is brilliantly appropriated by Joudah. The paper significantly demonstrates how a smartphone can condense pages of invocations and disclosures. It contends that Jouda's text message-like poems, which are each restricted to 160 characters, may most effectively capture the hurried spirit of the twenty-first century represented by its growing use of cell phones’ texting and twittering.

Arab-American Identity Crisis as Manifest in Diana Abu Jaber’s Arabian Jazz

Arab-American Identity Crisis as Manifest in Diana Abu Jaber’s Arabian Jazz

Inhabiting the Hyphen: (Re)Negotiating Arab-American Identity in Poems by Lisa Suhair Majaj, Laila Halaby and Suheir Hammad

Like the many “ethnic” literatures in the United States, Arab-American literature is often caught up in attempts to define the “migrant subjectivities” of its authors. Focusing on a selection of poems by Arab-American women writers, this article looks into how such writers negotiate their hyphenated being, and how they view identity not as a fixed category, but rather as an interplay between its performance and its perception. This essay analyses how these writers express their own sense of being in order to highlight, destabilize, and/or reconcile the often “assumed” paradox inherent within their double identity, especially after the rise of anti-Arab sentiment following the events of 9/11. This article, thus, focuses on a reading of a selection of poems by Lisa Suhair Majaj, Laila Halaby, and Suheir Hammad in search of the poetics of subjectivity their work performs.

Versions of an Arab American Identity: Toward a Revision Narrative for Rajia Hassib’s In the Language of Miracles

This essay compares the draft and published versions of three central chapters in Rajia Hassib’s 2015 novel In the Language of Miracles, as a smaller instance of what John Bryant terms a revision narrative. The key differences in characterization across the evolution of the narrative, along with the elements of a related character that remain largely unchanged, indicate the ways in which Hassib negotiates public and private versions of a gendered Arab American identity. By revising one chapter to remove a scene depicting a public assault in a pharmacy, the essay concludes, Hassib resists familiar narratives constraining Arab American subjects within a post-9/11 Orientalism.

“Versions of an Arab American Identity: Toward a Revision Narrative for Rajia Hassib’s In the Language of Miracles”

This essay compares the draft and published versions of three central chapters in Rajia Hassib’s 2015 novel In the Language of Miracles, as a smaller instance of what John Bryant terms a revision narrative. The key differences in characterization across the evolution of the narrative, along with the elements of a related character that remain largely unchanged, indicate the ways in which Hassib negotiates public and private versions of a gendered Arab American identity. By revising one chapter to remove a scene depicting a public assault in a pharmacy, the essay concludes, Hassib resists familiar narratives constraining Arab American subjects within a post-9/11 Orientalism.

Anxious Dynamics of Exile and the Ambivalence of Arab American Identity in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent: Critical Reflections and Contemplations

Abstract Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent is an Arab American literary piece of fiction that symbolizes the remarkable emergence of this kind of literature in the early years of the twenty-first century. The social and political atmosphere in the USA after 9/11 ushered in the rise of this ethnic literature to worldwide prominence. In addition to the desire to challenge the multi-faceted oppression that Arab Americans confront in the USA – gender-related, sexual, racial, and ethnic – the literary canon of Arab American writers also discuss the experiences of exile and displacement that Arabs go through when settling in the USA and how such experiences affect their sense of authenticity. As such, this paper examines the politics of exile as projected in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent, taking the co-protagonist Han as a prototype of Arab exiles living in the USA. In addition to employing critical and analytical approaches to the novel, this paper relies on a socio-cultural conceptual framework based on perspectives of prominent critics such as Edward Said, Avtar Brah, and Svetlana Boym, to name a few. This paper argues that the politics of exile – such as nostalgia, memory, and displacement – make Arab American identity more convoluted and interlaced with the dilemma of authenticity, featuring feelings of estrangement, loneliness, and homesickness.

The Rhizomatic Arab American Identity in Laila Halaby’s West of the Jordan

This paper is an exploration of Arab American identity in Laila Halaby’s novel West of the Jordan in relation to postcolonialism. The purpose of this paper is to trace Arab American identity development West of the Jordan and to negotiate how the Arab American identity manifested itself in the diaspora to create a rhizomatic identity whose multiplicity denies singularity. The process of identity negotiation for bicultural individuals is psychologically challenging. Arab Americans in particular deal with this process in an environment where they are continuously viewed as “The Other.” Using the concepts of Homi Bhabha, Edward Said, and Stuart Hall in relation to the postcolonial theory, as well as Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s concepts of the rhizomatic identity, the study analyzes how Arab American identities are represented in the work of Halaby.

Arab American Identity in Mohja Kahf’s The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf

Dans cet article nous nous demandons comment l’identité se forme, comment elle se négocie et comment elle se transforme dans un contexte de diaspora et de migration. Ce questionnement prend place dans la fiction arabo-américaine de l’Amérique post-11 Septembre. Prenant pour objet d’analyse le roman The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf de Mohja Kahf, nous cherchons à souligner le rôle essentiel que joue le récit et la mise en récit pour comprendre comment l’identité est influencée et altérée dans un monde où le racisme et les discriminations contre les Arabes et les Musulmans se sont intensifiés.

The Identity Analysis of Yussef El Guindi’s Ten Acrobats in an Amazing Leap of Faith

The meaning of home differs from one person to another. America hosts many hybrid cultures and one of them is the Arab American identity. These people suffer from many hardships not only because of their religious differences, but also their traditional alienation to American culture. This paper will analyze the Egyptian-American playwright Yussef El Guindi’s play Ten Acrobats in An Amazing Leap of Faith (2018), presenting the fear and anxiety for the unknown culture in an Arab American family who struggle with identity problems and the American lifestyle. The concept of in-betweenness will be analyzed in each character and as Stuart Hall mentioned in his theory, this study will carry out “the eye of the needle of the other before it can construct itself” (1996, p. 89). As for identity framework, each character will be examined in terms of identity, gender and religious perspectives. The hardships of each character throws light on various commentaries in relating to the identity analyses and this study will explicitly show how the concept of identity will be shown with different Arab Americans. The cultural conflict is understood with Arab American identities that captivated the hegemonic Americanized thought system in America. While analyzing all characters in the play, this study will present how El Guindi reflects upon the lives of in-between Arab Americans with various issues such as religion, gender and race. While studying themes such as identity, religion, gender and race, the framework will be considered according to the theorists like Homi Bhabha, Stuart Hall, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.

Narrating Arab-American Transnational Identity in Leila Buck’s Hkeelee [Talk to Me

Hkeelee [ Talk to Me] is a one-woman show written and performed by Arab-American playwright Leila Buck, which explores the history of Buck’s family as she reminisces about the life story of her Teta (grandmother) and intertwines it with her own experiences to better understand what it means to be American with an Arab ethnic origin. This article argues that Buck’s stories act as counter-narratives: they resist the marginalization of Arab Americans and place the Arab-American identity within a transnational framework that emphasizes simultaneous attachment to the Arab world and to the United States, thereby unsettling prevailing US political discourses on citizenship and national identity. The article further proposes that Buck constructs an Arab-American transnational identity in the play by deploying the techniques and practices of the ancient Arab hakawati [storyteller] tradition, another example of cross-cultural connection and an instance of how US theatre could be enriched by an ethnic literary and performance legacy.

Surviving in between worlds of Laila “Halaby’s West of the Jordan”

“West of the Jordan” was published in 2003, a period when the Arab American movement was coming to a new era in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It was a time when scholars/writers began deconstructing the concept of Arab and Arab American identity to highlight the diversity of the community by taking into account internal differences, especially in areas such as gender, class, and sexuality. I intend to add to this body of work by setting “West of the Jordan” against Gloria Anzaldúa’s theoretical concept of nepantla (Borderlands; In-betweenness), seen here as an identity formation framework. Anzaldúa’s theorization of nepantla has stressed the instability of identity categories through movement betwixt and between identity and transformative ethics of change. Thus, the novel’s formulations and reformulations of ethnic, gender, and other categories should be understood as a way of criticizing these categories ’essentialist nature (even if some of the characters in the novel fail to formulate a constructive liberatory alternative to the essentialisms it attacks/aims to eradicate). In this context, the heroines ’actions succeed in destabilizing the categories ’ideological power and manage to show the shallowness of such delineations.

The Selected Works of Yussef El Guindi

The Selected Works of Yussef El Guindi

The Power of Recipes: Culinary Practice as a Strategy to Deconstruct Arab-American Identity in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent

Abstract Crescent (2003) is an example of the kind of Arab-American literature that has emerged noticeably in the early years of the 21st century. It signifies a hypothesis that culinary practice is an essential cultural component for diasporic figures to define their identities, especially in a multi-cultural society. These figures embrace such component to strategically define themselves and assert their belonging and affiliation to their original homelands. This paper, as such, examines the extent to which Arab-American characters in the novel, namely Sirine and Han, consider culinary practice as a key tool to understanding their identity, locate themselves in a multi-cultural society, and re-discover their true belonging. The study of this novel shows that culinary practices, as indicated in the narratives, deconstruct Arab-American identity through various dimensions, including memory, nostalgia, hybridity, and essentialism. In addition to employing critical and analytical approaches to the novel, this paper relies on a socio-cultural conceptual framework based on perspectives of prominent critics and theorists such as Homi Bhabha, Brinda Mehta, Dallen Timothy, and Stuart Hall, to name a few.

Understanding Arab American Identity through Orientalist Stereotypes and Representations in Mohja Kahf’s The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (2006)

Abstract Arab-American women’s literature has emerged noticeably in the early years of the 21st century. The social and political atmosphere in post-9/11 America encouraged the growth of such literature and brought it to international attention. This diasporic literature functions as a means of discussing the Orientalist discourse that circumscribes Arab American identity and its effects in determining their position in the wider American society. As such, this article investigates the extent to which Edward Said’s discourse of Orientalism is employed by Mohja Kahf in her novel The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (2006) to project the stereotypes and misrepresentations that confine the identity of Arab and Muslim characters in the US society. This article suggests that post-9/11 Arab American fiction serves as a literary reference to such stereotype-based discourse in the contemporary era. The arguments in this article, while employing an analytical and critical approach to the novel, are outlined within postcolonial and Orientalist theoretical frameworks based on arguments of prominent critics and scholars such as Peter Morey, Edward Said, and Jack Shaheen, to name just a few.

Multicultural and Cosmopolitan Identity in Relation to Cross-Cultural Conversation in Arab-American Poetry: Naomi Shihab Nye

The poetry of Naomi Shihab Nye exemplifies the complexities of identity issues operating in a culture that is fraught with racial and political intensity. Although the poet has repeatedly mentioned the impact of her experience in Palestine on the formation of her poetic vision and consciousness, she does not resist -or separate herself from- the influence of American literary tradition and culture. Her multicultural identity embraces the two cultures by presenting the amalgamation of both Arab heritage and American experience. Thus, Nye's poetry shows how this Arab-American identity develops to be cosmopolitan as she sees herself as a "citizen of the world". This cosmopolitanism plays an important role in cross-cultural conversation which is based on acceptance and respect of difference. Her poetry is a message to all people and other hyphenated literary writers to celebrate their difference and use it to connect the various cultures in the world.

Immigrant Narratives: Orientalism and Cultural Translation in Arab American and Arab British LiteratureContemporary Arab-American Literature: Transnational Reconfigurations of Citizenship and Belonging

Immigrant Narratives: Orientalism and Cultural Translation in Arab American and Arab British LiteratureContemporary Arab-American Literature: Transnational Reconfigurations of Citizenship and Belonging

A CENTURY OF ARAB-AMERICANS: FROM IMMIGRANTS TO CITIZENS

The United States of America has been the land of immigration that experienced successive waves of immigration since the 17th century. The Arab immigration is a part of that history. This paper looks at the history of Arab immigrants in the USA. It illustrates how these immigrants became American citizens within a century focusing on political, social, and economic factors that have pushed these immigrants of their original homelands. It draws attention to the distinctive waves of the Arab immigration and how each wave had contributed in the formation of an Arab-American identity. Most of the previous researches on Arab-Americans concentrate on their literary works examining issues such as hybridization, 'double consciousness', and the feeling of being out of place. This paper, however, introduces the idea of how the Arab-Americans, through different generations and circumstances, have achieved their goal in creating an official existence that formed 'a nation within a nation', despite the fact that they have been shattered and traumatized by social and political issues both in the 20th century and the new millennium. Hence, this paper highlights the importance of history in transforming the Arab-American identity from an Arab immigrant to an American citizen. However, it concludes that this new nation might return to being a nation of immigrants at the end of the road with the new presidency and its extreme chauvinistic politics. Keywords: Arab-American History, Arab immigrant, Arab-American, American citizen, Politics

Ethnic Identity vs. Religious Affiliation: Understanding the Divide between Arab American Christians and Muslims

<p><em>The epithets </em><em>“</em><em>Arab</em><em>”</em><em> and </em><em>“</em><em>Muslim</em><em>”</em><em> are often confused and, in the mind of many Americans, they expressly mean the same. In reality, they do not even overlap. Actually, although they have become more visible over the past few decades, Arab Americans remain an inadequately described community. The first challenge in studying them poses the problem of determining their size. The non-availability of official census data, added to contrasted estimates provided by nongovernmental institutions, makes it more difficult to draw an accurate statistical picture of such a tiny but extremely diverse group. </em></p><p><em>This paper seeks to explore the thorny issue of Arab American identity. It aims to track the paths of two communities, Arab American Christians and Muslims, that self-identify as “Arabs”, but differ in many respects as to the way they adjust to mainstream society and respond to the stumbling blocks encountered on their way for assimilation. It basically aims to demonstrate how, despite inherited sectarian frictions, both groups succeeded in recent history to cross faith lines and to constitute themselves as a cohesive ethnic entity in the United States. At the same time, it delegitimizes claims that the group named “Arab American” is a monolith, and demonstrates that, contrary to popular assumptions, the two labels, “Arab” and “American”, are not mutually exclusive.</em></p>

A New Intersectional Model to Illuminate the Workplace Discrimination of Arab-American and Muslim Women in the U.S.

Prejudices about Middle Eastern women have created a trend of male-centric approaches to studying Middle Eastern people and societies. Following terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001; increases in stereotyping and prejudices have made these studies more discriminatory in addition to excluding the women that these prejudices impact. In this paper, I examine how changes in the conceptualization of Arab-American identity following the attacks of September 11, 2001 impacted the experience of all Arab Americans and how discrimination models have failed to account for this. I use intersectionality theory, specifically, the works of Kimberle Crenshaw and Rachel E. Luft to argue that discrimination models are faulty because of their focus on men in a sexist system, as well as, their focus on Islam in an Islamophobic era in American history. I review the data and research that has been collected on sexual and ethnic harassment in the workplace, highlighting the absence of Arab-American women in these works as evidence of male-centered study. I argue that an improved discrimination model must use tools of intersectionality such as narratives and decentralize religion in order to demonstrate that cases of discrimination are a racialized gendered problem rather than a cultural problem.

The Making of Arab Americans: From Syrian Nationalism to U.S. Citizenship

The Making of Arab Americans: From Syrian Nationalism to U.S. Citizenship